Free Lets Drink To The Dead by Simon Bestwick Page B

Myfanwy got up, dressed. She’d assumed they’d wake her, but what if they hadn’t? What if she’d slept through their attempts to rouse her? The children could be dead already. She couldn’t think like that. She’d woken last night, hadn’t she, when Yolly had wanted to speak?
    She went downstairs. A cup of coffee, that was what she needed. As she reached for the light switch, the carol singers’ voices – just launching into God Rest You Merry Gentlemen – died away and a cold pale light began to flicker in the darkened kitchen. It played across a tall thin figure and an array of tinier ones clustered around him.
    Yolly. She tried to speak, but of course no sound came out.
    Eight o’clock, Yolly said. The old railway station at Ash Fell. You know the place.
    Oh God, yes. She did. She knew that place.
    You know what to do, Yolly said.
    Myfanwy nodded.
    The flicker flared and faded, and Myfanwy was alone. From outside, sound returned: “To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray...”
    Myfanwy turned on the kitchen light, put the kettle on the hob, then went into the front room, took a cigarette from its packet on the mantelpiece, picked up the phone and dialled.
    She hoped Bronisław would answer. She didn’t want to have to explain herself to Roberta; even though their affair had ended long before Bron had courted her, Myfanwy always felt a little guilty around his wife.
    “Hello?” She breathed out; at least one thing would be easy tonight.
    “Bron?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s Myfanwy.”
    “Yes. Hello.”
    “Tonight,” she said. “Eight o’clock. The old railway station at Ash Fell.”
    “Alright,” he said. “I should bring...?”
    “Yes.”
    “Very well.”
    “Alright, then.”
    “I will come and pick you up.”
    “Thank you.”
    Myfanwy put the phone down. She lit her cigarette and went back through to the kitchen as the kettle began to shrill.
     
     
    6
     
    “I HAVE TO go out.”
    Roberta, curled up on the sofa, looked away from the television’s pale flicker. “Fair enough.”
    “I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”
    She hugged a cushion to herself. Beside her lay a framed photograph of Michael, in his army uniform. “Fine. I’ll be OK.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Bronisław, if you need to go out, just go. I’m a grown woman. I’ll be fine. I’m used to coping on my own.”
    She’d never used to call him Bronisław; always Bron. Until Michael had left. Bron tried to think of something else to say, couldn’t. “Alright,” he said. “I will see you later. Don’t wait up.”
    “Wasn’t planning to. I’m tired.”
    “Alright, then,” said Bronisław after a moment, and went into the kitchen. A coat with deep pockets hung by the door. He put it on, then crossed to the metal gun cabinet bolted to the wall and unlocked it. Inside were four shotguns: a .410 for small game, and three 12-bores – an over-and-under, a single-barrel and a side-by-side. He emptied a box of cartridges into his coat pocket, took out the side-by-side, broke it open and hung it over one arm.
    Then he went to the kitchen table. He laid the shotgun there and found paper and pen. After a few moments he began to write, printing in big square letters.
    I am proud of you , he wrote. I did not want you to be a soldier, only because I have seen war. I only wanted to protect my family from such things. But you are a man now; it is not my choice anymore. It is yours. Do what you must.
    He stopped, chewed the base of the pen; what he had written seemed stilted and didn’t say what he wanted it to. Words did not come easily to him, not words of this kind. Look after your mother, he wrote after a moment, then laid the pen aside and folded the sheet of paper.
    “What brought that on?”
    Roberta stood behind him, arms folded.
    “How much did you see?”
    “Pretty much the lot.”
    Bronisław nodded.
    “Where is it you’re going, Bron?”
    “It’s best you don’t know.”
    She