Stanley and the Women Read Online Free PDF Page B

everywhere. No passport, no traveller’s-cheque stuff, no
ticket stubs, nothing. So …’ She jerked her shoulders.
    ‘So he
hadn’t come from Spain, or not straight from there. No knowing where he was or
how long he’s been, well, whatever he is now.
    ‘Before
he had his bath he didn’t appear at all so I went up to see how he was getting
on, and he was just lying in bed, not asleep, just lying there. Then about half
an hour ago I was nearly blasted off my chair in the study by Mahler on the
record-player. Not just loud, you know, but absurdly loud. Grotesquely loud.
And then of course when I asked him to turn it down he turned it off.’ She
shook her head a few times.
    ‘Yeah,’
I said. ‘It must be his sex life. At least it’s all I can think of.’
    ‘Oh, I
brilliantly rang her flat, having brilliantly but I forget why put its number
in my book, but somebody I thought sounded Swedish said no, Miss Blackburn was
not there.’
    ‘Didn’t
they say anything else?’ Asking that question was rather dishonest of me,
because actually I only wanted to hear some more of what Susan must have
thought was a Swedish accent. It reminded me strongly of the Italian accent she
had put on the previous evening to tell a story about Toscanini.
    ‘No, in
fact I never made out whether Mandy wasn’t there just then or on a permanent
basis.’
    ‘Oh.
Well, I think all we can do is leave him to himself until he snaps out of it.
Sorry about that book, by the way. I couldn’t get him to say why he’d done it.’
    ‘Never
mind. But actually I would rather like another copy if possible.’
    ‘No
problem, I’ll send one of the girls out for it this afternoon. You go on down
now and I’ll give it a couple of minutes.’
    When I
went into the kitchen Lady D swung round on me with an expression that showed
clear as a bell that she expected a full report on the case of the buggered-up
book. I had used most of that couple of minutes to pour and swallow a stiff Scotch.
I wished now I had brought another one with me, that or a brass knuckleduster.
Hoping her idea might go away if I said nothing, I took my place at the table
opposite Susan, who rolled her eyes slightly.
    Fat
chance. ‘And what did Steve have to say about destroying that book?’
asked her mother, getting a totally different effect this time from leaning on
poor old Steve’s name.
    ‘Well,
he made it pretty clear that something had just come over him, he couldn’t say
what. But he was obviously very embarrassed about the whole thing and wished it
hadn’t happened.’ True in parts, I thought.
    Lady D
gave a kind of one-syllable laugh that in the standard way left it open whether
she was coming clean about not believing a word or thought she was keeping it
to herself. Mrs Shillibeer helped things along by standing at the cooker doing
a marvellous imitation of somebody not listening to what somebody else was
saying because of being so completely wrapped up in heating and stirring a
saucepan of soup. Susan said,
    ‘Stanley
thinks he’s had an upset in his love life and I must say I’m inclined to agree.’
    ‘And
that licenses him to rend apart other people’s books?’
    I
frowned. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. No, I … wouldn’t say that. In fact I can’t
agree at all. Explains it, perhaps.’
    ‘Let’s
just hope he’ll sort of unwind,’ said Susan.
    ‘After
shedding the gigantic burden of responsibility he habitually carries about on
his poor shoulders,’ said Lady D with tremendous faces and head-movements as
she spoke. Previous to that she had sent me the latest of a series of looks
which the chances were she thought I never saw or possibly failed to
understand, burning looks, looks that showed she was wondering what sort of
bloke it could be that had a son who did diabolical things like tearing covers
off books. I stopped trying to think what to say when I noticed that Mrs Shillibeer
had pointed her face at me, opened her mouth and started blinking