Free The Woman at the Window by Emyr Humphreys Page B

barking on a distant hillside broke the silence. The comet travelled with such effortless, awesome power, as far away from the earth as the sun, and reducing the size and significance of everything living on the planet, including themselves. Frank Wilmot murmured: ‘It’s humbling’.
    The silence couldn’t go on for ever. As soon as people began talking Hefin seized the opportunity to capture their attention. He stood on the parapet. He was swaying dangerously.
    â€˜I’ve written a poem,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t hear it. You listen to all sorts of rubbish.’
    Gisella raised her arm to restrain him. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Whatever she said would only agitate him further.
    â€˜Visitor from Heaven’s Gate! You bear a message and I can hear it. When you return in four thousand years there will be no-one here to see you. Not one soul. We will have snuffed ourselves out. The human race will drag down all the beasts and the forests and the flowers with them and all will be dispersed in the solar wind…’
    He made one gesture too many, lost his balance and tumbled into the garden below, leaving behind first a stunned silence, and then screams and cries of concern and a stampede from the roof by the shortest way to the garden. They found him there, stretched out and moaning. Dr Ortega took charge. He prevented Gisella from taking the prone figure in her arms.
    â€˜Don’t move him,’ he said. ‘Magda is phoning for an ambulance.’
    Bryn Tanat took off his jacket and made a pillow for his son’s head. He was murmuring. ‘Don’t worry, lad. We’ll take care of you.’
    He looked at Gisella who was kneeling on the other side. 
    â€˜We’ll take care of him, won’t we?’
    She nodded, her face stiff with the effort of stifling a long wail. There was no telling how bad the fall had been. He just lay, between them, unable to move. He was the only one still looking at the sky. He watched the comet sail on its predestined course, incandescent, and unconcerned.

Luigi

HE counted for nothing. Less than a stray cat. It was cold among the ruined tombs where black cypresses stood stencilled against the violet sky. The Moroccan troops had used the shelled church as a latrine after ransacking the place and pressing on. They didn’t bother with the heap of obsolete weapons left in the church. Luigi fingered the hand grenade under his torn cloak and stretched his mouth to try to stop his lower lip from quivering. He was eighteen. Could any of it mean anything? A starving cat crept along the edge of darkness. Yellow eyes. Malevolent reflections of the moon. The war was lost. Would he be better off dead? Dead as his noisy cousin Rodolfo, shot through the mouth while he was singing at the top of his voice standing on a truck in the middle of that Piazzale that was supposed to be deserted. Death and desertion. Death and betrayal. Was that all it amounted to? Was there nobody left to shoot?
    â€˜Be your own man, Luigi Perone!’
    Awful echo from a vanished world. Uncle Vittorio’s exhortations. The old fraud. The old fool.
    â€˜Life is an adventure, Luigi. Always be swift and well directed as a torpedo in a stormy sea!’
    A short sharp academic sticking his chin out like his hero, and his goatee wagging as he went on chewing up the world into words.
    â€˜Be your own man, Luigi. As sharp as steel on a whetstone! Stoke the fire in your heart with bitter memories of all your beloved country’s humiliations.’
    Whatever Uncle Vittorio chose to say was Holy Writ in his brother’s humble abode. Had he not fought and run and fought again on the Piave and been among the first to sense the overwhelming genius of their country’s saviour? Uncle Vittorio had achieved the ultimate accolade of a professorial chair. He corresponded with Gentile and Bottai. He lived in a fine house