LITMIR.BIZ

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fortnight,’ Alec said.

      ‘You need some rest.’

      ‘A fortnight.’

      Once Alec got hold of an idea, he didn’t give it up easily. He wasn’t moving. The thought that he hadn’t seen Sally for a fortnight appeared to have transfixed him, like some great revelation not vouchsafed to many.

      ‘A fortnight.’

      ‘A fortnight, Alec.’

      Something was biting into John’s unstockinged foot savagely. The pain was becoming unbearable but he was afraid to move. He was also terrified that if he changed the position of his other leg the knee would crack. He could be the first recorded case of a stiff knee proving fatal. Alec spoke an eerie echo of John’s thought.

      ‘It’s a good thing for whoever it is that he isny here.’

      The logic was opaque but John understood it perfectly.

      ‘That’s right,’ Sally said.

      ‘A fortnight,’ Alec said.

      In a moment of wild panic, John could imagine the cryptic exchange going on until his emaciated body was lifted too late, from the Wendy House. There was a noise that he was sure meant Alec had sat down on the bed. He hoped that was a good sign. Something hit the Wendy House and it buckled slightly and rattled against his head. He almost called out in panic.

      ‘Oops,’ Alec said.

      ‘Watch Christine’s Wendy House.’

      No, no, you bloody mug, John was screaming to himself. Don’t draw his attention to it. What Wendy House? There is no Wendy House. He might come over and inspect it for damage.

      ‘’S all right, love,’ Alec said. ‘Just ma shoe.’

      The other shoe hit the floor.

      ‘Lie down, Alec.’

      ‘Hm?’

      ‘Let me get your jacket off. That’s it. Right, lie down.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      The bed squeaked on its castors. Alec sighed, a sound like a small whirlwind. There was silence. John strained into it desperately. He was about to move his leg when he froze the movement, biting his lip.

      ‘Sally,’ Alec said.

      Sally said nothing. A couple of minutes passed. Someone was at the door of the Wendy House. Although John had seen Sally’s nightdress move towards him, he was still tensed as the door opened, as though it might have been Alec in drag. Sally was crouched looking in at him, her forefinger to her lips. Did she think he might be singing? She held his clothes with one arm against her body. With the other she motioned him to follow.

      Tiptoeing after her, John couldn’t escape the hallucinatory feeling that he was in a fairy story after all. And John tiptoed from his little house past the sleeping giant and followed the good fairy. He glanced very quickly at Alec in case looking at him might waken him. He seemed gross in sleep. His mouth, like every other part of him, appeared to make more noise than was consistent with performing its basic function. His lips flapped in the wind of his breathing.

      In the hall, John studied his heel briefly and saw the imprint of the face of the miniature doll – savage little household god. As he dressed very swiftly, Sally stroked his hair a couple of times. She mouthed his ear. Was she mad? He had noticed that before about women, how quickly they forgot risk when they were feeling roused. At the open door she held his arm.

      ‘It’s all right now,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just that he’s impossible when he’s drunk.’

      John nodded.

      ‘In the morning I’ll send him packing. No problem. He’ll go like a lamb.’

      John nodded.

      ‘I don’t see him now, you know. That’s all finished. There’s nothing between us. It’s just taking him time to get over it. He’s living in the past. But he has no rights here. And he knows it.’

      John nodded. Of course. That’s why he was taking up two-thirds of her bed.

      ‘Listen. I hope this hasn’t put you off.’

      John nodded and then changed to shaking his head. Not at all. Why should the possibility of being beaten to death every time you got into bed put you off?

      ‘Sally!’

      She winked, kissed the tips of her fingers and touched them to his lips.

      ‘It’s all right, Alec,’ John heard her call as he came downstairs, letting the darkness take him into it. She rattled the milk bottles she had put out when the baby-sitter left. ‘I’m just locking up.’

      John had brooded on the significance of that evening ever since. Sometimes, without warning, fragments of it would occur to him. He would hear ‘Sally! Sally!’ or see her face, distorted with panic, as she lay beneath him. Such moments came to him isolated and complete, inexplicable but stubbornly there, ciphers the pilgrim found along his way. But in what direction were they pointing him? Their repetitiousness suggested he hadn’t resolved them. They were liable to turn up anywhere, in a pub, in the car, at a football match on a wet evening.

      ‘Tackle, Freddie, tackle!’ Jodhpurs was calling.

      Gary had the ball. As Freddie lunged towards him, Gary drew the ball back and then threaded it neatly through Freddie’s legs and ran round him, leaving him stranded. ‘Nutmegged him,’ John muttered to himself. It was a way in which professional players hated to be beaten, perhaps because it made you look so silly – your legs, the very basis of your craft, being reduced to the role of a triumphal arch for the parade of your opponent’s skills. John was absurdly pleased. He glanced along at Jodhpurs as if he had taken revenge on her loud ignorance.

      ‘Sally! Sally!’

      He had seen her since then in her office and once had a drink with her (not in ‘The Barley Bree’). She gave him occasional reports on the nocturnal activities of Alec Manson. His visits were apparently becoming less frequent. ‘He’s coming to his senses,’ Sally had said but John wasn’t convinced that would ever be a permanent place of residence for Alec. Sally seemed still to expect that they would some time continue where they had left off, once Alec’s supposed refusal to forget the past had died of exhaustion. John wasn’t so sure.

      He had thought about it a lot and and he believed (how could he be sure?) that his uncertainties didn’t come from fear of Alec. Now that he understood the risks, the location and habits of the dragon as it were, he felt he could work out ways to reach the maiden safely. But he suspected she was no longer the maiden he had thought she was. He still relished the memory of her body and would have liked to go back there but – such was the fervour of his dreams – he could only do it with his faith intact. Paradoxically, to accept her offer of herself would have been for him to diminish her unless he did it on terms of belief in her.

      That belief had been undermined to some extent. ‘A fortnight’ had been carved on John’s mind. Alec had said it as if it meant a long time in his terms. Surely he wasn’t always drunk and surely he didn’t always go there just to sleep. John thought perhaps Sally had been lying to him. And, besides that central matter, his sense of Sally had been irredeemably altered. ‘Oh shite!’ was something he would never have imagined her saying, a glimpse of another person, just as the nature of Alec had been. How had she become involved with a bouncer from ‘The Barley Bree’?’

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