Free Leather Wings by Marilyn Duckworth Page A

yet had a chance to talk to Donald about the HIV scare concerning her grandchild. She prefers to think of it as a scare, until they take Jania to have the tests done. It might not be real. But the possibility of tragedy haunts her and she “doesn’t need this” any more than Donald. She can’t believe he doesn’t see the skull and cross-bones in her eyes, the scythe of the grim reaper swinging in her pupils, and accuses him soundlessly of insensitivity. Is he blind? He must see something is wrong. Does he think she looks this way — the grey bags snuggled on her cheek bones — simply because of his possible impending departure? A typical smug male assumption. Of course, she will miss him — horribly — but of course she will survive. Today she feels quite sure of this. There are worse things.
    Death is all very well in its proper order, but to have it living under your own roof, inhabiting an innocent child, a child you were calling a nuisance two days ago! She feels sick in her stomach; she hasn’t been able to eat since the letter arrived. It feels like when she was hauled up in front of the headmistress that time for taking home school property. Guilt. “Yes Mrs P - P - Patrick.” That was when she was still afflicted with her “nervous” stammer. “Don’t draw attention to it,” she’d overheard her mother whisper. “It’s just nerves.” Atschool when they had group reading the other girls in her corner would mimick her. Perhaps her stammer will come back now with all this going on — and serve her right. Guilt. As if she could be held responsible for the defection of a foreign hospital, or more to the point, held responsible for not loving the child enough; Esther feels superstitiously that love can immunise against disaster. Is this what is wrong with Rex’s heart? A low love count? Esther’s fault as well? She nearly didn’t come in to work today, wishes she hadn’t. She takes a breath and somewhere in the middle of it a paroxysm of despair chokes her, shockingly the water in her eyes overflows. She turns her back on the glass partition and scrabbles in her skirt pocket for a tissue, which isn’t there.
    “For God’s sake!” He kicks a chair so that it faces away from the window. “Sit down and look as if we’re doing something useful. Here.”
    He has tissues in his desk. She knows this, but they are for the younger, sillier staff, not his middle-aged mistress. He hands her a tissue and a computer printout with the same hand, as a covering device; positions himself alongside her chair and leans in with his ballpoint to indicate some fictional point of interest on the printout. He is good at deception. She shouldn’t be surprised at this, having taught him much of it herself, but it does occur to her to wonder if he has ever practised it against her.
    “All right?”
    “It’s not you,” she explains, still nasal with tears, but dry eyed now. “We had some bad news from Canada. I can’t tell you here. I wasn’t crying at you.”
    “Okay. Well, I’m sorry to hurry you, Es, but there really is a rush on. Don’t worry.”
    He is watching her dab fingers at her eyes. “You look fine. I’ll think of something to stall Finny, like I said. But find that folder, love — okay?”
    “I will.”
    She sits at her desk and dozes in front of a spreadsheet. This is no time to slide off to sleep, but she so nearly does. Her mind invents a nightmare in which Jania has cut up the file, given it doors and windows and moved in a family of dollsfashioned from Fimo. Next time she will take nothing home until it has been saved on to the computer — floppies too — and certainly nothing with an original signature. At least three o’clock is nearly upon her, thank God. But she will be going home to face Jania whose presence weighs on her now with quite a different sort of pressure, who can’t be put aside any longer like a library book she doesn’t find engrossing enough. Now Esther can