Free The Following by Roger McDonald Page A

had – a brand of assurance, of belonging, of owning. Something demeaning drove him from it.
    A FTER SCRAPING HIS PLATE AND scrubbing it in the greasy sink, Marcus stepped outside for a smoke before pudding. A yard lamp gave enough light to allow him to slide the letter from his pocket and look over it again. The rustle of scented paper was the promise of her. The smudge of ink where the franking stamp twisted brought her up, clumsy with earnest desire. His own greased thumbprint showed the mingling of blood between them. The blue-filmed whites of Pearl’s eyes were huge as sky curving over him. The forthright bigness of her handwriting hammered his heart. She was a large-breasted, slimly built woman slipped to her nakedness, and he wanted her badly enough to court ruin.
    Men put their spoons down as the driver, Ron Kristiansen, entered the mess room, late for the first-course pickings. Ron had been in there earlier, daintying-up that dish of Grannies. Marcus had missed him but now met his eye. Ron Kristiansen and Marcus stared at each other for a withering, black moment.
So it’s you
, each of them seemed to acknowledge. After that a mental switch was pulled and they got down to their feed, scab and beaten hero.
    The way they were assigned to each other on a mixed goods train supposed a malign influence on the roster. It would never have happened if Barney Atkinson was in full cry. He would have kept the two men apart. Marcus was made Kristiansen’s fireman more than he liked. It was how things were done against him, but all the same, he experienced bitter surprise on learning it was him again. Marcus did not think, as he might have done, that somebody such as Barney Atkinson, senior roster clerk, was working on him to put Kristiansen straight or to keep an eye on him and bend him to a better way of thinking.
    Seeing that the two men believed they could read each other’s thoughts, it was possible that Kristiansen reported to the authorities on Marcus’s every nuance of silence. Marcus, having no-one to trust, reported Kristiansen’s silence to himself.
    For many months the chief commissioner had kept Marcus’s name on his desk and tapped upon it with a disdainful finger. Humiliations and tense accommodation to circumstances followed him around the state. Marcus and Ron. Day and night. As back (inside centre) and forward (second rower) the two played for the same rugby team. And they never spoke one bloody word directly to each another, unless other people were around with whom the matter of their differences was not to be shared, when they made sure to meet eyes and speak a few carefully rehearsed lines as they did here at Harden or on the playing field.
    After the washing-up Marcus lost at cribbage. A lack of concentration caused by Pearlie’s letter and by Kristiansen’s cool balance at cards warned him to take more control of himself. If he was to recover, overcome and excel himself, he needed himself.
    Marcus surrendered three shillings, disturbing the play of a decent hand. Four groups of four played at two bench tables. Marcus sat in one group, near the open door, where the cold stars hung over the shunting yards and the sleeping town listened for the passage of night trains rollicking through the hills, one side towards Cunningar and the other to Demondrille. His next day’s driver took care to stay as far away from him as he could, over near the windows. Kristiansen won every hand he played.
    Around nine o’clock the coal range gave out the smell of burned sugar and baked apples. It was not forgetfulness in the apples’ cook as it was when Marcus burnt the stew; it was cause for a round of appreciation among the blokes that these second helpings were sweet as the first lot.
    Ron Kristiansen stood at the baking dish doling out Grannies and smooth vanilla custard. The shunters with their low, square chests and Biblical beards lined up for the fare. The baked apples were split like fat women’s