Now You See Me Read Online Free PDF

crumble and age before my very eyes – though he is actually ninety. Imagine being ninety. He’s proud of it, tells me every time. Ninety I am . And he likes to make the tea himself.
    While he was making it, I carpet-swept round the dog in front of the electric fire where the rug is thick with hairs and crumbs. Then I picked the sweet wrappers and pipe dottle off the plastic coals. He chucks things on there as if it’s a real fire and I take them off again.
    That room stinks of dog like no other place I’ve ever known. It gets you in the back of the throat like a snarl. It makes you sneeze. Thick, fusty, ancient dog and pipe-smoke. You have to breathe through your mouth at first to give your nose time to acclimatise. Mr Dickens smokes a giant pipe with a runkly black bowl and when he puts it down, brown juice runs out on to his Yorkshire Post or the arm of his chair.
    He let me carry the tray in for him and we shut the door. Me, him, Doughnut in the unspeakable electric fug. He’d cut a jam Swiss roll into raggedy chunks and when I took one I realised that he must have cut it with a dirty knife so it was smeared with something like sardine or, I hate to think it, but dog meat. I doubt I’d have eaten it anyway but I had to watch him and sometimes when other people eat I get this empathy thing, like I can taste whatever it is they have in their mouths. I sneaked the slice into my pocket and said no when he tried to get me to take another.
    He said, ‘You want to get a bit of flesh on them bones,’ staring perkily at me for a minute. ‘When I was a youngster I liked something to get hold of in a lass, can’t see the fun in these twiglets nowadays.’
    I sneezed and said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ and he didn’t answer. I sat there and waited. Sometimes he just nods off mid-sentence. He had a bit of Swiss roll sticking out of his mouth and I itched to flick it off but I didn’t. I started to wonder if he’d actually died this time, but then he spluttered and carried on.
    I listen while he talks and drink the tea which is never hot and has big weedy leaves floating about in it that cling to your tongue. To tell the truth I do more talking, or listening rather, with Mr Dickens than actual cleaning. I like it. Sometimes I think I ought to be a social worker. I mean I can see he needs someone to listen to him more than he needs his floor mopped or his draining board scrubbed. Although admittedly they do need doing too.
    He got on to the subject of his wife and I was so fascinated I almost forgot myself. I almost forgot Doggo. Mr Dickens is a good talker. If I closed my eyes I could see it all like some old film. His wife was called Zita which is the best name I’ve ever heard.
    He asked me to get his photo albums out of the sideboard. The photos looked like something out of history books. There was Mr Dickens with a sharp young chin, wearing a cricket sweater and pads and leaning on his bat, looking like something off a knitting pattern. It makes you want to weep when you see someone young and handsome like that and then see the wreck of their old face beside you. Does that really have to happen?
    Then he showed me some pictures of Zita. When they were engaged, sitting in a vintage car, and when they got married and later. What can I say about Zita except that she was beautiful? I mean beautiful . These big sad eyes and a movie-star mouth and a long neck. You know those women from silent movies with hair like petals round their heads and eyes practically bleeding stars. I could see what Mr Dickens saw in her, I could nearly have gone for her myself.
    Mr Dickens lit his pipe and told me the story of how they met. Her father was the captain of Mr Dickens’ works’ cricket team and she used to watch Mr Dickens play and once he scored a century, which apparently is good, just because her starry eyes were watching him. They got married in 1930.
    In my