The Inn at the Edge of the World Read Online Free Page A

considered too early, and the buyer had been travelling the world since April. The buyer was the actual source of Anita’s present feeling of unease. She had not, considered Anita, quite achieved the right touch this season, having ordered from somewhere in the Far East a collection of rather soupily old-fashioned Christmas cards when the trend recently had been towards a more secular, jocular form of greeting. The shepherds, angels, wise men, pop-up camels, donkeys, fat-tailed sheep, etc. made her a little nauseous, reminding her of Sunday School, and she had gone so far as to argue with the buyer. ‘In the Brent Cross branch,’ the buyer had said, ‘they can’t get enough Mother and Childs.’ Anita had been disposed to correct her grammar but had refrained. She was beginning to wonder if the buyer drank. It would not be surprising with all that foreign travel to manufacturers and trade fairs.
    Over a modest lunch of quiche and salad in the staff canteen she read
The Lady
with concentration because she didn’t feel like talking to anyone. When she came to the small ads the word ‘Christmas’ caught her eye. I hate Christmas she thought guiltily, surprising herself, and was about to turn back to an article on quail rearing when she saw the words ‘the edge of the world’. She could get away from it all, she could go where there were no Christmas cards or Santa Clauses, no swanky buyer, nothing to remind her of work or the way that, in the end, Christmas itself always turned out to be a little disappointing. She’d never quite admitted that to herself before. She folded the magazine into her bag and when she got home to her empty flat she wrote to Eric to book a trouble-free Christmas. It was an act of defiance: she repudiated all the tinsel and glitter which had occupied the forefront of her mind for far too long, while all the work she had done had brought her insufficient credit.
     
    Ronald was staring with wild incomprehension at the toaster, which was stubbornly refusing to relinquish the toast. It seemed to Ronald that if it could speak it would be saying something not only rebellious but disrespectful. The thing was bent on defying him, as indeed the dishwasher had been. The kitchen was littered with two-day-old dirty dishes; his bed was unmade and his clothes unwashed. Not merely had his wife left him but the cleaning lady had given notice. The two events, he suspected, were not unconnected. He wouldn’t be surprised if his wife had bribed the cleaning lady to leave in order to spite him and make his life impossible. How was he to give his mind to his work when his home was in total disarray? The pain he felt at his wife’s dereliction was rather less acute than his discomfort, the mute hostility of the toaster more wounding than his wife’s recent coldness. In truth the cleaning lady had left when his wife left because she had worked for single gentlemen before and had found it too onerous. Lifelong bachelors were all right, domestically competent and orderly, but deserted husbands were far too much trouble. They left everything for her to do – their beds unmade, their clothes unwashed, and they wouldn’t stack the dish washer. Often they couldn’t even control the toaster and expected her to gouge out the charcoal into which it had turned the bread, and make it better again.
    ‘Bloody women,’ said Ronald, wrenching out the electric plug from the wall. He was pleased with this decisive act. The words ‘That’ll show ’em’ were manifest in his demeanour. It was nearly time for his first patient to arrive, and as his wife wasn’t there to let her in he stood behind the curtain peering surreptitiously through the window. He had a theory that patients panicked if left too long with their finger on the bell. It made them feel rejected – a distressing sensation, as Ronald was learning to his cost.
    Having dealt with and got rid of his first patient, he had ten minutes before the second arrived.