Edith’s Diary Read Online Free PDF

old boy,’ said George.
    They got George seated on the living room sofa, and then brought all the luggage into the front hall. Edith announced that she would make some tea, and Brett took the suitcase and one carry-all up the stairs. Edith had decided to give George the small bedroom, not the main guestroom which had a double bed and which Edith knew Brett had thought to give him. They had occasional weekend guests like the Zylstras, and Edith wanted the big guestroom for them. As it was, she was giving up her sewing-and-ironing room.
    They had tea in the living room with cinnamon buns and lemon cookies from the shop in town called the Cookie Jar, which was first-rate and used old-fashioned ingredients like butter. George praised the cinnamon buns and ate heartily.
    ‘How is your back now?’ Edith asked, thinking it a permissible question, and that George might even like to talk about his ailments.
    ‘My dear, if I only
knew
,’
replied George. ‘The X-rays don’t show anything, doctors can’t – put their fingers on anything, though they poke enough. Ha-ha! Damned back hurts, that’s all.’
    ‘You didn’t fall – I’ve forgotten —’
    ‘No, no. I remember lifting someone’s suitcase, friend I was seeing off at Grand Central
– years
ago, maybe nineteen-fifty, and
bang
– a
day later, crick in the back and I went from bad to worse.’
    ‘But – you can walk, at least,’ said Edith, speaking clearly, because George was a little deaf.
    ‘With a cane sometimes. Yes. But I manage.’ George had large, dark brown eyes, shiny as eyes in a varnished picture, and intelligent.
    But George didn’t come down for dinner. Edith had seen that his clothes, sweaters and so forth were stowed away in a small chest of drawers which she had cleared for him, and that his trousers and jackets were hung in the closet. There was a closet in every room in the house, which Edith considered a god-send, as one had no right to expect closets everywhere in a house a hundred years old. Brett had gone up to ask George to come down to dinner, but George had been in bed and asked if they minded if he had a tray. Brett carried the tray up, complete with Jello dessert and a cup of coffee.
    ‘Is he going to want all his meals in bed, do you think?’ Edith asked when Brett returned.
    ‘Gosh! An invalid! Bedpans too?’ Cliffie asked, and shrieked with appreciation of his own wit.
    ‘Hush, Cliffie!’ Edith said.
    ‘I dunno,’ Brett said. ‘Can’t tell any more than you can.’
    Edith sighed, thinking Brett might have asked or somehow found out about a thing as important as this. Cliffie was listening sharply. It was not the time to ask about George’s finances. Edith was ashamed of her own hardness suddenly. Was she tired today? Maybe. The curse to boot. ‘Cliffie?’
    ‘Yes?’ His brown eyes, hardly darker than her own eyes, looked at her steadily, though sideways.
    ‘I want you to be polite to your Uncle George, do you understand? Your great-uncle George.’
    Cliffie nodded. ‘Yes, Mum.’
    After dinner, Brett helped Edith in the kitchen, as he often did. It was a good time to talk, amid the clatter of dishes, and when Cliffie had drifted off to the television.
    ‘He’s offered – well, he wants to pay us sixty dollars a month,’ Brett said, drying plates one behind the other, making a brisker clatter than usual.
    That would just about take care of food, Edith calculated. ‘Well – that’s nice.’
    ‘I really don’t think he’s stingy.’
    What had he been paying at the place he left, Edith wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to seem petty. There was his bedlinen, laundry to consider if he wanted his shirts done. But above all Edith was going to miss those hours Monday to Friday when Cliffie and Brett were out of the house. She liked being alone. Her thoughts flowed better.
    ‘Look, if it doesn’t work out, honey, we’ll give him a gentle hint, all right?’ Brett kissed Edith below her left ear. ‘I