Читать книгу Feather Boy онлайн | страница 9

“Sorry,” I say as we pass like a substituted football players at the edge of the pitch.

“You’re joking,” she says.

A moment later I’m face to face with Ram-Rod. Close to, she looks surprisingly frail. Her body so thin and bloodless, she must, I think, be sitting upright by force of will alone.

“I’m Robert,” I say, extending a polite hand.

“Edith,” she replies, ignoring the hand. “Edith Sorrel.”

My arm drops uselessly and me with it. I’m back on the floor.

Then, like the cavalry, the tea trolley arrives. It comes with clink and clatter and shout and “Thank God” from Albert. Catherine, obviously taken aback that tea can be so early, suggests we all use the time to get “better acquainted”. We know what this means because Liz Finch briefed us on the bus.

“Remember your Elder may be deaf,” she said. “Just ask short, simple questions. Do you have children? Grandchildren? A husband/wife? What job did you use to do? And speak up.”

“Do you have children?” I ask Edith Sorrel.

“No.”

I pause, leave a gap. This the art of conversation, you know. You say something. They say something. You say something.

Edith says nothing.

“A husband?” I enquire hopefully.

“No.”

Another pause. Longer this time. I watch the trolley coming, so very slowly round towards us.

“Looking forward to tea?”

“No.”

The trolley passes us. The staff obviously know that Edith does not take tea, she does not take biscuits. The biscuits are those oblong ones which say “Nice” on them and are covered in sugar. I watch them go Weasel’s way.

“Did you have a job?”

Behind me I can hear Kate’s Albert. He had a job. He worked “in sawmills” and then “on the building”, he got paid sixpence a day.

“How much is sixpence?” asks Kate.

“Eh?” says Albert.

“Sixpence – how much was it worth?”

“Three loaves of bread, that’s what sixpence were.”

“No,” says Edith Sorrel. “I did not have a job. Young women were not encouraged to have jobs.”

And then I think she’s not really trying and it’s not fair and anyhow I’m cross about the biscuits, so I say: “Any special reason why you didn’t want a girl?”