Not at Home by Doris Langley Moore & Brian Flynn

Author:Doris Langley Moore & Brian Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2019-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

11

It was mid-February before there was any opportunity of going out to Cornfields to see Mory and Maxine at work. Tentative arrangements had been made on two occasions before, but Mory had rung up each time to announce, with apparently infinite regret, some difficulty, and Miss MacFarren had quite lost hope of ever finding her way into a film studio or pursuing her tantalizing acquaintance with Maxine when one evening he telephoned and offered to call for her the following morning at eight. She had the alternative of either going with him in his car at that untoward hour, or making her way to the studio alone later in the day, and the weather being cold and the place somewhat inaccessible, she had preferred the car journey.

‘But, Mory,’ she pleaded, ‘if I’m to be sitting waiting in my hat and gloves at eight in the morning, you won’t ring up at the last minute to put me off?’

Mory swore he would not, but it was with some misgivings that she made her overnight preparations for an early start. The film business appeared to possess the lives of those who lived by it to an extent that made their actions quite unpredictable and, by ordinary standards, rather unmannerly.

The next morning she was glad to be kept waiting a little while, however, because it gave her a chance to rake the ashes out of the boiler and provide a secret snack for the dog before leaving; and she decided, when these tasks were done, to steal a glance at the budgerigars, as she made a point of doing whenever she was sure her tenant was out of the way. It was fortunate that she did so, for their water-dish was empty and she had no reason to suppose that Mrs. Bankes would be punctual in filling it.

Two of the birds had now solved the problem of their small cage and uncertain care by dying; and the sight of the remaining pair always lowered her spirits. The idea of their dismal and unnatural existence oppressed her, and she stood staring at the cage, wondering whether they most disliked the room when it was empty and lifeless or when it was filled with cigarette smoke, radio music, and all the uncongenialities of human behaviour. On the whole, she was inclined to think the room must be worse for them when it was deserted, when their little quick, glittering eyes saw nothing wherever they turned but motionless objects, nothing animated by wind or rain or the shadow of any flying or scurrying creature, everything unresponsive and unchanging. Transmuted in the light of those alien eyes through which she was now seeing, her own treasures became stony, implacable, devoid of comprehensible meaning. The birds had reduced the room even as the cage had reduced the birds. She thought of them as part of Antonia’s evil spell.

Then she reproached herself for her superstition. It was due, she assured herself, to having drunk too much whisky last night, but that reflection only deepened the frown on her brow.

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