One Good Turn Read Online Free PDF Page B

policewoman sighed. “I have several very accurate descriptions of the dog, but the Honda driver is variously described as ‘dark, fair, tall, short, skinny, fat, midtwenties, fiftyish.’ No one even took down his car’s registration number. You would think someone would have managed that.”
    “You would,” Gloria agreed. “You would think that.”
    T hey were too late now for the BBC radio showcase. Pam was delighted that they had been entertained by drama rather than comedy.
    “And I’ve got the Book Festival on Thursday,” she said. “You’re sure you don’t want to come?” Pam was a fan of some crime writer who was reading at the Book Festival. Gloria had no enthusiasm for crime writing, it had sucked the life out of her father, and anyway wasn’t there enough crime in the world without adding to it, even if it was only fictional?
    “It’s just a bit of escapism,” Pam said defensively.
    If you needed to escape, in Gloria’s opinion, then you just got in a car and drove away. Gloria’s favorite novel still resolutely remained Anne of Green Gables , which, when she was young, had represented a mode of being that, although ideal, hadn’t yet become impossible.
    “We could go for a nice cup of tea somewhere,” Pam said, but Gloria excused herself, saying, “Things to do at home,” and Pam said, “What things?”
    “Just things,” Gloria said. She was in an eBay auction for a pair of Staffordshire greyhounds that closed in two hours and she wanted to be in there at the finish.
    “My, but you’re a woman of secrets, Gloria.”
    “No, I’m not,” Gloria said.

4
    B right lights suddenly illuminated a white square, making the surrounding darkness seem even blacker. Six people walked into the square from all directions, they walked fast, crisscrossing one another in a way that made him think of soldiers performing a complex drill display on the parade ground. One of them stopped and began to swing his arms and rotate his shoulders as if getting ready for strenuous physical exercise. All six of them began to speak nonsense. “Unique New York, unique New York, unique New York,” a man said, and a woman answered, “Rubber baby buggy bumpers, rubber baby buggy bumpers,” while doing some kind of tai chi. The man who had been swinging his arms now addressed empty air, speaking rapidly without pausing for breath. “Thou-sleepst-worse-than-if-a-mouse-should-be-forced-to-take-up-her-lodging-in-a-cat’s-ear-a-little-infant-that-breeds-his-teeth-should-lie-with-thee-would-cry-out-as-if-thou-were-the-unquiet-bedfellow.” A woman stopped in the middle of her mad walking and declared, “Floppy fluffy puppies, floppy fluffy puppies, floppy fluffy puppies.” It was like watching the inmates of an old-fashioned asylum.
    A man walked out of the darkness and into the square of light, clapped his hands, and said, “Okay, everyone, if you’ve finished your warm-up, can we get on with the dress, please?”
    Jackson wondered if this was a good time to make his presence known. The actors—the “company”—had spent the morning doing the technical run-through. This afternoon they were having the dress rehearsal, and Jackson had been hoping that he could take Julia to lunch before then, but the actors were already attired alike in brown-and-gray shifts that looked like potato sacks. His heart sank at the sight of them. Theater, for Jackson, although of course he would never say this to any of them, was a good pantomime, preferably attended in the company of an enthusiastic child.
    The actors had arrived yesterday, they had been rehearsing in London for three weeks, and he was finally introduced to them for the first time last night in a pub. They had all gone into raptures— one of them, a woman older than Jackson, had jumped up and down in a parody of a small child, and another (already he had forgotten their names) dropped dramatically to her knees with her hands raised up in prayer to him and said,