Unbidden Guests

Wilson Martin

Description

The unbidden guest is ever a pest...Frank Grinder has retired from practice as a solicitor in Hong Kong and is now living in Cheltenham with his attractive, much younger Chinese wife, Winnie. He realises that he is bored and decides to write a book, recording the things that he finds irritating. His attempts to do so are interrupted by the arrival of his wife's family for a holiday and the resultant trouble in which his nave nephew lands himself. Meanwhile, through the agency of a South African private detective, he inadvertently becomes drawn into a supposed industrial espionage conspiracy, which is, itself, beset by mistaken identities. This is a very funny book, with a fast plot and a host of amusing characters, including an irritating and verbose vicar, a Russian botanist and a Brummie caf owner, whose idiosyncrasies of speech are cleverly captured.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783069491
• Langue: English

Extrait

Unbidden Guests
Unbidden Guests
Martin Wilson
Copyright © 2013 Martin Wilson
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador
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Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1783069 491
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Julia, my wife, my daughters Becky, Anna and Alex and my little grandson, Ben.
An unbidden guest is worse than a Tartar
– Russian proverb
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
CHAPTER 1
Frank Grinder woke with a stiff neck and a dry throat. He took a sip of water from the tumbler on the bedside table, put on his glasses and swung his legs out of the bed. It was becoming a worryingly typical start to the day: regretting how much he had had to drink the night before. Blearily, he walked to the window, pulled back the curtains and stared out at the drizzle suffusing the garden with a grey light. He glanced back at the face of his still sleeping wife. A short lock of black hair lay across her cheek as if positioned deliberately, accentuating the child-like quality of her features.
He put his forehead against the cool glass. The wooden furniture at the bottom of the garden was beginning to show signs of mould, bad enough for him to be able to see it from here. He would have to try to do something about it; scrape it off or buy some sort of product from the DIY store. And he would have to collect up the leaves which had started to fall from his neighbour’s horse chestnut tree and which the wind had swept into soggy, mottled piles in the corner by the fence. Perhaps he should get someone in to do it for him, but it seemed ridiculous and pretentious to employ a gardener for such a small area, with no lawn and only narrow strips of flower beds separating the paving from the damp-stained brick walls on either side. A blackbird settled on the back of one of the chairs and pointed its orange beak at him, cocking its head to one side. He didn’t know how long they lived, but there was every chance that it had taken possession of its territory long before he had; it certainly looked as if it was challenging him. He stared back at it, and at the dismal garden, settling into a reverie until the growing need for a cup of tea distracted him.
She had not moved, but she stirred slightly as he took his dressing-gown from the hook on the door. He was about to ask her if she wanted him to bring a cup up to her, but she turned onto her other side, breathing slowly, quietly, and he crept out of the room and down the stairs. The kitchen was immediately below the bedroom, and as he waited for the kettle to boil, he went over to the window and looked out at the rain. At this level, he could not avoid seeing how uneven some of the paving slabs were. The moss which had grown between them tended to lessen the effect, but there were one or two places that could cause a trip. Was that something that he could repair himself or would he have to pay a workman to do it for him? He had no idea. He didn’t even know who you would ask to do such a job. A builder? A landscape gardener?
Grey drizzle, a dismal garden, and nothing to do. He dropped a tea bag into a mug and took it over to the deal table, waiting for the tea to turn the dark brown that he liked. As he fished it out, the paper label detached from its thread and the bag dropped back into the mug, splashing the table. He went across to the sink, looking for a cloth. There was none there; she had tidied and cleaned the kitchen as she always did before going to bed. Where did she keep the cloths? Or the kitchen towelling? The stain was beginning to seep into the surface. He tried to dry it with the sleeve of his dressing gown, but succeeded only in making a mark on it. He went into the downstairs lavatory, there was always paper there, and a spare roll, neatly and unobtrusively ready.
