Read Online The Newspaper of Claremont Street by Elizabeth Jolley - Free Book Online Page A

and cooking after a long day of work, and being battered by their conversation, Weekly did not share the feeling. But she was unable to put into words to herself the mixture of annoyance and indignation and hurt she felt.
    Mrs Lacey was ready for Weekly.
    â€˜Take everything out of the children’s rooms,’ she said as Weekly stepped into the kitchen and began pulling the stove to pieces.
    â€˜Move everything from under their beds and do out the cupboards, Weekly.’ Mrs Lacey always wanted her children’s rooms cleaned thoroughly. It was as if there was something in the lives of her children she did not know about and she was afraid of this unknown mysterious thing as is if it was something evil. Every week Weekly cleared out the heaped-up innocence of the children, broken crayons, cut-out paper patterns, scraps of dolls’ clothes coming unstitched because the sewing had been done without knots to hold the cotton, and all sorts of things made with cardboard and beads and bits of string. She tidied the same boxes of stuffed dolls and animals and sorted the same shelves of picture books. There was nothing in the rooms except the stepping of children from one thing to another, and there was nothing in the remains of sticky sweets, stamps, sea shells, apple cores and other small hoarded things except the innocence of childish dirt and inconsequential untidiness.
    â€˜I can’t think how they get their rooms in such a state,’ Mrs Lacey sighed. She was dressed for going to town.
    â€˜I’ll go in there next thing,’ Weekly comforted her as she plunged the pieces of the stove into the sink, which was frothing over with hot water and detergent.
    Like human bodies after surgery, the gas stoves in Claremont Street were never quite the same after being attacked by Weekly. Every week all the stoves deteriorated just a little more as she scoured off the grease and burnt coffee grounds, and chipped blackened cheese and jam out of the ovens. It was the same with the shower curtains too. She never spared them. It gave all the housewives a kind of secure contentment. They liked, quite naturally, to feel the soothing comfort of having their things well cared for.
    The shop at the end of Claremont Street did a brisk trade in shower curtains, parts for the stove and other household articles. Weekly’s harsh cleaning methods were very good for business.
    â€˜Margie I can’t ever understand why you let Victor take your things.’ As Weekly heard Mrs Lacey’s car pull out of the drive and, with crashing gears, take off along Claremont Street, she relaxed into private thoughts and, as her arms gradually turned red to her thin elbows, memories came up in her mind.
    â€˜Margie I can’t ever understand why you let Victor take your things. You’ll hardly have a thing to call your own, and you should never give him money.’ Her mother had been quite angry and had shouted. ‘He’ll have us through the law courts and in the poor house before he’s finished.’
    â€˜But you give him money,’ Weekly had muttered to her mother.
    â€˜That’s my business,’ her mother had replied. ‘And it’s all the more reason why you shouldn’t!’ Her mother sighed, ‘I don’t know why he’s like he is.’ Weekly knew her mother would never look at the photograph of Victor when he was a little boy. She often looked at it herself. In the photograph he had round childish eyes, a little puffy underneath, and round cheeks and a sweet hopeful little mouth. Weekly loved the photograph. Sometimes she kissed it as she had done when she was a girl.
    Her mother had a horror of poverty and when Weekly herself remembered what she had known of it she shivered with fear.
    â€˜Remember,’ her mother said, ‘you must never give him your money. He’ll take everything and he’ll have you in the poor house.’
    â€˜I need the toilet,’