Colour Blind by Catherine Cookson

Author:Catherine Cookson [Cookson, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780360126
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

By midday she had finished the ground floor and the four rooms on the first floor. One of these had taken very little doing, as it was another studio belonging to the ‘other one’, whom her grandfather had referred to as being ‘madder by the week’ than her master. In contrast, the bedroom adjoining this studio was, to Rose Angela’s mind, more like an overcrowded sitting room, and unlike her master’s, which was practically bare, without even a carpet on the floor, a large orange rug being the only covering on the bare polished boards.

She did not venture to the top of the house, and as the afternoon wore on she began to await anxiously the summons for another meal. It was close on three o’clock when it came…a dull thumping from above. With fast-beating heart she mounted the stairs and knocked on the studio door, and entered, only to find it empty. Staring along its length, she saw a crumpled rug lying on the boards by the window. Had he been sleeping on the floor?

Her conjecturing was interrupted by his voice coming through a partly-opened door to the right of her. ‘Rosie!’

It was as familiar-sounding as if he had used her name every day for years. There was none of the harshness of the morning in his tone.

‘Yes, sir.’ She went into the room and saw him standing at a table, stretching some canvas over a frame. He did not lift his eyes from his work, nor speak further, until he had taken some tacks from his mouth and hammered them home.

‘I’ll have a pot of tea. Make it strong. Nothing to eat; but you can make me a meal about six. You needn’t stay to clear—do that in the morning.’

‘Is there anything particular you would like, sir?’

He walked to an easel, with a full-length empty canvas set on its pegs, and moved it to the side of a dais which ran the breadth of the room.

‘No—as long as it’s nothing hashed up, it’ll do…I like fresh food.’

‘Yes, sir. About the ordering, sir—do I do that?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Bessie always did. But mind’—he swung round and faced her, and his tone took on the edge that she associated with him as natural—‘sixteen pounds a month’s my limit—not a penny more.’

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