Read Online Fay Weldon - Novel 23 by Rhode Island Blues (v1.1) - Free Book Online

winner was of the lean hard-bitten hard-drinking kind: they tended to
last well. The Golden Bowl could, she supposed, do worse.
                 Nurse
Dawn’s attention was drawn to a Mercedes sweeping through the opening of the
gold-and-metal applique gates, copies of the ones at the entrance to London ’s Hyde Park ,
put up in honour of the Queen Mother, aged a good
ninety-eight at the time of their erecting. The Mercedes did not proceed to the
front of the house where regular parking was obviously to be found, but drew up
outside the French windows of the Rosebloom Suite, which everyone much got out
of the habit of calling it, only a few feet from where Nurse Dawn stood,
lamenting the view. Three women got out. A skinny young
person in sweater and jeans, with Botticelli hair and a high forehead, and two
women in their later years. One, in her mid-seventies, Nurse Dawn
supposed, was hideously attired in an orange velvet tracksuit and crimson
headband, and had a bulky waist - which did not augur well for a long life span
- but the other one, dressed in strange and impractical gauze and gossamer
floating drapes, looked slight but promising. Early eighties,
passing at first glance for ten years younger. A
one-time actress or dancer, maybe. Her movements were both energetic and
graceful: her back was scarcely bowed - HRT from early middle age, Nurse Dawn
surmised, always a plus - a graceful head poised on a long neck, tactfully
scarved to hide the creases.
                 ‘Parking’s
round the front, in the space designated,’ called Nurse Dawn, as the party
disembarked, but they took no notice, though they had heard perfectly well.
                 ‘There’s
lots of room,’ the young woman said. ‘And we’re here now.’ She had an English
accent. If the relatives were English and far away so much
the better. ‘Can we talk to whoever’s in charge?’ ‘I’m in charge,’ said
Nurse Dawn, and seeing it was more or less true, felt much better. She might
have reached her forties without husband, children, or home of her own, which
was the fate of many, God alone knew, but at least she was accumulating money
in her bank account, very fast indeed, and would not, as her mother had always
promised her, end up with nothing.
                 She
saw how Felicity lingered in the Rosebloom Suite, with its pretty pink and
white paper, admired the view, laughed with pleasure at the absurdities of the
bathroom cabinet, and heard her say, ‘I could live in a place like this. It
seems more me than that great creaky
house ever did.’
                 She
heard Joy reply, shocked, at the top of her voice, ‘That’s your home you’re
talking about, Miss Felicity.’
                 Nurse
Dawn was pleased to understand it was the quiet one, not the noisy one, who was
looking for a home. If she made so much noise now what would she be doing in ten years’ time? The vocal cords were often the
last to go. And Felicity’s reply, ‘I was never happy with my
own taste. I don’t think we need look further than here,’ came almost as
a relief.
                 The
English girl said, ‘Come on now, this is the first place we’ve seen. You can’t
make up your mind just like that,’
                ‘I can,’ said Felicity. ‘And I have.
What was I told this morning? It furthers
one to have somewhere to go? This is the somewhere.’
                 Nurse
Dawn led the party through to the front reception area, where they should have
been in the first place, imbuing a proper sense of reverence, where busts of
Roman Caesars stood on marble plinths, and said, ‘You must understand we have a
long waiting list, and all applicants must first be vetted, and then voted for.
We’re very much a family here.’ This deflated the spirit of the group
considerably, as Nurse Dawn had intended. She preferred supplicants to pickers
and choosers.