Hamish MacBeth 06 (1991) - Death of a Snob Read Online Free PDF Page B

morning till night.”
    “Well, maybe her husband will do the job for you.” Hamish looked longingly at the tea he had been forced to abandon.
    “Him! That wimp. Have you seen him pass a mirror? He stops dead-still and gazes longingly at himself like a man looking at a lover.”
    “Let’s talk about something else,” said Hamish. “What brought you here?”
    “I am Jane’s ex-husband.”
    “Aye, just so, but what brought you?”
    “Oh, I get you. I couldn’t believe she’d made such a go of things. When we were married, she was always full of harebrained schemes to make money. That’s how I got her to agree to a divorce. I said I would put up the money for this place if she agreed. I thought she would be back after a year, asking me to bail her out, but not a bit of it.”
    “And weren’t you embarrassed about seeing her again…after the divorce, I mean?”
    He gave a cackle of laughter. “You don’t know Jane. Have you heard her psycho-babble yet? There’s not one idea in that head of hers that doesn’t come straight out of a woman’s magazine. An article on ‘How to Be Friends With Your Ex’ was one she enjoyed a lot. Are you the latest amour? She occasionally liked a bit of the rough stuff.”
    Hamish was too amazed to feel insulted at this bit of blatant snobbery. “Did she have affairs when you were married?”
    “Yes, she said we had become sexually stagnant and went out to experiment.” His voice grew reflective. “It was that hairy truck-driver I couldn’t take.”
    Hamish gave John Wetherby a prim look of startled disapproval and rose and moved away. The Carpenters, surely, would be safe company. Sheila was reading a book and Ian was sipping a large whisky and smiling vaguely at nothing.
    He sat down next to Ian. “Topping place,” said Ian, looking around.
    “I hear you’re a farmer,” said Hamish. “Funny, I wouldn’t have thought farmers would go to health farms. Although, come to think of it, maybe that’s not true. I just had a vague idea that perhaps health fanatics went in for it.”
    Ian patted his round stomach complacently. “Sheila keeps up with all the fads. We each lost five pounds when we were here in the summer. Of course, we put it all back on again the week we got home. Didn’t we, sweetie?”
    “Mmm?” Sheila was buried in a book with a pink cover called Love’s Abiding Passion. Her lips were moving slightly and she was breathing heavily through her nose.
    And then Heather was before them. “What are you reading, Sheila?” she demanded. Sheila gave a little sigh and held up the book so that Heather could read the tide.
    “My dear, dear Sheila,” said Heather, shaking her head. “Surely you can find something better than that pap?”
    “It’s a marvellous book,” said Sheila, her fat cheeks turning pink.
    Heather suddenly snatched it out of Sheila’s hand and flicked over the pages and then gleefully read aloud.
“There was a tearing sound and the thin silk cascaded at her feet. He thrust his hot body against her naked one and she could feel his aroused masculinity bulging against her thigh.”
    I ask you, Sheila, how can you bear to read a book like that?”
    Sheila snatched it back and heaved herself out of the sofa and waddled from the room. Her husband stood up and glared at Heather. “It’s better than the works of Marx any day.”
    “It would considerably improve your wife’s mind to read Karl Marx.”
    “Yah!” said Ian. “What d’you lot think about the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, hey?”
    “That was not real Communism,” said Heather; “Real communism…”
    “Stuff it, you old crow,” said the farmer and left the room with the same waddling walk as his wife. Hamish felt like running after him and shaking his hand.
    Before Heather could speak to him again, he darted for the door and let himself out into the night. The high wind of earlier in the day had descended to ground level and was tearing and shrieking and moaning