Read Online Day by A. L Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B

any part of it. He’d sat with his ma in the kitchen – she couldn’t go to chapel because of the pain in her leg and that wasn’t good, it made a familiar rawness in at the back of his thoughts, still Alfred and his ma, they kept things cheery. They were fine. They were being comfy together and they’d eaten their sausage, eggs and bacon, not talking much because they never had to, and everything today could be late and slow – they’d get away with that – and they were having extra toast – he didn’t know then she made the best bread he’d ever taste – and the house would be at rest for another two hours, at least. The back door was open and the smell of their last roses coming in and a wedge of sunshine fallen down into the hall with the cat lying in it and purring, you could tell by the set of his head before you even heard a sound. Then Chamberlain comes on the wireless and Alfred had never liked him, never taken to the tone of him – the way he seemed like some thin, grey relative you wouldn’t want to sit with, all his sentences fading away and breaking if his voice went low and everything being so sad and hard for him, even though there were other people in the world who weren’t enjoying themselves that much. Like the Czechs. Or the Poles. You could bet they weren’t happy. But here was Chamberlain in the Cabinet room – which Alfred imagined to be like a kind of parlour: Mansion Polish and china dogs – and he was saying in his pretty accent that he’d had a bitter blow and there was nothing else for it now but to be at war. He’d needed to hear from the Germans by eleven o’clock and eleven o’clock was gone. Which suited Alfred nicely, thanks ever so much.
    They’d brought in national service the day before, which had put Alfred’s father in a mood. Not for himself: he was too old for anyone to want him: but he’d worked out they’d be after Alfred soon.
    Alfred had been put in a mood, also, because of being fifteen and just those few months, only six, which meant he’d have too long to wait. But as soon as he could he’d volunteer. He’d decided. So he wouldn’t have to walk about in fish guts till he died, wouldn’t have to listen while his father made that same sodding joke every day: a blind man walks past the fish shop – ‘Morning, ladies.’ Alfred would go and he’d pick his service, that was how it worked, he hoped. Up in the clean air, up free with the blue, that’s what he wanted. At least it would be, if they’d have him. So he’d exercise more to please them and strengthen himself and then he’d volunteer. Of course he’d fucking volunteer.
    Ma, she’d heard the announcement and stopped eating. Alfred had been so busy in his head that he hadn’t paid her proper attention and she must have sat perfectly still for a long while before he noticed and was jolted, damaged somewhere by the way she raised her eyes to him.
    She was normally very sensible about crying and didn’t do it. Today, though, she’d made a mistake and so they both started seeing what they were together – truly seeing, because they couldn’t help themselves, and so they had to know what they meant for each other and how it would be when he’d go. They were harmed by it, by too much feeling. He might as well have been leaving that afternoon.
    And he hated that they were trapped inside this, had to rush through the way they would be months in their future, for fear of his father, the thing still asleep above their heads. Later his mother might not find the chance, might not be allowed, so she had to weep in the kitchen when nothing was different yet. Without ever intending, they were making their one goodbye.
    His mother lost herself for a while in little cries that seemed to leave her frightened, woman’s sounds, and her hands fluttered and tried