Affairs at Thrush Green by Miss Read

Author:Miss Read [Read, Miss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780618238576
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1983-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

11. Problems At Thrush Green

AS THE weeks passed, and high summer embraced Lulling and Thrush Green, Albert Piggott's fears of the return of his Nelly grew less painful.

He regretted the journey to see her. It had been a complete waste of time and money, in his opinion, and it looked as though that confounded Charlie Wright still reigned supreme in his wife's fickle heart.

She must have been out of hospital for weeks now, he told himself with some relief, and that silly threat of hers to spend her convalescence at Thrush Green could safely be ignored.

In fact, Albert was living in a fool's paradise, and things were far from harmonious at Nelly's present address.

It was true that the lady had recovered with remarkable rapidity from the operation, although the surgeon had been quite ferocious about Nelly's superfluous fat and had practically ordered her to lose three stones in weight as soon as she had come round from the anaesthetic. He gave her to understand that it was only his consummate skill which had enabled him to get to the vital parts on this occasion.

Nelly, too weak to argue, agreed to take home a diet sheet which she had no intention of reading, and there the matter rested.

Charlie had called regularly at the hospital, and Nelly had looked forward eagerly to returning home. She could hardly wait to get back to a bed without a horrible piece of plastic sheeting over the mattress, and to some windows which she could have open all night instead of enduring the enveloping hot stuffiness of the ward throughout the hours of darkness.

Charlie took her home and she went straight to bed. In the days that followed, she got up for a few hours and enjoyed cooking Charlie's evening meal and cleaning the house again.

In the midst of her relief at being at large again, she hardly noticed that Charlie was somewhat subdued.

He came home later than usual too, and one evening smelt strongly of chypre perfume. It was a cloying scent that Nelly had always disliked, being an eau-de-Cologne woman herself, and she was alert at once. However, she had the sense to say nothing.

When Charlie had driven to work the next day in his oil van, Nelly began a systematic search through Charlie's drawers and the small desk where he kept his papers. She found nothing, but the smell of the chypre was faintly on the air when she came to the wardrobe.

Only Charlie's clothes hung there. Nelly had appropriated the bedroom cupboard on her arrival, and had little occasion to open the wardrobe. When she did, on this day, she went swiftly through all the pockets, and found a crumpled note in the jacket of his best blue serge suit. It said:

'Will be at the usual 6.30. If you can't make it, give the

Grand a ring. 2946.

Best love—

Gladys'

Nelly knew at once who was this correspondent. Gladys and her husband Norman were a couple who lived on the other side of town and

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