Opposite the Cross Keys Read Online Free PDF

took off! Often enough to launch a second mini-missile upon the Market Place air.
    Nature’s overflowing cornucopia – that was what my father said you thought about when you looked at Mrs Fenner; heard her rich, Norfolk voice and her laughter which stirred the lees of mirth. Maud, inordinately proud of this prodigy which was, so improbably, her progenitor, was at the same time, in our kitchen especially, a little afraid of it, as of a large, friendly lioness who might yet, with a carefree swish of tail, bring the plates crashing down from the dresser. As soon as dinner was cleared away, she vanished upstairs to her attic bedroom to change into the dim toilette of excruciating refinement which was her best, the navy coat and skirt which were, in fact, her nurserymaid walking-out uniform, together with the navy hat – straw in summer, felt in winter – which went with them. On Saturdays, to signify that despite what the raiment might seem to indicate, her services were not available, Maud pinned to the hat a bunch of red cherries interspersed with some other fruit she always asserted were medlars, but which, at a much later date, I was able to identify positively as testicles. The fruit on the hat was the equivalent of the red flag on the breakwater which tells you it is forbidden to swim. Once the fruit was hoisted, it was no earthly use asking Maud to pick up so much as a paper of pins for you, since she was going to be in the Market anyway.
    It was her afternoon off.
    Once Maud was out of the way titivating herself, Mrs Fenner and I got down to business. Mrs Fenner had never been to school. She could neither read nor write; and every Saturday – so soon, that is, as I myself had mastered those skills – she would ask me to read to her extracts from the previous Sunday’s News of the World , saved for that purpose, to say nothing of old favourites cherished in a biscuit tin until they fell apart along the creases.
    â€˜Read me that one again,’ she would demand admiringly, ‘’bout the feller what chopped up them women an’ buried the bits under the hen run. You read it so lovely!’
    Newspapers, in our household, were issues of the day in more ways than one, my father as an addict subscribing to several, of varying degrees of seriousness and political complexion. He had been known to rise at the crack of dawn in order to stand at the front door, ready to commandeer the lot the moment the delivery boy arrived – before, that is, Maud could get her hands on them. On days when he had overslept, you might find him in the drawing-room with the carpet rolled back, absorbed in the news-sheet spread out under it to discourage moths; or else, down on his hands and knees, with his head in the cupboard under the stairs where we kept the Wellington boots and galoshes, studying, between the mud marks, a page of the Daily Chronicle which Maud had whisked away before he had had time to do more than glance at it.
    â€˜You’d never think newspapers were made to be read,’ was his constant lament; and indeed, if you lived in our house, actually reading a paper came pretty low in our – or rather, Maud’s – list of priorities. They were made to bear away the cold ashes of the fires, and to be laid artfully crumpled under the kindling and coals of the new ones awaiting the liberating match. They were made to protect freshly scrubbed floors, or the scrubbed deal table in the kitchen. Newspapers were in never-ending demand for lining knife boxes and silver boxes, shoe-cleaning boxes and polishing boxes, and the box reserved for the cleaning rags. My poor father, who was always intending to cut out this article or that to preserve for some ill-defined future purpose, and then forgetting to do it until the article in question had vanished from human ken, could think of no better counter-measure than to add yet another newspaper to the list; knowing in his heart of hearts