No Talking after Lights Read Online Free PDF Page B

with chamois leather and curved into perfectly matching ivory crescents; their hair was eternally patted into place in order to display their pretty, boneless hands. Most mothers were empty-headed appendages to their husbands, only too glad of the social freedom gainedby entrusting their daughters to the care of other women.
Forgive me, Lord, my intolerance towards my own sex. I could have been one of them
.
    Until a girl leaves home for good to start her own household (it is different for boys; but then, everything is different for boys), her parents’ marriage is the proscenium arch within which her life is enacted. Unthinkable that it might collapse, or the curtain come down. A father or mother cannot have an understudy. And that is how it should be, thought Mrs Birmingham; marriage is a sacrament, an indissoluble union for the procreation of children, in sickness and in health.
    As a good Christian, she had never questioned her marriage vows, and suffered pangs of guilt for not spending more time with her husband. Had he taken any interest in the school, she would have been happy to tell him about the girls and her daily life, perhaps even to ask his advice. As it was, Lionel Birmingham, a lifelong hypochondriac with a few genuine illnesses - enough to get him classified as Medical Group III during the First World War, so that he had spent it safely behind a desk - had little interest in anything beyond his own bodily functions. But now, at sixty-five, his health was genuinely deteriorating. The doctor had warned her that lung cancer was a possibility, but she dared not pass this information on to Lionel, who continued to smoke heavily, as he had done all his life.
    It is time I went up the drive, she thought.
    The housekeeper greeted her at the door of the Lodge.
    â€˜Not too bad today, Mrs Birmingham,’ she said. ‘He ate a bit of fish for his supper, and I made him a nice pudding, and now he’s listening to the play on the wireless.’
    â€˜Very good, Ridley. I can take care of everything else. You may go.’
    Mrs Birmingham’s childhood stood her in good stead with parents and servants, who were awed by her commanding air and old-fashioned voice. Mrs Birmingham said ‘orf’ and ‘’otel’ and never softened her tone with the mock-deferential requests that some considered necessary nowadays, with servants becoming so choosy. She would not have dreamed of suggesting an extra evening off to her housekeeper, and Ridley, who valued her autonomy at the Lodge and had learned to turn a deaf ear to Mr Birmingham’s occasional croaking summons, never dreamed of asking for one.
    Mrs Birmingham walked into her own drawing-room, where she knew a tray with Nice biscuits and two cups of cocoa would be waiting. She would have preferred to sit down and drink hers alone and reflect, or perhaps write to her son James in Hong Kong, but all that would have to wait. She lifted the tray and carried it slowly, heavily up the stairs.
    â€˜Is that you, dear?’ Lionel called shakily.
    Of course it’s me. I weigh fourteen stone and Ridley’s half that. Can’t you tell the difference in our tread? Look at the bedside clock. You know it’s me at this hour.
    â€˜Coming, darling,’ she called.
    She walked into their bedroom trying not to inhale too deeply, for the stale smell of cigarettes and decrepitude permeated the air.
    â€˜Let me open the window - perhaps the night air will make you feel better. Hasn’t it been a lovely spring day?’
    But, pointing fastidiously at the skin on his cocoa and complaining about the petrol fumes from the drive, Lionel wanted the window left shut.
    Dear Lord who has suffered many adversities and always had compassion for the sick, grant me Thy patience
, prayed Mrs Birmingham.
Forgive me my intolerance, help me not to show irritation towards my husband, who is sick, sicker than he knows …
    Sitting together behind drawn