The Shifting Fog Read Online Free PDF

smooth my pale hair over my ears as Mother had shown me. The girl in the mirror caught my eye briefly, and I thought what a serious face she had. It is an uncanny feeling, that rare occasion when one catches a glimpse of oneself in repose. An unguarded moment, stripped of artifice, when one forgets to fool even oneself.
    Sylvia has brought me a cup of steaming tea and a slice of lemon cake. She sits next to me on the iron bench and, with a glance toward the office, withdraws a pack of cigarettes. (Remarkable theway my apparent need for fresh air seems always to coincide with her need for a covert cigarette break.) She offers me one. I refuse, as I always do, and she says, as she always does: ‘Probably best at your age. Smoke yours for you, shall I?’
    Sylvia looks good today—she has done something different with her hair—and I tell her so. She nods, blows a stream of smoke and tosses her head, a long ponytail appearing over one shoulder.
    ‘I’ve had extensions,’ she says. ‘I’ve wanted them for ages and I just thought, Girl, life’s too short not to be glamorous. Looks real, doesn’t it?’
    I am late in my reply, which she takes for agreement.
    ‘That’s because it is. Real hair, the sort they use on celebrities. Here. Feel it.’
    ‘Goodness,’ I say, stroking the coarse ponytail, ‘real hair.’
    ‘They can do anything these days.’ She waves her cigarette and I notice the juicy purple ring her lips have left. ‘Of course, you have to pay for it. Luckily I had a bit put aside for a rainy day.’
    She smiles, glowing like a ripe plum, and I grasp the raison d’être for this reinvention. Sure enough, a photograph materialises from her blouse pocket.
    ‘Anthony,’ she says, beaming.
    I make a show of putting on my glasses, peering at the image of a grey-moustachioed man in late middle-age. ‘He looks lovely.’
    ‘Oh Grace,’ she says through a happy sigh. ‘He is. We’ve only been out for tea a few times, but I’ve got such a good feeling about this one. He’s a real gentleman, you know? Not like some of them other layabouts that came before. He opens doors, brings me flowers, pulls my chair out for me when we go about together. A real old-fashioned gentleman.’
    The latter, I can tell, is added for my benefit. An assumption that the elderly cannot help but be impressed by the old fashioned. ‘What does he do for a living?’ I say.
    ‘He’s a teacher at the local comprehensive. History and English. He’s awful clever. Community-minded too; does volunteer work for the local historical society. It’s a hobby of his, he says, all those ladies and lords and dukes and duchesses. He knows all kinds of things about that family of yours, the one that used to live up in the grand house on the hill—’ She breaks and squints toward the office,then rolls her eyes. ‘Oh Gawd. It’s Nurse Ratchet. I’m supposed to be doing tea rounds. No doubt Bertie Sinclair’s complained again. You ask me, he’d be doing himself a favour to skip a biscuit now and then.’ She extinguishes her cigarette and wraps the butt in a tissue. ‘Ah well, no rest for the wicked. Anything I can get for you before I do the others, darl? You’ve hardly touched your tea.’
    I assure her I’m fine and she hurries across the green, hips and ponytail swinging in concord.
    It is nice to be cared for, to have one’s tea brought. I like to think I have earned this little luxury. Lord knows I have often enough been the bearer of tea. Sometimes I amuse myself imagining how Sylvia would have fared in service at Riverton. Not for her, the silent, obedient deferral of the domestic servant. She has too much bluff; has not been cowered by frequent assertions as to her ‘place’, well-intentioned instructions to lower her expectations. No, Myra would not have found Sylvia so compliant a pupil as I.
    Is it hardly a fair comparison, I know. People have changed too much. The century has left us bruised and battered. Even the