Read Online Tigerlily's Orchids by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online Page B

drink was strong now, almost violent. Although she would have been prepared to stagger along to Wicked Wine, holding on to fences and posts, using an umbrella as a stick, she knew her worn-out feeble body would never make it. If she phoned Rupert, could he be induced to come round or send someone over with a bottle of gin? The phone, like most small objects in her flat, was on the floor. She reached over, scrabbling for the phone before she remembered it wouldbe dead. British Telecommunications or whatever they were called had cut it off weeks ago because she had forgotten to pay the bill.
    Any pride Olwen had once had was long gone. Keeping it through those two marriages, concealing the addiction and the smell on her breath and the unsteadiness of her walk, had been gratefully relinquished when she was alone at last and resolved on drinking herself to death. She eased herself off the sofa on to the floor and when she had crawled to the front door, pulled herself up by holding on to the handles on a built-in cupboard. She got the front door open, dropped heavily to the floor again, and crawled across to Flat 5. Her hammering with her fists brought Noor Lateef to the door with Sophie Longwich behind her. The sight of Olwen in a dirty pink nightdress covered by an ancient fur coat made them stare and then look away. Neither of them had ever heard her say more than ‘Not really’, and their reaction to what she said was as if Rose Preston-Jones’s McPhee had given tongue to human speech.
    â€˜Could one of you go round the corner and get me a bottle of gin? Rupert’ll be open now. It’s half nine. I’ll pay you when you get back.’
    When she had recovered from the shock of it, Sophie, the more practical of the two, said, ‘Shall I get you a doctor? I could call an ambulance.’
    â€˜I only want a bottle of gin.’
    Noor, gaping, took a step backwards.
    â€˜It wouldn’t be right to do that,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m sorry but I couldn’t. You ought to have a doctor.’
    Still on her knees, Olwen shook her head with all the violence she could muster, turned round and crawled back to her open front door. The girls closed theirs and inside stared at each other and at Molly Flint who had come out of thebathroom, wrapped in a towel. They had all led sheltered lives; though a Friday- or Saturday-night session in a pub or club was requisite behaviour for all of them, though they indulged in some mild binge drinking at these times and saw others in a much worse way than they were, the sight of true alcoholism was new to them. They were a little frightened by Olwen’s squalor, her rat-tail hair, her dirty nightdress, her swollen feet like slabs of beef in a butcher’s window. The raw desperate face she presented to them was stripped of that control, that tidying-up and levelling-out which governs the features of the old, creating a mild and almost cheerful blank.
    â€˜If she’d asked us to get her some milk we would have,’ said Noor.
    â€˜Milk’s not like booze,’ said Sophie. ‘It wouldn’t hurt her.’
    Molly, reputed to be a philosopher, said, ‘You don’t know that. She might be allergic to milk. And it’s not down to us to judge, is it? It’s not down to us to be moralistic.’
    â€˜I’ll tell you what we could do,’ Sophie nodded decisively. ‘We could go and get her a half-bottle of gin or even a quarter-bottle and when we’ve done that we could tell Michael Constantine about her and see what he says.’
    The others said this seemed a good idea and they set about scraping together the requisite five pounds.
    â€˜Y ou gossip too much,’ Wally Scurlock said to his wife. ‘You’ll get yourself into trouble.’ Mrs Scurlock, whose name was Richenda, said, ‘We’ve been through all that before, Wally. And I’ve told you, so what? And who’s going to get me into