Puccini's Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page A

only had happened but ought to have happened; with Fleur as recipient it felt less random than deserved, somehow. From now on they would wear the lustre of prosperity and luck. Fleur flitted about making toast, insisting they all sit down to breakfast in the dining room as if this was how life would be from now on. No more short-tempered, solitary foraging for breakfast eaten off the draining board. At the table Lila, cautiously elated, poured out her cornflakes and watched her parents.
    ‘At last!’ Fleur said. ‘Oh, at last we won’t look silly anymore, having a garage and no car. We’ll have a car! A new car!’
    Lila could see it already, her mother in calfskin driving gloves and ladies’ slip-on driving shoes, happy.
    ‘Once I’ve learned to drive, I’ll be able to take the car anywhere I like!’
    Lila’s mind sailed on. Enid’s mum had no car. Enid’s mum ran the remnant shop on Main Street and did dressmaking and alterations and she and Enid lived in a cramped flat above. Lila was ashamed of how much she loved Enid’s mum. Sometimes she ached all day to see her. She suspected, especially since last Easter when Enid had taken up with the Lord and the Fellowship of Sinai, that she only stayed friends with Enid because of her, and that Enid suspected it too. When she suggested going along to Sew Right after school and Enid gave her a hard look and said, What
for
? she was afraid that Enid knew exactly what for. Then she would have to pretend she didn’t care and drift home to 5 Seaview Villas, aching all the more.
    Maybe when the car came she would be safe from that. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention it, she would tell them both in the back shop, in a careful floating voice, we’re getting a car. Surely when she and Fleur were out together on lovely mother and daughter excursions she would have no more need of the back shop. She would not crave the smells of cloth and paraffin and biscuits, the sight of Mrs Foley’s round, slow body and the click of the sewing machine like an oiled tongue lapping up the fabric as her big hands fed it under the needle. I won’t be able to come round after school so much, I’m afraid, she would say. My mum and me, we’ll be off out.
    Yes, they’d be off places, and she would never again have to worry about how much she wished that Enid’s mother were hers instead.
    Her father finished chewing. ‘Och, Fleur,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘just you hold your horses a minute. A car’s a major expense.’
    ‘Oh, come on!’ Fleur cried, her eyes still shining. ‘Now we can
afford
it.’
    ‘Aye,’ he sighed, ‘we could maybe buy it. But we couldn’t run it.’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Raymond, of course we could!’ She picked up the letter and waved it at him. ‘Look! Five hundred! What’s the point of having a garage and no car? You
said
we’d get a car.’
    ‘Aye, one day. I never said when. We’re still paying off the stereogram.’
    Fleur’s mouth twisted. Lila, recognising dangerous ground, stood up and began stacking the plates. Her father did not believe in hire purchase so her mother had bought the Decca stereogram—glide-away doors, dark walnut finish, three speakers, four-speed auto-changer—by forging his signature on the forms and on the cheque for the down payment. It had cost 95 guineas and the instalments would go on for another three and a half years.
    ‘That’s just
typical
of you. What’s that got to do with it? I suppose you think I should sit in this dump with nothing decent to play records on?’
    Raymond said, ‘Och, Fleur, I’m just saying—’
    ‘If it was up to you we’d never buy a thing. Don’t be such a bloody wet blanket, we
need
a car. Of course we should get it now, stuck out here! With a garage and no car!’
    ‘I’m just saying…There’s purchase tax, don’t forget. That bumps it up.’
    ‘We’ve got five hundred!’
    ‘There’s the servicing.’
    ‘Oh, typical. You’re so mean. You’re a