And so the toast was drunk, and while their glasses were still being drained, the hall clock struck the hour. ‘If we’re to be at the Athenaeum for the opening quadrille,’ Nan warned, ‘we must make haste.’ And she stood up to show them that the meal was over.
Billy went rushing off to prepare at once, and she noticed that Calverley walked out of the room with Annie and Mr Hopkins, and that Cosmo was escorting Bessie and Thiss. But Johnnie remained behind, standing beside the window, with his hand on the curtain, watching the torch-lit fair.
She snuffed all the candles except for the eight beside the mirrors and the room was suddenly cast into gentle shadow. Then she went to stand beside him. The square below them was full of little glittering lights, yellow as glow-worms in the gathering dusk, and the Athenaeum gleamed whitely against the mauve sky.
‘Could you truly double our profits in two years?’ she said.
‘I believe so.’
The business-woman in her was intrigued, the mother impressed. This was the way forward. ‘Tell me how,’ she said.
A Note on the Author
Beryl Kingston was born in Tooting in 1931. She was eight when the war began and spent the early years of her education in many different schools, depending on her latest evacuation. As an undergraduate she attended King’s College London, where she read English.
She married her childhood sweetheart when she was 19, with whom she has three children. Kingston was an English teacher before embarking on a career as a full-time writer in 1980.
Discover books by Beryl Kingston published by Bloomsbury Reader at
A Time to Love
Fourpenny Flyer
Sixpenny Stalls
Tuppenny Times
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
First published in Great Britain 1991 by Little, Brown
Copyright © 1991 Beryl Kingston
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eISBN: 9781448210374
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