Read Requiem for a Wren for Free Online Page B

the dead parlourmaid, but I seemed to have told her most of the things already. The thought of Bill came into my mind and the new details I had
    34
    learned about his death, but I rejected this hurriedly as a subject that had better wait for another time. My journey home was something that I had not told her of, that might amuse and interest her and take her mind off the more sombre topic. 'I stayed four or five days in New York,' I said-'It's a stimulating place, but I don't know that I'd like to work there.'
    My father played up, sensing the move. 'What's it really like?' he asked. 'Is it like you'd think it was from the movies?'
    'I suppose it is, physically,' I said. 'You know more or less what it's going to look like before you get there. But as regards the people, I've never yet met an American that was much like the people that you see upon the movies, and I didn't this time. I suppose there are Americans like that.'
    My mother said, 'They probably exaggerate their own types, Alan, when they put them on the stage or on the screen. We do that, too. All countries do it. You don't often meet people who behave like people on the stage.'
    My father carried on the steering of the conversation. 'I suppose they have to make them larger than life on the screen, in all their characteristics. Did you go to Los Angeles?'
    'No,' I said. 'I spent a few days with a chap in San Francisco.' I carried on talking about the United States, and the topic lasted us all through dinner. My parents eat little at their age, but what little they do eat they like to be good, and I think Annie our old cook had made a special effort, though I can only remember the fresh asparagus from the garden and the jugged hare. I pleased my mother by appreciating the dinner, and promised her that I would speak to Annie about it. They had put a good deal of thought into getting together the dishes that I would like best. My father opened a particularly good bottle of Burgundy from somewhere on the Hunter River, and a glass of vintage port from South Australia served with the dessert was really very like the real thing.
    We went through to the drawing-room after dinner. My parents had always gone early to bed; one does so in the country where it is usual to be up and about the property at
    35
    seven in the morning to keep the men from getting slack. Since his operation my father had been ordered to bed at nine o'clock by his doctor, and with the increasing infirmity of my mother they had both got into the habit of retiring about that time, though I think they usually read in bed for an hour or so before sleep. When I had lived at home before, after the war, I had frequently played a game of chess with my mother after dinner; I had not played since then and I had all but forgotten the moves, but now to take her mind off our troubles I suggested we might have a game to celebrate my return. She was pleased at the idea though she had played very little in my absence, so I brought up the inlaid chess table that they had bought in Paris before the war and that had once stood in some chateau or other in Touraine, and now stood in somewhat similar surroundings in the Western District, and found the box that contained the eighteenth-century carved ivory chessmen, and set them up by my mother's chair before the fire. We played two games and then it was half past nine and time for them to be in bed.
    I put the things away and helped my mother up out of her chair. 'It seems terribly early to be going to bed on your first evening' she said. 'I feel rather badly about it, Alan, but it's what Dr Stanley says we've got to do, especially because your father gets up so early.'
    My father said, 'Help yourself to a whisky, Alan. And there's the paper here.'
    I smiled. 'Don't worry about me. I'll probably take to going off early myself in a few days, and getting up early. It's the best way in the country.'
    I walked with my mother as she hobbled slowly to the door and opened it for