Business as Usual by Jane Oliver

Author:Jane Oliver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Handheld Press
Published: 2020-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Train

Sunday evening

October 25th

My Dearest Family,

I’m writing this on the way back from the Bellamys. Margaret sent you her love. She and George hope to see you on their way north in the spring. They’re going to motor through the Highlands and then tramp. As Margaret says, if she can’t go to Nice she’ll go to Cape Wrath instead. Better to be braced in Scotland than drenched on the English Riviera.

It was a very grand week-end. Perfectly glorious, I suppose, except for some of the usual moments. But if a two-figure income person goes to stay with four-figure friends, she may as well be philosophic and expect them.

I’d got the four figures rather on my mind, of course, in spite of theories, so I started preparations on Wednesday evening. I revived my better evening dress with half a bottle of benzine52, and then took the other half to the evening shoes that had suffered from my last partner’s feet. Only, I put them too near the gas fire afterwards, and while I was opening the door to let the petrol out, one shoe quietly went up in smoke. (Keep calm: there was no conflagration, and I didn’t burn a finger-tip. But I was left with one shoe and a smoking puddle of ash.) That rather settled the economies. I took it as an omen and went shopping in the lunch hour. (When Staff Discount is allowed.) I bought a pair of evening shoes and stockings and a pair of pyjamas fit for the Bellamy corridors with the tail-end of my birthday money eked out with some of my deposit account. But I thought my bedroom slippers would just have to do, as a penance, though a mouse had rather eaten the fur in places.

When I arrived at Bath, the shining Bellamy car was there to meet me, and the chauffeur beside the ticket collector, touching his cap enquiringly to anyone who looked qualified to be a guest in the Bellamy household. I had an uneasy feeling that he was going to let me pass unchallenged, so I gave him my suit-case and swept out without waiting to see if he were surprised. But from that moment the question of tips (which usually only spoils the last afternoon in the houses of one’s grander friends) worried me to distraction. Ought one in the circumstances, to tip the chauffeur by the piece as it were, instead of as a final gesture? I wished I’d asked you in my last letter as I’d meant to. I began to have wild ideas of stopping the car in the village and sending you a pre-paid wire. But then I remembered that the answer would probably come by telephone and be brought to me vocally by some menial in a very public place.

The Bellamys’ house is five miles out of the village, on top of a hill, with a long avenue of noisy beech trees leading up to it. The outside is just ordinary country house-like and not particularly period or imposing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.