The Little Stranger Read Online Free PDF

had made the best of a rather meagre store.
    ‘Oh for a scone, and jam, and cream!’ said Mrs Ayres, as the plates were handed out. ‘Or even a really good biscuit. I say that with you in mind, Dr Faraday, not us. We’ve never been a sweet-toothed family; and naturally’—she looked mischievous again—‘as dairy farmers, one would hardly expect us to have butter. But the worst of rationing is, it has quite killed hospitality. I do think that a pity.’
    She sighed, breaking her cake into pieces and dipping them daintily into her milkless tea. Caroline, I noticed, had folded her slice in half and eaten it down in two bites. Roderick had set his plate aside in order to concentrate on his cigarette and now, after idly picking out the peel and the sultanas, he threw the rest of his cake to Gyp.
    ‘Roddie!’ said Caroline, reproachfully. I thought she was protesting at the waste of food; it turned out she didn’t like the example her brother was setting to the dog. She caught the animal’s eye. ‘You villain! You know that begging isn’t allowed! Look at the sidelong glances he’s giving me, Dr Faraday. The old sly boots.’ She drew her foot from her sandal, extended a leg—her legs, I saw now, were bare, and tanned, and quite unshaven—and prodded his haunches with her toes.
    ‘Poor old thing,’ I said politely, at the dog’s forlorn expression.
    ‘Don’t be taken in. He’s a dreadful ham—aren’t you, hey? You Shylock!’
    She gave him another nudge with her foot, then turned the nudge into a rough caress. The dog at first rather struggled to keep his balance under the pressure of it; then, with the defeated, slightly bewildered air of a helpless old man, he lay down at her feet, lifting his limbs and showing the grey fur of his chest and his balding belly. Caroline worked her foot harder.
    I saw Mrs Ayres glance over at her daughter’s downy leg.
    ‘Really, darling, I do wish you would put some stockings on. Dr Faraday will suppose us savages.’
    Caroline laughed. ‘It’s far too warm for stockings. And I should be very surprised indeed if Dr Faraday had never seen a bare leg before!’
    But she did, after a moment, draw her leg back and make an effort to sit more demurely. The dog, disappointed, lay with his limbs still raised and crooked. Then he rolled on to his front and began to gnaw wetly at one of his paws.
    The smoke of Roderick’s cigarette hung bluely in the hot, still air. A bird in the garden gave some distinctive throbbing call, and we turned our heads to listen to it. I looked around the room again, at all the lovely faded detail; then, twisting further in my seat, with a shock of surprise and pleasure I got my first proper view through the open window. An overgrown lawn ran away from the house for what looked like thirty or forty yards. It was bordered by flower-beds, and ended at a wrought-iron fence. But the fence gave on to a meadow, which in turn gave onto the fields of the park; the fields stretched off into the distance for a good three-quarters of a mile. The Hundreds boundary wall was just about visible at the end of them, but since the land beyond the wall was pasture, giving way to tilth and cornfield, the prospect ran on, uninterrupted, finishing only where its paling colours bled away completely into the haze of the sky.
    ‘You like our view, Dr Faraday?’ Mrs Ayres asked me.
    ‘I do,’ I said, turning back to her. ‘When was this house built? 1720? 1730?’
    ‘How clever you are. It was finished in 1733.’
    ‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘I think I can see what the architect must have had in mind: the shady corridors, with the rooms opening from them, large and light.’
    Mrs Ayres smiled; but it was Caroline who looked over at me as if pleased.
    ‘I’ve always liked that, too,’ she said. ‘Other people seem to think our gloomy passages a bit of a bore … But you should see the place in winter! We’d happily brick up all the windows then. For two months last year