Read Online It Ends with Revelations by Dodie Smith - Free Book Online Page B

both looks and feels like a completely closed car.
    ‘It’s lovely as it is,’ said Jill, looking up at the sky.
    Thornton asked her if she drove.
    ‘No, and we haven’t a car. It wouldn’t be very much use in London. And Miles has never driven since he was involved in an accident ten years ago.’
    ‘Was he hurt?’
    ‘No, but a friend of his was killed.’ Why had she mentioned that? She quickly spoke of something else.
    They were proceeding – it seemed the suitable word – along Spa Street at a snail’s pace, so that the girls could point out various shops and buildings. And after only a couple of minutes she noticed that people looked towards the car with smiling recognition.
    ‘I’d never dare drive a modern Rolls here,’ said Thornton, ‘even if I could afford one. The Spa Town would think it ostentatious, though there’d be no resentment of the money spent on it. The New Town wouldn’t give a damn about the ostentation but would strongly resent my being able to afford it. But my grandmother’s Rolls is popular in both towns. I even think it won me quite a lot of votes.’
    Soon they turned into a street which, Jill remembered, led into the New Town; she had walked it often enough during that long-ago week. The eighteenth-century terraces here showed signs of having come down in the world, and soon the car was passing semi-detached Victorian villas and then rows of small houses with bay windows and stained glass in their front doors.
    ‘I stayed somewhere near here,’ said Jill.
    ‘Can you remember the address?’ asked Kit. ‘We could make a pilgrimage.’
    ‘No, thank you. It was a horrid place.’ She had a sudden memory of a linoleumed bedroom with a cold, sagging bed … though perhaps it was a composite memory. Life, in those days, had achieved a general average of discomfort.
    Already they were entering one of the busy streets of the New Town. Jill gazed with dislike at the gaudy shops.
    ‘Now you must look about you carefully,’ said Kit, ‘or you’ll miss interesting bits. Ignore the shops – these are some of the worst – and look up at the roofs. Lots of these buildings are Queen Anne or older.’
    Jill did as she was told and was surprised to note the jumble of tiled roofs and little attic windows, some of these cobwebbed and indicating unused rooms.
    ‘My grandmother told me that shop assistants used to live in, up there,’ said Thornton. ‘Now very few of the attics are used even for storage; too many stairs and rickety at that. From a hard-headed point of view, all this property should come down. And will, eventually.’
    Jill said, ‘I suppose, when buildings are so badly spoilt …’
    ‘But I like them spoilt,’ said Robin. ‘I mean, I like the mixture of old and new. Anyway, I like it better than having the old buildings pulled down.’
    Kit said, ‘You don’t think keeping them like this is a bit like keeping old people alive when they’ve got one foot in the grave?’
    ‘No, I don’t. And neither do you,’ said Robin.
    ‘True enough. I was just airing the idea.’
    ‘And anyway, we do keep old people alive as long as we can. And when you’re old, I bet you won’t think you’ve gotone foot in the grave, even when you’re dangling both feet into it. And you’ll want to go on and on. Most people do.’
    The sisters continued to bicker amicably until the car reached the large market square which was in the middle of the New Town.
    Robin said, ‘Now you see what happens when the old buildings are tidily pulled down and replaced.’
    There were chain stores, cut-price supermarkets plastered with advertisements, two gaudy cinemas, a particularly hideous town hall. Buses painted blue, green, orange and even striped, were bringing people in from the surrounding countryside.
    ‘I’ll admit this is awful,’ said Kit.
    ‘But the market itself is rather fun,’ said Jill. ‘Somehow the crude colours look all right there.’
    Racks of bright dresses, rolls of