Read Online Death of a Perfect Mother by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online

cats, were too involved in their own intricate magnificence to minister to her self-love. So beyond demanding great clumps of gladioli, peonies, or any other slightly monstrous bloom that caught her eye in other gardens, she left it to Fred. And it looked like it. Fred had his successes, mainly turnips and chrysanthemums, but he could not be said to run to a green finger. The Hodsdens’ back garden was a dull little patch of earth.
    Still, spring flowers there were, and the odd bush shecould make feints at, in pretence of pruning. Which is more than could be said for Guy Fawcett’s garden, which was a weedy lawn, and beyond that a wilderness: tall straggly bits of weeds, grasses and flowers that had been planted and forgotten. Any less blatant person would have been embarrassed at the pretence of ever working in it or caring what happened to it.
    â€˜Hot work this,’ said Guy, unbending from doing nothing very much by a border and drawing a fleshy arm across his brow.
    â€˜Got to be done,’ said Lill, flashing a head-on smile while snapping away at a depressed and dusty rose-bush that looked more in need of pep-pills than pruning. ‘You don’t get anything in this world you don’t work for.’
    â€˜True,’ said Guy, though neither of them believed a word of it: neither of them had got where they were, or enjoyed the pleasures they did enjoy, as a result of the sweat of their brows. Guy weighed straight in, as was his custom. ‘God, you look a million dollars today, Lill. I don’t know how you do it. Time doesn’t just stand still with you. It walks backwards, like leaving the Queen’s presence.’
    This flowery compliment was typical of Guy in the early stages, but it was wasted on Lill, who knew nothing of the mysteries of locomotion before royalty. ‘Go on,’ she said, which was a good all-purpose remark she made a lot of use of. ‘Few more years and I’ll be past my prime!’
    â€˜I shan’t live to see that,’ returned Guy. As though drawn by invisible plastic gardening twine they both approached the waist-high fence. Lill threw up her arms in a gesture of girlish ecstasy and exclaimed: ‘Oh, I love Spring!’
    They looked at the scratchy earth, poked through by the dusty leaves of newly-sprouting bulbs and sighed sentimentally. ‘Yes, it makes you think, Spring,’ said Guy. His thick, sensual, self-admiring lips slid into a meaningfulgrin: ‘Eh, Lill? Doesn’t Spring make you think of a lot of things you could be doing?’
    â€˜Maybe,’ said Lill. ‘And I don’t suppose you mean digging the potato patch either.’
    â€˜Not exactly,’ agreed Guy, the grin still fixed but mobile on his lips, and his eyes resting on her powdery face. ‘But when you get to our age—say thirty-five—’
    â€˜Say twenty-five if you like,’ said Lill agreeably.
    â€˜â€”you realize there’s some things—things you want to do—and that time’s not on your side any longer—that you’d be silly not to do them if that’s what you fancy—because in a few years it’ll be too late, if you follow me.’
    â€˜Just about,’ said Lill. ‘It’s difficult, but I’m doing my best.’
    â€˜Specially,’ concluded Guy with a leer, ‘when they hurt nobody. Not, of course, that anybody’d know anyway.’
    â€˜My Fred’s a terror when he’s roused,’ said Lill. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but by golly he is!’
    Guy repressed a chortle of disbelief, and tensed his shoulders and arms to show off his biceps. I’d fight for you, Lill, he was saying as clearly as if he’d spoken. Lill was thrilled. She said: ‘Naturally whatever I did I’d always be careful, because of Fred . . .’
    The half-concession was obvious, but Guy played his game for one more move. He put on