Read Online Harriet by Jilly Cooper - Free Book Online Page B

and a disapproving dough-like face. She gave Harriet a hostile stare, but seemed far more interested in stopping a large tabby cat from escaping.
        ‘Ambrose! Come here, you devil!’ She just managed to catch the cat by the tail and pull him squawking into the house.
        ‘Miss Poole?’ she said icily, very much on her dignity. ‘I’m Mrs. Bottomley.’
        ‘How do you do?’ said Harriet, trying to shake hands and clutch William and the luggage at the same time.
        As she walked into the hall, two children rushed down the stairs, dragging a black labrador, and stopped dead in their tracks, gazing at her with dark, heavily lashed and not altogether friendly eyes.
        ‘Jonah and Charlotte,’ said Mrs. Bottomley, ‘this is Miss Poole.’
        ‘How do you do?’ said Harriet nervously. ‘This is William.’
        ‘Did you have a good journey?’ said the little girl in a formal voice. ‘We’re so recited to see you. Ambrose is on heat; that’s why he’s not allowed out. We thought he was a "he" when Daddy bought him.’
        Mrs. Bottomley picked up one of her suitcases.
        ‘I’ll show you to your room,’ she said coldly, starting up the stairs.
        ‘Watch the string,’ said Harriet in anguish, but it was too late. The string snapped and the contents of the suitcase - all the dirty laundry - her own and William’s that she hadn’t had time to wash before she left - cascaded on to the floor with a crash.
        The children shrieked with laughter. Chattie went into hysterics of excitement. Nothing could have broken the ice more completely as they rushed round putting things back.
        Mrs. Bottomley, frostier than ever, led Harriet along a winding passage to her room. The house, in contrast to its grim exterior, was positively sybaritic inside. Whoever had chosen the moss-thick carpets, the watered silk wallpapers, the brilliantly clashing curtains, had bad an inspired eye for colour, if no regard for expense.
        There were also looking glasses everywhere, in the hall, on the stairs and at the end of the landing. Harriet tried not to look at her worried, white-faced reflection.
        ‘What a lovely house, and how beautifully you keep it,’ she said, making a feeble attempt to remove the rigid expression of disapproval from Mrs. Bottomley’s face. The housekeeper ignored her.
        ‘You’re in here,’ she said, showing Harriet into a little grey and white room with yellow curtains and yellow flowered four-poster bed. ‘The child can sleep next door,’ she added coldly. It was as though she couldn’t bear to acknowledge William’s existence.
        ‘Chattie and Jonah are at the far end of the passage, but there’s a device you switch on, so you can hear if they wake in the night. I’ll see them to bed tonight. Your supper will be ready in an hour.’
        All this time she had not looked Harriet in the face. Oh dear, sighed Harriet, she really does resent my coming here.
        Later, feeling more and more depressed, Harriet found a place laid for one in the huge green Victorian dining-room. She looked at Mrs. Bottomley timidly:
        ‘Won’t you come and eat in here with me?’ she asked.
        ‘I have my meals in my own part of the house. I hope that will be all,’ said Mrs. Bottomley.
        But as she stalked majestically towards the door, she heard a muffled sob and, looking round, she saw that Harriet’s face had disintegrated into a quivering chaos of misery, as she fished out her handkerchief.
        Mrs. Bottomley’s heart melted. She padded across the room and put an arm round Harriet’s shoulders.
        ‘There, there, my lamb, don’t cry. You’ll get used to it all in no time. I know it seems an out-of-the-way place for a young girl, but the children have been so excited, especially with you bringing the baby, and you’ll be company for me. I get lonely of an evening.’
        Harriet wiped her eyes. ‘You don’t mind about