A Certain Age Read Online Free PDF Page A

it’s not like Steve to miss the 5.37. It’s quite funny really; we moved down from Chessington to Thomas Hardy country – that’s what they call it round here, like living in a book!– but Steve’s still a commuter, still does this job in the lab at Salisbury which is really hush-hush. I tell people he works for British Gas, which turned out to be quite a good idea because no one can ever think of an interesting follow-up question when you say British Gas, unless they want to complain about automatic switchboards. I say, “I know, I know, it’s terrible, I know, push this, push that, yes, I know, please hold while we try to connect you, I know!” but it’s better than arguing about animal rights, as I always get upset by that, obviously, when you consider how I personally quite like cute cuddly mice and everything, and when you consider my job! I tell Steve I don’t like my job very much; I love it actually, but if Steve knew how much I loved it, he’d say it wasn’t normal to be so enthusiastic, the place was unbalancing me, and start campaigning for me to leave. He hates to see me unbalanced, Steve. I told him I loved the civil service, you see, years ago. That’s not normal, he said, and the next thing I knew, I’d left.
    When we moved down here five years ago we didn’t expect to find a job at all that would suit my meagre talents (!) – my “MTs” – but then this job came up at Bathsheba’s, which, yes, IS a bit of a dramatic name for a petting zoo, but as Mr and Mrs Bryan say, everything else is named after Thomas Hardy things around here, so why shouldn’t we be Bathsheba’s Barn, with our Pair of Blue Eyes Teddy Bear Shop and a café called Far from the Madding Crowd? If Steve ever gets suspicious that I’m enjoying it, I invent something – tell him Mr Bryan is unnaturally close to the sheep, or the hamsters are smelly or something – and the bad news seems to cheer him up. Bathsheba’s. It’s a lovely name. Mr and Mrs Bryan aren’t big readers, they don’t pretend to be, but they gotthis big list of Thomas Hardy names from somewhere (I think everyone’s got one), and we’re working through it gradually and I think it’s lovely. We’ve got a tiny goat called Eustacia and a goose called Jude. And you’d never think of names like that, would you? You’d call them Titch and Quackers or something. I did try to read one of Thomas Hardy’s books recently, what Steve would call Overdoing It, but it was quite good, no really. Quite sad. Full of horrible ironic things that are somehow bound to happen; you see them coming, and you think, “Oh no, there’s no escape from the very thing they were trying to avoid, no, no!” I got about halfway before I gave up. The thing is, it does put you off a bit when every time the name Tess comes up, you visualise a chicken.
    Oh where’s Steve? He knows I get worried if he’s late. He ought to, we’ve been together since we were eighteen, it’s our twenty-fifth anniversary in a couple of weeks, his mum’s doing all the catering in case I couldn’t cope with the worry, which is very nice of her, but at the same time, obviously, a bit worrying. Oh come on, Steve, I can’t start cooking for tonight – can’t start applying my meagre culinary talents, my MCTs! – till you get home and decide what you want. I’ll start tucking into the biscuits in a minute! That biscuit barrel is lovely, anyway, there’s no way Steve can say, “They saw you coming Henny” like he did with the lemon clock. We could use the old one for nuts and bolts or something. Not that we’ve got any nuts and bolts; we might have to buy some specially. Oh come on, Steve. He’s an hour late! And now it’s going to be awful when he gets home because whatever I say to him, even if I don’t mention it, even if I say I did notice he was late but it didn’t bother me, he’ll say, “Don’t go accusing me of anything, Henny; it’s YOU that’s not normal” and I