Free Madame Sousatzka by Bernice Rubens Page B

faith. Cordle’s mother died, didn’t she? I read it in his cups three weeks before it happened and he didn’t even know she was ill. Then a friend of mine went on holiday and her husband was drowned. I could have told her that before she went. I saw it in his cup.’
    â€˜Didn’t you tell him?’
    â€˜No, of course not,’ said Jenny. ‘You can’t go against fate. If it’s in the cups, it’ll happen, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.’
    â€˜Don’t you ever read anything happy in cups?’
    â€˜I read your concert, didn’t I? That’s happy, isn’t it?’
    â€˜But it wasn’t happy for Sousatzka. You know it wasn’t.’
    Jenny didn’t answer. Absentmindedly, she blew on her finger-nails to dry them.
    â€˜Shall I wash up for you, Jenny?’ Marcus said, getting up. He always washed up for her on a Friday.
    â€˜No,’ Jenny shouted, almost falling out of her seat as she stopped him taking the cups away. ‘I’ll do it myself later,’ she said quietly. Marcus sat down again and they said nothing to each other.
    â€˜I think I’ll go down and have a game of draughts,’ he said after a while, not able to bear the silence any longer. He was hurt but not surprised that Jenny made no move to keep him.
    Marcus walked down the stairs dejectedly. On the top flight leading from Jenny’s room the banister was of wrought iron with unadorned metal supports. He took a pencil out of his pocket and strummed it along the rails. Hefelt lonely and the noise comforted him. As he neared Mr Cordle’s room on the second landing, he put the pencil away and tip-toed past his door on to the stairs. From here onwards, the stairway became more respectable. It was encased with hardwood and Marcus had to walk silently and alone.
    Madame Sousatzka was fumbling with the telephone on the first landing. In all her years as a box hirer, she had never understood the vital difference between Button A and Button B. She was shouting frantically to an unhearing recipient while the pennies dribbled back into the hole. Suddenly she caught sight of them. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said to no one in particular, and she reinserted them. As each penny dropped, Madame Sousatzka counted hastily, repeating the number she was going to dial between each penny. Marcus watched her turn the dial with a red pencil.
    â€˜Hullo,’ she shrieked after a while. ‘Now I’ve got you,’ her tone of voice seemed to say triumphantly. She pressed Button B. The pennies wearily stuttered down the slot and Madame Sousatzka wearily picked them out again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, and Marcus turned to go downstairs.
    As he reached the hall floor, he saw the shadow of a man climbing the front steps, and scrutinizing the names of the bells on the side of the door. Not that it would have helped him. None of the bells worked, neither was there a knocker on the door. Only those in the know could gain access to 132 Vauxhall Mansions, by heaving one shoulder on to the front door. Even Madame Sousatzka used to do it when she’d forgotten her keys, and on entering she would shove the door with her other shoulder to even out the pain.
    Marcus watched the man press on the bells, and he sat on the bottom stair, listening to the silence in the house. The man pressed again after a few minutes and stepped back a little to look up at the front windows. He pressed for a third time, leaning his ear against the glass panel.
    Marcus smiled. He felt the man had been patient enough to deserve an entry. He turned the metal knob of the door and pulled, but the door had for so long been used to rough treatment that it refused to respond to any conventional handling. ‘Push,’ Marcus shouted through the hole thathad once been a letter-box. Marcus stood back while the visitor pushed. And in a second they were facing each other in the