pifiow.
He dropped the bedding and the mattress, used his heel to close the door behind him. He groped for the light switch. She was in bed, where he had told her to be. She had found more blankets from the shelf at the top of the wardrobe. Her clothes were scattered on the floor, her underwear, jeans, sweater and walking shoes. Only the shoulders of the pyjamas showed above the sheet and the blankets. He had made, again, a child of her. She hadn’t spoken to him in the car, hadn’t bloody thanked him, or apologized to him for rubbishing his advice. He had gone out only when the night closed on the city. She looked up from the pillows.
‘Have to eat – have to eat something, damned if you deserve anything.’
He was stern because he had been frightened fit to crap and angry because he had been frightened fit to piss. The big eyes gazed at him from the pale face, from the pillows.
He put the food boxes on the bed. She sat up for him and he rearranged the pillows behind her back, as he would have done for a sick child. The burgers would have cooled and the sauces would have congealed. He opened the boxes. She wore thin cotton pyjamas and he could see the shape of her beneath the material. He gave her the coat from the floor and she hooked it round her shoulders. Her face was filled with the burger and chips. He pulled the ring on a beer can, passed it to her, and she lifted her knees, gripped the can between them, against the blankets. He sat on the end of the bed.
Her mouth was full. She pointed with a chip at the bedclothes behind him, and the mattress.
‘What’s that for?’
He flushed. ‘I am sleeping in here.’
Her eyebrows arched, as if the life returned to her, the mischief. ‘Please yourself.’
He said, as if it was another speech, ‘You are not alone again, you are not out of my sight again.’
She ate, she thawed, she drank.
Through a full mouth, swallowing, ‘What do you do with yourself, when you’re not working?’
‘Don’t seem to have much time.’
‘I was only asking.’
‘I read a bit, in the evening, if I’ve the time.’
‘What do you read?’
‘Military history, and my law books – work for the morning.’
‘Is your work good?’
‘It’s dismal, but it’s what I have.’
‘What’s important to you?’
‘Important to me, Tracy, is to be my own man.’
She grinned, first time. ‘That matters?’
‘Some people, not many, say it does.’
‘Is that why you came here, to be “my own man”?’
‘Have you finished?’
She nodded. The last of the sauce from the last of the burger dripped onto her blankets. She reached for another can and he passed it her. He took the boxes, squashed them small and shoved them into the room rubbish bin. She watched him. He laid his mattress across the doorway. He came close to her, her eyes following him, and he bent and switched off the light. It took him moments to accustom himself to the light in the room, faint through the curtains. He sat on the end of her bed and pulled off his shoes and socks, his shirt and trousers. He folded each item and placed them next to his pillow, with his shoes. He stripped to his vest and underpants. He crawled into the cold of the bed, hugged himself for warmth. Her arm hung from below her blankets, near h head.
‘Josh…‘ A whisper.
‘Yes?’
‘You didn’t tell me. Is it why you came here, to be your own man?’
‘I’m pretty tired. Keep it till the morning.’
He heard the rhythm of her breathing.
‘Josh..
‘Yes?’
‘What sort of team do we make?’
‘Pretty bloody awful.’
‘Josh..
‘For God’s sake.’
‘A good enough team to break the bastards?’
‘Maybe.’
He rolled over from his back to his side, away from her and her hanging hand. He shivered.
‘Josh..
‘I’m trying to get to sleep.’
‘Josh… If anyone ever called you a chatty old bugger, they lied.’
‘Goodnight, Tracy.’
He heard her finish the second can. She threw it away over the floor of the room. It clattered against the wall by the window. He pulled the blankets tighter on his shoulders.
Chapter Ten
‘I can’t help you. You have travelled from England? A great journey. I have been here for three years only. I was a church youth leader in Schwerin.’
He was a pleasant-faced young man. He shrugged. He stood at the gate across the road from the church. By the side of the house his wife hung washing on a line. There was a good wind off the sea and sunshine. Small children played at the woman’s feet.
‘I can’t help you because I have never heard such a business spoken of in Rerik. I know the names of those who come to my church and they are the few in this town, the majority do not care to come. Those who worship with me have not talked of it.’
Josh sensed that, beside him, she sagged.
She had needed the help so that she would not have to bang on doors and traipse from road to road. They had talked about it in the car, the long drive on the small roads to the south, past the lone farms and the cranes pecking in the fields, the need to find the pastor because he would be able to unlock the doors.
‘I have to tell you, the past here, and everywhere through the East, is a closed book. You will not find people who wish to talk of the past. They were dark times and there are few who want light thrown on those times.’
He looked at her.
She was turning away. Her chin jutted in determination. It was a small community in a half-moon around the inner sea, bordered to the north by the peninsula. They had laid too great a weight on the pastor, at the heart of the community, opening doors that would otherwise be locked to them. She was walking away. He nodded to the young man, thanked him, for nothing, and there was pain on the young face that recognized the failure to help. Josh grimaced. He followed Tracy.
The voice called from behind him.
‘I came here three years ago when my predecessor died. There is somebody else who could perhaps be of assistance to you. There was a pastor who came to Rerik when my predecessor was away, he lives here now. He came every year to Rerik for twenty years. I cannot say that he would wish to talk of this matter.’
She was rooted still. Her head turned. She demanded and was given the name, the address, the direction.
‘People do not talk of the past, there is nothing of pride in the past.’
They left him frowning and walked by the old red-brick church with the steep tower where there was a nest box for kestrels. An elderly woman in a formal coat sat on a bench in the sunshine in the graveyard past the church. They walked on the small main street and a shop-keeper was sweeping hard at the snow on the pavement. A woman was pushing up the shutters from the front window of a craft shop. A workman from the council shovelled
