Free The Matchmaker by Stella Gibbons Page A

Canadian soldiers and hoping to sail for their new homes within the next few months, and one had tender memories of an American private. Louise could hardly have chosen a less appreciative audience to hear her announcement that they were “going to buy some cigarettes for the poor Italians,” and only the fact that the four young ladies of Bettany’s knew the children as old acquaintances from Pagets prevented their comments from being sharp indeed.
    “ May we go and have tea at the Linga-Longa?” implored Louise, casting a wistful glance at the bedraggled curtains of the only café in Sillingham, as Alda hurried the pram past it on their way home. The winter day was drawing towards dusk.
    “ No , Louise.”
    “Oh, why not?”
    “Because it’s smelly and gipsies go there.”
    “That’s just what I like,”
    “That’s just what I like,”
    said Jenny and Louise together. Meg had fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position and Alda paused to rearrange her head against the cushion.
    “Oh, Jenny, do you remember that one with the yellow scarf? I expect he’d kidnapped thousands of children,” Louise continued dreamily, and began to wander back towards the café just as a lorry, narrowly avoiding the kerb, drew up with a rattle and a roar. A man jumped down, slamming the door after him, and hurried across to the café, where a girl’s pretty, untidy head looked out laughing to welcome him. The door shut on them both.
    “It’s so lovely,” mourned Louise, with her nose against the window. “Oh Jenny, there are pink cakes to-day!”
    “Do come along, Weez, it will be dark before we get home,” said Alda sharply; she wanted her tea.
    “Well, can we go there for my birthday treat?” asked Louise, reluctantly moving on.
    “What a treat!”
    “It’s my birthday and my treat.”
    “Even you said the cakes were nice and the tea was hot when we went there, Mother,” said Jenny with her judicial air.
    “But it wasn’t clean, Jenny. I do draw the line at dirty places.”
    “And the ladies are all so pretty and nice. Even the old fat one was kind,” put in Louise.
    “I give you all that, but I don’t like gipsies and dirt. Now that’s enough, come along.”
    She hurried them away, down the long High Street which gradually ran out into fields. They left the village half in daytime business, and half in evening peace; curtains had been drawn across the bow-windows in some cottages, but in many of the small square houses of cream or grey stucco, built in the early years of Victoria’s reign, the blinds were still up, and within, sitting in a room filled with strong gold light, was an old woman knitting as she listened to the wireless, a man lingering at the tea-table with the evening paper, a child bent over its homework. Evergreen bushes swayed and sighed in the evening wind, shutters were going up at the chemists and the butchers; it was that hour before winter dusk when the air clears and the sun sinks in purple mist even as the first star shines out in the icy blue.
    “Lucky creatures!” said Alda, as three young women sailed past them on bicycles.
    “Do you think we shall ever have bicycles, Mother?” asked Jenny.
    “Of course we shall, darling. Next year, perhaps. As soon as father comes out of the Army and goes back to the college.”
    “We could go exploring.”
    “And you could take Meg in a basket at the back.”
    “Meg’s nearly old enough to have one for herself. By the time we all have them, she will be,” said Alda.
    “We could have super picnics.”
    “And get to the sea, perhaps. It’s only fifteen miles away.”
    “It would be so lovely, Mother.”
    This conversation had been gone over many times before but never lost its wistful fascination. Alda and Ronald had been enthusiastic bicyclists before their marriage, and had presented Jenny with a tiny bicycle almost as soon as she could walk, but they were only beginning to take rides as a trio when the Second World War broke out,