Free The Flood by Maggie Gee Page B

thanked God for the boys.
    Then she sighed, and lost herself in her assignment.
    About half an hour later, Elroy came through. He looked harassed; his voice was accusing. ‘Winston’s crying. He wants his mother.’
    ‘I’m a little bit busy … Could you do it, Elroy?’
    ‘Thing is, I don’t know what’s up with him. He’s talking about you killing a cat, and a man shouting, and lots of people, and everyone will die, and I told him it must be something he’s seen on TV, it isn’t real, nothing’s going to happen, but it seems this Kilda girl has told him it’s true. Why she been looking after my boys? You tell me you take them to the zoo, Shirley.’
    They were always
his
boys when he disapproved, though Shirley knew that the truth was more complex, he’d never be sure if the boys were his, because she, Shirley, was a wicked woman. She could never tell him. Her sin lay between them. One day, surely, he would pay her back. Or had he already? How could she blame him? Yet he was a doting, passionate father.
    Later she was thoughtful as she lay in bed. Winston and Franklin had been hard to comfort. Perhaps the boys had seen some frightening news; most TV news was frightening, at the moment. Mr Bliss was banging the war drum again. We must have war, or there would never be peace. There was a lot of footage of troops moving, and reports of ‘liberated’ cities far away. Dark-eyed, frightened, liberated people stared back as reporters waved microphones under their noses and asked if they would like to thank Mr Bliss. Ragged, uncomprehending clapping.
    Or maybe they’d heard something about the rains. The rising tide of water was scary for everyone. Or Kilda might have been talking wildly. To Shirley she seemed shy, but people were mysterious. Kilda hadn’t told her where she had taken the boys.
    Guilt pushed up again, black, powerful. She should never have dumped the boys on Kilda. If she hadn’t done that, the boys would be sleeping. And that poor cat would still be alive. She had driven straight on; that really
was
wicked. She winced at the memory of its small squashed body. Somewhere an owner might be weeping.
    One of the boys started crying again, and the rain hammered hard against the window.
    Shirley prayed for the everlasting arms to bear her up, but it was one of those times when Jesus seemed distant, and all that came back was her own small voice, and the empty wind, and the night was black, wet, endless.
    May sat in her kitchen trying to read, with darkness pressing against the pane. She loved poetry, and myths, and novels, but she didn’t really have an education. (Shirley was getting an education.) May didn’t understand about wood-boring insects, she didn’t know history, or geography. Maybe she had married Alfred too young, and too many things had been left to him. How old had she been when they took up together?
    A kid, really. A chit of a girl …
    She’d been driven to the kitchen by the throat-searing smell of the chemicals the woodworm men had used. Her kitchen still kept its old tiled floor; having no wood, it had not been treated. But there wasn’t any heating, and the air was chill.
    Feeling slightly wicked, she had switched on the oven, and sat by its warmth, clutching her book, unable to rid herself of the worry that Alfred would tell her off for extravagance.
    And yet, she thought, if he did, oh if he did, if I heard his feet coming down from upstairs and his voice, slightly gruff, calling my name, if his dear red face should appear at the door…
    Unpredictable, familiar, the tears welled up, and the grief came back, the old hopeless stone, to press on her chest, crushing, stupid. How could anyone so real and particular – angular, awkward, his look, his smell, the little phrases only Alfred used, Alfred, love, my dear, my duck – how could
Alfred
disappear for ever?
    Where had he gone? Alfred, Alfred.
    ‘Stay with me, dear,’ she whispered to him. ‘You’ll never be dead while