The Miracle Man Read Online Free

her knees. What a look she might otherwise receive from Margaret, who was saying to Mr Pointerly,
    “And what d’you think we might expect for dinner this evening, Richard?”
    Mr Pointerly gave a rueful smile, lifted and dropped a languid hand.
    “Ah, who knows, my dear? Who knows? We are entirely at the mercy of the Winter Cook.”
    “Hmph! A cook, she calls herself? The woman hasn’t the slightest idea what the word means. If she’s boiled potatoes for pigs, that’s about the height of it. And have you seen her hands? There’s bears’ paws that are cleaner. It’s a wonder we’re not all poisoned.” She gave a sniff. “I ask you, how much longer do we have to suffer the depredations of that woman? We’ll all be in an early grave.” Frowning, she glanced over at Cissy who was as usual off somewhere on thoughts of her own. “Where are we now, Cissy?”
    Her sister blinked at her. “Why – the sitting-room, Margaret.”
    For a full five seconds Margaret closed her eyes in silent martyrdom before opening them to gaze up at the ceiling.
    “The date, Cissy!” She said. “The date, for goodness sake!”
    “The – second week in May – I think,” Mr Pointerly volunteered. “Don’t know the exact date, I’m afraid. Don’t possess such a thing as a calendar now – or a diary.” He shrugged. “Used to keep one years ago, of course. We all did. Hardly seems much point now.” His voice trailed away as his gaze drifted from the sisters to the sunlit scene on the other sideof the window. Margaret Garrison tutted and gave a little flick of her head. Like a favourite cat, her large macramé bag sat hunched on her lap and from it she took a lighter and a packet of cigarettes, screwed a cigarette between her pouted, magenta lips, lit it and puffed smoke out without having inhaled it. It was a habit of some sophistication that she had picked up in London in her twenties, during the year she had spent there with her cousins, the Hennessys.
    “Cissy,” Margaret said without looking at her sister, “as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I really don’t think that cardigan goes with that dress. Perhaps you should go upstairs and change it before dinner.”
    Pinched between two fingertips, the cigarette was held aloft, a symbol of her authority and superior knowledge in matters of couture.
    From the couch Cissy peeped over her knees and gave a vacant smile.
    “Well – I rather like it, Margaret,” she said, smoothing the rumpled fabric over her flat chest. “And it’s not as though we’re going to dine with the Queen, dear.”
    “Puts me in mind of fuchsia. This is the place for fuchsia,” Mr Pointerly said, as if revealing a great truth. And then he said simply, “Ballerinas.”
    Margaret ignored this irrelevance and said to him,
    “I don’t know about you, Richard,” with the clear implication that she meant the opposite, “but I intend to make the strongest possible representations to Mr McAllister about the food we’ve been forced to endure at the hands of that – woman. Indeed, I fully intend to demand a reduction in my bill – and I would strongly advise you to do the same.”
    Mr Pointerly opened “Chrome Yellow” and glanced down at the beginning of Chapter Two.
    “Perhaps,” he said, half to himself, “if the food was better, the bill would be higher.”
    At that very moment the banshee wail of Mrs Megarrity, the Winter Cook, came hallooing down the hall, an inescapable call to account. Margaret groaned and Cissy valiantly tried to struggle from the grip of the couch. Without the page being marked, “Chrome Yellow” was closed and laid on the water-marked wood of the windowsill, long since devoid of varnish. The cooking smell that was beginning to drift from the kitchen into the sitting-room was really quite pleasant. Perhaps this evening’s meal would be different.
    Although all three of them, the Garrisons and Mr Pointerly, had been residents in the hotel for a number of years