Read Online Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson - Free Book Online Page A

out, and all the guilt came down on me, and all the shame, and anger too, a bright, crooked flash of anger through me, like a shiver. Marie thought it was hilarious, of course.
    Gradually, I came to expect the comments, and I prepared myself. One morning, in the supermarket, somebody touched me on the elbow, and I turned to see an old woman smiling up at me. It warmed her heart, she said, to see two young people so much in love. I thanked her. Then, leaning closer, I told her that I had never been happier – and, curiously, I didn’t have the feeling I was lying. Marie almost choked. I watched her disappear round a stack of cereals.
You know what you should do?
the woman said. I shook my head. The woman’s smile widened.
You should marry her.
I wish I could have found this entertaining, as Marie did. When I got home, though, I sank into a deep despondency. My dreams had come true, but only for a fewmoments, the moments during which an old woman in a supermarket had believed me, and now, once again, they were just dreams, and always would be.
    In time, I succeeded in turning it into a game – I would spend hours thinking up different histories for us, fresh dialogue – but secretly I was flattered to be thought of as Marie’s boyfriend. I wanted to be seen in that light, I liked the fact that it looked possible, and it would always come as something of a disappointment to me if we went out together and no one said anything.
    Every once in a while, Marie would tell me about a fling she was having. On the one hand I felt privileged that she had chosen to confide in me. On the other, I couldn’t stand hearing about a person whom I viewed, almost inevitably, as some kind of rival. It split me right down the middle, just listening to her.
    I remember an evening when we walked up to the castle, a clear black sky above our heads. It had been raining earlier. Water rushed in all the gutters, and the air was full of river smells, reeds and mud and roots. When we reached the entrance – a pair of tall gates, padlocked at sunset – Marie asked me to give her a hand. I helped her up on to the wall, then she scrambled down the other side, first on to the roof of a garden shed, then down again, into the castle grounds.
    Steep steps led to a stone tower, which was the highest point in town. There was a lawn up there, with a lime tree in the middle. Perched on the wrought-iron seat that circled the trunk, Marie lit a cigarette. A single raindrop promptly fell from somewhere and extinguished it.
    She grinned. ‘You think someone’s trying to tell me something?’
    We climbed a spiral staircase to the top of the tower, then leaned on the battlements looking east. In the distance a pale glow showed here and there where the downs had been quarried for chalk. Marie began to tell me about Bradley Freeman, her current boyfriend. They had been going out for six months, and she had just discovered that he’d been seeing someone else all along. It took me a second or two to realise that she was talkingabout the man who had taken me to see Miss Groves on the day of my first interview at the Ministry. He’d been pursuing Marie on and off ever since. I went back in my mind, but I could remember nothing about Bradley Freeman, nothing except his amiable manner and his endless mundane questions.
    â€˜Why him?’ I asked.
    â€˜You wouldn’t understand.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜Because you’re my brother.’
    â€˜He doesn’t realise how special you are.’
    She sent me a sharp dark glance, as if she thought I knew something that I had no right to know, then she looked away again.
    â€˜Sometimes he does,’ she murmured.
    I stared out over the rooftops. They seemed to mill and jostle in the darkness, as though straining at their moorings – more like boats than houses. The ground itself felt uncertain, unreliable. Everything could come apart so easily.
    â€˜I