He was cold in spite of the fire. What creepiness is she trying on now? This thing, reciting, whatever it is she’s doing.
Why?
‘that’s to grow the wood –’ she said, delving deep.
Couldn’t trust a word she said. Trying to scare him.
‘Nearly there.’
Abashed, he looked down.
‘God love you,’ she said, ‘like a big stupid kid, aren’t you.’
She drew out the splinter with the pin, flicked the spiteful shard of wood, long as a sewing needle, towards the fire, pinned the brooch back onto her lapel and pulled the scarf from round her neck.
‘that’s to grow to the man –’
It was coming onto morning. The rain had started again, a lively downpour, sparking silver at the windows. The older he got, the more it seemed that simple moments like these could sprout a hundred – no, more, many more, and still more filaments of memory, all of them laden as myth.
‘that’s to make the cradle –’
She wet the corner of the scarf with her spit.
‘that’s to rock the bairn –’
and applying it to his palm
‘that’s to lay –’
and pressing hard with her thumb.
He shivered.
For a long time they sat without speaking. He didn’t know what to say or do, so he did and said nothing, while she pressed her thumb into the dark place in his palm, rubbing at the pain. His stupid eyes welled up and he felt idiotic. Those words, those words, he thought, what do they mean? Just her, being clever. Always someone being clever.
‘I’ll go when it eases off,’ she said.
He nodded, looking at the window.
Slowly, the room filled up with cats. Jintoo was there, acting the innocent.
‘Got any Savlon or anything like that?’ she said.
‘Somewhere. In there.’
‘Stick it under the tap,’ she said, so he went into the kitchen and turned the tap on and held his hand under it and looked out of the dark gaping windows, and she was behind him in the window and it was no good, no good, he was useless in these situations.
‘You’ll have to get it seen to,’ she said, ‘just in case.’
A door opened upstairs. They looked up.
It might or might not have been.
‘Think so?’ he said.
‘Yeah. I would.’
‘God’s sake,’ he said, ‘it’s just one thing after another.’
Bare feet on the landing, softly hurrying to the top of the stairs. She heard it too.
They looked at each other. Is it? You hear it?
Or is it just me?
‘I’ll come with you if you like,’ she said, ‘but you really should get an injection or something, just in case.’
‘OK.’
No more footsteps, nothing at all. Order in the house.
‘It’s happened before,’ he said. ‘It’ll go quiet now. I think.’
‘Yes.’
She smiled as if she knew what he was thinking.
‘Come,’ he said.
Back to the fire.
‘You should call a cab,’ she said. ‘Are you OK for money?’
‘You,’ he said, ‘asking me that?’ He laughed.
‘Just asking,’ she said.
He called a cab.
It didn’t stop hurting. She held his hand in the back of the cab all the way.
‘Don’t be scared,’ she said, ‘honestly, it’s all going to be fine, I promise you,’ and though he felt fear in his scruff and marrow, there was something else, a pang, an uprising through all his senses, not new but unplaceable; and he realised it was the exact feeling he’d had all those years ago when he’d got up on the big horse Pepper and ridden the beautiful thing round Gallinger’s field, and the sun and the sky and the air and the whole world had fallen perfectly into place around him.
About the Author
CAROL BIRCH is the award-winning writer of twelve novels, including Jamrach’s Menagerie, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011. Her first novel, Life in the Palace, won the David Higham Award for Fiction (Best First Novel of the Year), and her second novel, The Fog Line, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Born in Manchester, she now lives in Lancaster.
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