Wish Her Safe at Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

watch eagle-eyed the customer in front of me at the checkout to make sure she didn’t put
my
goods into
her
shopping bag; check and recheck my slip from the cash register—had the girl gone haywire or was there something about me which she didn’t like?
    No. No.
No
!
    I smiled.
    I looked at him afresh.
    He was a dark-haired, smoothly shaven, self-possessed young man who plainly meant the whole world nothing but good. I said, “Well, thank you for showing me all this, Mr. Wymark. You’ve been most kind. Now come and let me buy you a cup of coffee and a Chelsea bun.” In my own ears I sounded just like anybody’s favourite aunt.
    But he glanced at his watch, abstractedly mentioned another appointment and said that if I didn’t mind he would see me later at his office. Or could he drop me off somewhere?
    He waited while I gave water to that one surviving plant and spoke to it encouragingly. He seemed reinvigorated; it was as if I’d watered
him
at the same time, spoken to him in the same soft and persuasive style. “I can see you’ve got green fingers,” he said.
    “My mother would never have agreed with you!”
    “Anyway, I can certainly put you in touch with somebody who has: a fellow who’ll be able to work such wonders on your garden! A friend of mine... an undergraduate. Name of Allsop.”
    I thanked him and again told him he was kind. “And you seem to be wonderfully well-connected!”
    “I’ve lived in Bristol all my life.”
    “Have you indeed? So did you ever meet my great-aunt?” I had meant to ask him earlier. “And if so what did you think of her?”
    “Are you referring to when she made her will?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’d have you know, Miss Waring, that at that time I wasn’t even
born
.”
    “Oh dear! Was it so very long ago? You make me feel quite ancient.”
    I added quickly:
    “But it’s not as if I’d gone completely mad. She might have had more recent dealings with your firm?”
    “Of course she might. But in fact she didn’t.”
    Then, with a feeling akin to sadness, I watched him drive away: this dark-haired, smoothly shaven, self-possessed young man who so plainly, it appeared, meant the whole world nothing but good.
    Yet he didn’t return my wave and I thought that for some reason he clearly hadn’t taken to me.

4

    “I think I should like to have been somebody’s favourite aunt,” I said. “I think it might have been fun.” This, to the woman whose table at the teashop I had asked to share.
    She smiled, hesitated, finally remarked: “Well, perhaps it’s not too late.”
    “No brother, no sister, no husband—somehow I get the feeling it might be!”
    “Oh dear.”
    “Did you ever see
Dear Brutus
?”
    “
Dear Brutus
? Yes! A lovely play.”
    “Wouldn’t it be fine if we all had second chances?”
    She nodded, now looking more relaxed. “Oh, I’d have gone to university and got myself an education!” I reflected that she probably needed one. “But otherwise I don’t think I’d have wished things very different.” She gave a meaningless laugh and started gathering up her novel and her magazine. Poor woman. What a lack of imagination. (And what a dull, appalling hat.) Yet I realized that I envied her.
    “What about you?” She said it as if she felt she had to. She was pulling on one of her gloves.
    I had a moment’s sudden unease upon the question of my own hat.
    “Me?” I had always considered it pointless engaging in a serious conversation unless you were prepared to give it your all. “Well, I suppose, chiefly, I wouldn’t have been so stupidly kind to my poor mother.”
    Yet it seemed I had embarrassed her. “Oh, but I’m sure your mother appreciated it! Indeed I’m certain she did. Ah, but there’s my bus! So sorry to rush off like this... ” She smiled back at me from the doorway and dashed into the street.
    I hadn’t noticed any bus.
    “No.” I shook my head. “She took it solely as her due. But that’s the old, old story.