Read Online Opposite the Cross Keys by S. T. Haymon - Free Book Online

black-nailed forefinger distracted me, the words themselves presented no especial difficulties: I had been reading since I was four.
    â€˜â€œMay 25th to 27th,”’ I read aloud. ‘“An explosion on board a large passenger ship will result in its sinking with considerable loss of life. A Welsh climber will break all records for –’”
    â€˜Bugger the rest,’ said Mr Fenner, which I took to be instructions to stop. He took his Almanac back. ‘What you say to that? I never heard o’ no ship goin’ down in May. An’ now we’re well into June. You see anything in them papers o’ yours?’
    I shook my head. I had seen nothing. Mr Fenner observed gloomily, ‘Never knew Old Moore to get it wrong afore.’
    â€˜It doesn’t say an English ship,’ I pointed out, trying hard to be helpful. ‘They might not bother with putting foreign ships in the paper.’ And indeed Mr Fenner brightened up considerably. Jolly little puckers appeared at the corners of his eyes.
    He reached up to the mantelshelf and selected a clay pipe from among a number lying there. It was hardly used, with only a small stain of yellow down one side.
    He thrust it towards me.
    â€˜You know how to blow bubbles? There’s something for you to blow bubbles with.’
    â€˜After she’s had her dinner!’ Maud peremptorily interposed a hand, confiscating the gift, which she placed on top of the chest of drawers. But I could see she was pleased I had hit it off with her father.
    Ellie Fenner, in a discontented voice, from the other side of the room, asked, ‘You forget my bonbons?’
    â€˜When do I ever forget your bonbons?’ answered Maud, in a tone from which I immediately deduced that, bonbons or no bonbons, Ellie Fenner and I were destined to be rivals, if not outright enemies.
    In a sense we were that already, before we had ever met. Every Saturday, on the Market Place, Maud paid out fourpence for a quarter of cream bonbons, which were brown, sausage-shaped sweets rolled in something white – icing sugar, perhaps, or ground rice. I never did know exactly what, because I was strictly forbidden to eat any of the candies piled up in gorgeous abundance on the Market sweet stalls. ‘Flies!’ Maud would pronounce, if the suggestion was made that a pennyworth of jujubes or pear drops would not come amiss. ‘Germs!’
    Yet there was Maud herself, Saturday after Saturday, buying her quarter of cream bonbons regular as clockwork! Why? For Ellie, I was told: for Ellie, the beautiful sister, who specially needed them, and the Market Place was the only place you could get them. I was given the impression they were vaguely medicinal, and that when Maud bought Ellie’s weekly supply it was the equivalent of going to Boots the Chemists and getting a prescription filled.
    When Ellie spoke, therefore, I was not surprised to see Maud open her handbag and take out the bag which contained the sweets. I expected her to put it on top of the chest of drawers next to my clay pipe. ‘Not before dinner!’
    Instead, to my chagrin, she handed the bag over with the kind of smile I hated to see her wasting on others. Ellie snatched it without so much as a thank you, peered inside as if seeking a particular cream bonbon, and finally settled on one which to all outward view differed in no way from its fellows. This, to my amazement, she did not pop into her little round mouth for a suck and a chew, as I, salivating jealously, had expected, but – with the aid of a small hand mirror which she produced from somewhere – proceeded to rub vigorously over her cheeks and up and down her pudgy nose. It took a little while to realize that Maud’s fourpennyworth was the snip of the week: not only sweets but face powder. It took three of them to coat Ellie’s face and neck to her satisfaction, after which the de-powdered sweets were returned to the bag