Free The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna Page A

sensibilities would confide as much in him.
    “Boys-o, that’s a good one—he told you the same thing. Oh, he’s a smart man, Dr. Brewster. He knows what’s wrong with you by just lookin’ at you, so he does.”
    “Oh, a gentleman.” Doris inhaled deeply and shook her head. “None of that pokin’ and proddin’ at a person. Oh, a very decent man…couldn’t get the better of him, so you couldn’t.”
    “Aye, yes, you couldn’t get the better of him, that’s right. I know what you’re sayin’ right enough.” Jamie pulled on his ear and righted his cap again.
    “Was it the stamps you were lookin’, Jamie?” she asked, opening her book, suddenly officious. Another customer had just entered the premises and she didn’t want to be seen to be getting too friendly with Jamie, lest rumors started circulating.
    “Yes, Doris, a coupla stamps and a coupla them envelopes. And a need a pad a that Basildon Bond over there.”
    Doris lifted an eyebrow at such a list, wondered what Jamie McCloone might be up to, and quickly filed away the tantalizing snippet for discussion with Mildred later on.
    She began totting up the cost with her pencil. Jamie lowered his face to Doris’s left ear.
    “And I’ll be needin’ to take out a wee bit a money for the wee trip y’know,” he whispered.
    “Certainly, Jamie. If you’d just fill this wee form out, and while you’re doing that, I’ll let this customer away.” Doris looked up expectantly at the waiting youth behind him, all thoughts of romance shelved for the time being.

Chapter eight
     
    H e scrubbed the floor on his bony knees; his purpled hands clamped on the wire-bristled brush. He was doing four big tiles at a time, his body shuttling back and forth, machine-like, mopping up the sludge with a greasy rag that he’d rinse out in the bucket. Four hundred and fifty tiles in the cold refectory; only a hundred more to go.
    Every five minutes he’d stop and move to the next set, hauling the bucket with a screech farther along the speckled terrazzo, positioning his knees on the sodden towel, rinsing and wringing and scrubbing—scrubbing, scrubbing until the gray flecks flashed white under his determined strokes, until his heart beat too rapidly and his arms went numb.
    Mother Vincent timed him with her fob watch, appearing sporadically at the open door, either withdrawing satisfied or advancing enraged. He dreaded her coming, the hard heels cracking across the empty room, a hail of hammer blows to his heart.
    “Not good enough, Eighty-Six! I told you five minutes exactly per section.” Her words struck the walls like rifle shots, and made the floor beneath him sway.
    He knelt before her with his face upraised, his swollen hands crossed in a penitential pose: Saint Francis Beholding the Afflicted .
    “S-sorry, Sister,” he stammered.
    “How old are you now, Eighty-Six?”
    He did not know his age, but knew that such an admission would earn him a ringing slap; maybe just one, maybe several, depending on how Mother Vincent felt. He thought hard. He remembered the time he’d entered the refectory, 7.30 P.M. He shifted his knees on the soggy cloth, kept looking up, seeking out her face so as not to linger at the tooled leather belt that swung at her waist, the cane in her hand.
    “Seven and a half, Sister.”
    “Quite,” she said, sneering at the inaccuracy of the guess. She’d noted him from the day he’d arrived on her step five years earlier, but why should she tell him his real age? These sons of whores deserved nothing.
    “Do you see that clock down there?” and she pointed needlessly at the far wall. “That clock is there so you can time yourself. Now reverse three sections and start again.” She drove the last words down, bending low to level with him. The air vibrated with her anger. Fear crushed his throat. Her eyes locked with his.
    “Remind me why you’re here, Eighty-six?”
    “Because…’ He swallowed back the tears. “Because I’m bad