The Little Stranger Read Online Free Page B

light silk scarf draped over the top, tied loosely under her chin; and when her children caught sight of her, they laughed.
    ‘You look like something from the early days of motoring, Mother,’ said Roderick.
    ‘Yes,’ said Caroline, ‘or a bee-keeper! I wish you were one; wouldn’t the honey be nice? Here’s Dr Faraday, look—Dr Graham’s partner, from Lidcote. He’s all finished with Betty already and I said we’d give him tea.’
    Mrs Ayres came forward, taking off her hat, letting the scarf fall loosely over her shoulders, and holding out her hand.
    ‘Dr Faraday, how do you do? Such a very great pleasure to meet you properly at last. I’ve been gardening—or anyway, what passes for gardening, in our wilderness—so I hope you’ll excuse my Sundayish appearance. And isn’t that strange?’ She raised the back of her hand to her forehead, to move aside a strand of hair. ‘When I was a child Sundays meant being dressed in one’s finest. One had to sit on a sofa in white lace gloves, and hardly dared to breathe. Now Sunday means working like a dustman—and dressing like one, too.’
    She smiled, her high cheeks rising higher in her heart-shaped face, giving her handsome dark eyes a mischievous tilt. A figure less like a dustman’s, I thought, it would have been hard to imagine, for she looked perfectly well groomed, in a worn linen dress, with her long hair pinned up loosely, showing the elegant line of her neck. She was a good few years over fifty, but her figure was still good, and her hair was still almost as dark as it must have been the day she handed me my Empire Day medal, when she was younger than her daughter was now. Something about her—perhaps the scarf, or the fit of her dress, or the movement of her slender hips inside it—something, anyway, seemed to lend her a Frenchified air, slightly at odds with her children’s light brown English looks. She gestured me to one of the chairs beside the hearth, and took the other across from it; and as she sat, I noticed the shoes she had just slipped on. They were dark patent leather with a cream stripe, too well-made to be anything other than pre-war, and, like other well-made women’s shoes, to a man’s eye absurdly over-engineered—like clever little nonsense gadgets—and faintly distracting.
    On a table beside her chair was a small heap of bulky old-fashioned rings, which she now began to work on to her fingers, one by one. With the movement of her arms the silk scarf slid from her shoulders to the floor, and Roderick, who was still on his feet, leaned forward with an awkward motion to pick it up and set it back around her neck.
    ‘My mother’s like a paper-chase,’ he said to me as he did it. ‘She leaves a trail of things behind her wherever she goes.’
    Mrs Ayres settled the scarf more securely, her eyes tilting again. ‘You see how my children abuse me, Dr Faraday? I fear I shall end my days as one of those neglected old women left starving to death in their beds.’
    ‘Oh, I dare say we’ll chuck you a bone now and then, you poor old thing,’ yawned Roderick, going over to the sofa. He lowered himself down, and this time the awkwardness of his movements was unmistakable. I paid more attention, saw a puckering and whitening appear at his cheek—and realised at last how much his injured leg still troubled him, and how carefully he’d been trying to disguise it.
    Caroline had gone to fetch our tea, taking the dog off with her. Mrs Ayres asked after Betty, seeming very relieved to discover that the problem was not a serious one.
    ‘Such a bore for you,’ she said, ‘having to come out all this way. You must have far graver cases to deal with.’
    I said, ‘I’m a family doctor. It’s mostly rashes and cut fingers, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Now I’m sure you’re being modest … Though why one should judge the worth of a doctor by the severity of the cases on his books, I can’t imagine. If anything, it ought to be the other way