Read Online Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield - Free Book Online Page B

proximity.’
    â€˜Among others,’ Helen said lightly, ‘in which Rose is supposed to be something of a specialist. She’s been looking very pretty over the last couple of days, have you noticed? More subdued, less spiky.’
    â€˜I thought that might have been your influence. You know, having a little chat with her, woman to woman, like Redwood asked you to do.’
    â€˜Asked once, then again and again, after more complaints and a fight in the section house. Yes I did try and talk to her, you know, Rose-is-there-anything-worrying-you? kind of thing, anything-where-I-could-help-you? But I didn’t do much good. Quite the reverse, I must be losing my touch. I’ve never heard such a stream of insults in my life. No, that isn’t true, I have, but not usually so fluent. The message was, Fuck off, leave me alone, you old cow, how can you understand at your age? And if Redwood wants to sack me, let him try. I made a tactical withdrawal.’
    â€˜Bloodied, but unbowed?’ Dinsdale asked, smiling to show teeth which were admirably white.
    â€˜No, both bowed and bloodied. I wish there weren’t such a thing as the age gap. I like her, I can’t bear to see this brooding anger of hers, but she finds it impossible to like me. You can’t convince her you might know what she means.’
    â€˜The effort was commendable,’ said Dinsdale gravely, sensing a real humiliation. His hand on the now clean table hovered close to hers. The sight of it, pale, with its neatly pared nails, made her feel unaccountably lonely. The fingers tapped a neat rhythm, as if listening to some hidden music which was not hers to hear. Like the music which vibrated between Rose and her man, hidden but harmonic, cutting across the smog of the room to where they sat, the two adults. Helen thought she remembered what it was like, the music of romance, and felt older than Noah. Older than the sherry casks and just as deaf.
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    T he pub on the corner of Legard Street and the main avenue which led to the football stadium also served sherry, but only if asked, with the request repeated several times. Their speciality was the kind of pie which, even when microwaved within an inch of its life, still challenged the digestion of a steam engine. The pie was held by the edge of the cellophane wrapper and it was not wise to examine the contents. Logo was indifferent to food and the pub was empty.
    He ate his pie. It was burnt on the outside and chilly in the centre and did nothing to cure his hunger, but it made him feel bigger as he swallowed it. The concave stomach, knitted together in the middle by a scar which made him look as if he had been bitten by a shark, relaxed beneath the belted trousers. He belched, softly, looking round for an audience. The barman regarded him with marginal interest, less tolerant than usual. He was restocking the shelves for when the crowds came out of the stadium. On a night like this, during the silence in the middle of the two storms, he could do without Mr Logo, and if the bastard sang, he would pack him out of doors among the phalanx of parked cars, into the roar of sound which would reverberate as soon as someone scored a goal.
    â€˜All right, are you?’ he said pleasantly and threateningly enough.
    â€˜All right,’ said Logo. ‘And you?’
    â€˜All right. Time you went home, isn’t it?’ He leant over the table, wiping the surface with a busy fussiness which betrayed watchful idleness and anxiety. Logo always leant over things without ever actually sitting down, the better to clear his chest for the next hymn, the barman thought, although Logo knew different. He found it uncomfortable to sit. The old scar was a wound known only to himself and some doctor who had long since moved on without his notes. The stitches were cumbersome, but they had been inserted in the middle of the night in a casualty ward without thought of future vanity, and they were