Read Online Living As a Moon by Owen Marshall - Free Book Online Page B

I said.
    ‘I told you not to do that, Jack,’ and she half rose from the seat and then sat again when her son obeyed. ‘You don’t think of someone changing that much when you marry them, do you?’ she said. ‘You imagine one personality for all the time. That sounds stupid I suppose.’
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘We’ve both been so unhappy.’
    ‘Maybe the shift here will make the difference,’ I said.
    ‘If it wasn’t for Jack I don’t think we’d make a go of it at all. But then you have to go through stuff, I guess.’
    I thought she might cry, but was relieved when she got up and went over to play with her son. It was getting colder in the late afternoon, and in the hire yard a tall, slow man was putting tarpaulins over some of the equipment. I wished I could say something to Summer that was as candid as her own admission, but far more encouraging, something about love, resilience and sacrifice, but I was too much on the outside of her life. We retreated to talk of the cold, Jack’s dexterity on the tyres and his lack of concern with Dr Posswillow’s stitches.
    The mechanic was as good as his word. He had the car right within half an hour. Jack sat on his mother’s knee on the way home, but the Italian heart-throb didn’t appear. Emma insisted that Summer come in to warm up and have a drink, and she’d dug out some of our children’s old toys and had them on the carpet for Jack. I recognised them all with a twinge of family nostalgia. The wooden duck with oval wheels to make it waddle, and the robust jungle jigsaw that was more suited to Jack’s age.
    Summer appreciated the kindness, seemed almost reluctant to leave, although she said she needed to get back to her own place. ‘God, what a strange day,’ she said. ‘I come over to introduce myself and end up imposing on you both for the whole afternoon. And relying on you to find a doctor, and not having my purse to pay him. I don’t know what you must think.’
    ‘We’re glad to help,’ said Emma. ‘I’m just so pleased that Jack’s okay. That’s all that matters.’
    ‘You’ve been so kind.’ Summer took Jack’s hand and we followed them to the door. The little boy’s patch had become an accustomed part of his face. She thanked Emma and then me. ‘Thanks, Robin, for the help and the understanding,’ she said.
    ‘Good luck,’ I said.
    We watched them going home to their own lives. ‘Good luck?’ said my wife.
    ‘She said a few things about why they shifted. Just semaphore really. There’s stuff going on in the marriage.’
    ‘Yes, there is something, isn’t there.’
    ‘Anyway, after all that excitement I could do with a rest.’
    ‘You know you never sleep in the afternoon,’ Emma said.

VAPOUR TRAILS
    ‘Bums, aren’t they,’ said Matthew. ‘In the States they’re derelicts, winos, bag crap, hobos, vagrants, tramps. Jesus Christ.’
    ‘Not that so often, I reckon,’ said Felicity.
    ‘What?’ Matthew stood at the office window and looked down on the small group forming in the alley off the busy street. ‘They’ll all be on P, or some bloody thing. Fucked up by being groped by an uncle, or some such, so they’ll tell the courts. Useless buggers.’
    Matthew, who imported office equipment like the rest of us, stood as a big guy by the window in the cheap, black shoes of a lower echelon city suit. The vagrants didn’t have to put in the hours he did, had no responsibility, were never going to provide a client base. Their essential, dilatory uselessness and weakness pissed him off.
    Usually they were later coming back to the alley, but the day was cold and the wind came up the street from the harbour with a drizzle before it like a swarm of sandflies. The alley offered protection, and ended in a plot of bushes and zigzag steps to a car park accessed from another street. There were cartons and light, Warehouse garden sheeting made into shelters in the bushes, a suitcase in which a Labrador slept. Close to the steps was