counter for the ice. When he turned back she had drained the glass in one gulp without waiting for the ice. He hadn't known Americans would drink anything without ice.
'You people serve small shots, she said. 'Let me have another.' He went to take the glass from her but she tightened her hold on it. 'Would you make me one the way 1 like it? Let me show you, and then after that whenever 1 ask for a bourbon, you can fix it that way.'
When he agreed she asked for a tall glass with several large chunks of ice, two shots of bourbon, and then some soda.
He wrote down the cost of this and the first drink on the account he was keeping beneath the counter.
'Are you finding what you want in the town?' he said, making barman's conversation.
'What makes you think I'm looking for something?'
'You're obviously not here on holiday, so 1 assumed you were on a business trip.'
'Kind of Do people come to Bulverton on vacation?'
'Some do. Not as many now as in the past. They like the way the town looks.'
'The town's pretty enough, but it's kind of depressing.'
'Most local people think there's a good reason for that. You must know what happened last year.'
'Yeah ... It's why I'm here, I guess.'
'Amy said she thought you might be a reporter.'
'What gave her that idea? My interest is ... 1 guess you could say it's more personal.'
' I'm sorry,' he said, surprised, because Amy's suggestion had sounded right. 'I didn't realize.
Did you have a relative here who was involved?'
'No, nothing like that.'
She turned away from him sharply, almost literally giving him the shoulder, and looked towards the window. The bottom halves of the bar windows were frosted; all that could be seen through them were the diffused and haloed lights of the passing traffic. The three men from Bexhill wanted another round of drinks, so Nick went to attend to them. When he returned, Teresa Simons was facing the counter again, resting her elbows on the top and cradling her now empty glass. She indicated she wanted a refill, which he poured her, using fresh ice and a clean glass.
'What about you, Nick? You don't mind me calling you Nick? Your parents were caught up in the shooting, weren't they?'
'They were both killed, yes.'
'Do you ever talk about it?'
'Not a lot. There isn't much to say, when you leave out all the obvious stuff.'
'This used to be their hotel, right?'
'Yes.
'You really don't want to discuss it, do you?'
'There's nothing to talk about any more. They left me the hotel, and here 1 am. What 1 went through was less traumatic than some of the people here.'
'Tell me.'
He thought for a moment, trying to articulate feelings that had always remained undefined.
He remembered how, when he had realized that he couldn't cope with the idea of what Gerry Grove had done, he had begun to think in cliches. Soon, he heard other people spouting the same empty phrases: reporters on television, vicars in pulpits, leaderwriters in newspapers, wellmeaning visitors. He knew that those phrases, so quickly becoming familiar, simultaneously missed the true point and captured the essence of it. He learned the benefits of nonthought, nonarticulation. Life went on and he Joined in, because that way he was spared the need to think or to talk about it.
'There were all those people dead,' he said carefully. 'I didn't know them personally any more, because 1'd been living away from the town, but I knew of them. Their names went on lists, their stones were told. All that grief, all those people being missed. The relatives, the parents, the children, the dead lovers, and a couple of strangers. At first nothing surprised me: of course the survivors were going to be shocked. That's what happens when other people get killed. But the more 1 thought about it, the more complicated it seemed. 1 couldn't understand anything. So 1 stopped trying to think.'
Teresa was looking away, twirling ice cubes as he spoke.
'But in a funny kind of way, you know, they were the
ones who escaped, the people who were killed. They didn't have to live with it afterwards. In some ways surviving is worse than being dead. People feel guilty that they survived, when a friend or a husband or wife didn't. And then there are all those who were injured. Some recovered quickly, but there were others who didn't, who never will. One of those is a teenage girl.'
' Shelly Mercer,' said Teresa.
'You know about her?'
'Yes, 1 heard. How's she doing now?'
'She came out of the coma and she's out of hospital, but her parents can't look after her at home. They've had to put her in a special nursing home, in Eastbourne.'
He had been to visit Shelly one day, while she was still in intensive care in the Conquest Hospital in Hastings. He went with a small group of people from the town, all drawn to her by whatever it was that seemed to
