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

Weekly replied, still shivering. And her mother, sorry for frightening her, tried to comfort her. ‘He’ll have us both in the poor house before he’s finished.’
    On her fourteenth birthday Victor gave Weekly a present. She sometimes thought about it; it was a white, imitation-leather handbag with a broken chromium clasp and two handles.
    She had thanked him.
    â€˜Aw! Thank you Victor, but the clasp’s broke.’
    â€˜You mean you’ve just broken it.’ He was only a small boy but had a way of making her feel big and stupid. ‘And mind your dirty hands, you’re making black fingermarks all over it,’ he said.
    â€˜Aw! I’m sorry,’ she’d said.
    She remembered it as the only present he had ever given her. She had kept it always with a best hanky in it and never used it.
    Weekly tried to think of her money mountain. Sometimes the thought of the silver cone brought a fresh breeze, laden with the scent of pine forests and cold clean air from the shining surface of a clear fast-flowing river. Things Weekly had never seen, but her money seemed to smell of them.
    Thinking of her money comforted her and she wondered why she had loved her brother so much and why she had given him away to people who were so worthless and who had never done anything for him or for her.
    She struggled back into the peace of the Laceys’ house. After work she would walk by her car and see how it was. She looked forward to this. Her method of getting the car was, in a sense, a way of pleasing Victor. If only he could know, he would approve that she was getting it for nothing. But Weekly told herself severely that if Victor knew where she was or if she knew where he was, shewould not have the car for more than half an hour and her thrift and careful saving over the last years would all disappear overnight.
    As she passed the Kingston house she had a shock to see the car was no longer on the verge. It had been there so long it had become part of Claremont Street. Her first terrible thought was that Victor had come back, found out that the car was hers, and had taken it.
    â€˜Take a holt on yerself,’ she told herself. Her own hoarse voice, under the trees in Claremont Street, gave her a shock.
    Of course the car was in the garage being fixed up for her. She hurried on home telling herself she’d be the death of herself, scaring herself the way she had.
    On her door was a scribbled note.

    Torben Very Ill Can you Come. Nastasya
    Weekly sighed. She supposed she would have to go but she would eat her meal first.
    Every time Torben was ill—and he was ill quite often, an earlier disease had damaged his lungs—every time he was ill he was a little worse than the time before. And, every time he remained, after the illness, frailer than before. But every time he was ill he seemed to get better with a tremendous determination and effort. He seemedto recover when all hope of his recovery had gone. It was as if he did this, time after time for Nastasya, as if he loved her so much he was determined to go on living so that she would not have to be alone.
    Weekly squeezed a lot of little oranges with Nastasya and they poured the juice into a cordial bottle and went with it to the hospital. The two women, both elderly and, in their own different ways, strangely dressed, stood together at the bedside where Torben was propped up on several firm pillows. An oxygen cylinder hissed as his side and there was a mask on his face; the white gauze and the knowledge of illness altered his appearance so much that they might have been standing beside a strange man. A transfusion dripped tremulously.
    â€˜He vill recover Veekly,’ Nastasya whispered. ‘He vill live for me, you will see!’ Torben opened his eyes, they were as blue as always, and very tired. He looked at his wife a moment, tenderly, and then closed them.
    â€˜He vill sleep Veekly! And tomorrow all vill be quite better!’