Free Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson Page B

away.
    Like Victor, Marie had undergone a physical transformation. She had dyed her hair black again, and it curved beneath her chin in the old way, but she was more restrained than she used to be, almost as though she had been stricken by a fever that had left her permanently depleted. She didn’t appear to have any desires or ambitions. Instead, she seemed content simply to stay at home and keep her father company. She was working at the town hall, as a clerk. She was still so young, only twenty-seven. Did she miss that wealthy lawyer? Was she in mourning for the child she had lost? I had no sense of what she might be thinking or feeling. If anything, the months that had elapsed since we had last seen each other had added to our awkwardness, and I found it difficult to know what to say to her. Everything I thought of was either too weighty or too superficial. I knew that we would never again swing hand in hand through the shopping precinct or fall about laughing at the supermarket check-out. The electricity that had crackled in the air between us, the flirtation that had meant so much to me, the love that had lit up my entire life – it was gone, all gone, and it would not return. Night after night, in my small box of a room, I would lie on my back with my arms folded across my chest and I would listen to the wind picking at a loose flap of tar-paper on the roof where she used to sunbathe. Tears would rise to the surface of my eyes and overflow. My cheeks would sting. A spring had welled up inside me, its waters irrepressible, but bitter, acidic.
    In April I went home again, but only for a week this time. On the last night, as we ate our supper at the kitchen table, Victor announced that they were thinking of selling the house. The atmosphere in the room seemed to solidify around me. I couldn’t even lift my knife and fork.
    â€˜You wouldn’t mind, would you?’ Victor said.
    â€˜Mind?’ I cleared my throat. ‘Why do you want to sell the house?’
    Victor looked away across the room. ‘Too many memories.’
    Though Marie didn’t lift her eyes from her plate, something came through the air from her. She was silently agreeing with her father.
Yes, too many memories.
    I pushed my chair back and walked to the window.
    My memories too, I thought. My only memories. I remembered how I had stood on the doorstep, eight years old, how I had crouched deep inside myself and peered out, like someone hiding in a hollow tree-trunk. And Jones’s words had floated into my head, unwelcome but persistent.
What if I don’t like them? What if they’re cruel to me?
I remembered my stomach lurching, and the sweat on my palms. The Parrys didn’t realise. Or they’d forgotten.
    I thought of the life I’d had before, what there was of it. The holding station with its draughty haunted corridors. Rooms possessed of such a chill that your hair turned cold as a corpse’s. No sooner had you made a friend than he was taken from you. Then your name was taken from you. And before that? A time that was too painful to contemplate or even remember. A time so precious that it was inaccessible. Yes, they must have forgotten, the Parrys. Or perhaps they’d never bothered to imagine. That what they’d given me was all I had.
    A creak came from behind me as someone shifted in a chair.
    â€˜Aren’t you hungry?’ Victor said.
    That summer the house was duly sold, and Victor bought a cottage on the south coast with the proceeds. Marie would live there with him. On the day of the move he stalked from one room to another with a claw-hammer, nailing down the lids on tea-chests. Bang-bang-
bang
, bang-bang-
bang.
There seemed to be more space between his features, and flecks of white froth showed at the corners of his mouth. His shoulders and elbows jiggled, as though light electric shocks were being constantly administered to all his joints. He had so many things he wantedto do, he