The Servants Read Online Free PDF

stopped but stayed the same.
    “How long have you lived here?”
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    t h e s e r va n t s
    “Oh, quite some time,” she said. “But no, I don’t remember it that way.”
    She put down a cup of tea next to him. It didn’t look like any cup of tea he’d seen before. It was dark brown, almost red. “There.”
    “Is that . . . a special kind of tea?”
    “No,” she said, lowering herself slowly into the other chair.
    “It’s just strong. Most people make their tea far too weak, and what’s the point in that? If you want a cup of tea, have a cup of tea. That’s what I say.”
    Next to the tea she put down a plate on which lay the contents of the brown paper bag. This was a cake, but of a kind with which Mark was unfamiliar, though he thought he might have seen things like it for sale at The Meeting Place. The cake had been cut neatly in half. Mark picked up one part and bit into it cautiously. It was hard and tasted of flour and was studded with little raisins. It was not consistent with his idea of a good time.
    “Very nice,” he said, putting it back down.
    “Keep at it,” she said. “Not everything tastes good in the first bite.”
    This sounded uncomfortably like the lecture David had been giving him upstairs, before he ran out, and Mark sat back in his chair.
    “Oh dear,” the old lady said. “Did I say something wrong?”
    They remained like that for a while. Mark picked up the cake again and took another bite. It still tasted odd, as if it
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    m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h came from a time when people ate things because they had to eat, not because they expected to get much pleasure from it. The War, perhaps, when, Mark gathered, things in general had been somewhat substandard. He liked the tea strong, though, and the third and fourth bites of the cake—by which time he’d lowered his expectations—were not too bad. The raisins were okay, at least.
    “Why were you running?” the old lady asked, out of the silence.
    He shrugged. He didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t face questions like this very often. If another kid your own age asked, then you’d just say the person who’d annoyed you was an arsehole and go kick a football and by the time that was over you wouldn’t be so mad. Grown-ups never made that kind of enquiry, and it seemed unlikely the old lady would much fancy knocking a football around. “I just wanted to get out of there.”
    “Trouble upstairs?”
    “I suppose so.”
    The old lady nodded. “I hear coughing, sometimes.”
    “My mother,” Mark said defensively. “She’s not too well at the moment. She’s okay, though.”
    “And your father?”
    “He’s not my father.”
    The old lady paused, her own portion of the rock cake—
    that’s what it was called, apparently—halfway to her mouth.
    “Oh. I understood he was married to your mother.”
    “Well, yes, he is.”
    She cocked her head slightly on one side. “So . . .”
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    “That doesn’t make him my dad. I have a dad already. He lives in London.”
    “I went to London once,” she said. “Didn’t like it much. Too many people . Couldn’t tell who anyone was.”
    “It’s better than here. Stuff happens. You can go to places.”
    Mark had spoken far more sharply than he’d intended, but she didn’t seem to notice.
    “I’m sure you’re right,” she said.
    She went to the counter and poured a little more water into the teapot. She swirled the pot around, slowly, looking up through the window. The lace curtains stopped you from being able to see much, but you could tell it was still raining hard. “How long have they been married?”
    “Four months. They did it really quickly. I think he made her do it fast in case she realized what an idiot he is and changed her mind.”
    “ Is he an idiot?”
    “Yes. He really is. He’s really annoying, too. He’s always trying to make me do things, and getting in the way. He doesn’t know anything about