Читать книгу Bloody Awful - Georgia Evans - Страница 8

“All I can say, Gloria, is I think you’re nuts. He’s handsome, intelligent, bedworthy and a gentleman to boot. I don’t understand your hesitation.”

Gloria was tempted to tell Alice that if you turned furry at intervals, you didn’t get involved with men. Better not. “It’s such a cliché: he runs me over, I break an ankle and then he takes me out to dinner to make up.” The whole scenario belonged in a Mills & Boon. Reading them was a smashing way to escape the stresses of war, actually living one was another thing entirely.

Alice didn’t give quarter. “Bully for clichés. You can’t turn him down after you said ‘yes.’”

“I was suffering from shock.”

“You will be, if you keep on this way.”

“Look, Alice. I’m injured. Sick people don’t go out to dinner.” That sounded so wet.

“You’re not sick. They didn’t even keep you overnight.”

“Only because they needed the bed.”

Gloria had never seen Alice this stubborn. Still, two could play that game. “Just because you’re getting hitched, you’re out to play matchmaker.”

“Of course. Love is wonderful, Gloria. Even a little bit of it and no, I’m not saying you should marry him, fall into bed or take lifelong vows on the strength of dinner. For heaven’s sake go, have fun and enjoy yourself. Darn it, we could all be dead any day.”

No denying that. Although Gloria put her chances of survival a bit higher than your average human.

“He’s got it all set up and doing things in style. He’s booked a table at The White Horse. You can’t let him down.”

“It’s not just that, Alice…”

“It’s not anything, Gloria. You’re going if I have to manhandle, or rather womanhandle, you into that car tomorrow night. If you say any more about standing Andrew Barron up, I’ll get Gran to talk to you. She’ll make you see reason.”

No idle threat that. While Mrs. Burrows had always treated Gloria with friendliness and kindness, you didn’t have to be Other to see the strength of the woman. “I’m going, but I’m not exactly comfortable about it.” Complete truth that. She was on tenterhooks inside. She’d fancied Andrew since the day he got off the train and walked into the village. She’d just had the good sense to keep at a distance. Until now.

“Gloria, you’ll have a wonderful time. I’ll come in and help you wash your hair and bring my electric hair dryer. What are you going to wear?”

A dress! “Something I can haul myself in and out of a car in and keep my dignity, and, Alice, I don’t need help deciding. I can get myself upstairs using my arms.” Moving far more easily than any human could. Much as she loved Alice, she could just imagine the look on her face if she ever suspected her friend and coworker turned furry and ran over the heath when all respectable villagers were tucked up safe in bed.

Gloria got to her feet using her crutches, hugged Alice good-bye and closed the door behind her.

Driving home, Alice tried to ignore the needles of guilt.

What if Gloria really didn’t want to go out with Andrew Barron and had only been bulldozed into agreeing? No! Gloria might have reservations; after all she, Alice, had plenty about Peter once upon a time, but Gloria was not one to be pushed where she had no intention of going. Was she?

Alice was so wound up agonizing over the rights and wrongs of it all, she almost hit the dark figure running across the road. A swerve and a screech of brakes had Alice avoiding a collision. Thank heaven! They’d had quite enough road accidents for one week thank you very much. The car came to a halt at the side of the road, narrowly avoiding the ditch.

Heart pounding, Alice yanked on the brake and looked around. The waxing moon was hidden behind the clouds leaving the night dark enough to keep the pickiest air raid warden happy. “Anyone there? Are you alright?” Alice called as she opened her door.

The silence of the night was the only reply.

Damn! She had seen someone or something. She got out of the car and listened. Gran had made her practice and now Alice used all her Pixie hearing to cast around her. A small animal, a mouse or stoat, moved through the ditch, another several scurried in the hedge opposite and somewhere in the cluster of trees by the allotments, a larger creature, a badger perhaps, snuffled in the earth.

Other than an owl overhead, there was no sign or sound of life.

Didn’t mean there wasn’t something out there. A few weeks ago she’d learned the hard way not being alive didn’t stop some creatures.

She waited for several minutes, every Pixie sense alert, but nothing stirred other than the four-footed creatures looking for dinner.

And Gran was expecting her back for hers.

