A Little Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

to run away and get lost in the blackout, and he’s so
dreadfully
afraid of the dark, poor little lamb.’ They took the railings from the square, but for some reason they left the gates, and the man who looks after the square carried on locking them every night and unlocking them in the morning. He said to Edmund, ‘It may be daft to you, but it’s my job and I’m going to carry on doing it until somebody tells me to stop.’
    Degrees…
could be university degrees. BA, MA.
Claims. In the manner of. A la…
Alabama… Very clever this morning. I’d show Edmund, except that he’s gone upstairs, which is most irritating of him. We usually do the crossword together, it’s much more fun. He said he didn’t feel well and was going upstairs for a ‘lie-down’. His word, not mine. He’s been spending too much time with Ada again or he wouldn’t be using words like that. ‘Lie-down!’ It’s got Ada written all over it. And it’s monstrous of him because he knows I can’t go after him, it takes too long. But when you’re as fond of someone as I am of Edmund, a little selfishness here and there doesn’t matter. Because we’re inseparable, Edmund and I. We’ll die together. It’s the only way. Oh, I’ve thought about it very often. It’s no good to have one of us hanging about for years after the other one’s gone. For the one that was left, it would be like dragging a carcass around. What’s next?
Darwin sailed inthis hound.
Oh, for heaven’s sake,
The Beagle.
Who sets this thing? The typist?
    The loony-doctor at my trial said he’d examined me and found me to be a moral primitive. I was very offended. He made me sound like one of those hideous African wood carvings all the artists pretend to like so much. My lawyer hit the nail on the head—he gave me a piece of advice I’ll never forget: ‘Try to look as if you’ve got a lovely garden.’ I knew exactly what he meant, which was why I asked Louisa to choose my clothes for me. Because even an African wood carver would take one look at my cousin Louisa and say, ‘I’m sure she’s got a lovely garden.’ Meaning, of course, another dowdy Englishwoman with no dress sense. I should have been
French.
But of course everyone— including the twelve assorted butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers on the jury—knows that moral primitives don’t have lovely gardens… like poor Ruth Ellis. It was obvious from the start that she didn’t give two hoots about herbaceous borders.
    We’ve lived in this house for over twenty-five years, Edmund and Ada and I. Ada’s seventy-three and we’re not much younger. As long as we can manage for ourselves, it’s better than being left to die in one of those places full of shuffling ghouls staining their drawers. Ada’s devoted. In love with Edmund, of course. But that’s a breed that’ll soon be as dead as the dodo. Everything’s turning upside down nowadays. You used to know where you were with people; now you don’t. Ada’s sound enough. She’s a terrible spy, of course; all servants are. Always listening at doors. She thinks she owns us. I say to her, ‘Heard enough, Ada?’
    ‘Oh, Miss Georgina, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’ Always the same. Like one of those long-playing records with the needle stuck. But I’m sure she’s gotplenty to say for herself. Most of it pure imagination, of course, but her life has hardly been the most thrilling, so let her live through us if she wants. But I wish she wouldn’t make vulgar insinuations about my brother and my cousin Louisa. It was Edmund who introduced Louisa to Davy Kellway in the first place and he’d hardly have done that if he was in love with her himself, would he? So you see it’s all rubbish. In any case, Louisa looks like a Bedlington terrier. Edmund could only love a
beautiful
woman. Besides, if he were in love with her, or with anybody, I would know. But truth isn’t as important to that class as it is to ours.
    The first thing I