Free The Sweet-Shop Owner by Graham Swift Page B

the rest of the family, seemed crumpled, and it glared momentarily at him in his deck-chair, accusing. ‘Won’t she come out?’
    The cat purred in his hands.
    Up the garden the brothers conferred, shifted legs and lit each other cigarettes, like guests when there has been a hitch in the programme which someone else must correct. But they looked uneasy, as if deprived of something they’d bargained for.
    ‘The sun will go in.’
    At the end of the table Mr Harrison spoke about Churchill, about invasion, about the weakness of the French, while Aunt Madeleine, holding a cake-slice, served up ‘Patriot Pie’, an economy recipe from a magazine. Mrs Harrison sat with her fingers on her necklace. Each time Mr Harrison declaimed upon a subject he turned to him and said, ‘What do you think?’ Then,
    ‘Well, Jack and Paul should be here tomorrow,’ and ‘I dare say you envy them.’
    ‘Irene!’ Mr Harrison suddenly barked aloud, turning to the window, as if giving an order. Then he said in the voice of someone at a public meeting, ‘Don’t let your brothers down!’
    His cheeks quivered. The camera he held in his hand might have been a weapon, a missile he would have hurled through the window. Up the garden the figures stiffened, rallying. What was happening? They wanted her to come out but their gaze seemed to shut her in.
    ‘Irene!’
    Mr Harrison turned, accusing once more, the camera in his hand. ‘What’s the matter with her? You should know.’ He seemed to be really craving for information. ‘You don’t help much, do you?’ – looking with contempt at the cat.
    He leant forward in his chair. He would have said, putting down the cat: ‘Now just a minute, Mr Harrison.’ But he saw her eyes, through the window, bright and precarious in the gloom, suddenly fix and hold his, sending little threads between them, taut with warning: Don’t fall. Don’t fall.
    No, he wouldn’t enter this particular action.
    ‘She isn’t well Mr Harrison, you know that.’
    The older man stood before him, flexing his shoulders, like a man waiting for his opponent to make the first move so as to crush him blamelessly. He drew breath. Sweat oozed in the crevices of his face, strands of hair fell over his forehead. The war wouldn’t be for him, as it would for many, a temporary curtain lowered over the past. It would be dropped for him for ever.
    ‘Damn you,’ he said softly.
    Paul and Jack raised their cigarettes. Mrs Harrison strode towards the house. ‘If she won’t come out,’ saidAunt Madeleine, taking off her wide straw hat, ‘then that’s the last of the photographs.’
    The sun went in. A breeze fanned out over the garden, ruffling the michaelmas daisies, flipping the black tie from Paul’s jacket, shaking the trees beyond the patch which Mrs Harrison and Aunt Mad, soiling their hands, had diligently dug. For an instant they all stood awkwardly, looking in different directions, actors waiting for a prompt.
    ‘Irene –’ began Mrs Harrison, approaching the window. But she paused. For there she was, emerging from the side of the house, tucking a handkerchief in her sleeve, and coming up to place one hand behind him on the frame of the deck-chair.
    ‘All right. Where do you want me?’
    ‘You can’t blame the French,’ he’d said, meeting Mr Harrison’s armed scrutiny, but first swallowing his mouthful of Aunt Mad’s uninspiring pie. ‘After all, they’ve been invaded many times before.’ He remembered his history lessons.
    Click. The shutter flicked, drawing its curtain over the past. Paul and Jack, with Irene between. The fair flanked by the strong. Click. ‘Smile, Irene.’ But she didn’t smile. She had come out. She stood where they told her to stand. She took her place in the picture, but she didn’t smile. She breathed heavily.
    ‘Just one please.’ Mr Harrison was no longer angry. He was apologetic. Standing looking down at the view-finder, his head bent, he had an air of