Read Killings on Jubilee Terrace for Free Online

reach up to the top shelf in a newsagents.’
    ‘Oh yes, of course.’ Hornby was still more extravagantly neutral as he came round from behind the counter and peered upwards. ‘Was it Physique Pictorial, All Male or Muscle Monthly you were after?’
    ‘I’d really like to have all three, ducky, because you can’t have too much of a good thing, can you? Still, the old ready is in short supply, so I’ll just take All Male .’
    ‘I hear you’re not too well,’ said Hornby, holding out his change. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Oh, don’t be. We’re all suffering from thesame thing, and in the end it always proves fatal. It’s called life.’
    As the sequence ended Hamish turned, reassumed his natural real-life role as an unusually vicious heterosexual, and turning to Melvin Settle, just off-set, said:
    ‘That is the most corny and sick-making line I’ve ever had to speak on television. I suppose it’s one of yours, is it, Melvin? One of your concentrated essences of worldly wisdom scattered before this nation’s yobs and dimwits? It has the ring of you, the mark of your pen. Tell me it’s one of your calendar maxims, meant to give the nation its daily ration of thought.’
    ‘You’re right as always, Hamish,’ said Melvin quietly. ‘It’s one of the truisms I learnt at my mother’s knee.’
    ‘A knee worn out by scrubbing other people’s linoleum, I suppose?’
    ‘How you do hit the nail on the head, Hamish. And how I wish I could return the compliment by hitting a nail into your head.’
     
    Permission to film at Leeds–Bradford airport had only been given to Jubilee Terrace for one of the less busy weekdays at the end of the summer rush, so that Cyril’s arrival back in the soap had to be filmed well after the scenes in which his personality was re-established and hispredicament made known. The script and direction departments were clear in their minds that it had to be the airport: a scene at the station, implying that he’d flown to Heathrow or Manchester and then changed mode of transport, was somehow not at all as dramatic as the dire flight from San Francisco to Leeds. So Lady Wharton and one or two other Terrace notables were in the public area just beyond Customs, joining a queue of real relatives meeting loved ones, and extras. Cameras were discreet but everyone, especially the members of the public, were aware of them.
    ‘Darling, don’t make me throw my arms around him,’ pleaded Lady Wharton to Reggie.
    ‘Don’t be silly Winnie. Of course she will throw her arms around her son.’
    ‘Couldn’t I, just before her arms touch him, register how sick he is looking and back away in horror?’
    The thought had never occurred to Reggie before.
    ‘Hmmm. I suppose it could work,’ he said.
    ‘Of course it would. The first thing a mother would do would be to register how her son looked.’
    ‘Maybe you’re right. Particularly the mother of a gay, I suppose. Well, we’ll try it both ways, then we can choose later.’
    ‘Yuck!’ said Winnie.
    At that moment, after several families had gone past and been greeted by relatives (they were actually off a flight from Paphos) the figure of Cyril was seen walking daintily through the door from Customs. His hair was dyed blonde, his luggage was one leather bag carried over his shoulder, and he was wearing a T-shirt with ‘San Francisco, capital of Gayana’ printed on it.
    ‘Cyril!’ shouted Winnie, for once getting a line right.
    ‘Mumsie,’ said Cyril, with a lack of enthusiasm both real and appropriate. She had pulled herself up one foot from an actual touching of him.
    ‘Darling – you look—’
    ‘I know, Mumsie. Washed out. Drained . I’m perfectly all right. If you’d done fourteen hours of ghastly food, ghastly films and even ghastly classical music, you’d feel like death too. In a couple of days I’ll be right as rain.’
    ‘Are you sure, darling—?’
    But Cyril was looking round the Terracers who had – without zest –