A Kind of Grief Read Online Free Page A

she looked around.
    The table was covered in red gingham oilcloth with paint splatters adding to the cheery color. The room smelled of wood, yeast, and drying vegetation.
    There were paintings on every wall, a mix of watercolors, oil paintings, drawings, with one large oil still life in a speckled gold frame. Another cluster of paintings, which looked modern but not too modern as to be scoffed at by the hoi polloi, were propped above the stove on a timber beam nearly a foot thick and about nine feet long.
    What caught her fancy most was an ink drawing of a bird skeleton—brown ink, faded ink, light-dirty-faded brown paper. The tiny bones, in profile, took up half the composition, details of the skull the other. Calum had said something about skeleton drawings being exhibited in court, and Joanne had to look away, lest she be caught staring.
    Faded rugs, some rag, some woven, and some threadbare Oriental, were scattered on the slate slab kitchen floor. The covers on a sofa, set under a window looking down the glen, Joanne recognized as a William Morris print, a design she had seen in a book and always hankered after. She loved the tapestry cushions and wondered if Miss Ramsay had stitched them herself. And the paisley shawl—perhaps it was a treasure from some relative in the British Colonial Service. She felt she was in an Oriental bazaar in a story from One Thousand and One Nights . Entranced by the room and everything in it, Joanne did not disguise her delight. Never before had she been in a place where she coveted so many of the objects.
    Alice enjoyed her visitor’s obvious pleasure at her creations. As she busied herself stoking up the fire and searching for the tin of biscuits she had misplaced, she was remembering the numerous trips up the farm track, when every visit to the town, every hour outside the safety of her territory, was one trip too many.
    She could picture her Land Rover, the rear area, the backseat, and the passenger seat filled with the spoils of the furniture and bric-a-brac auctions held weekly to coincide with the livestock marts.
    Nails, screws, tools, cement, curtain rods, curtain fabric, flour, poultry feed, barley, oatmeal rough and flakes, tea—lots and lots of tea—sugar brown and white and castor, soap, washing soda, scrubbing brushes, sweeping brushes (outdoor, indoor, a broomstick made from twigs), bed linen, pillows, cushions, knitting yarn, knitting needles (secondhand from a church bazaar), thread, needles, sewing-machine needles, scissors large and small and pinking shears, antiseptic cream, sticking plasters, bandages, surgical spirits, and other spirits—whisky, gin, and cooking sherry (for she was not fond of sweet sherry, but that was all that was available hereabouts)—everything in the house and the outhouses and the garden she had carted up the road, through the gate, up the track, and into her life. The fencing posts and barbed wire and building materials, the hammer, screwdrivers, a set of spanners, and a bow saw—all these she had carried and used. Frequently.
    Joanne cut into Alice’s reverie. “Miss Ramsay, I wrote to your post office box. Is that not the correct address?”
    â€œI haven’t had time to collect mail.”
    Joanne knew the mail would only have been there two days at most and didn’t take the offense that was intended.
    Alice put down a tray with the teapot hidden in a pale pink quilted satin cozy, the edges of which were stained a peat color from spilt tea. “Milk?”
    â€œYes, please.”
    Alice sighed. She may have to venture out after all, as this was the last of her last pint of milk, with not even enough for that first early-morning cup of tea. For the remainder of the day, black tea or herbal was fine. But to start the day, milk was essential.
    Joanne mistook the sigh. “I’m not your enemy. I came to talk, to ask you about the trial, yes, but never to publish without your permission.