Free The Red Judge by Pauline Fisk Page A

conjuror’s trick, their two faces turned away as if they’d forgotten me already.

10
The Black Candle
    When I got indoors, there was a new message from my mother on the answerphone. In a voice I hardly recognised, it announced that Cary had slipped deeper into her coma and that it was unreasonable, in the words of the hospital, ‘to offer too much hope at this stage’.
    â€˜It’s best that you still stay where you are,’ my mother said, every word clipped and tight. ‘Cary wouldn’t know that you were here, and we couldn’t possibly come and get you, anyway.’
    I went to Grace’s parlour, glad that I’d been out when the call came through, and that I hadn’t been required to answer it personally. In the dresser I found Grace’s whisky and, behind the Caradoc Evans, I found her cigars. I helped myself to both and sat nursing them before the ashes of the previous night’s fire. I couldn’t feel Grace’s presence any more. This was just an empty room, its owner gone away never to return. And my sister wouldn’t return either. She, too, was slipping away.
    I was on my second tot of whisky, and had puffed enough of a cigar to make myself feel sick when Pawl came in. I didn’t hear him until too late, but there he suddenly was, standing in the doorway, seemingly unaware of my guilty attempts to hide what I’d been up to.
    â€˜Came down earlier … Welsh lamb stew … heated up lunch … you all right … couldn’t find you …’ he said.
    Now he’d brought me supper instead and, no matter how sick from smoking I felt, I knew I couldn’t turn it down. Pawl was in a funny mood. He sat down opposite me, but didn’t smile. I pushed my supper around my plate, and he didn’t exactly watch me but then he didn’t exactly look away. It was as if something was bothering him, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
    Everything felt changed since yesterday. Even the room felt changed. Pawl didn’t light the fire, and didn’t lean back and savour things the way he’d done the night before. I wondered if he, too, had had a phone call from my mother, saying that he shouldn’t phone her but that she’d phone him. Or perhaps the problem lay elsewhere.
    I looked around the parlour, full of Grace’s things that she’d never touch again. Yesterday it had seemed alive, buzzing with the very essence of her personality. But now it felt like a museum – Pawl’s Gracelife Museum, you could almost say – and I wondered if Pawl was finally realising that she wasn’t coming back.
    I went and sat on the edge of his chair, and put my arm around his shoulder. Pawl leant against it, as if hewas my child. There were secrets in his face – things I couldn’t understand and, from the look of him, I guessed he couldn’t understand them either. We sat in silence. All sorts of things ran through my mind – a jumble of crazy, upset thoughts, but I couldn’t find the words for any of them.
    Suddenly Pawl started talking –
about my father
. ‘A good old … boy your father … was you know … laughed he did … always laughed he … was always full … of good fun … tired I am … of missing him … you look just … like his son … glad he’d be … to see you … all grown-up … his big boy … and proud too … he would be … proud of you …’
    He squeezed my hand. I tried to smile. My father might have been proud of me once, I thought, but not any more – not after what I’ve done to Cary!
    Silence hung between us. Pawl had tried to tell me something that would make me feel better about myself. It was as if he’d sensed that I’d needed it. But it hadn’t worked, and he knew it. In the end, he got up, cleared away the supper things and left me on my own, telling me to make sure