Read Online After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sarah Perry
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because you touched the paper too often with dirty hands – ‘You have placed in the skies the sign of your covenant with all living things…’ (and I’m not a religious man but I know a rainbow when I see one).
I know what you’re thinking. I’ve no right to your clothes or your name or your place at their table. But read what I’ve written and you’ll see: they took my arm – they touched me and wanted me here…
Oh, but it’s useless I know. Soon enough they’ll catch me out and besides, it was never me they wanted.
Keep this book safe, would you? Please do that.
Yours,
John Cole
II
Later, when a too-heavy lunch had been eaten, and doors closed one after the other upstairs as the afternoon torpor settled on the house, John walked alone in the garden. The letter – torn from the notebook and placed under the painted Puritan’s frame – ought to have shaken him loose, but seemed instead to fix him in place. As he walked across the dying lawn he cast about for sight of Eve walking between the poplars or Hester at her window, already feeling it his duty now to observe, if not take part. He rolled the glass eye across his palm; there was the dying elm, and there the raised bright bank of the reservoir, but nothing moved – no shadow on the grass, or shiver in the branches overhead. There also, of course – he’d never thought to look! – would be the narrow track down which he’d walked, and beyond it the long road home. He stood sunstruck alone on the lawn – I can go I must go I will – then thought suddenly of the notebook upstairs. He imagined Clare finding it one early morning as she ranged about the house, passing it between them all, reading it aloud.
He turned back, to the grey-paved terrace and its broken sundial, and the roses dying in their beds. Upstairs a window was opened and the sun slid across the pane; a note or two was struck on the piano, but nothing came of it. John crossed the threshold to the blue room where he’d sat in silence the night before, feeling the glass eye grow hot in his palm, and gave a shameful cry of surprise as a hand emerged from a dim corner and beckoned him further in. Elijah, holding a glass of water in which floated an opaque ice cube cracking as it melted, gestured towards an empty chair. The gentle invitation had the proportions of a threat ( I think we’d better have a talk) : John started guiltily, and dropped the eye, which made its way across the carpet, settled against the leg of an armchair, and fixed its gaze upon the ceiling.
‘John!’ It was clear he’d been waiting. ‘John! That is to say…’ Delicately, by little more than a raised eyebrow, he put out the question which John had dreaded and longed for.
‘Oh no – I am John. You see, that’s been my trouble!’
‘Care to tell me about it? I’ve kept a good many secrets’ – the preacher pulled, wincing, at the iced water – ‘not all of them mine.’
‘It was just a mistake,’ said John. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ The plaintive note in his voice was new and unwelcome, and flushing miserably he wished the arms of the chair would draw him in until he seeped into the wood.
‘So easily done,’ said the other man, benevolently. ‘Wide is the gate, and broad is the way…’ He paused, then thinking better of the turn he’d taken said: ‘You came in last night so pale, and seemed so weary, that it didn’t much matter that you weren’t the Jon I knew. Certainly you looked as though you belonged here – what right did I have to turn you out?’
‘Does everyone know?’ Appalled, John considered the possibility that all their welcome had been an act of amused pity. The glass eye rolled his way in sympathy.
‘Oh, no! No, they never knew the lad – he was one of mine, if you take my meaning, and fetched up at St Jude’s a while back, following his pastor like a dutiful member of the flock. A tendency to a particular kind of kleptomania, I’m given to
I know what you’re thinking. I’ve no right to your clothes or your name or your place at their table. But read what I’ve written and you’ll see: they took my arm – they touched me and wanted me here…
Oh, but it’s useless I know. Soon enough they’ll catch me out and besides, it was never me they wanted.
Keep this book safe, would you? Please do that.
Yours,
John Cole
II
Later, when a too-heavy lunch had been eaten, and doors closed one after the other upstairs as the afternoon torpor settled on the house, John walked alone in the garden. The letter – torn from the notebook and placed under the painted Puritan’s frame – ought to have shaken him loose, but seemed instead to fix him in place. As he walked across the dying lawn he cast about for sight of Eve walking between the poplars or Hester at her window, already feeling it his duty now to observe, if not take part. He rolled the glass eye across his palm; there was the dying elm, and there the raised bright bank of the reservoir, but nothing moved – no shadow on the grass, or shiver in the branches overhead. There also, of course – he’d never thought to look! – would be the narrow track down which he’d walked, and beyond it the long road home. He stood sunstruck alone on the lawn – I can go I must go I will – then thought suddenly of the notebook upstairs. He imagined Clare finding it one early morning as she ranged about the house, passing it between them all, reading it aloud.
He turned back, to the grey-paved terrace and its broken sundial, and the roses dying in their beds. Upstairs a window was opened and the sun slid across the pane; a note or two was struck on the piano, but nothing came of it. John crossed the threshold to the blue room where he’d sat in silence the night before, feeling the glass eye grow hot in his palm, and gave a shameful cry of surprise as a hand emerged from a dim corner and beckoned him further in. Elijah, holding a glass of water in which floated an opaque ice cube cracking as it melted, gestured towards an empty chair. The gentle invitation had the proportions of a threat ( I think we’d better have a talk) : John started guiltily, and dropped the eye, which made its way across the carpet, settled against the leg of an armchair, and fixed its gaze upon the ceiling.
‘John!’ It was clear he’d been waiting. ‘John! That is to say…’ Delicately, by little more than a raised eyebrow, he put out the question which John had dreaded and longed for.
‘Oh no – I am John. You see, that’s been my trouble!’
‘Care to tell me about it? I’ve kept a good many secrets’ – the preacher pulled, wincing, at the iced water – ‘not all of them mine.’
‘It was just a mistake,’ said John. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ The plaintive note in his voice was new and unwelcome, and flushing miserably he wished the arms of the chair would draw him in until he seeped into the wood.
‘So easily done,’ said the other man, benevolently. ‘Wide is the gate, and broad is the way…’ He paused, then thinking better of the turn he’d taken said: ‘You came in last night so pale, and seemed so weary, that it didn’t much matter that you weren’t the Jon I knew. Certainly you looked as though you belonged here – what right did I have to turn you out?’
‘Does everyone know?’ Appalled, John considered the possibility that all their welcome had been an act of amused pity. The glass eye rolled his way in sympathy.
‘Oh, no! No, they never knew the lad – he was one of mine, if you take my meaning, and fetched up at St Jude’s a while back, following his pastor like a dutiful member of the flock. A tendency to a particular kind of kleptomania, I’m given to
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