The Queen's Margarine Read Online Free PDF

differently: give people an inch and they might transform it into a mile, through their own talents and initiative.
    And this man did have talents – that was obvious from his drawing: a powerful and professional sketch, yet completed in a scant three minutes. If his poetry matched his artistic skills, he might soon be on the road to fame. After all, many poets had to struggle at the outset for any sort of recognition, let alone a living wage. Although, with a reading in Bristol, he must already have a public, so perhaps she was at fault for never having heard of him.
    â€˜See,’ he said, leaning over the desk to point out details on his sketch, ‘the petals are double and sort of ruffled at the edges, as if they’ve been snipped with pinking shears. Where I’ve shaded them is orange, and those unshaded bits are yellow. And the insides of the petals are streaked and speckled pink, which I’ve indicated here with little dots. Do you get the general idea?’
    She nodded, still on the watch for Julia, who would want to take control, and was bound to shush his loud, insistent voice, which seemed to echo round the building; even carry to the street outside. Actually, no one in the library was either studying or browsing, so a little noise was surely not a problem. Julia, however, was such an ancient fossil, she would label it as ‘racket’ and ‘intrusion’.
    â€˜Shit!’ he said, glancing at the clock. ‘I’m going to miss that train if I don’t get off in two seconds flat. Look, will you be here on Friday?’
    â€˜Er, yes.’
    â€˜Great! I’ll call in then, and see what you’ve come up with.’
    â€˜Ask for Claire – that’s me.’
    â€˜OK, Claire, see you on Friday, for definite. And thanks a million. You’re an angel – no, an archangel!’
    As he scorched out of the building, she seemed to sprout great feathered wings and began soaring up to some vast celestial sphere, where everything was marble-white and shimmering; the air itself a lighter, purer blend. Alas, a swift descent was necessary, since Julia chose that moment to stride back to the desk.
    â€˜Who was that moron?’ she asked disparagingly. ‘I’ve never heard anyone make such an awful din! And he more or less cannoned into me in his rush to get away, and didn’t have the manners to apologize.’
    His mind was probably on tulips, Claire didn’t say. As was herown, in fact. She was determined to track down his ‘dream-flower’, and unearth every book on tulips the library possessed. ‘He’s doing a … a research project and needs some specialist stuff. I’ll just check the catalogue.’
    As she’d hoped, there were several interesting items held in their Reserve Stock. She decided to go up to the stockroom and fetch them right away. She needed to be alone, in order to bottle his vital essence before it dissipated; stick in her mental scrapbook the dark disorder of his hair and blaze of his compelling, burnt-toast eyes; the saturated shirt and trousers brazenly delineating every angle of his body. In just ten minutes, she had changed from library assistant to archangel; from tame mother-of-two-teenagers to swoony adolescent, already fatally besotted.
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    â€˜Mum!’ Susanna shouted down the stairs. ‘What have you done with my clean shirt?’
    â€˜In the drawer,’ Claire shouted back. ‘Where it’s meant to be.’
    â€˜It’s not . There’s not one single shirt there.’
    With a stab of guilt, she suddenly recalled that Susanna’s shirts (not to mention Rodney’s) were still piled up in the laundry basket, waiting to be ironed. The tulip research had driven all else from her mind. ‘I’ll bring one up, OK?’
    â€˜Well, quick – or I’ll be late.’
    Hastily, she set up the ironing board, wondering, as so often, why she was the one