Wives at War by Jessica Stirling Read Free Book Online Page B

sleep,’ Babs said.
    â€˜No you don’t.’
    â€˜Thanks for the compliment,’ Babs said. ‘But I really can’t burn the candle like you can. Don’t let me rush you, though. Stay up as long as you like.’
    He put down the bottle and glass and waited.
    Babs crossed the room and offered her cheek.
    â€˜â€™Night, Mr Cameron,’ she said.
    He kissed her, his lips dry against her moist cheek. She leaned into him for a moment, pressing her breasts against his arm. He did not draw back but what she detected in his eyes was not desire.
    â€˜â€™Night, Babs,’ he said, and returned to fiddling with the wireless set, seeking, so Babs imagined, not the soothing strains of a late-night orchestra but the voice that filtered through the static, ranting in a foreign tongue.

3
    Polly could see nothing of Fin Hughes except his legs and feet. The legs were clad in immaculately pressed lightweight worsted trousers, the feet in hand-lasted brown brogans. His stockings were a pale brown colour, so fine that they seemed more like skin than lambswool. The right trouser leg had ridden up, however, and she could make out the clip of his suspenders and a section of white calf bulging above it, muscular enough but already stippled with the faint blue veins of middle age.
    â€˜Do you have a spanner there, Polly?’
    She had several spanners, a whole battery of spanners. Fin had personally selected them from the rack in the garage, brought them into the kitchen and arranged them on a newspaper on the draining board above the sink.
    For all his meticulous preparations Fin was no handyman and Polly took a certain malicious satisfaction in putting him into situations that exposed his lack of competence. She was, she knew, being entirely unfair, but in a society when a man’s ability to use his hands effectively counted for more than his ability to use his brain, it was easy enough to make Fin feel small.
    Small he was not, not in any way at all. He was tall, elegant, polished, and a good deal less effete with his clothes off than with his clothes on.
    â€˜Which one do you want?’ Polly said. ‘Tell me the gauge number.’
    â€˜Gauge num— Ah, the second smallest.’
    His voice echoed from the hollow stone chamber beneath the sink. He had a fine courtroom voice, a rich, tawny drawl, and it was unusual for him to ‘ah’ or ‘erm’. Fin, of course, knew no more about gauge numbers than she did but he was too vain to admit it.
    She took a spanner from the row and passed it down to him. He groped for the tool with a long lean-fingered hand. His shirt cuff was stained and there was dirt under his fingernails, and Carfin Hughes, scion of the legal profession, certainly didn’t like getting his hands dirty.
    Polly smiled to herself and yielded up the spanner.
    â€˜Can’t you fix it, darling?’ she asked.
    â€˜Of course I can fix it. It’s the flange nut on the stopcock.’
    â€˜Is it really?’
    â€˜I’ll have pressure restored very shortly, I assure you.’
    â€˜Jolly good!’ said Polly.
    There was nothing seriously wrong with the plumbing. Falling water pressure was general throughout Manor Park, for an inexperienced crew from the Auxiliary Fire Service had ruptured a main pipe. A chap in a damp blue uniform had called round a couple of days ago to inform householders that full pressure would be restored as soon as possible which, these days, meant next month or the month after, or possibly not at all. Somehow, though, Polly had neglected to inform Fin of the fireman’s visit.
    â€˜God, but it’s stiff.’ Metal scraped on metal. ‘Damn and blast it!’
    â€˜If you can’t manage—’
    â€˜I can manage. I can manage. Whoever installed this antiquated system should be shot, though. Why hasn’t the stopcock been greased? Didn’t your husband ever do it?’
    â€˜He had a man come in