Alice got back into the car and headed for The Gallop, the house she’d grown up in and shared with her grandmother and her brothers when they were home. Not that Simon, now a POW in Germany, was likely to get home any time soon, and she worried daily about Alan, as they didn’t even know where his ship was most of the time.

As she pulled into the drive, Alice noticed a chink of light in the kitchen curtains. Gran must have missed that. Better take care of that right away.

The aroma of fresh baked bread greeted Alice the minute she opened the door. Closing it carefully, she parted the blackout curtain and stepped into the warmth of the kitchen.

“Gran, that’s smells wonderful!”

“Thought you might fancy some, my love,” Helen Burrows replied, looking up from her knitting. Air Force blue this time. Probably made a nice change from khaki. “I made extra. Thought you could take one to Gloria in the morning. How’s she doing?”

“Irritated at being cooped up, feeling guilty that Mrs. Jenkins has organized the villagers to bring her meals, and a little uncertain about whether or not she wants to go out with Andrew Barron tomorrow night.”

Gran smiled. “She’ll go. You mark my words. Here, take your coat off. There’s a mushroom pie in the oven.” She rolled up her knitting as she stood. “I’ll get it out while you wash your hands.”

They split the pie. Amazing really what Gran could make out of very little. She’d no doubt found the mushrooms in one of the fields and although Alice was getting tired of carrots, they did liven up the look of food on the plate.

The fresh bread, the honey Gran produced from the pantry, and a nice cup of tea rounded off the meal nicely.

“Delicious, Gran,” Alice said, licking the last trail of honey off her finger. “Nothing like fresh baked bread. It really is a treat.”

“You didn’t hear the news then?”

“What news? About the mother of Mrs. Grayson’s evacuees disappearing?”

“Hadn’t heard that.”

“She went up to London to help out her mother, who’d lost her house in the Blitz. She spent the night in an emergency shelter with her mother, then they went out to buy her mother new clothes and nobody has seen them since. Mrs. Grayson is getting more than worried. Those boys are pretty sick.”

“No one’s checking?”

“Of course. Mrs. Willows is in contact with the WVS in Shoreditch but so far, not a sign. After several nights of heavy bombing everyone’s inclined to think the worst.”

“Those poor little boys.”

“They don’t know anything yet. Mrs. Grayson thought it best to wait until they get well. Sometimes people do turn up in hospital.” They also disappeared off the face of the earth. At least Jim and Wilf had a good billet and Mrs. Grayson was willing to keep them.

Gran refilled Alice’s cup. “After that, we need my good news. There’s a new baker moving into Stone’s.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From Doris.” Their charlady carried news all the time. “Seems Roger Hudson got a call asking him to make sure the shop was cleaned up and the flat over it in order and he asked her to take care of it. She said he was also told to get ready for a bulk shipment of flour.”

Good news. “That will put Whorleigh’s nose out of joint. He won’t have much market for his day-old bread any more. Wonder who he is. Or she.” Wasn’t impossible these days. It was downright interesting the jobs women managed quite comfortably when there weren’t men blocking the way.

“Time will tell, my love. Maybe it’s a CO sent here for war work.”

Would Gran never stop poking over her one-time prejudice? “If it is, someone else can have him. I’ve got mine.” Her love, her Peter. Her own.

“Anything else?”

Better see what Gran made of it. Alice mentioned the fast-moving shape that supposedly disappeared or…

“Humm,” Gran sipped her tea. “No sign of anything?”

“No, I listened as you’ve been teaching me.” Developing her Pixie powers after years of pretending they didn’t exist had been interesting and tiring. “The only creatures alive were animals.”

“If you saw something, my love. There was something. I’m going to talk to Howell Pendragon in the morning, and you’d better have Peter sharpening stakes.”

“Surely Gran, we won’t have another vampire!” One had been more than enough to last a lifetime.

“We know there were two. Maybe more. The wrong sort seem to travel in packs.”

Lovely! “And is there a right sort of vampire, Gran?”

She ignored that. “I’m going to talk to Howell and we’ll see.” After last time, Alice wasn’t the least sure she wanted to “see” anything. Not that she’d had much choice then. “Oh, by the way, dear, there was a phone call for you. A Doctor Pettigrew from Dorking. He wanted to talk to you about Miss Waite’s cause of death.”