Listening in the Dusk Read Online Free PDF Page B

have a fire, it’s terrible up there, a night like this, all those draughts. The only thing is …” here she cast her eyes anxiously up and down the stairway, as if hoping that an electric fire just might spring out from somewhere, come hopping and rattling to their feet, and thus solve the problem. “The only thing is … We want one that works ,you see. That’s the problem.”
    That this was indeed a major consideration Alice could not but agree, and she watched in suspense while her landlady frowned and bit her knuckles.
    “ I know!” Suddenly Hetty’s face cleared. “We’ll take the one from Brian’s room, that’s sure to work, everything of Brian’s always does. I don’t know how he does it, I really don’t. And his eiderdown too, you could do with that, I’m sure. Those miserable blankets you’ve got up there wouldn’t keep a rabbit warm.”
    “But won’t … This Brian, won’t he mind?” Alice was beginning, but Hetty interrupted her.
    “Mind? Of course he won’t mind. He’s out. I told you,” and lumbering gamely on up the next flight of stairs, she launched herself against one of the doors opening on to the landing just below Alice’s attic floor.
    “Hell! He’s locked it! And he probably won’t be in till all hours! I wish he wouldn’t do that, I’ve asked him no end of times, but he doesn’t seem to understand how inconvenient it can be.” Here she rattled the handle again impatiently. “It’s funny,” she continued, “because he’s such a nice boy really, but he does have this possessive streak about his things. I don’t know what he thinks might happen to them, I’m sure.
    “Oh well. Never mind, I’ll give you the one from the kitchen, nobody’ll be using the kitchen this late, and if they do they can light up the oven and give themselves a good warm with their feet in it. I’ll give you a hot-water bottle too, Alice, that’ll make a difference, won’t it, and then tomorrow we’ll get you rigged up right and proper, blankets, pillows and all sorts. Oh, and what about something to eat, my darling? You must be starving. Come on down, and I’ll see what I can find for you. Then, tomorrow, we must think where to fit you in, for cooking and that.”
    Sitting at the scrubbed wooden table, gratefully consuming the remains of a still-warm shepherd’s pie, Alice listened attentively while Hetty expounded the system by which she apportioned the use of her kitchen among her various tenants.
    The core and essence of the system, it soon became clear, consisted in not upsetting one Miss Dorinda.
    “She’s in the beauty business, you see,” Hetty explained. “She likes everything to be just so; and so when she comes in at six thirty she has to have the kitchen entirely to herself until she’s finished. The best part of an hour it can be, all her bits and piecesand stirring up little messes on the cooker. She’s into health, you know, and that takes up a lot of space, no use anyone trying to do anything else while she’s there, so we all just keep out of her way till she’s done. Or before she starts, of course, before six thirty. But if you choose the before six thirty time, Alice, do for goodness sake get yourself cleared up before she gets in! If there’s so much as a teaspoon left on the draining-board she’ll go through the roof! Actually right through it, I’m not exaggerating …”
    While Alice’s tired mind was grappling feebly with this vision of the unknown Miss Dorinda, Hetty was continuing (aware, perhaps, that she had slightly over-stated her case) in a more sober vein: “It’s the nature of her work, you see,” she explained. “She’s manageress at the hair and beauty salon in the High Street. Just beyond Marks, you’ll see it when you go to the shops, Alice, you can’t miss it, nearly opposite Tesco’s, on the corner. They get like that in the beauty business,” she went on reflectively, “I’ve seen it no end of times. I had a manicure young