Laurie King Mary Russel 03 A Letter of Mary

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church, shops, and teahouse, engulfed but more or less intact.
Some hours later, from my table in the front window of that same teahouse, I
watched Col. Dennis Edwards walk through the doors of the Pig and Whistle
public house. I had taken the table an hour before and had spent the time
eating sandwiches and chatting with the waitress-owner. She now knew that I
was new to the area and looking for work. I knew that she had corns, five
children (one of whom was in trouble over a small matter of removing from a
store an item of clothing for which she had neglected to pay), and a husband
who drank when he was at home, that her mother had piles, her elderly Jack
Russell terrier had become incontinent and she was afraid he would have to be
put down, and that she had an appointment the following week to have the last
of her teeth out. I also had somewhat less thorough but equally intimate
biographies of half the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, including the
occupant of that great ugly house behind the wall up there, Col. Dennis
Edwards. That gentleman, whom she seemed to think almost was but wasn t quite,
had shown himself to be a parsimonious customer on the rare occasions that he
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ventured into Rosie s Tea Shoppe, had difficulties keeping female servants
( not that he s improper, mind, it s his temper, don t you know, specially
when he s been at the bottle ), had a real looker of a son with roving
hands, whose drinking habits were similar to those of the father, though he
was happy rather than mean-tempered when in his cups. A fountain of
information was our Rosie. She told me happily about the colonel s wife, who
had died of pneumonia during the war, about his servants and his cars, his
dogs and visitors, what he ate and how much he drank, where his clothes came
from and her estimate of his net worth. I listened until she began to repeat
herself, and I then commented on the young couple who walked past the window
holding each other upright and listened with equal interest to ten minutes of
their personal habits. Finally, I rose, thinking that the half hour he had
been in the pub should have softened him and knowing that if I had to listen
to Rosie s tumbling monotone for another minute, I should go mad. I left her a
decent tip and took my sore feet off to the Pig and Whistle for something more
fortifying than Rosie s tea.
I walked slowly, studying the contents of shop windows, until I stood looking
in through the wall of small panes that formed the front of the pub, as if
attracted by the warmth within. Two nights before, it would have been stifling
inside, but the temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees in the past
twenty-four hours, and most of the client�le who would have been standing on
the pavement were now inside. It did look warm and comforting, with its wooden
walls, polished bar, and even a patch of orange-and-brown carpet on the floor.
At the far right, I saw a boisterous party in a booth, the table littered with
bottles and empty glasses. Two young women sat laughing uproariously at the
antics of one of the men, who was hurling darts with exaggerated fury towards
a frayed-looking target on an equally frayed wall. A man in a crisp black suit
sat with his back to the window, watching the darts players. Two greying
ladies whom I had seen earlier that day sat with a pair of strangely coloured
drinks, vaguely green and unpleasant. Had I seen them in the knitting-wool
shop? No, it had been the stationers, where I had purchased a lined notebook.
A man and a woman stood behind the bar, the man pulling a pint for a second
black-suited man and talking sideways to the woman in a way that spoke of a
long, comfortable marriage. And there, halfway between me and the bar, was the
object of my interest, a sturdy, moustachioed man nursing a glass of what I
took to be whisky, watching the darts game.
I straightened my thin shoulders, summoned up a nest of mouselike thoughts,
and walked in. The man in the dark suit stood with two glasses on the bar in
front of him while he counted out a handful of coins. He slapped them down on
the bar, made a remark to the owner, who laughed, and picked up the two
brimming glasses. He ran his eyes across me, then, to my relief, he walked
past the colonel s booth to join the similarly dressed man at the front
window. I needed the colonel alone.
Get you something, miss? I turned to the publican, who smiled encouragingly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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