Getting It Right Read Online Free

where he had first seen the mirror – from the top of a
bus. It had been very well upholstered in red velvet that had faded with age and the sun: only the bits behind the faded buttons showed you the original, royal colour. But he had not wanted to
change it, which had driven his mother into a frenzy about germs and worse. She sprayed it angrily with fly-killer and had been known to dab at it with almost neat Jeyes Fluid till he’d
stopped her. She thought second-hand things equated with being poor and there was no shifting her, so he had simply said that he was funny that way, and that had turned out to be immediately
acceptable. The room was certainly Gavin’s rather than his parents’. Mum kept the rest of the house so nice that it was in a perpetual state of suspended animation – there was no
sign that anyone ever read, sewed, talked, left things about, or even dropped or broke them – whatever they did, she cleared it up almost before they had finished doing it. Even meals were
cleared off the table the moment their mouths – or possibly only plates – were empty. The garden was rather like that as well. It was so tidy and symmetrical that putting even one deck
chair in it made it look lop-sided. Largely on the strength of these things, Mrs Lamb had the reputation for being a wonderful wife and mother.
    When he had washed, he came downstairs to find that his mother had propped his post against his glass on the table. There was a card from the library saying that the book he had asked for was
now in and also a travel brochure about Greece – the country he was planning to go to on his next holiday: a good post.
    Supper was eaten in silence. Mrs Lamb did not realize the heat of the curry because she did not eat it. She hardly ever ate at meal times, and was not given to tasting the food she cooked. This
meant that whenever she strayed from the family recipes learned from her own mother, her food became an anxious business for her consumers. She was particularly fond of trying out new recipes for
‘foreign food’ and various curries were a recurring hazard. But she also had the unshakeable notion that all printed recipes were mean: if it said ‘one teaspoonful of chili powder
and two of plum jam’ she carefully measured these amounts and then chucked in a whole lot more for good measure. The results were extreme; scalding, dizzily sweet, briney beyond belief.
Sometimes the skin was removed from the roofs of their mouths before they were blown off – sometimes not. Mr Lamb and his son dutifully ate as much as they could of whatever was put before
them and kept their criticism to an heroic minimum ever since the dreadful evening some years back when Mrs Lamb, looking more like a nervy little witch than usual, had served them their first
curry, asked what they thought of it, and on being mildly told that it had seemed a bit hot, had burst into wracking sobs and a tirade that beginning with their ingratitude had extended to the
futility of her whole life. It had taken hours to calm her, and even then she had not been really appeased and they had been treated to tinned food served with sardonic sniffs and nasty remarks
made to Providence for nearly a week. Afterwards, Gavin had realized that it had been the anniversary of Caesar being put down. As she refused to have another dog, Gavin and his father made a note
of the anniversary, and were always especially bright and obliging on it, but they had also divined that criticism, however tentative, was not something that Mrs Lamb wished to experience. So, this
evening they chewed their way through shredded strands of beef in coconut syrup and sultanas while Mrs Lamb sat, a little apart, crocheting a playsuit for a teddy bear; her small speedy hands in no
way impairing her watchfulness: the teddy bear, clad in tangerine nylon fur, lolled beside her.
    ‘Very nice,’ Mr Lamb said at last. He drank the last of the water on the table and met Gavin’s