Read Online Hindsight by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page B

thought she was drunk. Mrs Fison, who was married to Uncle Charles’s gamekeeper, sometimes got drunk and when she did had that kind of look, dazed, miserable, not quite sure whether she was dreaming or waking. Paul was concentrating on the Daisy-woman, apprehensive about the hug and puzzled by her behaving like Mrs Fison, so he didn’t notice when Mad Molly changed.
    â€˜Look at me, Paul,’ she said.
    Her voice still had the bubble of amusement in it, but the note of mockery was gone, and a sort of excitement or happiness had come in. When he turned to face her she was bending forward, staring at him in a way that compelled him to stare back, to study her without shyness, just as she was studying him. She was not, he saw, terribly old—nothing­ like as old as the Grannies, for instance, no, only a few years older than Mummy. The reason he’d thought she was old was the way she usually held herself, very straight and proud, like a granny. But her hair wasn’t white, just pale blonde with a bit of grey. She wore a lot of powdery make-up but it wasn’t there to hide wrinkles. Her face was a bit like a cat’s with its small pointy chin and neat mouth, and then the wide, high cheek-bones and those round blue eyes …
    â€˜Your father was a lieutenant and then a captain in the Warwickshires,’ she said. ‘He got his MC when he was wounded at Bixschoote. His name was Cyril but everybody called him Rogue. He could juggle five wine glasses at a time.’
    â€˜I … I didn’t know about the glasses,’ said Paul.
    â€˜Can’t you see the likeness, darling?’ said Mad Molly. ‘This is Rogue Rogers’s son! Don’t you remember that night at the Vache Ivré when he tried to dance the can-can with his leg still in plaster and we had to smuggle him back into hospital at four in the morning?’
    The wind sighed among the chestnut leaves. The Daisy-woman shook her head slowly from side to side. Tears began to stream from her eyes.
    â€˜Don’t bother about her, Paul,’ said Mad Molly. ‘Tell me, have you any brothers and sisters?’
    â€˜There’s a new baby, but she’s only a step.’
    â€˜So sensible of your mother to marry again,’ said Mad Molly, the mocking note back now. ‘How did poor Rogue come to die so young? He was as strong as a horse when we were looking after him.’
    â€˜It was in an aeroplane,’ said Paul. ‘When I was five. My godfather was going to start an airline in South America and Daddy went out to help him. They had a new aeroplane and it was bigger than the one my godfather was used to. He let the wing touch the ground just after they’d taken off. Daddy was in the plane with him. They were trying it out.’
    â€˜What rotten luck!’
    â€˜Much better than dying in bed,’ said the Daisy-woman.
    â€˜You’re going to come to tea with me on Sunday,’ said Mad Molly.
    â€˜I’m afraid we’re only supposed …’
    â€˜Piffle. Annette will arrange it with Mr Smith. She can bring you down.’
    â€˜But …’
    â€˜Goodbye, Paul. Remember, if you don’t come I shall turn up in church the Sunday after and kiss you in front of the whole school.’
    Mad Molly spun away and strode off down the path. The Daisy-woman, still weeping, stumped after her. Paul stood among the soaring rough-barked tree trunks with his mouth opening and closing, as if it were still trying to say words that hadn’t come. In any case he had no idea what they would, or could, have been.

6
    D obbs’s response was the last I could have expected.
    Admittedly I was apprehensive about the material I had sent him, because it had so little to do with his own interests. For different reasons I wasn’t all that happy with it myself, though I had evolved what seemed to me the beginnings of a promising plot. I won’t go into the details, but it was to