Other People Read Online Free PDF

there. You know, Mary, I'll be surprised if we aren't a couple of bob to the good by the time tonight's over. Oof! They're a bit loose, but there it is. I know Whitey will do his nut when he sees you—if he's there of course. He'll jump on you like a kangaroo. No, just slip into it. You don't want any knicks or anything, this time of year. I don't believe I've got a clean pair myself. Still, they won't mind that, will they. Eh? Eh? Let's just tuck it in. I tell you, they'll think it's Christmas when you walk in there. Right. Let's have a look at you.'
    Sharon swung open the cupboard door again and Mary saw herself. She turned away quickly.
    'What's the matter? Go on, look. En joy ... That' s it. Don't say I don't look after you. You look a real cracker, you do. A real dish. I tell you, when we get you down the pub, they're going to eat you alive.'

    It hadn't been easy getting into the house, and it wasn't easy getting out again.
    Sharon told Mary to be prepared to leave in a hurry. When they came down the stairs Mr Botham was already standing by the front door, his arms folded.
    'You're not going anywhere, young lady,' he said. 'You're stopping home.'
    A half-hearted scuffle took place, and Mrs Botham limped down the passage to make her scandalized contribution. Mr Botham vowed that Sharon would not go through that door unless she stepped over his dead body. She went through it anyway, and Mary went with her.
    'Don't go, Mary, for the love of God,' cried Mrs Botham. 'Don't go with her! You'll regret it...'
    Mary was pretty sure Mrs Botham was right. It all confirmed her suspicions about houses and homes. They were hard to get into; and once you were inside, it probably wasn't a good idea to go out again.

    4
    • • •

Bad Language

    The pub was a public house, one of those rare places where people could go without being asked. Appropriate care had therefore been taken to make things as hard on the senses as possible—or else everybody would come here, or else none of them would ever leave. There was a stale, malty, sawdust heat, and an elusive device to hurt the ears; the wall of sound came and went at you very cleverly, with deceptively brief intervals, never giving you time to rearrange your thoughts. Everything clamoured for exchange—the multi-coloured glass banked up high over its trench, the boxy machines with their clicking trapdoors, their conditions and demands. Even the air stung the eyes and made them cry. It had been full in there for quite a time but no one was ever turned away. In the tall and endlessly proliferating room people formed in laps and circles of power and exclusivity, sometimes opening to let another in and sometimes closing to let another out. They were all playing with what Mary knew to be fire.
    'Of course, I'm not a nymphomaniac or anything like that, you know,' Sharon assured her, looking towards the door. 'I think that's such a silly word, don't you?... Where are they? I mean, I just like a good time.'
    Time—she needed more and more of it as time went by. Sharon was known, valued and believed in here: she had credit. A few minutes of coy pleading at the bar secured her a Stingo every time. Mary was given one too, a fizzy black liquid so candidly hostile to the palate that after a few cautious sips she put it back on the table and left it alone. But Sharon couldn't get enough of it; she seemed to like the way it slowed her down, and closed her eyes off behind their layer of time.
    'It puts me in the mood,' she said. 'No harm in that, is there? Jolly good luck to you, that's what I say.'
    Mary found Sharon's remarks more compelling than might be supposed. Harm, luck and time were precisely the sort of things she was keen to know more about. Sharon's references to them were of course too intimate to be of much help, but they told Mary that language was out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered and used by her. Each word she recognized gave her the sense of being restored, minutely