Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018
- Автор: Ловси Питер, Зельцерман Дэйв
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018». Краткое содержание книги:
“You ought to come,” he’d say. “They’re fun.”
Fun? Rolling dice to pin different body parts to insects?
“Next time,” I’d say, with a twinkle in my eye. He knew I was happier alone with the record player, bopping round the living room while the jail-house rocked and Guy Mitchell never felt more like singing the blues. I think, deep down inside, he also sensed that his parishioners were happier too. That without me there, a nonbeliever in believer’s clothing, they breathed more easily. Hypocrisy always finds its level.
But life after illness finds its level too, and me, I found another skill. Organising things, jumble sales in particular. Again, not my first choice, but when Mrs. Meredith had a stroke, someone needed to step in, and I don’t care who called me bossy, rigid, rhymes-with-witch, I got the job done, didn’t I? That year, the church banked a third more in takings, which was a terrific boost for Richard’s new soup-kitchen project, so you can shut your ugly faces, all you backbiters from school, and remember who it was that raised more food in that year’s Harvest Festival than any that had gone before it.
And so what, a bit of swearing slipped out here and there?
No one’s bleedin’ perfect.
As for Richard, well... slower songs meant slower dances, and what’s wrong with clicking your fingers to “Blueberry Hill” or tapping your toes from the sofa while someone went sneakin’ round the corner, could that someone be Mack the Knife? The Clean Air Act meant a new gas fire downstairs, a two-bar electric in the bedroom, and that autumn we was as warm as toast, drinking the cheap sherry the bishop and his boring wife brought round, watching the brand new ITV channel, playing Monopoly, and going to the pictures.
But like I said, when it comes to Dolly Sneed, nothing good lasts long.
Richard, poor bugger, caught the flu.
Excuse my swearing, but holy bleedin’ *!?~*!!*, ’cause if you think pneumonia’s bad, this was ten times worse. First off, his temperature shot through the roof. Scary enough, but add on chills, joint pain, diarrhoea (that was just the tip of the iceberg), and I’d never known so many heart-stopping moments in me life. Considering the epidemic started the year before, I suppose he was lucky not to have caught it then. “Asian flu,” they called it. Something to do with ducks, don’t know what exactly, but I do know three and a half thousand people in Britain died from it — and when you’re prone to bronchial pneumonia, I swear the Pearly Gates creaked open half a dozen times.
Once again, though, his parish proved terrific. Even though he was laid up in hospital, they brought round pies and soups and stews and pastries for me, baked flapjacks, swiss rolls, and macaroons, and swamped the entire house with flowers. This was wintertime, remember, and the sacrifices them poor people made to buy me roses, violets, lilies, freesias, brought a lump to my throat. Their scent fingered right the way to June.
The women, bless ’em, knitted shawls for the vicar’s wife, an Aran cardi for the reverend. Their husbands mowed the lawn, checked out the electrics and the plumbing, replaced two washers on the taps, and repainted the kitchen and the lounge. As for the books they donated, dear me, I’m sure we ended up with more than the local public library, but you won’t hear Dolly Sneed complain. Believe me, when you’re nursing an invalid back to health, time passes slower than a snail without its shell.
Leastways, for active girls like me.
I drank too much, I must admit, and sod the port, just gimme the bloody brandy. But the bottle and the books between ’em saved my sanity, because what’s that saying? Them what never reads live only one life. Them what do live a thousand. Glutton that I was, I guzzled everything from pulp fiction to biographies, via serious literature and lurid magazines. National Geographic was my lifeline. Without ’em, see, it was just me and the Courvoisier, taking me back to days when strong arms pulled me, laughing, onto the dance floor, and I’d jive and jitterbug until the music stopped, Glenn Miller still ringing in me ears as the same strong arms pulled me down. That’s when I’d close the living-room door, so Richard upstairs in bed wouldn’t hear, and blast out things like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “In the Mood,” where Courvoisier and I could pretend I was wearing strappy shoes with a little bow on top, and that frilly skirt that showed my petticoats and sometimes more, while men whistled, clapped, and cheered.
“And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’Ф”
“Funny, I thought the delirium had passed a month ago.”
“Next Sunday’s sermon,” Richard said, smiling. “Luke twelve, sixteen through twenty-one, the parable of the rich man, whose land was proving remarkably productive. Then he said, ‘This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to the rich man, You fool! This very night your soul is required of you, and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
“God said that?”
“His exact words.”
My turn to laugh. “Why are you telling me this?” I shot a comical glance over my shoulder. “Did God tell you, in his exact words, that the Grim Reaper’s creeping up, about to swing his sickle any second?”
He smiled, but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m worried, Dolly. In less than a dozen years, people seem to have forgotten the horrors and the deprivations of war and—”
“You worry too much, Richard Jenkins. That’s what you do. You spend too much time out there in the parish—”
“I’m their minister. They need me.”
“I need you too, luv. You’re hardly ever home.”
And when he was, it was only because he’d picked up a tummy bug from Sunday school, or shingles from a kid with chicken pox. Trust me, if it was going round, he’d catch it. In fact, his resistance was so bleedin’ low, a common cold would lay him low for weeks, but God bless ’em, his flock never let up. Loved him like a son, they did, so even when one illness rolled into another and he was bedridden half the time, they’d bake round the clock, knit, sew, make the prettiest lace outside Flanders, and you know the funny thing? They didn’t do it out of duty, boredom, or any of the reasons I’d have done it for. They did it ’cause they liked me. Imagine that! Dolly Sneed, Mrs. Popular. Who’d have thought it, eh?
That’s when I started pressing some of the flowers. Not the likes of Joe Mackenzie’s roses or Miss Hemmings’ potted cyclamen. I didn’t need no physical reminders of their generosity and help. I’m talking about the pansies, violets, even that sprig of mimosa sent round by the girls I went to school with. And when they’d dried properly, squashed between the mammoths and the manatees in the Encyclopedia of Mammals, I propped them upright on my writing bureau, like pupils in class, so I could look at ’em, standing in a line, and say, Well, girls. Never thought you’d be bringing me flowers, did yer? Not when you was teasing me about not knowing how to calculate, or when I got my Keats all wrong and called it “myths and mellow fruitfulness,” or ’cause I couldn’t tell my acids from my alkali. Who’s top of the class now, eh? You answer that.