Free Out of This World by Graham Swift

have looked at a copy of
Aftermaths
or
Decade
, both of which, I suspect, are now acquiring rarity value.
    Her eyes go sharp and shrewd, soft and artless by turns. These days I don’t know if twenty-three is still young. Or if the young have any innocence any more.
    A week of thinking: So don’t be a fool, don’t be a damn fool. And then a week of quiet agony (surely mutual? surely mutually detectable?) because it seemed that I might – that we might – let something real slip away simply out of the fear that it might not be real. Then a week when the argument turned inside out and I said to myself: Don’t be a fool, don’t be a fool – how would you feel if she didn’t even come three days a week, to be under your roof? And the answer shot back: Empty, bereft.
    In the pub car park, when I pulled her towards me, she said, ‘My God, I thought you’d never –’
    I said (but this was later, in the dead of night: her car still parked on the road outside, the keys to her flat somewhere amongst the clothes on the floor): ‘How long has this been going on?’
    ‘About six weeks.’
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘But who’s counting?’
    (An owl’s hoot in the distance. The whole world of her small body letting me in, letting me come in. Strange bits of my life spilling, now, out of my lips.)
    ‘This is crazy. I’m forty years older than you.’
    ‘Who’s counting?’
    Now look at Harry Beech. Former rover of the world, former witness to its traumas and terrors. He steps from the back door of a country cottage, dressed only in a dressing-gown and old slippers, to tip bits of bread and bacon rind on to the bird-table in the garden. He sniffs moist Sunday morning air. Inspects spring bulbs. As he stands at the bird-table he hears a knocking at a window, and turns and looks up at the bedroom. He sees a face, a sleepy, smiling, brown-haired, blue-eyed face. Framed in the window, it is like a living portrait. He stands, holding a bread-board, amazed by a single face. All the faces, all the faces, all the shouting, screaming, frightened, weeping, dying, dead faces. Nothing is more exquisite than a single human face. The face comes close to the window. Below the face are bare shoulders, bare breasts. The face blows him a kiss.
    Now look at Harry Beech, sitting at his kitchen table (while outside the birds of Wiltshire contend at the bird-table). He is writing a letter. Struggling with the words. (The first of its kind for ten years.)
    Dear Sophie. How can I tell you? How can I say this? Your father, who you haven’t seen for ten years and who is sixty-four years old, is going to get married. And she is almost half your age. And a third of his. And though we haven’t told anyone yet, and we haven’t fixed a day, I was wondering, we were wondering – I was hoping – If, after all this time – ? If – ?

Sophie
 
    I can tell you exactly when Harry gave up photography. Just as exactly as I can tell you when it was I last saw him. They were almost one and the same.
    But why did he have to be there at all? Why when he was never around for the rest of the time did he have to show up for the grand occasions? Weddings. And funerals. Like when he led me to the altar to marry Joe. I didn’t want him there, didn’t want him throwing his shadow on it all. But I was surprised how well he carried it off. How good he looked. And just for a moment, as we entered the church and the organ started and, right on cue, he patted my hand that was hooked on to his arm, I thought – I couldn’t help myself – he is doing this for me, he is making the picture right for me. I am this white, nervous, beaming bride leaning on the arm of her father. And everything is as it should be.
    Shit! It was the same church. The same damned church. And we had to do the same thing – the father-and-daughter, the next-of-kin thing. I had to take his arm and we had to walk through the lych-gate, between the yew trees and holly bushes, up the path to the