Read Online The Day of the Storm by Rosamunde Pilcher - Free Book Online Page B

overborne. “I’ll leave her here to get settled in and unpacked, and then I’ll be back about—” he glanced at his watch—“seven thirty, to pick her up. That all right?” he flung casually in my direction. “You’re an angel, Mrs Kernow, and I love you like a mother.” He put an arm around her and kissed her. She looked delighted; then he gave me a final, cheerful grin, said, “See you,” and so departed. We heard his car roaring away down the street.
    â€œHe’s a lovely boy,” Mrs Kernow informed me. “I had him living here three months or more … now come along, pick up your little bag and I’ll show you your room. ’Course it’ll be cold, but I’ve got an electric fire you can have, and the water in the tank’s nice and hot if you want a bath … I always say you feel so mucky coming off those dirty trains…”
    The room was as tiny as all the other rooms in this little house, furnished with an enormous double bed which took up nearly all the space. But it was clean and, presently, warm, and after Mrs Kernow had shown me where to find the bathroom she went back downstairs and left me to myself.
    I went to kneel by the low window and draw back the curtains. The old frames had been jammed tight shut against the wind by rubber wedges, and the dark glass streamed with rain. There was nothing to be seen, but I stayed there anyway, wondering what I was doing in this little house, and trying to work out why Joss Gardner’s sudden re-appearance in my life had left me with this unexplained feeling of unease.

4
    I needed defences. I needed to build up my confidence and my self-esteem, disliking the role of rescued waif in which I had suddenly found myself. A hot bath and a change of clothes went a long way towards restoring my composure. I did my hair, made up my eyes, splashed on the last of a bottle of expensive scent and was halfway towards being in charge again. I had already unpacked a dress from the ubiquitous rucksack and hung it hopefully to shed its wrinkles; now I put it on, a dark cotton with long sleeves, and dark stockings, very fine, and shoes with heels and old-fashioned buckles which I had found, long back, on a stall in the Portobello Road … As I fastened my pearl ear-rings I heard, over the rattle and bang of the gusty wind, the sound of Joss Gardner’s little van, tyres drumming on the cobbles, coming up the street. It screeched to a noisy halt outside the door, and the next moment I heard his voice downstairs, calling first for Mrs Kernow and then for me.
    I continued, slowly, to screw the fastening of the last ear-ring. I picked up my bag, and then my leather coat. This I had draped near the electric fire in the hope that it would dry off, but it hadn’t. The heat had merely emphasized the smell of a spaniel come in from a wet walk, and it still weighed heavy as lead. Lugging it over my arm, I went down the stairs.
    â€œHallo, there.” Joss, in the hall, looked up at me. “Well, what a transformation. Feel better now?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGive me your coat…”
    He took it from me intending to help me on with it, and instantly became a comic weightlifter, sagging at the knees with the sheer bulk of it.
    â€œYou can’t wear this, it’ll drive you into the ground. Anyway it’s still wet.”
    â€œI haven’t got another.” Still toting the coat, he started to laugh. My self-esteem began to drain away and some of this must have showed on my face, because he suddenly stopped laughing and shouted for Mrs Kernow. When she appeared, with an expression both exasperated and loving on her face, he bundled my coat into her arms, told her to dry it for me, unbuttoned and removed his own black oilskin and laid it, with a certain grace, around my shoulders.
    Beneath it he wore a soft grey sweater, a cotton scarf knotted at the neck.