Marking Time Read Online Free PDF

he waited, he looked at his watch as though he didn’t know the time. Well, he didn’t, exactly, but it was well after twelve.
In bed at noon? Good God!
    The girl who opened the door to him was young with straight brown hair and small brown eyes. ‘It’s quite a long way up,’ she said as soon as she perceived his limp.
    He followed her up two flights of stairs that were covered with worn linoleum and smelled faintly of cats, and finally into a room that contained, among much else, an unmade bed, a tray on the
floor in front of the gas fire that held the remnants of a meal, a small sink with a dripping tap, a sea-green carpet covered with stains and a small sagging armchair in which crouched a large
marmalade cat. ‘Get off, Orlando. Do sit down,’ she added. The gas fire, filled with broken and blackened elements, was roaring. ‘I was making toast,’ the girl said. She
looked at him doubtfully, not supposing that he would want any. ‘It’s all right. I’ve woken her. We went to a party last night and were jolly late, only I got up early because we
hadn’t any milk, and, anyway, I was starving.’
    There was quite a long silence.
    ‘Do go on with your meal,’ he said.
    At once she began hacking at the sloping loaf of bread. Then, without looking up, she said, ‘You really
are
her father, aren’t you? I recognise you now. Sorry,’ she
added. For what? he wondered. For the incredulous laugh? For Angela, having this old crock of a father who turned up without warning?
    ‘Do a lot of mock fathers come flocking to the door?’
    ‘Not exactly
flocking
—’ she began, but was interrupted by Angela, miraculously – it seemed to him – made up and with her hair elaborately done. She wore a
dressing gown and her feet were bare.
    ‘I’ve come to take you out to lunch,’ he said, trying to sound assured and festive about it.
    She allowed him to kiss her, then, looking at the room with a certain distaste, said she would just get dressed and they could go.
    In the street, he said, ‘Where shall we go?’
    She shrugged. ‘I don’t want any lunch. Anywhere you like.’
    In the end they walked down Percy Street and along Tottenham Court Road to Lyons’ Corner House, where he worked his way through a plate of roast lamb, potatoes and carrots, while she
sipped coffee.
    ‘Sure you couldn’t fall for a Knickerbocker Glory?’ he asked. When she had been goodness knew how much younger, these fearful concoctions had been her greatest treat. But she
simply looked at him as though he was mad, and said no thank you. After that, he chatted feverishly, telling her about collecting her grandmother and Miss Milliment, and it was when her face
cleared at the mention of this last name that he realised how angry she had been throughout the meal. ‘I did like Miss Milliment,’ she said, and some indefinable expression crossed her
face and was gone almost before he saw it. It was then that he apologised for turning up without warning.
    ‘Why
did
you come, anyway?’ she said. It was some sort of faint acknowledgement of the apology, and he launched into it having been on the spur of the moment, and thence to
his wanting to get her out of London. Now they were about to go, and the whole meeting had been a wash-out. When they reached his car, parked outside her house, he said, ‘Well, perhaps
you’d ring Mummy up, would you? She’s at the new house. Watlington three four.’
    ‘We’re not on the phone, but I’ll try. Thanks for the coffee.’ She presented him with her cheek, turned and ran up the steps to her house, turning in the doorway only, he
felt, to be sure that he was really going to get into his car and leave. Which he did.
    During the rest of that arduous day – which he mismanaged in a number of stupid ways: fetching his mother-in-law
before
Miss Milliment was the first (Lady Rydal seemed to feel
that even being driven in a motor car to Stoke Newington was some kind of insult) and getting Miss