The Coming Day by Adrian Wright

Author:Adrian Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

The Kiss of Venus

When and how had Francis and Gordon’s Uncle Peter grown moustaches, bought a beret, moved to France and become Oncle Pierre?

Branlingham woke one day to read of his appointment as curator at one of the great art galleries of Paris. Could this be the brother of Doris Jones, an impeccably dressed young man who every morning sat ramrod-straight on the top floor of the bus into Norwich and by 9 am was in position at the haberdashery department of Chamberlins department store? Surely not the same!

Some thought young Peter precious, from the way he wore kid gloves and spats, and walked with a silver-topped cane although there was nothing wrong with his knees, and sported a fedora bought from Marshall and Snelgrove’s summer sale, and cultivated that extraordinary moustache that perked up at the edges. More darkly, some called him bookish. Blodwyn Williams at the library couldn’t keep up with his demand for esoteric literature. Miss Simms had just snapped up the latest Denise Robins when she saw him strolling out of the library with Oscar Wilde under his arm. The fact that he made no attempt to conceal it stirred her moral unease.

‘Oh dear!’ said Blodwyn, who had just bitten off half of her first Wagon Wheel of the morning, ‘He forgot his other book.’

Miss Simms gazed with horror at the volume in Blodwyn’s hand: Renaissance Nudes of the Great Masters. Blodwyn caught Miss Simms’ expression.

‘I know,’ she said, flicking through the pages with half a wicked eye on the gaping postmistress, ‘and there’s double page spreads.’

Miss Simms made no secret of the relief she felt at Oncle Pierre’s emigration.

‘Less fun, though,’ Blodwyn replied, waving a Wagon Wheel in Miss Simms’ direction. ‘Peter – I mean, Pierre – read interesting books. He was a man of passion.’

‘I feared as much,’ sniffed Miss Simms.

‘A passion for knowledge. It wasn’t only paintings and statues of classical male nudes …’

‘So I should hope. Some of those sculptors didn’t know when to stop chiselling.’

‘Peter had a real passion about all sorts of things, about life itself. Once he got something in his head he’d explore it to the full. Wild plants – he went through book after book about them, and fungi, mushrooms and all that, there can’t be a book about them he hasn’t read. I know I’m Welsh and all that, but he had a craze for the architecture of Arabia, and the pantomimes of Joseph Grimaldi, and Victorian workhouses. He was amazed that some were still in operation. Outraged, he was; wanted them closed down immediate. He got angry about people, properly riled at what he saw as injustice. And capital punishment. Now, that was something that really got him going. I mean, I know I’m Welsh and all that,’ (she gazed at her Wagon Wheel as if she might see her reflection in it) ‘but you could sense the loathing. He said he was thinking of writing to the papers about it and all. Book after book he consumed as if there was no tomorrow.

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