Caroline Minuscule Read Online Free Page B

disregard for the convenience of his customers scratched his red beard, leant his great belly against the counter and said: ‘Having a party, are we? If you’re going to mix those, you’d be far better off with sparkling wine.’ Dougal was too tired to think of an answer. He took the clanking carrier bag and left the shop, banging his thigh on a monolith constructed of beer cans on the way out. A dry Scottish chuckle followed him out into the night.
    Amanda lived on the other side of the High Road, the side nearer the river. You could sense its great grey presence a quarter of a mile away, and even see a tiny square of water, framed by buildings, from the window of Amanda’s room. It was a room with a view, she said, which presumably explained why the Polish landlord felt obliged to charge so much rent for it.
    The house was semidetached and had seen far better days. Amanda had a large room at the back of the house on the first floor. The door was open and he went in. Amanda wasn’t there, which sent a wave of desolation over him. He felt an infantile urge to scream, ‘It’s not fair!’ But the room was as welcoming as ever. It was large, dimly lit and cavernous; there were plants everywhere – they hung from the ceiling, crouched on the floor and occupied most of the available surfaces between the two. A gas fire – of the old-fashioned type where, if you stared long enough, it was easy to see glowing Oriental palaces – hissed light and warmth. Dougal liked the carpet best of all – it was Persian, comfortably shabby, with a dark blue pattern on a red background.
    There was a step behind him. He swung round to see Amanda standing in the doorway looking simultaneously cross and beautiful; she was one of the few people he knew who could combine the two.
    â€˜Hullo, love,’ he said, aware of relief oozing out of him like sweat. ‘Where have you been?’
    â€˜In the loo. Some bugger’s gone and blocked it again. With the
Daily Telegraph
.’
    The other tenants of the house were a source of endless irritation and interest to her, according to their sex. Amanda was generally on terms of mute hostility towards the women, which occasionally burst into sporadic verbal warfare when Amanda’s record player was thought to be too loud, or when old Mrs Middle, to whom the sweet and sickly smell of death had clung for years, had allowed her portly marmalade pussy to defecate in the bath once more. The male inhabitants of the house, however, venerated Amanda and she returned the compliment by sending them to the doctor when they were ill and disentangling their emotional problems with the clinical competence of a heart surgeon.
    On the whole, Dougal reckoned that Mrs Middle was the most likely culprit for the lavatory, but he wisely held his tongue and changed the subject by letting his carrier bag clink suggestively.
    He left his own news until they were sitting on two large cushions in front of the fire. Amanda made champagne cocktails with swift efficiency, talking of what she had done today. She did freelance work for publishers – her father was managing director of a firm – and had read a couple of tedious manuscripts.
    Dougal found her words almost as reassuring as the alcohol. A part of him had been secretly afraid that the whole world had shifted away from normality at five o’clock this evening, that the earthquake within his own life was merely an insignificant tremor emanating from a more general cataclysm; it was pleasant to find the fear groundless, even if it was the kind of fear which he couldn’t admit to himself.
    When Amanda, her long black hair swinging like a protective shield in front of her face, asked him what sort of day he had had, he told her the truth: ‘Gumper got garotted and I’ve been offered one thousand two hundred pounds for a couple of days’ work.’ He had to tell someone, and she was the only