Read Online Little Bits of Baby by Patrick Gale - Free Book Online Page B

supper made it seem as though he had failed somewhere and they were kindly covering his failure with a show of celebration. He hated their mead and as always it made him long for sleep but he forced himself to stay awake for compline.
    He had never been in all those years. He used to lie awake and hear the singing from his room but no one had ever told him to come and he had never felt interested enough to suggest it. But the end-of-term spirit had taken him, so he went. They were pleased and handed him a book with words in it.
    It was a short, lyrical service; a sort of late-night spiritual insurance, full of lines about protecting us from the devil who prowls like a lion, or something. When they had to sing,
    â€˜Keep me as the apple of thine eye,’ Robin glanced over at Luke, who was watching him carefully as ever, and he smiled. This was mean, he knew.
    He said his goodbyes all round before going to bed then got up early and unseen to hitch a lift ashore with a fisherman. There was a red flag the monks hoisted by the cottage on the beach if they wanted someone to take them across, not unlike those orange signs that light up and say TAXI at night outside old mansion blocks. As luck would have it, Robin caught the post boat after about four minutes’ wait. As it chugged him back to the mainland he leaned against some greasy fish crates and watched Whelm dwindle. The rule was that, before boarding a boat, one had to lower the red flag again and the fisherman had duly done this after dumping the post in the cottage for collection. As Robin watched, someone ran down to shore and hoisted it again.
    â€˜Someone being sent out to drag you back, I reckon,’ his water-cabbie shouted from the wheelhouse. ‘You done something you shouldn’t? Eh?’
    â€˜No,’ Robin told him.
    â€˜Not said your prayers, maybe.’ He chuckled and crossed himself. It was hard to tell if he did this in mockery or superstition. ‘Don’t worry,’ he went on. ‘I’m not turning back this far out. He can just wait his turn.’
    When he came to climb on the train to London, Robin scanned the thin crowd boarding with him but saw no familiar face.
    He had almost no luggage – just the few things he had first brought with him and a beeswax candle made by the sisters of Corry which the Abbot asked him to pass on to his mother. He had also handed over the small brown envelope in which he had sealed Robin’s fistful of cash on his arrival. Eight years had dwindled its already paltry value, but Robin still had his cheque-book, his wallet and his fountain pen, all three unused since his arrival. His mother had posted him four new cheque-cards in the course of his stay, which the Abbot had kindly intercepted and kept safe. The ticket clerk eyed Robin suspiciously as he now produced all four, gleaming new and still unsigned. Robin’s signature had changed, with neglect, into a pale reflection of its former, italicised self but, with some effort, he managed to sign both card and cheque in roughly similar styles. He caught the clerk’s stare and laughed in explanation.
    â€˜I’ve been away,’ he said. ‘Haven’t needed any of them.’ The sum demanded of him seemed vast but a tutting queue had formed and, in the wake of the display of cards, he thought it better not to query it. Parting with seemingly large sums for very little made him feel pleasantly like a tourist, giddy at the unreality of inflated foreign currency.
    As he found a seat on the train he followed some long-hidden prompting and busied himself destroying the out-of-date cheque-cards. The difficulty of twisting the plastic to breaking point sent the recollection spilling into his mind of a bank account spectacularly overdrawn in student bravado. He realised that all this time his mother and father would have been fending off querulous demands from banks, bookshops, the college bursar and various ignorant