As the warmth of blood might miraculously seep into a shadow, or anaesthesia be lifted by a jolt, feelings he has never before experienced invade Thaddeus’s solitude. The emotion stirred by the birth of his child was particular to that one event. His sadness was stony when he stood at the funeral of the wife he could not love. The flowers that Mrs. Ferry so often longed for were sent when it was safe to send her flowers. Tonight he pities, and is angry.
The dusk is darkening when Mrs. Iveson walks with Thaddeus in the garden, her stoic’s stamina defeated in the pain of that same pity. A light comes on in a window of the house, then in another, a curtain’s pulled across. High in the oak trees the rooks have settled on their branches. Below, among the shrubs and faded flowers, the single sound is Rosie’s rustling in the sodden undergrowth, sniffing the fresh scent of moisture. The two do not walk close yet cling together, at one in honouring the ghost that has come to haunt this garden and this house.
‘Albert.’
It is a whisper from what seems to be an empty doorway. He peers, and then a figure emerges, shaking off the dark, and it is Bev.
He speaks her name. He says he has been looking for her. vI been around.’
‘You OK, Bev?’
‘I done with all that stuff. You know.’
‘I wondered about you, Bev.’
‘Yeah.’ There is a silence, then Bev says: ‘I ain’t got nowhere to go nights.’
‘You got work daytime?’
Bev shakes her head. She says she has tried for work, day work, nights, anything.
‘You’d go for the Marmite factory? You’d go for anything like that?’
Bev says she would. The Marmite, the stocking place, up Chadwell, it doesn’t matter.
‘A woman told me they’ll maybe be taking on at the stocking place.’ Albert nods, lending emphasis to that. It would have been Tuesday he asked the woman, he remembers; it could be tomorrow they’ll be taking on. ‘Never does no harm to ask.’
They walk together, by the common, past the dairy yard. She isn’t a tearaway, you wouldn’t ever call Bev a tearaway and once she is taken on regular no way there’ll be a problem with the rent. That’s how he’ll put it. There’ll be reluctance at first, stands to reason there would be, but the rent will be the draw.
They cross Caspar Road. In the artificial light the blank shopfronts of Bride Street are tinged with orange. The KP Minimarket and Ishi Baba’s take-away are secure behind their night grilles. Outside the Soft Rock Cafe the cat that is Albert’s only enemy is rifling a dustbin.
‘Turn of luck running into you, Bev.’
She says it was. She’s tired. Albert can tell. She’s dragging her footsteps a bit, the sole of a shoe flapping. Except to say it isn’t far to Appian Terrace, he doesn’t bother her with talk.
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Table of Contents
Death in Summer
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
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10
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12
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15
Table of Contents
Death in Summer
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15