Read Online A Tale of Two Families by Dodie Smith - Free Book Online Page B

cleaned when they were dirty, but she admired May’s summer and winter cupboards and assisted with the painting of wild roses on one and snowdrops on the other. May then decided that these looked ‘amateur’ and painted them out – ‘After all, I can remember which cupboard is which.’
    June eventually came to the conclusion that May was invincible as regards laying hands on any kind of help she might conceivably need – ‘If you wanted to have the Crown Jewels repaired you’d find someone to do it.’
    ‘Well, Tom tells me there is a particularly good little working jeweller, two villages away. I did think I might have one or two things reset.’
    Tom was the taxi driver who had first brought them to the Dower House. May came to use him much as if he were her chauffeur and his taxi her private car. ‘Well, it’s cheaper than buying an extra car – and I’d have to learn to drive it. And Tom’s so helpful.’
    June was roped in for all May’s outings and always given a share of May’s discoveries. (Mrs Matson, mère et fille , spent a good bit of time cleaning at the cottage, and the carpenter put up shelves wherever the cottage could find room for them.) The sisters were always happy in each other’s company. ‘Really,’ May pointed out after a few weeks, ‘we’ve spent more time together than in all the years since we’ve been married. Oh, June darling, it is working out, isn’t it? And the boys like it.’
    The boys undoubtedly did. Robert, now, even enjoyed his critical work and his one day a week in London. And he would have started his novel at once had he not been put off by too much help from May. She persuaded Sarah Strange to show him over part of the Hall and he even had a brief meeting with Sarah’s grandfather who, if vague, was civil. Unfortunately Robert found both the old man and his house disillusioning. They weren’t Gothic, they were decayed Edwardian, quite unlike the Hall’s Palladian exterior and Robert’s mental picture of crumbling glories within. He must return to the Hall of his imagination. It would come back in time. Meanwhile, he would relax and enjoy the swiftly unfolding spring.
    What George enjoyed as much as anything – to his surprise – was getting up early; well, not the actual getting up, but being up, being given breakfast by May, driving himself to the station through the fresh early morning, then the hour’s journey on the train when he almost always had a First Class carriage to himself and could put in uninterrupted work on the day ahead. The return journey was as convivial as the journey to town was solitary. The train was usually full and he was soon on chatting terms with any number of cheerful men commuting to their country homes. George liked men en masse – but not women; women needed to be known individually. Not that, for the present, he felt any need to know any women in any way, apart from May and June.
    He found his evenings delightful. May always gave him an admirable dinner, and if, as occasionally, she had some job to finish afterwards, he would stroll over to see Robert and June. There was nearly always something he wanted to discuss and often some present he wanted to take. George particularly liked bringing presents home for the two households; food, books, gramophone records, absurd puzzles. Baggy would spend hours over the puzzles.
    The dear old man was generally believed to be both comfortable and happy – and so he was, he frequently told himself, once he’d got used (well, more or less) to his room. (Never would he forget that first night. When he closed his heavy curtains – you had to pull complicated strings – he felt claustrophobic, but with the curtains unclosed he seemed to be sleeping in the front garden; not normal to sleep in a ground-floor room. He’d been thankful for May’s Thermos of hot chocolate. He had that every night and it was an improvement on just one cup of cocoa; not that he lay awake much now he’d