Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

tall as Tom, and twice as wide. Then she stood back, holding him at arm’s length, the better to savour the sight of him.
    Her face, he had always thought, was a man’s face; strong-featured, large-nosed, square-chinned. This masculinity was emphasized by her uncompromising coiffure, her grey hair drawn tightly back and screwed into a straggling bun, but belied by the generosity of her considerable bosom.
    She said, “You’re looking marvellous. Did you have a good journey? How splendid of you to come. Look at me, trying to make the place look presentable for tomorrow night. Can’t describe to you what it’s been like. Eustace—you remember my old gardener—he’s been in, shoving furniture around, and his wife’s polished everything in sight, including the dogs’ bowls, and the kitchen’s full of caterers. Hardly know my own house. How’s your mother and father?”
    She picked up her secateurs and went on with her task while Tom, leaning up against a table with his hands in his pockets, told her.
    “Wretched creatures,” she remarked, “going off to Majorca at a time like this. I really wanted them to be here. There!” She inserted the last daffodil and stood back to admire the finished result.
    “Where’s that going?” Tom asked her.
    “I thought on the grand piano.”
    “Aunt Mabel, isn’t all this a frightful lot of work for you?”
    “No, not really. I just tell people to do things, and they do them. It’s called delegating. And we’re not having a proper orchestra. Not the kind I would have liked. But nobody knows how to waltz these days, so I’ve ordered something called a disco. Heaven knows what’s going to happen.”
    “Rock music and strobe lights,” Tom told her. “Where’s the disco going to be?”
    “In the old nursery. We emptied it of all the old toys and the doll’s house and the books, and Kitty’s decorating it to look like a jungle.”
    After a bit, Tom said, “Kitty?”
    “Yes. Kitty. Ned’s niece. Our Kitty.”
    “She’s here?”
    “Of course she’s here. She couldn’t be decorating the disco if she wasn’t here.”
    “But … the last time I heard of her—the last time I saw her … she was living in a boat on the Hamble River.”
    “Oh, dear, you’re very out of date. That marriage broke up. She got a divorce. I’m amazed you didn’t know.”
    “I’ve been out of touch with Kitty. What happened to the dreaded Terence?”
    “I think he went back to the south of France.”
    “And the little boy?”
    “He’s with Kitty.”
    “Is she staying here?”
    “No. She lives in Caxford.” Caxford was a village out on the moor a few miles from Kinton. “She came to stay with me after the divorce, and then she bought this derelict cottage. Heaven knows what with, she doesn’t appear to have two brass farthings to rub together. Anyway, she bought it and told us all that she was going to do it up and live there. With that, the council slapped a preservation order on it. I thought that would be the end of it, but she managed to get quite a good grant, and she’s been there ever since, living in a caravan with Crispin and working with the builders.”
    “Crispin?”
    “The boy. He’s four. Nice little chap.”
    Tom privately decided that only Kitty would have a son called Crispin.
    “But what is she going to do with herself?”
    “Oh, goodness knows. You remember what Kitty was like. Once she’d got the bit between her teeth, you could never get a word of sense out of her. Do you want a cup of tea?”
    “No, I’m fine.”
    “I’ll give you a drink later on.” She began to clear up the litter of her flower arrangement, but as she did this, a knock came at the door, and an unknown head appeared around the edge of it.
    “Mrs. Kinnerton, that’s the man with the tumblers. Where do you want them to go?”
    “Oh, dear life, if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Tidy this up for me, would you, Tom, and put a log on the fire…” And she took