The People on Privilege Hill Read Online Free PDF

of Lord Nelson belonged to the Admiral and his wife. Dead of course, long ago. They looked like black beetles.”
    At that moment the front door opened and two black beetles walked out hand in hand. When they caught sight of Babette, terrible fear came upon them and they hoofed it down the terrace and round the corner, registering unbelief.
    â€œStill alive,” she said—Babette. “Well, we gave them a good fright. Now, look. Before we moved we had to leave some treasures behind us. In the roof. We couldn’t get them out through the side door. The Admiral and his dame could have obliged us. Through their front door. But they wouldn’t hear of it. So we had to haul them up into the roof—it was before the fall of France—and we boarded up the opening. They’ll still be up there. I’d like you to accept them.”
    I asked what they were.
    â€œOh—a big Victorian rocking horse. An eighteenth-century doll’s house. And a bathtub.”
    â€œA doll’s house tub?”
    â€œA human’s bathtub fit for Cleopatra. Indestructible. Cast-iron. White porcelain thick as your finger. Painted feet. Acanthus leaves. Worth a bomb now. Though what is a bomb worth? It’s all yours if you want it.”
    â€œYou lifted a Victorian cast-iron bathtub into the roof?”
    â€œWe used block and tackle. My son was talented and strong.”
    â€œBut surely it will all belong to whoever lives there now?”
    â€œI don’t see why. I labelled them with my name and number and the new address, and ‘To Await Collection.’ It was scarcely fifty years ago. My telephone number is little changed.”
    â€œBut however could I get them out?”
    â€œI’ll write. But first we must make sure that they are still there. My son used to crawl up that drainpipe. When we lost our doorkeys. It still looks firm. See the little window under the eaves? Shin up and take a shufti.”
    â€œYou mean that you expect me to climb up the side of the house? Up ... three floors? Up the drainpipe?”
    â€œI don’t see why not. You’re young. Well, fairly young.”
    â€œBut I review for the Times Literary Supplement .”
    We enjoyed this notion.
    â€œI knew you were the one for my inheritance,” she said. “I’m off now. Let me know how you get on.”
    â€œBut you were coming back for lunch.”
    â€œAll in good time,” she said.
    But there was no good time.
    There was no time at all.
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    A few weeks later a newspaper rang me to ask if I would write Babette’s obituary.
    â€œBut she had years to go yet,” I said. “I walked all the way round the town with her the other day.”
    â€œWell, she’s gone,” said the newspaper.
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    After a time I called at Babette’s old house. I did not call on the Admiral and the Admiral’s apartment because I had found lately that I was forever bumping into the pair of them taking the air on the Common and an expression I did not care for darkened the Admiral’s beetle brow. I called instead at the side door.
    Nobody answered, so I left a note asking the occupants of the top flat to call on me in Putney, and to my surprise they did. They were a serious but colourless couple and when I told them that there might be treasures in their roof they looked as embarrassed for me as if I had been reading too many children’s books. They said they had heard that there had once been very mad people living in the house. A fat, middle-aged man used to climb up the drainpipes and the dear Admiral had watched muttering, “Let him fall.”
    â€œI believe there is a magnificent bathtub in your roof.”
    They stared. “Are you a friend of the family?”
    â€œOh yes,” I said.
    They got up to go.
    â€œThere will be a blue plaque one day on your house,” I said. “Babette was a genius. A wonderful novelist.”
    â€œWe don’t read