Victoria Line, Central Line Read Online Free PDF

hotel and it was here that she met Joseph. Twenty years her senior, with his big anxious eyes and his worried face, he was the ideal catch, one of the giggling receptionists had told her. A lonely widower, no children, pots of money, so broken up after his wife’s death that he had sold the house and moved into a hotel. He had been living in this hotel for three years. He was apparently looking for a wife, since hotel life had its drawbacks. Sometimes he called at her little shop to buy gifts for clients, always she advised him with charm and taste. He was very attracted to her. Soon he managed to find the courage to ask her out. Vera’s own hesitation was genuine. In her effort to become her own version of a lady, she had given very little time to recognising that she was a woman. She knew little of men, and was very shy on their first few outings. This pleased Joseph more than anything else she could have done . . . In a matter of weeks he was telling her of his dream house, but his fears of being lonely in it if he bought it for himself alone. She agreed with him enthusiastically, she thought that a big place was bad if you were alone. That’s why she only had a tiny bed-sitter.
    Joseph wondered if he could come and call at her bed-sitter some time. Vera agreed and asked him for afternoon tea the following Saturday. The sunlight caught the beautiful china, and the gentle highlights in Vera’s hair, and the shining wood of the one smalltable . . . and Joseph’s eyes filled with tears. He started to apologise for being forty-five, and to excuse himself for his arrogance in supposing that a beautiful young girl could possibly . . . She let him babble on for some minutes and then just as he was about to retract everything he had said from sheer embarrassment, she laid a finger on his lips and said,
    ‘Don’t say any more, Joseph. I should love to see your dream house in Finsbury Park, and we’ll make it the most wonderful palace in the world.’
    She had heard dialogue a little like that in some old movie, and it seemed right for the occasion. It was indeed. Utterly right. The months passed in a flurry of inspecting the house, giving in her notice at the hotel, accepting a small marriage settlement from Joseph, a complete refusal on her part to have anything to do with her family, a quiet wedding, an undemanding honeymoon in the sunshine of the South of France and then Vera’s apprenticeship ended and her life began.
    The small scullery attached to the great kitchen in Finsbury Park became her headquarters. Here she sat and studied the plans, here she returned after great measuring trips around the rooms, here she studied fabrics, paint charts, samples of tiles, wood pieces. It was in this scullery that the catalogues began to mount up as she debated, and wondered and frowned, and pouted, and looked at the first ones again. Joseph began to fret after a few weeks.
    ‘Is it proving too much for you, my little darling?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You know we can have a designer, and a consultant if you like. Someone who will take the donkey work from you.’
    ‘Donkey work?’ cried Vera in genuine amazement. ‘But this is the best bit. This is what we want, to decide it ourselves, to have it perfect. To have a perfect house which we get for ourselves!’ Her eyes looked almost wild with enthusiasm, so Joseph decided not to point out that they slept on a bed in a bedroom, and ate meals in the little scullery while a fourteen-room house awaited them. It was like a naked house waiting to be dressed.
    It got dressed. Amazingly slowly. It took months for the painting, months for the curtains, the furniture to build up. Two years went by and it still looked as if they had just moved in. Joseph was deeply disappointed.
    He worked hard all day as a company lawyer. He had thought that his life had taken a new and almost miraculous turn when the flower-like Vera had agreed to marry him. True, his evenings were less lonely than