The End Of Solomon Grundy Read Online Free PDF Page B

then ran out of the room and upstairs. Grundy began to collect the coffee things, his big hands placing them gently upon the tray.
     
    That evening Grundy attended a meeting of the garage committee. The question of the garages had become a matter of increasingly bitter discussion during the past months. When The Dell had been built seven years earlier, neat modern garages had been provided for the houses numbered 1 to 50. The houses numbered from 51 to 100 had not been ready for occupation until eighteen months later, and by that time the price of land had increased. The SGH Trust, the company which financed the building, had suggested that part of the ground which had been designed as a lawn should be used for garages, so that they might save the cost of the extra ground, belonging to a man named Twissle, which would have to be bought. This proposal had, naturally enough, been resisted by the residents of the houses with numbers above 50, since through it they would be losing the amenities of a large lawn. The matter had drifted on from month to month, and even year to year, with nothing done. What should have been a green lawn was a patch of waste ground, on which what were understood to be temporary car ports had been erected. These car ports, roofed with corrugated iron, were undoubtedly an eyesore, but they did provide garage space, and the price of the ground on which the garages might in the first place have been built increased every year. The SGH Trust now demanded an extra sum from each resident if they had to buy this ground and use it for garages. They offered to put up permanent garages to replace the temporary ones on the waste ground, but this met with strong objections, especially from those who lived in the houses that faced the car ports. It was possible theoretically for any householder to attend committee meetings by giving notice in advance, but in practice this right was never exercised. Twice a year a public meeting was held, at which severe criticism of the SGH Trust and of the committee was voiced. One or two committee members resigned each year, and new blood, which soon grew as thin as the old, was injected.
    The garage committee met that evening in the Jellifers’ house.
    The members, besides Jellifer, were Dick Weldon, Peter Clements, Felicity Facey, Grundy, and Edgar Paget. Felicity Facey was the wife of a local chemist with artistic inclinations. She was herself an enthusiastic painter of abstract pictures. The Faceys lived in one of the houses directly opposite to the waste ground.
    The Jellifers, the Weldons and the Grundys all lived in the upper numbers, and so were directly concerned with the garage question, Peter Clements, who was not, had been included to show that those lucky enough to possess proper garages were sympathetic to the fate of their unfortunate neighbours.
    Paget was present as a representative of the SGH Trust. Finally, the committee chairman was Sir Edmund Stone, a retired civil servant who lived in Brambly Way and thought The Dell architecturally detestable, but had taken the position of chairman because he felt it his duty to preserve local amenities.
    The Committee meetings were informal. They sat around in chairs and on sofas, grouped to face the abstract painting with its suggestion of a fish, its vaguer hint of a bottle. Arlene came in with a tray of varied bits of liver sausage and salami and cheese, placed on slices of rye bread, and decorated by fragments of pickled cucumber. When she had departed Jack solemnly made coffee in a machine with a special filtering device, which he said produced the only coffee worth drinking. While he superintended this, poured the coffee into minute cups, and handed it round, Edgar Paget was talking. Almost every meeting ended with Edgar reporting back to the SGH people, and the next meeting began with their reactions.
    “I’ve been asked to repeat that the SGH Trust has no intention whatever of backing out of its contractual