A Little Stranger Read Online Free

be doing. That is supposed to free time in order for one to do what one does best. I was popularly, that is among our acquaintance, supposed to do thinking best, but it is not an easily evidenced accomplishment. I had worked at a series of ill-paid though rewarding jobs with publishers, occasionally jazzed up by bouts on the boards and even, sometimes, if there was nothing else, modelling.
    But now, freed from cooking by the cook, from cleaning by the cleaners, from John by Margaret, I was not carefree, nor was I full of thoughts.
    I dared not sit still, for fear of being caught in apparent idleness, for which the only excuse might have been beauty or a decent literary output. Mine had been a glamour of animation which stillness had dulled.
    Our house and garden were none the less a credit to those they kept employed. I liked to consider them, laid out and labelled, perspective absent and detail disproportionate as in a seventeenth-century estate map. Daily I added detail to this map as I oversaw the establishment of an asparagus bed or the installation of a machine to make hard water soft. As the great houses remind one of a city state, so ours reminded me of a hive, full of business tending to the making of sweetness and its storage. It is true that I did not feel myself the queen bee, but I knew that this would come with time and patience and practice. We had been married only five years.
    The days passed and the nights lengthened. I was happy, my husband was happy, and we were happy with Margaret, who kept John happy.
    Sometimes I thought the happiness was the better for not thinking. When I did try to think, I too often encountered my own objections to our way of life, as though I were a doctor who carries the disease he is attempting to cure.
    It was simple not to think, easier each day.
    I lived by instinct and its control, like a properly tended plant, and John was my flower and fruit.
    As was natural, orderly, provident, I found out after one of the first very good shooting days on our land, with towering birds and a sporting wind, that I was pregnant.
    The shooting cards were sent out to the guns. My husband kept his own. Our cards were pictorial, with each column for the various game shot headed by a reduced Bewick engraving of that creature, in life. One column was for miscellaneous beasts, shot not by design. In this column, my husband wrote ‘baby’.
    ‘If it’s a girl, it’ll be a left and a right all right,’ he said.
    He could be very funny.

Chapter 5
    That autumn John started school. He learnt about shame and comparison, and a certain amount about short words. At school he met children he already knew and some new children. In the morning they made marks on soft sheets of coloured paper which they brought home after a story and a rest. There was a sandpit at the school and a roll of oil-cloth for handwork-fallout. There was a frieze showing the happier events in the life of Christ, and there was a list of names with stars against them. John seemed to come between decent brandy and a country-house hotel for conduct and was about mid-octane petrol academically.
    He made school jokes at home and said ‘Present’ when one called his name. He was, though, endearingly absent, giving perfect attention only to what interested him perfectly.
    Margaret drove him to school. At the school she met other nannies and after school they would sometimes go to a tea-shop for coffee and cakes. John would be given glossy crackleware buns which he could not finish. I would find the square sugar crystals in the corners of his pockets. Her pleasures left their sugary dust.
    I was glad Margaret had made friends. In the evening she might meet the other nannies and they would see a film or go out to eat. Those nannies who were her particular friends tended to be those whose employers were our particular friends.
    The children got on well, only ever divided, and that briefly, over possessions.
    When other children came to see