The End Of Solomon Grundy Read Online Free PDF

that released his wife’s tongue. She began to speak at once.
    “The traffic I call a disgrace, really I do. What are they doing, putting more cars on the roads when they’re not fit to take the ones we’ve got already, that’s what I ask. And the learners, they should be kept off the road for a year if they fail their tests, they’re a real danger. This morning, we’d just come through Redhill and were turning on to the Banstead road—”
    “Didn’t come through Redhill this morning,” her husband said.
    “You know what I mean. It was just after we’d passed that black and white farmhouse—”
    “Glyte’s old house, you mean?” Marion was leaning forward attentively.
    “You turn down All Souls’ Lane, and then take the second right by Barrington Church—”
    “Glyte?” her father said to Marion. “You mean old Ronnie Glyte? He never lived there.”
    “No, no, not Ronnie. His cousin, the one you used to call Chappy. You took Robert and I there for the day once, don’t you remember? He was a friend of someone you knew, Dad, was his name Fairclough?”
    “Yes, I remember. But his name wasn’t Fairclough. Let me see, now—”
    “Just after the church there’s a sharp bend and this man, this learner, I don’t believe he had anyone with him in the car, was on the wrong side of the road.”
    “There’s no left turn after the church, Mother,” Mr Hayward said severely.
    “Of course there is. Not a turn, a bend. You go right round the churchyard.”
    “Round Easonby Churchyard?” Her husband’s face was purple. “How can you go round it?”
    “Not Easonby, Barrington.”
    “Barrington. But that wasn’t where we met the chap.”
    “Fairweather,” Marion said triumphantly. “His name was Fairweather.”
    “Going out for a walk,” Grundy said. “Got a headache. If you’ll excuse me.”
    There was silence, then Mrs Hayward said, “I think we ought to be going, Dad.” Her husband agreed.
    He took Grundy by the arm, led him outside. “I must do a Jimmy Riddle before I go. Everything all right?”
    “Why not?”
    “Thirteen years you’ve been married now, is that right? They say the first twenty-one years are the worst.” They were standing outside the door of the lavatory. Mr Hayward laughed, then became grave. “I want my little girl to be happy. Is she happy?”
    “You’d better ask her.”
    “I shouldn’t like it if I thought she was worried by – cats.” Mr Hayward’s face lost its usual beefy jovial look, and became almost menacing. Then he stepped into the lavatory and locked the door. Five minutes later he and his wife had crunched away in their Rover down the gravel drive of The Dell.
    Marion waved them away, smiling. When she came back into the house, she said, “Why do you have to spoil everything?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “How often do they come to see us? Once a month, for a few hours. Can’t you be polite to them even for that little time?” Her voice was as cool as usual, but a note of strain moved through it like a red thread in a neutral pattern.
    “I had a headache.”
    “You can’t bear to see me enjoying myself, why not say so?”
    “I can’t help it if your father and mother are bores, and you know very well that they are.”
    Now her voice did rise, as though the thin red line had widened, was spreading over into the neutral part of the pattern. “Bores, are they? And what did you say that was so brilliant?”
    “How can you be brilliant with bores? They wouldn’t understand.”
    Her upper lip was raised from her teeth, she was snarling at him like an animal. “What makes you think you’re anything but a bore yourself? What are you but a cheap commercial artist doing a comic strip for morons, a sort of prostitute—”
    His large hand, swung back from a distance, struck the left side of her face. It was the first time he had struck her.
    “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She put one hand to her cheek as though he had wounded her,