Mr Wrong Read Online Free Page B

it’s so unlike you to want a drink that I didn’t put it out. It’ll be in the corner cupboard in the
sitting-room.’
    Meg knew this, knew also that she would find the untouched half-bottles of gin and Bristol Milk that were kept in case anyone ‘popped in’. But the very few people who did always came
for cups of tea or coffee at the appropriate times of day. Her parents could not really afford drink – except for her father’s medicinal whisky.
    When she brought the bottles into the kitchen, she said, ‘You have one too. I shall feel depraved drinking all by myself.’
    ‘Well dear, then I’ll be depraved with you. Just a drop of sherry. We needn’t tell Father. It might start him worrying about your London Life. Been meeting anyone interesting
lately?’
    Meg had offered her mother a cigarette with her sherry, and her mother, delighted, had nearly burned her wispy fringe bending over the match to light it, and was now blowing out frantic streams
of smoke from her nose before it got too far. It was all right to smoke if you didn’t inhale. On a social occasion, that was. Like it being all right to drink a glass of sherry at those
times.
    ‘This
is
nice,’ her mother said, and then added, ‘Have you been
meeting
anyone nice, dear? At all your parties and things?’
    It was then that Meg realized that she could not possibly – ever – pour out all her anxieties to her mother. Her mother simply would not be able to understand them. ‘Not this week,’ she said. Her mother sighed, but Meg was not meant to hear, and said that she supposed it took time in a place like London to know people.
    Meg had a second, strong gin, and then said that she would pay her mother back, but she was tired, and needed a couple of drinks. She also smoked four cigarettes before dinner, and felt so
revived that she was able to eat the delicious steak-and-kidney pie followed by baked apples with raisins in them. Her mother had been making Meg Viyella nightgowns with white lace ruffles, and
wanted to show them to her. They were brought into the kitchen, which was used for almost everything in winter as it saved fuel. ‘I’ve been quite excited about them,’ her mother
said, when she laid out the nightgowns. ‘Not quite finished, but such fun doing each one in a different colour.’
    She listened avidly when Meg told her things about Mr Whitehorn and the shop: she even liked being told about the
things
in the shop. She laughed at Meg’s descriptions when they
were meant to be in the least amusing, and looked extremely earnest and anxious when Meg told her about the fragility and value of the chandeliers. When it was time to go to bed, and she had filled
their two hot-water bottles, she accompanied Meg to the door of her bedroom. They kissed, and her mother said: ‘Bless you, dearie. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Although,
of course, one of these days I shall have to when Mr Right comes along.’
    Meg cleaned her teeth in the ferociously cold bathroom and went back to her – nearly as cold – bedroom. Hot-water bottles were essential: Viyella nightdresses would be an extra
comfort. From years of practice, she undressed fast and ingeniously, so that at no time was she ever naked. Whenever her mother mentioned Mr Right she had a vision of a man with moustaches and wearing a bowler hat mowing a lawn. She said her prayers kneeling beside her high, rather uncomfortable bed, and the hot-water bottle was like
a reward.
    In the night she awoke once, her body tense and crowded with fears: ‘I could
sell
the car, and get another,’ she said, and almost at once relaxed, the fears receded until they
fell through some blank slot at the back of her mind and she was again asleep.
    This decision, combined with a weekend of comfortingly the same ordered, dull events made her able to set aside, almost to shut up, the things – as she called them – that had
happened, or seemed to have happened, in the car. On Sunday