Nomance, T Price [bookreader .TXT] 📗

dear,’Carla cooed, ‘I have to support myself in my hour of need. As youcan see, I run the business on my own and I can’t afford notto work. I expect I’ll still be at it even when I’m very,very old.’ She gave Shelly a meaningful look. ‘Not that I ever wantto retire. No, not me. If you don’t work then what else is there todo, apart from sit round all day drinking coffee and eating thinlittle biscuits? If ever I ended up like that I’d probably want totop myself. But of course, only after I had arranged the very bestsend-off I could afford.’

‘But it is terriblyhard for single parents to hold a job down, isn’t it?’ Shelly cooedback. ‘I’m not saying you’ll have to quit work, but many do,don’t they? And that’s such a shame, I think. Especially if theyfeel really worthless about themselves and end up,‘ she smiled atthe quaintness of Carla’s term, ‘topping themselves.’ Shepaused here and they both observed 0.2 of a minute’s silence inremembrance of the topped. ‘But never mind,’ Shelly continuedbreezily, ‘it’s not all bad nowadays. The Government has, at longlast, started to force the men pay up, haven’t they? So I reckon –even if the worse came to the worse – you’d be able to afford apretty good send-off.’

‘I only wish theGovernment could force my man to pay up,’ Carla said, recallingthat, like every one of her other customers, Shelly had neverstooped to find out whether she had a partner or not. Well, it wastime for a little white lie – just in case Shelly got away with theidea she was a loose woman. That might be bad for business. ‘Butthey won’t get a penny out of him, because you see, my husband’sdead. Yes, and he was a great big strapping erector too. You know,he put those . . . rods up. Never had a day’s illness in his life.Fit as a fiddle, he was – right up to the second he hit theconcrete.’

‘I’m . . . terriblysorry to hear that,’ Shelly said, looking amazed.

‘Oh, I’m tougher than Ilook,’ Carla reassured her, ‘and anyway, I see it all the time inmy line of business.’

Shelly was momentarilyconfounded. ‘Why? Are you a . . . erector too?’ Her eyes roamedover Carla’s meaty shoulders. ‘In your spare time?’

‘No, just a humbleflorist. What I mean to say is, I do a lot of funerals.’

‘Ah.’

‘It goes without sayingthat I really went to town when they buried my husband. People camefrom all over to see my displays. I very much doubt whether therewill be a funeral like it for a good few years to come. Not,anyhow, till I bury Gwynne, my brother. I’ll do something specialfor him. Though I always hope someone else might come along first,someone who can afford to stand out from the crowd. Someone withthe vision thing. That’s where Romance can offer you more.See, with us, you can order in advance and die feeling completelyconfident about the future.’

Shelly noddedthroughout this speech, while her hands, acting, as it seemed, oftheir own accord, brought out a carton of fancy cigarettes from herhandbag, a handbag which no doubt cost more than what Carla earnedin a month – a year even. ‘Oh, what am I doing?’ She upbraidedherself, and put the carton back.

‘No, no, please, carryon,’ Carla urged.

‘You see, it’s animmemorial habit with me. I caught myself taking them out inFortnam and Mason’s last week. There’d have been a riot ifI’d actually lit up. But it’s just automatic with me, that’sall.’

‘But please, go ahead.No one else is here and you’re my . . . most valued customer.’

‘Am I, dear?Well,’ Shelly hesitated for a moment and removed the carton onceagain. ‘Thank you very much. Just lately you’re made to feel such aleper if you smoke. Do you smoke, by the way?’

‘Yes,’ Carla said,though she had never smoked in her life, such was her eagerness toplease.

Shelly offered her acigarette and Carla took one. She’d smoke the whole packet to getShelly signed up to her funeral programme. ‘Some people say youshouldn’t when you’re pregnant,’ Shelly observed, lighting Carla’scigarette before her own.

‘Oh, it’s just once ina while. And it’s my belief is a ciggie now and then is milesbetter at calming your nerves than sedatives, and definitely safer.I don’t care what the doctors say, smoking does wonders for me. Solong as the cigarettes are not too mild.’

Shelly liked this. ‘Ithink a pregnant woman has an instinct for what’s good for her, andthese are made with the very best Turkish tobacco, you know. Thekind I smoked to calm my own nerves while I was carrying Stewart,my first son.’

There followed a briefinterlude in which the pair indulged in smoking mannerisms peculiarto themselves. Shelly exhaled mean, thin clouds, as perhaps mighthave issued from the chimney of a death-camp incinerator, whileCarla puffed away like a Wild West steam engine.

‘All pregnant womensmoked when I was young,’ Shelly declared with satisfaction.

Carla considered thisstatement. ‘You know, nobody mentions that anymore. And yet,they’re still going on about Thalidomide. Just shows, doesn’tit?’

‘Yes, yes, that’sright, my dear,’ Shelly agreed warmly. ‘Now while I don’t knowanyone who ever suffered because their mother smoked, withthalidomide the first person I always think of is my cleaning lady. . . ’

Shelly, as it turnedout, had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the frightful effectsof thalidomide. And too, the frightful effects of arterialsclerosis, emphysema, cancer and gas gangrene. What’s more shecould reel off the names of her contemporaries, and householdstaff, who had died of them. The grand prize went to Uncle Cecil –killed off by lung cancer, even though he had never smoked acigarette in his life. Which just went to prove what Shelly hadalways suspected – that all these things came and went in fashions,like the length of women’s skirts. Apropos of which she nowrecalled with great fondness her friend at school, Lydia. Sheobserved, ‘But isn’t it so odd, dear, how one simply never sessclub feet anymore?’

Carla tutted and shookher head, ‘So many things are changing for the worse.’

‘Very true! For a startthis area of London is awash with drugs