Muriel's Reign Read Online Free PDF

to be firm.
    Lizzie was due to arrive in the evening and doubtless expected her quarters to match the comforts of other visitors; barring chamber pots, lidded buckets and alcohol. She told Muriel, earlier by telephone, ‘Don’t worry a scrap about me in your grand house with your grand guests.’ Muriel loathed the word ‘grand’.
    ‘I’ll have a very heavy suitcase. Masses of clothes, of course. As you know the only thing I can’t stand is cold. I get physically ill when I’m cold. Actually sick.’
    No sign of Marco or Flavia and Muriel became frantic. She swallowed her prejudices and decided to dump the baby on Hugh; playpen too.
    Cleopatra, even when writhing and flailing, was transportable in Muriel’s arms – across the yard and down a path to the squash court although it was windy and wet. The playpen, she decided, must be delivered later and left forever in Hugh’s charge.
    Eric and Joyce, her main and disliked outdoor helpers,claimed to be occupied with wreaths and holly – worthy of a Queen or, at any rate, her mother. Later they must be urged to move the pen. She wrapped a woolly coat round Cleopatra. Kitty had fished it out from the muddle in the barn for Flavia had delivered her coatless.
    Hugh was practising the flute when Muriel and Cleopatra charged in without knocking. Not far from where he stood in front of the music stand, a game of patience was laid out on a card table – sighing signal of solitude. Muriel was fairly certain that the game had not progressed since the last time she had popped in with a wastepaper basket.
    ‘Goodness me, Muriel.’ He cleared his throat and put the flute to one side. ‘What a pleasant event. A visit from you and our lovely granddaughter.’ He spoke in a voice of reverence and looked tenderly at them as he encouraged his eyes to brim. ‘Next time perhaps you could bring Monopoly.’
    Muriel, desperate to leave them to it and to get on with preparations, said, ‘I can only stop for a moment Hugh but I hope you will be able to look after Cleopatra until Marco and Flavia get back from a jaunt to the pub.’
    Hugh, thunderstruck, decided to take his chance, to stake his claim, to show grandparental responsibility and involvement.
    ‘Of course. Come little one. I’ll teach her to play the flute and, er, bond.’
    Filled with doubts and some regrets, Muriel fled to the warmth of Peter’s study and related all to his amusement. She was relieved that they were close and together as they discussed the forlorn enterprise of entertaining – the dimness and uncertainty involved in aiming to be hospitable. She felt, she told Peter, that her past was never to be over and that their future together was shapeless. Peter was having none of it and explained, very patiently and to her satisfaction, that they were happy. She knelt beside him and he held his hand heavily on her head. She liked the weight of it.

Chapter 7
    An extra Christmas post had brought a letter from her friend David explaining in more detail his last-minute refusal to be with them all.
    ‘Darling Muriel. I had bought gifts for everyone, very special gifts, but, oh, I so regret I shan’t be able to give them round, all of you gathered about what I imagine, in the full fantastic flush of my imagination, a Christmas tree in the grand hall rising to the high Elizabethan beams, scintillating with gaudy ornaments and twinkling lights. And then Christmas luncheon in the dining room with its wainscoting so attractively warped with age, the great roasted turkey served on a massive serving dish (in America, platter, an old English word preserved in the still devoted ex-colony) surrounded by holly and mistletoe. HRH delighting in eating a whole leg? Up the ancient wooden stairs, the treads at picturesque angles and the newel posts worn from centuries of palsied hands clutching at them for support. I could go on and on, and do in fantasy, a fantasy I so wish I could realise in fact, but, my darling Muriel, I am