A Little Bit on the Side Read Online Free PDF Page A

but with the traders. Everyone’s ready to do a deal. The ladies’ hairdressers used to have a sign pinned up: This establishment will negotiate payment in any form of exchange cash, goods, services etc — just have a word with Peggy. It was taken down when you arrived …. Felt sure I could trust you,’ he added with a smile.
    ‘I only wish the rest could,’ said Jack, ‘And as far as we’re concerned they can put the notice back up as soon as they like. Kate won’t shop them, will you love?’
    He took a long pull at the glass of elderberry wine that wound up the meal before continuing.
    ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do this job if I didn’t wear two hats. What comes across my desk is business, just business — nothing personal, as the Mafia used to say. But despite popular misconception we aren’t the Stasi, and outside the office I’m one of the boys, so to speak. Wouldn’t do to play the game myself of course, but apart from that …’
    He left the sentence unfinished, but then added, ‘Although I often wondered what I’d do if I had a really good offer.’
    ‘Well I’ll noise the good news abroad,’ said Jimmy, ‘I mean about the two hats, not you waiting for a good offer, but they’re a suspicious and cautious bunch, and it might take quite a while.’
    He topped up the stove with a few more logs, handed them each a glass of what Jack took to be Calvados, and through an increasing booze-induced haze Jack and Kate learned a little of their hosts’ time on the hill.
    ‘We bought this place in the late fifties with a little unexpected help from Celia’s father,’ said Jimmy.
    ‘Family and friends thought I’d gone bush when I went off with Jimmy just after the war,’ said Celia. ‘Roedean girls weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing were they? But Miss Tanner, our headmistress, wasn’t snobbish and didn’t encourage the girls to be; although I’m not altogether sure she would have approved of Jimmy — bit too radical for her. Anyway the school’s evacuation to Keswick broadened my horizons, and as soon as I was eighteen I volunteered for the Wrens, and that really knocked off the rough edges. Even so at first none of them could see the bargain I saw. Could they my big, bold hero? But they came round.’
    Jimmy gave her a smile and took up the story, ‘This place was sound when we came in, but a bit run down. Since then I’ve altered the inside to install a few comforts of modern living, without detracting from the charms of the old. The wood burner runs the few radiators we need, and I had the phone and power lines laid on at some expense after a year or so, but we’d got used to the lamplight by then and still prefer it down here. Use the electric upstairs though. As for other basic needs, our water comes sweet and cool from our own well, and my own variation of the earth closet provides for calls of nature. Ever heard of Henry Moule?’
    Jack shook his head.
    ‘Wonderful man — sadly neglected. Invented the first earth closet: deserved a Nobel prize for service to humanity. Very efficient, no water wasted, and an end product that goes straight into the veg plot. Everything recycled and fully self-sustaining. Never properly developed though. I’ve got a copy of his pamphlet somewhere, Manure for the Millions — A Letter to the Cottage Gardeners of England. I’ll dig it out and you must come over some time in daylight and read it. Then I’ll give you a tour of the place, and you can try the thunderbox for yourself — very relaxing.’
    Jack smiled at Jimmy’s enthusiastic presentation of his idiosyncratic sanitary arrangements, and then as it was well past mid-night, they thanked them both for an enjoyable evening, put on their coats, and by the hard and frosty light of a moon now out from behind the clouds, walked back home across the meadows.
    The sense of affinity that Jack felt for Jimmy was clearly mutual, and as the two wives also enjoyed each other’s