Westwood by Stella Gibbons Read Free Book Online Page B

smile grew less steady. Poor thing, she thought.
    ‘How about a cup of tea, Hilda?’ said Margaret. ‘Mother? You’ll have one, won’t you? Mrs Wilson? I’ll go and put the kettle on.’
    ‘I’ll come and help you,’ and Hilda followed her out of the room, leaving their mothers to carry on a conversation about the neighbourhood’s amenities and disadvantages, which, considering their differing natures, was not too awkward; but Mrs Steggles’s manner was constrained, and as she talked she listened for the sound of her husband’s key in the lock.
    The first cups of tea had just been poured out when she heard it, and set her own down with an exclamation to Margaret – ‘There’s your father at last! I wonder whatever’s kept him’ – turning to Mrs Wilson, ‘I’ve been expecting him this last two hours.’
    Poor man, thought Mrs Wilson, but she said comfortably, ‘Oh, I expect he’s found the journey back took much longer than he expected; I always think you do, in a strange place,’ and turned her bright eyes towards the door. Her flirtatiousness did not extend to the husbands of her acquaintances, but she enjoyed masculine society, to which her daughter’s admirers had accustomed her, and saw no reason to subdue her smile because Mrs Steggles was a jealous wife.
    Mr Steggles came into the room with the litter of half-unpacked boxes and tea-drinking, and smiled with pleasure at the sight of two pretty faces. Mrs Wilson was too good a woman to make her a dangerous one to him, but he liked to look at her and make her laugh, and he suspected Hilda of being the type known in his youth as a little devil. Hilda was not; but the illusion gave zest to his exchanges with her.
    ‘Hullo, what’s all this, a party?’ he said, looking round and blinking his handsome eyes because they were still dazed from the blackout. ‘I’m very late, I’m afraid, Mabel,’ putting his hand for an instant on his wife’s shoulder, and feeling her shrink, without any change ofexpression: ‘I went in for a quick one with some of the boys afterwards, and we got talking.’
    ‘How did you get on, Father? Tea?’ asked Margaret.
    ‘Please.’ He moved some books from a chair next to Mrs Wilson, and sat down. ‘Well, I feel a bit as if I’d been running the quarter-mile all day, but I shall get used to it, I expect. The work is so much –’
    ‘Did you find somewhere nice for lunch?’ interrupted Mrs Steggles.
    ‘I went to a pub; quite good. A bit expensive, but I was –’
    ‘Well, I hope you had a good one, because there isn’t much for your supper,’ and Mrs Steggles glanced at Mrs Wilson with a little laugh. ‘What did you have?’
    ‘Steak and kidney (otherwise sausage and spam) pudding and –’
    ‘Isn’t it disgraceful the way they take people in?’ demanded Mrs Steggles, peering into Hilda’s cup. (‘More tea, Hilda? Really? Sure?) If everybody refused to pay the fancy prices they ask for the rubbish they give you, they’d soon change their tune. I expect Mr Wilson finds it the same, doesn’t he?’
    ‘Oh, Herbert has been to the same comic little old place for about twenty years now. They know him there and don’t try any tricks on him,’ said Mrs Wilson.
    ‘They must have seen Mr Steggles coming,’ and Mrs Steggles laughed again. Her husband laughed too, and held out his cup for more tea. If I was Margaret’s dad I should sock her mother one, reflected Hilda, sipping her tea and looking like a pensive aquiline angel.
    ‘Is it a very big building, Dad?’ asked Margaret.
    ‘The Gazette offices were blitzed; I saw it in that list they gave of the newspapers that were bombed out,’ said Mrs Steggles. ‘More tea, Mrs Wilson?’
    ‘No, thank you. Have they got temporary offices, then?’ said Mrs Wilson, smiling and shaking her head.
    ‘Yes, in Thames Street. They aren’t very big by London standards, I should think, but they’re much bigger –’
    ‘Than he’s been used to,’ said Mrs