A Month in the Country Read Online Free

betrayed me. There was my face, the left side, too. Like his Bankdam-Crowther it worked spasmodically. People like the Revd. J. G. Keach brought it on badly. It began at my left eyebrow and worked down to my mouth. I’d caught it at Passchendaele and wasn’t the only one either. The medics said it might work off given time. Vinny going off hadn’t helped.
    No, I told him, he could rely on me and put on what I believed to be a reliable look. As one side of my face was being jerked in another and unreliable direction, I must have looked frightening because he gave the stove another kick – an embarrassed one.
    â€˜Now,’ he said, ‘… to touch on a delicate topic.’ It apparently was going to be very delicate, because he lowered his voice. ‘Should you … when you feel a call-of-nature you can use the hut in the north-east corner of the burial yard. You’ll find it quite private – behind some lilac bushes. When last I looked there were a few tools Mossop uses, but there’s room enough. Kindly sprinkle a little Keating’s once a week and shovel down some earth: it controls the flies.’
    This must have been a very great effort for him, and there was an interval whilst he gathered reserves of goodwill for a further concession. ‘The scythe,’ he said.
    â€˜The scythe?’
    â€˜Mossop’s scythe hangs from a nail there. It is rusting. The nail.’
    â€˜Ah.’
    â€˜Perhaps you should ensure that it is safely secured before …’
    I thanked him, speculating if it was loss of life or only manhood he was concerned about.
    â€˜I told Moon he might use it too. What period do you suppose it to be?’
    He couldn’t possibly have meant the earth-closet, so I supposed he meant the stove and said, ‘Oh, about 1890 … 1900 … somewhere about that time’ and wondered who Moon, my secret sharer, was.
    â€˜No, no,’ he exclaimed irritably. ‘The mural … the wall-painting …’
    I told him I couldn’t possibly know until I’d uncovered part of it. The costume would tell me within ten or twenty years; dress fashion didn’t change all that quickly even for the well-to-do and, as for the poor, theirs scarcely altered at all, so I was hoping that there’d be one or two rich women. I said that kirtles went out and snoods came in about 1340. But, if he wanted me to guess – and guessing was all it would be – I’d say fourteenth century, after the Black Death, when surviving magnates were swallowing dead neighbours’ estates at disaster prices and while fear for their own skins was still sweating out some of their profits.
    He began to say something quite irrelevant – perhaps that was one reason why it was hard to keep listening to him. But there was a quality in his voice too which sapped the spirit and possibly there was a great deal that I missed (I may have been brooding on Moon and Mossop’s Damoclean scythe).
    â€˜When will you start?’
    I picked up
that
. Well, here I was: I’d started. Surely, that was plain enough. Then I heard him say, ‘We shan’t entertain any Extras.’
    â€˜There won’t be any.’
    â€˜There
mustn’t
be any. You agreed to 25 guineas, £12.10s. to be paid half-way and £13.15s. when Finished and Approved by the Executors. I have your letter here.’
    â€˜Why just the Executors?’ I asked. ‘Why not you too?’ That was a shrewd thrust.
    â€˜Merely Miss Hebron’s omission in the form of bequest,’ he lied bitterly. ‘An oversight, of course.’
    Of course, I thought. Naturally!
    But he struck back. ‘However, for all intent and purpose, I represent the executors. I shan’t mind if you touch it up … any faint areas or even bits which may have disappeared … you can fill them in. So long as it’s appropriate and tones in with the rest. I leave it to