Good Hope Road: A Novel Read Online Free

large maple. ‘They’ll be by. Isn’t anyone strong enough to keep away from your coffee, Mrs Dalloway.’
    She laughed, her cheeks turning pink with pleasure at the compliment. ‘You could be right, you could be right.’ She turned back to her customer. ‘So, what do you think, dear? It does suit your colouring.’
    ‘I’m not sure . . . They are all so pretty, it’s hard to decide.’
    A hint of iron entered Mrs Dalloway’s voice. ‘Well now, you need to make up your mind, dear. Here, why don’t I let you decide while I finish up with Jim.’
    She resumed stacking the tins of tobacco on the counter. ‘Flat- landers!’ she mouthed to him, rolling her eyes. ‘Now let’s see. Coffee, flour—’
    ‘Hi, you there, in the overalls. Help a girl out, would you?’ Jim turned, startled. The girl had two different swathes of fabric draped over her, tucked over each shoulder and about her waist. She cocked her head, smiling, and that mane of hair fell to one side. ‘The teal, or the rose?’
    He began to say something, caught off guard, then shrugged, embarrassed. The girl laughed, a low throaty sound that seemed to him all kinds of knowing, making him feel like a fool.
    ‘Well, that decides it,’ she declared. Unwinding the bolts from about her, she piled them onto the counter. ‘I’ll buy both, and that’s that.’
    She sauntered over, her heels loud on the wooden floor as Jim handed his father’s card to Mrs Dalloway.
    ‘Why, is that a veteran’s card?’
    ‘Yes, dear.’ There was still a touch of asperity in Mrs Dalloway’s voice. ‘It’s Major Stonebridge’s – Jim’s father. He was in the war.’
    ‘The town must be proud.’
    ‘That we are,’ Mrs Dalloway agreed, her tone softening at the girl’s interest. ‘He was decorated in France you know. A real Yankee doughboy.’
    The girl turned to Jim, intrigued.
    ‘Do you think we might meet him? My friends and I, we have a summer theatre camp going. Well, spring camp, I suppose. We thought we’d begin early this year, no point in waiting about when we were all quite bored. Any way, we’re working on a play. It’s about soldiers. And the Great War. Do you think your father might accord us the pleasure of his counsel? Lend some authenticity to our shenanigans?’
    ‘No.’ Jim didn’t bother elaborating the bald refusal, still prickling from his earlier fumble.
    ‘He’s a private sort, dear, the Major,’ Mrs Dalloway piped up helpfully. ‘Keeps to himself, a real stay-at-home. Why, I don’t think I’ve seen him in years, isn’t that right, Jim?’
    ‘Yes, but I’m sure if he knew . . . Oh!’ The girl paused, her mouth rounding dramatically over the ‘Oh’. ‘Why, how rude, I’ve yet to introduce myself!’ She extended a slim-boned hand, not put off in the least by his reticence. ‘I’m Madeleine. Madeleine Scott.’
    After that morning, he thought of her. That rich red colour. Suddenly, it was everywhere. In the roan of a cow, in the threads unravelling from the velvet of his father’s smoking jacket. In a portrait on a wall, a past Mrs Stonebridge wearing something red and sparkling about her throat. In the seams of the leather armchair, and the bridles glistening with oil against the wall of the barn. In the apples that lay fallen around the oldest tree in the orchard, arcs and moons of red on snow-patch ground.
    Jim turned from the window, glancing restlessly at the black mirror. He could still see the tree, grafted from the earliest on the orchard. It seemed to list even more crookedly towards the barn when viewed in reflection, the memory of last year’s storm in its jagged crown and gnarled, arthritic stem. The littered apples seemed at once attenuated and exaggerated, the red of their skins muted, but taking on a strange, subterranean glow, as if they were on an illustrated plate in one of his great-grandfather’s books.
    The image jogged Jim’s memory, reminding him of a book he hadn’t thought about in years.