Grace's Table Read Online Free PDF Page B

I suppose. But I couldn’t stand it.’ Susan started opening cupboards under the sink.
    Mother had always said something similar about Harvest – that it was as close to the real world as she liked and that the far-away city could stay just that, far away. At the time Grace too had thought each to her own, desperate to be shot of Harvest, desperate to be nothing like her mother, as Susan probably felt now.
    â€˜She was always so outgoing,’ Susan said to the inside of a cupboard. ‘I never understood why she took herself so far off the social map in the first place … Where’s the colander?’
    â€˜The other potatoes are in it. I’ll get something to put them in.’ Grace took a plastic bowl from inside a cupboard and emptied the first batch of cooled potatoes into it. She then took the other pot from the sink and upended it into the colander, tilting her head back from the steam. ‘Maybe after living a busy life she decided simplicity was the ticket.’
    â€˜Taken a ticket to sit and wait beside her grave more like. She’s given in to it.’ Susan moved in on the cauliflower, took over from Grace.
    Grace knew the it Susan referred to was age.
    â€˜She never struck me as the type,’ Susan said.
    â€˜There’s no type. Ageing happens to everybody.’
    â€˜But she was always so out there. As a girl I wanted to be just like her when I was her age. Remember the zany-hat stage I went through? That was Kath. Just as my failed attempts at smoking were. Remember that tin Dad used for his rollies, the one you always kept full for him? Certainly came in handy during that particular phase.’
    Grace remembered the tin because she had given it to Des. She still held the image in her mind of the male peacock that was pressed into its gold metal lid, tail feathers on full display. Bev had found her filling it with fresh rollies once. Grace was sitting alone at the kitchen table the day her friend came by, unannounced, to the back door. Not that an announcement was necessary, but if Grace had known Bev was calling in, then she might have found her doing something different.
    â€˜Are you doing it to keep busy?’ Bev had asked, hand resting gently on Grace’s shoulder.
    Her friend’s voice was anxious but Grace was in no state to soothe. She didn’t look up from the cigarette she was crafting. Instead, she ran the tip of her tongue carefully along the gummed edge of the Tally-Ho paper and sealed it. She picked up a match and poked the hairy tobacco ends inside, then put the completed cigarette in the tin. She pulled another paper from the packet and started over again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Keeping busy.’
    â€˜Oh, Grace,’ Bev said softly.
    As Grace remembered it her friend had remained at her side, arm round her thinning shoulders, until she’d fitted the last one she could into the tin.
    She got the rolling of Des’s cigarettes down to a fine art – the tobacco tight, but not so tight that you couldn’t move the air easily through it, and not so loose either that it burnt down too quickly. He never thanked her for keeping the tin full, but neither did she stop doing it.
    â€˜Kath was my idol,’ Susan said, ‘and now I have trouble remembering why.’
    Who could deny Susan her feelings of betrayal: to have imagined a future for yourself, only to discover it wasn’t the right one.
    Grace looked up from the potatoes, quite drained in the sink now, and watched Susan as she worked the knife through the cauliflower. She remained a tall woman, and attractive in an unadorned way. Peter’s Jane had always needed trimmings to create such a look; Susan could still pull it off with the assets she’d been given from birth.
    Yes, she’s carried herself well, Grace thought, admiring her straight back and long neck. Des had taught her not to round her shoulders on her height. Pull yourself up tall,