Read Online Conrad & Eleanor by Jane Rogers - Free Book Online Page B

fingers. When Con opened the door there was an exclamation and a clatter. And there was little Megan in her pyjamas, with the cricket bat she had been using to try to push up the latch. They took her downstairs for a cuddle. All the doors had those old iron latches that need lifting with a finger, so high up the doors that only Paul could reach them; Megan and Cara were trapped if a door was closed on them. She remembers Con praising Megan for trying the bat rather than waking Paul. ‘Good lateral thinking, little lass.’ And how then, with a drowsy Megan curled between them on the battered sofa, and the sounds of her desperate thumb-­sucking gradually relaxing into nothing more than gentle breathing, he had quietly returned to his speculations about transplanting monkey hearts to humans.
    They kicked the ideas back and forth between them for the rest of the holiday, and the optimism which reanimated Con is linked in El’s mind with the physical attributes of that creaky old house, its stubborn functionality: the big cold stone slabs on the kitchen floor that could be swept or sluiced down when farm muck got trodden in; the booby trap of a door sill on the back door to the yard that each of the children tripped over repeatedly, put there, she assumes, to keep flooding mud out of the kitchen; the noisy, uncarpeted wooden stairs, black and slippery with use, that they had to keep Cara away from, but that they all managed to avoid falling down. That old unyielding house sheltered them and imbued their holiday with its character; regrounded them in a physical setting that demanded their attention and was so old it did not need excuses; making them aware every time they clanked open a door or set a bare foot on the cold kitchen floor or drew in a breath of peat-smoky air, aware of being alive and able and in motion, aware of their own lightness and warmth and mutability.
    Would Con have generated the enthusiasm to contact Saul, if these conversations had happened at home? El doubts it. That strange old house brought out the best in him – in them – and ­fostered a new kind of energy.
    The sound of Cara in the shower brings El back to this kitchen. Cara will not eat anything El offers her for breakfast, so better not to be in the kitchen when she comes down. She may just pick at something she fancies, if left to her own devices. El takes a new mug of tea and her list into her office. She can polish off some work emails before it’s time for Cara to leave.

Chapter 4
    C onrad passes little hotels by the station but feels the need to identify the centre of the town, to locate himself geograph­ically in this dot on the map where the train has deposited him. It is a real city. He swings into a rhythm of walking, enjoying the exercise and the fresh air in his lungs – feeling himself physically present in the place. The drizzle stinging his face is real. In the diminishing light it is so real it transports him, effortlessly, back to the night when, like this, the drizzle was a blessed relief. To the farmyard, in the rain. The night his father died.
    Con’s father hanged himself from a beam in the barn, at the age of sixty-seven. Con’s mother found him, and rang Con at work with the news.
    There is no one else (well, there is Con’s sister Ailsa, who will of course have to be told, but she is unlikely to be much use). Con rings El to tell her, then drives straight to the farm, arriving as darkness falls. His mother is in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. Con kisses her. She is grey but seems composed. ‘I can’t get him down so he’s still there.’
    â€˜You haven’t rung —’
    â€˜Who? Bit late for the doctor, isn’t it.’
    â€˜I think we need a doctor for a death certificate. Maybe the police as well.’ Con makes the necessary phone calls while his mother stolidly peels carrots and parsnips. Going out to the barn is unavoidable. The