Tim by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

pocketed, of course.’
    ‘Well, it wasn’t that much. What do you expect for mowing a bloody lawn by machine, you suspicious old twit? No fortune, and that’s for bloody sure!’
    ‘As long as I get me housekeeping, I don’t give a sweet bugger how much she paid him, mate!’ She got up, stretching. ‘Want a cuppa tea, love?’
    ‘Oh, ta, that’d be real nice. Where’s Dawnie?’
    ‘How the hell should I know? She’s twenty-four and her own flaming mistress.’
    ‘As long as she’s not someone else’s flaming mistress!’
    Es shrugged. ‘Kids don’t think the way we did, love, and there’s no getting around it. Besides, are you game to ask Dawnie where she’s been and if she’s shagging with some bloke?’
    Ron followed Es into the kitchen, fondly patting her on the bottom. ‘Cripes, no! She’d look down that long bloody nose of hers and come out with a string of words I didn’t understand, and a man would end up feeling pretty flaming silly.’
    ‘I wish God had rationed out the brains a bit more fairly between our kids, Ron, love,’ Es sighed as she put the kettle on to boil. ‘If He’d split them down the middle they’d both be all right.’
    ‘No use crying over spilt milk, old girl. Got any cake?’
    ‘Fruit or seed?’
    ‘Seed, love.’
    They sat down on either side of the kitchen table and polished off half a seed cake and six cups of tea between them.

8
    Self-discipline carried Mary Horton through the week at Constable Steel & Mining as if Tim Melville had not even entered her life. She doffed her clothes before using the lavatory as usual, ran Archie Johnson as well as ever and chewed out a total of seventeen typists, office boys, and clerks. But at home each night she found her books unenticing and spent the time in the kitchen instead, reading recipe books and experimenting with cakes, sauces, and puddings. Judicious pumping of Emily Parker had given her a better idea of Tim’s taste in goodies; she wanted to have a varied selection for him when Saturday came.
    During one lunch hour she went to a north Sydney interior decorator and bought a very expensive ruby glass coffee table, then found an ottoman in matching ruby crushed velvet. The touch of deep, vibrant colour disturbed her at first, but after she got used to it she had to admit that it improved her glacial living room. The bare, pearl-grey walls suddenly looked warmer, and she found herself wondering if Tim, like so many naturals, had an instinctive eye for art. Perhaps one day she could take him around the galleries with her, and see what his eye discovered.
    She went to bed very late on Friday night, expecting a phone call any minute from Tim’s father to say he didn’t want his son hiring himself out as a gardener on precious weekends. But the call never came, and promptly at seven the next morning she was roused from a deep sleep by the sound of Tim’s knock. This time she brought him inside immediately, and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea while she dressed.
    ‘No thanks, I’m all right,’ he replied, blue eyes shining.
    ‘Then you can use the little toilet off the laundry to change in while I get dressed. I want to show you how to do the front garden.’
    She returned to the kitchen a short time later, cat-footed as always. He did not hear her come in, so she stood silently in the doorway watching him, struck anew by the absoluteness of his beauty. How terrible, how unjust it was, she thought, that such a wonderful shell should house such an unworthy occupant; then she was ashamed. Perhaps that was the raison d’être of his beauty, that his progress towards sin and dishonour had been arrested in the innocence of early childhood. Had he matured normally he might have looked quite different, truly a Botticelli then, smugly smiling, with a knowing look lurking behind those clear blue eyes. Tim was not a member of the adult human race at all, except on the sketchiest of premises.
    ‘Come along, Tim, let me show