Back in the kitchen he tried mopping the stain with a couple of sheets of dry toilet paper, and then with a handful which he soaked under the tap. The stain grew larger, without appearing to get lighter, and small, damp curlicues of paper were now embedded in the grain of the surface. Meanwhile the tea had turned black. He tried picking the bag out by its sodden string, but it was still too hot, so he went to the cutlery drawer and took out a teaspoon which, had he thought about it, he should have had ready before the kettle had boiled. After two attempts, when the bag splashed back into the tea, he managed to balance it on the spoon, lift it out and then dropped it onto the table. With the aid of the spoon and more paper he got it into the sink and sat down to contemplate the, probably permanent, mess that he made.
Yesterday’s newspaper was on one of the chairs, where she always left it when she cleared up, because she knew that he liked to go through it again before the morning’s delivery, looking for articles that he had missed and seeing whether he could fill in any more of the unfinished crossword puzzle. He spread it out, guiltily, over the wet patch whilst he took the milk from the fridge. He checked that it had not gone off: they didn’t get through much, he, because he liked his coffee and tea very strong and because he had an aversion to breakfast cereals, and she for cultural reasons. But, of course, it was fine; the insistence on fresh food was another characteristic of her background.
He looked out at the garden again. The rain had stopped, and there seemed to be a faint glimmer of sunshine behind the clouds. He ought to get out and do something. It seemed much easier for her, she could occupy herself for hours tidying the house up, cooking, reading the magazines that were sent regularly by her family. Her temperament was much better suited than his for taking apparent satisfaction from the mundane. Perhaps, if he took the car down to the local supermarket, he might see something that they needed at home. It was a pretty big one; perhaps it might even have a gardening section and he could buy some mould killer and a rake. But first he would make her some tea.
There were several small boxes of Rickshaw Brand Oolong tea in the cupboard, behind the teabags that he liked. He had no idea where she got them from. Did they come from the supermarket or were they also sent from home? He had never thought to ask. He boiled the water again and made her a cup, this time using the spoon to fish the bag out. She was beginning to sit up when he went in to the bedroom, but her eyes were still closed. For several seconds, he gazed at her perfect, even features and tousled hair.
‘Hallo, F’ank,’ she said, looking at him, as if his stare had woken her. ‘How’s my man today?’
‘I’ve brought you some tea, love.’
‘No milk?’
‘No, it’s your tea. Where do you get it from?’
‘You got it. From kitchen cupboard.’
‘No, I mean, where does it come from? Where do you buy it?’
‘I don’t remember. Maybe my mother send it.’
He handed her the cup and sat down on the bed.
‘Listen, love, I think that I’ll go to the supermarket.’
‘You?’
‘Yes, there’s got to be a first for everything.’
‘O.K., but how about you get dressed first?’ she said, and put her hand on his knee.
‘Oh, and I’m afraid I made a bit of a mess on the kitchen table. I dropped a teabag on it and I couldn’t get the stain out. I’m sorry.’
‘ Mo man tai , don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You’re tired because you get up too early. Maybe, that’s why you so clumsy. I’ll clean it up,’ and she laughed as she added, ‘When you shop.’
The car park at the supermarket was enormous. Grinder had never seen one as big, other than at airports. He wondered whether there was a shuttle bus to the building as he reversed the car into a space which seemed a very long walk to the entrance. He saw that there were trolleys, jammed together in covered bays and went over to one. He struggled with it until he saw that it was attached to the one in front by a small chain with a coin slot. He searched his pockets, but could not find a £1 coin. He vaguely remembered stories of people being stopped by security staff for going round supermarkets without a trolley or a wire basket, but he could not see any baskets in the bay, or anywhere else in the car park. It was all a bit of a puzzle, but he would walk over and chance it.
As he went through the automatic sliding glass doors, he was astonished. It was huge. A giant hall of commerce: banks of check-out tills and beyond them a bewildering scene: rows and rows of display shelves with a throng of trolley-wielding people in the aisles between them. And he was taken aback by the level of noise: voices, announcements and music. He abandoned his earlier notion of wandering round, picking up the odd item that appealed to him or which he thought might be needed at home, and decided that he would just look for some moss-killer, or whatever it was that he needed. He walked past the café – he had not r