The Hours Before Dawn Read Online Free Page B

the greater part of her waking life, and this manner had no doubt become habitual. All the same, it was odd that a woman so self-assured should display so little interest in the amenities (or lack of them) in the place she proposed to make her home. With almost perverse honesty, Louise began pointing out the disadvantages of the room: the low, sloping ceiling; the lack of storage space – the only built-in cupboard being shallow and inconvenient, with a jagged hole in the plaster at the top which the men still hadn’t come to mend.
    But Miss Brandon seemed quite unperturbed – or, rather, uninterested. Indeed, she seemed to find Louise’s frankness merely irritating, and she brushed it aside impatiently, simplyrepeating that she wished to take the room. Her only concern seemed to be that she should come in soon –say tomorrow evening?
    This being agreed, the two set off down the stairs again, Louise making rapid calculations about how to fit in the cleaning and preparing of the room tomorrow. Mark would definitely be home for lunch, which meant extra cooking; and the scullery and passage simply must be scrubbed – they couldn’t go another day….
    At the foot of the stairs, Miss Brandon seemed suddenly to lose her air of restive indifference. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed.
    Louise really couldn’t feel surprised at the exclamation. Anyone other than a mother must surely be horrified at the sight of a baby in the position in which Christine Hooper had managed to get herself. There she lay, sound asleep, her head hanging over the edge of the pram, and her spine bent backwards at an angle which must surely have resulted in instant death to anyone much over seven months old. Louise, of course, recognised these symptoms as indicating merely that Christine was all set to sleep peacefully for hours; but she appreciated that to a less experienced eye the situation might look alarming.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she began hastily; but Miss Brandon was already bending over the pram, rearranging the outraged Christine into the comfortable position which babies so detest. ‘She’s all right, really,’ repeated Louise, as Miss Brandon, her strong features flushed with stooping, straightened herself, and looked accusingly at Louise.
    ‘This isn’t your baby, is it?’ she said.
    ‘Why – no,’ answered Louise, rather taken aback. ‘I’m just looking after her for a friend of mine—’ She stopped rather awkwardly, realising that ‘looking after’ must seem to her listener something of an exaggeration. It was true that she hadabandoned Christine and her pram rather unceremoniously in the middle of the hall when the visitor arrived; but what else could she do, with the doorbell ringing, and Mark arriving home, and such pandemonium everywhere? And anyway, hadn’t Mrs Hooper assured her that Christine could be left in her pram indefinitely, anywhere, anyhow?
    ‘Don’t worry about her, my dear,’ Mrs Hooper had said. ‘ I never do. Just leave her anywhere – out in the front, if you like. I’ll be back in time for her feed.’ And then, as if conferring a great favour, she called over her shoulder: ‘If you like, you can give her a bottle when you give Michael his. Any milk mixture will do.’
    But, of course, Miss Brandon didn’t know Mrs Hooper and her methods. And anyway, it occurred now to Louise that the accusing stare which was fastened on her so uncomfortably probably had no reference to her neglect or otherwise of the superfluous Christine, but simply to the fact of her owning a baby at all. After all, she had only said three children on the phone, and who would choose to come and live in a house with a baby in it if they could possibly live elsewhere? Apologetically, she plunged into explanations:
    ‘Actually, I have got a baby about that age. And two older girls. I thought I told you when you rang up. But I don’t think they’ll bother you at all, your room is right up at the top, on a floor by