The Hours Before Dawn Read Online Free
Author: Celia Fremlin
right away from Louise’s objections to looking after Christine for the evening. She hastily interposed:
‘Well, I don’t think this woman will be like that. She’s a schoolteacher, and she sounded very respectable on the phone. In fact, I expect the trouble will be that she’ll think we aren’t quiet enough for her. I told her we’ve got children – but, well, you do see, don’t you, that I don’t want an extra baby around just when she’s coming to look at the room? I mean, two prams in the hall – it’ll make the place look like a day-nursery.’
‘Let her put up with it,’ advised Mrs Hooper airily. ‘Let hersee you as you really are. Why should you be always putting yourself out for other people?’
Before Louise had thought of a suitable reply to this a screech of ‘Mummy!’ put an end to the discussion. Two little girls had detached themselves from the squealing crowd round the school gates and were running towards her. Margery, the elder, ran clumsily, heavily, a bulging satchel with a broken strap banging her ankle at every step; and even as Louise watched, one of the gym shoes clutched in her other hand skidded to the ground, followed by a crumpled paper bag of crayons, spilling this way and that among the hurrying feet. Harriet, smaller, darker, carrying nothing, free as air, flew past her woebegone sister, skimming like a dryad across the crowded pavement and into Louise’s arms.
CHAPTER TWO
I t would, of course, happen that the new tenant should arrive at exactly the moment when Mark got back from work, tired and irritable. And it was equally inevitable that this moment should be the very one when Louise had at last decided to bring the howling Christine indoors, and both prams were now wedged across the narrow hall, locked by their mud-guards in a dismal and indissoluble embrace. This was the moment, too, chosen by Margery to sit on the bottom step of the stairs and pick bread and jam off her socks – the result of Harriet’s Teddy bear’s tea having been laid out in its usual place – on the floor just inside the kitchen door. What with one thing and another, Louise could hardly wonder that Mark should give her one hunted glance, and disappear headlong into the kitchen. She had only time for a fleeting, desperate hope that he had not landed, as Margery had done, in the middle of Teddy’s bread and jam, before she had to turn and greet the tall figure silhouetted in the doorway.
‘Mrs Henderson?’ the figure was saying, in the clear, decisive tones of one used to commanding attention. ‘I’m Vera Brandon. I telephoned yesterday—’
‘Yes. How nice. I mean, do come up. Come and see the room—’ Exerting what felt like a degree of physical strengthequal to throwing a sack of coal across the hall, Louise radiated silent will-power in four directions at once: to Margery to get herself and her jammy socks off the stairs without any of that laboured discussion with which Margery always liked to surround herself and her doings: to Harriet to keep her shrill argument with her father well behind the closed kitchen door: to Michael to slobber over his sodden rusk for a few minutes longer before dropping it through the bars of the playpen and screaming: and to Christine to remain in the state of stunned silence to which the appearance of so many strangers at once had fortunately reduced her.
The will-power worked – as it always does, thought Louise, when you put every ounce of strength you’ve got into it, and leave yourself weak and empty – and she conducted the visitor upstairs to the vacant room – the Rubbish Room as the children still persisted in calling it, in spite of the fact that it had been cleared out some days since and furnished in readiness for its new occupant. And, as it happened, this title turned out to be a good deal more appropriate than Louise could have wished, and she began to apologise to her rather disconcertingly silent visitor:
‘I’m sorry we
‘Well, I don’t think this woman will be like that. She’s a schoolteacher, and she sounded very respectable on the phone. In fact, I expect the trouble will be that she’ll think we aren’t quiet enough for her. I told her we’ve got children – but, well, you do see, don’t you, that I don’t want an extra baby around just when she’s coming to look at the room? I mean, two prams in the hall – it’ll make the place look like a day-nursery.’
‘Let her put up with it,’ advised Mrs Hooper airily. ‘Let hersee you as you really are. Why should you be always putting yourself out for other people?’
Before Louise had thought of a suitable reply to this a screech of ‘Mummy!’ put an end to the discussion. Two little girls had detached themselves from the squealing crowd round the school gates and were running towards her. Margery, the elder, ran clumsily, heavily, a bulging satchel with a broken strap banging her ankle at every step; and even as Louise watched, one of the gym shoes clutched in her other hand skidded to the ground, followed by a crumpled paper bag of crayons, spilling this way and that among the hurrying feet. Harriet, smaller, darker, carrying nothing, free as air, flew past her woebegone sister, skimming like a dryad across the crowded pavement and into Louise’s arms.
CHAPTER TWO
I t would, of course, happen that the new tenant should arrive at exactly the moment when Mark got back from work, tired and irritable. And it was equally inevitable that this moment should be the very one when Louise had at last decided to bring the howling Christine indoors, and both prams were now wedged across the narrow hall, locked by their mud-guards in a dismal and indissoluble embrace. This was the moment, too, chosen by Margery to sit on the bottom step of the stairs and pick bread and jam off her socks – the result of Harriet’s Teddy bear’s tea having been laid out in its usual place – on the floor just inside the kitchen door. What with one thing and another, Louise could hardly wonder that Mark should give her one hunted glance, and disappear headlong into the kitchen. She had only time for a fleeting, desperate hope that he had not landed, as Margery had done, in the middle of Teddy’s bread and jam, before she had to turn and greet the tall figure silhouetted in the doorway.
‘Mrs Henderson?’ the figure was saying, in the clear, decisive tones of one used to commanding attention. ‘I’m Vera Brandon. I telephoned yesterday—’
‘Yes. How nice. I mean, do come up. Come and see the room—’ Exerting what felt like a degree of physical strengthequal to throwing a sack of coal across the hall, Louise radiated silent will-power in four directions at once: to Margery to get herself and her jammy socks off the stairs without any of that laboured discussion with which Margery always liked to surround herself and her doings: to Harriet to keep her shrill argument with her father well behind the closed kitchen door: to Michael to slobber over his sodden rusk for a few minutes longer before dropping it through the bars of the playpen and screaming: and to Christine to remain in the state of stunned silence to which the appearance of so many strangers at once had fortunately reduced her.
The will-power worked – as it always does, thought Louise, when you put every ounce of strength you’ve got into it, and leave yourself weak and empty – and she conducted the visitor upstairs to the vacant room – the Rubbish Room as the children still persisted in calling it, in spite of the fact that it had been cleared out some days since and furnished in readiness for its new occupant. And, as it happened, this title turned out to be a good deal more appropriate than Louise could have wished, and she began to apologise to her rather disconcertingly silent visitor:
‘I’m sorry we
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