Tiger Ragtime by Catrin Collier Read Free Book Online Page A

them, if only for a few hours.’ Edyth picked up the last of the plates on the scrub-down table she had covered with a sheet because she didn’t have a large enough tablecloth, and carried them to the sink. Having invited all the members of the Bute Street Blues Band and their families, as well as her own, to supper, she had laid it out in the enormous kitchen of her shop.
    ‘You miss your family?’ Micah took the sheet from the table, folded it and hung it on the back of a chair.
    ‘Of course, but not enough to give up the bakery and go back to Pontypridd.’ She smiled when she saw Judy standing over the sink with her eyes closed.
    Micah touched Judy’s arm. ‘Bed, miss, now. You’re falling asleep on your feet like a horse.’
    ‘I was just blinking,’ she mumbled.
    ‘So I saw.’ He took her by the shoulders and propelled her out of the kitchen, through the shop to the foot of the stairs. ‘It’s quite simple. You hold on to the hand rail, lift one leg, then the other and walk straight ahead. Don’t forget to wash off that greasepaint or you’ll be scrubbing your sheets for a week.’
    Too tired to respond to Micah’s sarcasm, Judy did as he ordered.
    He returned to the kitchen. Edyth had lifted the last of the plates from the washing-up water and left them to drain on the zinc draining board.
    ‘I’ve put the leftover food in the pantry. Everything else can wait until morning. Drink?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ve consumed more tea today than there’s water in the West and East docks combined.’
    ‘I said drink, not tea.’ She took the last flagon of beer from a cupboard and set it on the table next to him before pouring herself a small sherry from the bottle she’d opened for her guests. ‘This is cosy.’ She sat next to him at the table.
    ‘It could be cosy every night if you allowed me to talk to your father,’ he reproached.
    ‘To tell him what?’
    ‘That I love you and intend to marry you as soon as you’re free.’
    ‘I’m a married woman and my own person. You don’t need my father’s permission, only mine.’
    ‘Aside from courtesy, you may be married but you’re not twenty-one and, in Peter’s absence, that makes your father your guardian.’
    ‘I suppose it does, but as my present marriage isn’t annulled, and won’t be until Peter signs and returns those papers, which, given that he’s on the other side of the world, could take months, any talk of remarrying is premature.’
    ‘But Peter will be returning them any day now and when he does –’
    ‘Micah, I’ve been thinking,’ she interrupted.
    He flicked opened the beer, poured some into a glass, replaced the rubber-ringed top and closed it again. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
    ‘What, me thinking? My brain doesn’t make a noise.’
    ‘Don’t joke, not now, Edyth, please.’ He removed his glasses and stared at her.
    She knew he was acutely short-sighted, but even unfocused his deep blue eyes seemed to bore into hers, reading her thoughts as they formed. ‘If we married, you’d expect me to move into the Norwegian mission with you, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘Married people do generally live together,’ he agreed.
    ‘Now who’s not being serious?’ A note of irritation crept into her voice.
    ‘What point are you trying to make?’
    ‘My bakery …’
    ‘If that’s all you’re worried about, you could still run it,’ he said with relief. ‘Judy will be only too happy to carry on living here.’
    ‘It’s not Judy’s bakery, it’s mine. I’m up every morning at four –’ she glanced at the clock on the wall. The hands pointed to ten minutes to four and music was still echoing from the direction of Loudoun Square, ‘– every weekday morning, that is,’ she qualified. ‘That means I go to bed most nights at nine.’
    ‘I know,’ he murmured pointedly.
    Not wanting to get sidetracked into a discussion as to what happened on the nights Micah stayed over when Judy was babysitting for one