Quartet in Autumn Read Online Free PDF

much with make-up and even Marcia could see that some would have been improved by it.
    'Some of us at the Centre have been worrying about the lonely ones.'
    Could she really have prepared that sentence, for this was what came out. Marcia gave her no encouragement.
    'I mean, the people who live alone.'
    'Did you think I might be found dead? Was that the idea?'
    'Oh, Miss Ivory, of course we had nothing like that in mind!'
    It seemed to be almost an occasion for laughter but Janice Brabner was sure this couldn't be right. Doing voluntary work at the Centre wasn't exactly funny even if one smiled sometimes at the people one visited, for some of them were rather sweet. But they could be tragic. Miss Ivory, for instance, in what category should she be placed? It was known that her mother had died some years ago, that she now lived alone and that she had recently left hospital after a major operation. The medical social worker, whom Janice knew, had dropped a hint, suggested that it might be as well to keep an eye on her. It was true that she went out to work but nobody seemed to know much about her — she didn't speak to neighbours and nobody had ever been into her house. She did not invite Janice to come in now and they continued their conversation on the doorstep. Of course one couldn't force one's way into people's houses, but surely a lonely person like Miss Ivory would welcome a friendly advance and a chat?
     
    'We just wondered,' Janice went on, realizing the need for tact and caution, as she had been instructed, 'if you'd like to come along to a get-together at the Centre one evening. It's next to the town hall, you know.'
    'I don't think so,' said Marcia firmly. 'I go out to work and my evenings are fully occupied.'
    But there was no television aerial on the house, so what did she do in the evenings? Janice wondered. Still, she had done all she could, sown a seed, perhaps; that was the main thing.
    No sooner was the door closed than Marcia went up to the front bedroom to watch Janice Brabner go. She saw her unlock her car and then sit in it with a list in her hand which she appeared to be consulting. Then she drove away.
    Marcia turned back into the room where her mother had died. It had been left almost untouched since then. Of course the body had been removed and buried, all that was necessary in that way had been done and the proper obsequies performed, but after that Marcia had lacked the energy to rearrange the furniture and Mrs Williams, the woman who came in to clean at that time, had not encouraged her. 'You want to remember things as they were, not go changing them,' she had said. She did not care for moving furniture, anyway. The bed had become the place where the cat Snowy slept until his death, when the black part of his fur had taken on a brownish tinge and his body had become light, until one day, in the fullness of time, he had ceased to breathe, a peaceful end. He was twenty years old, one hundred and forty in human terms. 'You wouldn't want to be that old,' Mrs Williams had said, as if one had the choice or could do anything about it. After Snowy's death and burial in the garden, Mrs Williams had left, the work having become too much for her, and Marcia made no pretence of doing anything to the room On the bed cover there was still an old fur ball, brought up by Snowy in his last days, now dried up like some ancient mummified relic of long ago.
    'Miss Ivory has funny staring eyes. And she obviously didn't want to ask me in,' said Janice, back at the Centre, basking now in the relief of an awkward duty done.
    'Oh, you mustn't let that put you off,' said an older and more experienced colleague. 'A lot of them seem like that at first, but the contact has been made, that's the chief thing. And that's what we have to do — make contact, by force, if necessary. Believe me, it can be most rewarding.'
    Janice wondered about this, but said nothing.
     
    Over the other side of the common Edwin, on an evening walk,