Read Online Flowers on the Grass by Monica Dickens - Free Book Online

front. Furniture was always made as inconvenient as possible. Doris was used to that.
    She stepped on to a chair and dipped her finger into the well on top of the wardrobe, looked at the finger and wiped it on her apron. No point doing anything about that. It would only make the dusters dirty. She banged all the drawers open and shut. She had not brought any drawer paper up with her, so the paper would do for one more guest. She threw a little knot of brown hair out of the window, likewise the hairpin and the razor-blade. A hairpin
and
a razor-blade in a single room? Yes, because Miss Rigges had been one to take trouble with her appearance, even though it was not the bathing season. No other explanation was possible. The Lothian Private was not that kind of hotel. There was a gentleman once who was asked to leave. No scandal. Mrs. P. had simply given him a more suitable address.
    Doris threw the razor-blade and the hairpin without vigour, and they landed on the jutting lead roof below. Oh well. There were other bits of rubbish out there. This was not a window to look out of, giving only on to the roofs and side walls of the houses that climbed away from the sea.
    Doris wiped round the basin and reminded herself to ask Mrs. P. to unlock the soap cupboard. She glanced under the bed and gave one scythe-like swish of the broom there. The bed itself she made carefully, tight and cold as a coffin. Onething she was good at was making beds. Her mother, who had been a nurse, had taught her. Since the age of ten Doris had had a passion for mitred corners and eighteen inches of turn-down.
    When she had finished, she paused by the door for a quick look round. It was a nice enough room for the money. Whoever was coming had got the best eiderdown in the place, though some guests complained that it would not stay on the bed. The gentleman who was in here last winter used to tie his dressing-gown cord right over, which was a great nuisance to undo when Doris came to make the bed.
    Sometimes Mrs. P. chose to come up and inspect before a guest arrived, so—one thing more. Doris looked at the notice on the wall by the light switch to make sure that the last occupant had not written anything rude against the part where it said: “TO FACILITATE THE ORGANISATION OF THE HOTEL AND THE CONSEQUENT FELICITY OF THE STAFF, GUESTS ARE URGED TO ATTEND PUNCTUALLY AT MEALS.” It didn’t mean a thing. Felicity was a girl’s name. There had been a girl at Doris’s school called that.
    Not that Miss Rigges would “have written a remark, but you never knew. Quite ordinary people did the queerest things. Doris never thought twice about it. She did not trouble herself much about who came and went in the rooms. It didn’t do to think too much and fancy things. You could go nervy that way. You had your own life. The best thing was to forget the guests as much as possible and just do the job. Sometimes she forgot that she only had the job because of the guests. She was intolerant of people who wanted to miss breakfast and lie in late on a Sunday morning. It put her behind with beds, and after seven years of making their beds, cleansing after them, feeding them, Doris had come to think of cleaning, bedmaking, waiting at table as her business, not theirs. Mrs. P. had got like that, too. Once when an invasion scare had emptied the hotel, she had made Doris clean the rooms just the same every day. Doris had not objected. It gave you something to do.
    Although she was what you’d call a mobile woman, they had not called Doris up, because her eyes were so shocking. They were better now, with these new glasses whose thick lenses made her eyes look like beads in the head of a teddy bear. She had read a piece in a magazine that saidyou must wear your hair soft and fluffy to distract from your glasses, so Doris had a perm every six months and washed her hair herself, without setting it, so that it stood out twice as thick. Jimmie always said that he liked her better