Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books. Sally Bayley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Blunt closes the shop at six o’clock. He pulls down the strip blinds and looks out across the green. He sees Milly-Molly-Mandy and Sue playing with a hoop and ball. He watches and he watches. Beads of sweat begin to form across his brow. The corners of his mouth twist into a smile.

      ——————————

      People say nothing ever happens in villages. But that isn’t true. A lot goes on. Miss Marple knows this. Peculiar things happen in English villages all the time. You only need think of Poor Sue Blunt.

      One day over tea at the Copper Kettle Miss Marple tells Greta, the vicar’s wife, the story of Poor Sue. Greta tries to remember it so she can tell it to someone else.

      ‘As a child, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But she grew up into an odd woman … Poor Sue.’

      Miss Marple paused and looked out the window.

      ‘Please do go on, Miss Marple.’ Greta looked anxious. She did so wish that Miss Marple would stop being so vague and distracted. Miss Marple turned back to Greta. The poor girl was looking worried.

      ‘Something went wrong with Sue. The village people blamed her husband. David Blunt was quiet as a church mouse and very serious. And of course he was far too old for Sue. Three times her age.’ Miss Marple paused again. ‘Then one day she disappeared.’

      ‘Disappeared?’ Greta squeaked, stirring her tea more quickly. ‘Someone can’t just disappear.’

      ‘Of course they can, dear, if things are managed cleverly.’

      ‘Well she must be somewhere … unless she’s dead!’

      ‘Mysterious things happen all the time, dear. You can live alongside people for years and years and not know things about them. Sometimes you are none the wiser for living in such close proximity. Husbands and wives can do the most surprising things …’

      Miss Marple suddenly looked serious. ‘You can have suspicions, of course. We all have our suspicions.’

      ‘What are your suspicions, Miss Marple?’ asked Greta, stirring her tea furiously.

      ‘Sue was tangled up in religion. But it was all too emotional for her. She was a very quiet, modest sort of woman. She wasn’t suited to all of that. Sue would have done better as a mother I think.’

      ‘All of what, Miss Marple. All of what? Do tell!’

      Later, when Greta told Miss Cram over tea at the vicarage, she was disappointed to find that Miss Cram already knew all about it.

      ‘Old enough to be her father. Disgusting,’ said Miss Cram. ‘It shouldn’t have been allowed, a man of over sixty marrying a girl of twenty.’ Miss Cram sniffed hard. She opened her bag and pulled out a tissue. She patted her lips.

      ‘And they never had children. I don’t think they could. That’s the price of unnatural relations if you ask me!’

      Greta nursed her hot coffee and looked thoughtful.

      ‘Perhaps. More a case of too much religion and not enough fun. What she needed was more parties instead of prayers. And you know, people say, well …’ Greta lowered her head to the table and leaned across towards Miss Cram. ‘Well … that they spent all their time, you know …’

      ‘No, I don’t know, dear,’ said Miss Cram sternly, raising her eyebrow.

      Greta leaned in further. ‘Summoning spirits … shrieking at God – whatever it is you do when you’ve gone a bit demented.’ She paused and tried to look thoughtful again.

      ‘You’ve heard that from Jane Marple, I suppose,’ said Miss Cram, looking quite put out. ‘She oughtn’t to be gossiping like that. Doesn’t she know it’s one of the seven deadly sins?’

      4

       Jane Eyre and Verity

      Every story has a backstory. Backstories are stories in disguise. Sleeping Beauty has a backstory, Jane Eyre too, but I should tell you about Sleeping Beauty, because she came first.

      Beauty is born to a king and queen who can never have children. For years the royal cot in the palace hallway sits empty. Finally, after ten years, the queen loses hope. She pushes the cot behind the hallway curtains and tells her staff never to touch it again.

      Then out of the blue, as if by magic, the queen produces a child, a child so beautiful that anyone who sees him can’t help exclaim, ‘What a beauty! What a delight! How lucky you are! May God bless you and your child! May he grow fair and tall!’

      An old fairy living on the fringes of the palace hears news of the child and she is filled with jealousy. She cannot bear that a child so beautiful and so loved should live. Her heart begins to fill with wicked thoughts.

      Every day at noon the child sleeps beneath a rosebush in the garden. One day, the fairy takes a stroll to the rosebush where the child is sleeping. She bends down towards the cot and lifts the white muslin veil that protects him from the sun. Her knobbly fingers are cold and bent and the child, feeling something, stirs. His eyes open and he screams. The fairy pinches the small rosebud mouth between her fingers.

      After that, there is only the sound of tweeting.

      ——————————

      When people die before their time they turn into ghosts. Ghosts are what the people left behind have to puzzle over. When Miss Marple meets Miss Temple, the schoolteacher, she knows she must help her draw out her ghost. Luckily, ghosts can come out of hiding with the mere mention of a name.

      ‘We had been talking,’ said Miss Marple, ‘about a young girl called Verity.’

      ‘Ah, yes.’

      ‘I did not know her surname. Miss Temple, I think, mentioned her only as Verity.’

      ‘Verity Hunt disappeared years ago,’ said the Archdeacon.

      ‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Miss Temple and I were talking about her. Miss Temple told me something I did not know.’

      Most ghosts are familiar; you know who they are when you see them. Mum looks like a ghost when she passes down the hallway in her nightie; she’s pale all over, grey as congealed porridge. The bottom of her nightie is ripped and torn as if a wild cat has got at it. Sometimes, when the hall light is off, I don’t see her coming and I scream. Then Mum gets cross and goes back into her room and slams the door. We don’t see her for hours.

      ——————————

      Women waft about in their nighties when things are going wrong. Clotilde Bradbury-Scott walks into Miss Marple’s room in a purple nightie in the middle of the night because she’s afraid. She’s had a bad dream about nasty secrets hidden beneath pink polygonum flowers.

      ‘Polygonum baldschuanicum. Very quick-growing, I think, isn’t it? Very СКАЧАТЬ