Read Online Staring At The Light by Frances Fyfield - Free Book Online

the bandage. ‘Oh, Cannon, is it still sore?’
    ‘Nothing, lovely, nothing. I don’t know what came over me. Fireworks madden me. Won’t happen again. Are you all right?’
    She nodded against his chest. ‘Why did you d-d-dothat, Cannon,
why
? Clumsy man. You need your hands. You don’t need d-d-dying, not yet. Not a long while yet. And if you go alone, I swear to
     God I’ll kill you. Honest I shall.’
    ‘It was a bad day,’ he whispered lamely. ‘And it was never
our
house. I wanted him to know what I thought of him. I wasn’t living there. He left me a note. Telling me he’d get the house
     back for me if I’d come home. Don’t let’s talk about him.’ Then he stood with her still in his arms, that little strong scrap
     of her bound to him like a limpet as he bowed towards the altar and then sat down again. There was a smell of polish, which
     he rather liked.
    Oh, to make love in a big, light room to the sound of the sea through a window. He had never envied anyone, but he did now.
     Never believed in a God either, but he did here, temporarily, in the hope of the fulfilment of his single wish. Listen to
     me, God, please. I shall obey every letter of the law, and if you let us free, I shall sacrifice whatever else I hold dear.
     Paint, canvas, fine wine, notoriety, curiosity and my few friends. You can have them all. Vanity and ambition are long since
     gone, so you can see I’ve made a start.
Free me from my brother; free Johnnyboy from me. And free me from the urge to destroy things
.
    ‘How do they pray in here?’ he asked into her ear. ‘Isn’t it too cold to pray?’
    She shook her head. Soft hair touched his face and made him want to moan with longing.
    ‘They wear a lot of clothes. And it’s only cold at night.’
    Cold, but not lonely; not with the statues and the altar light and the moon through the windows.
    ‘Are they still kind to you?’ he whispered urgently.
    ‘Of c-c-course. And I’m busy.’
    That was a relief. Idleness had never suited her. She felt guilty if her hands were free of work. Born to it, took to it like
     a duck to water, proud of it. His wife, who should have been breeding babies by now – three already if she had not had to
     wait for him to grow up and free himself and watch him make a mess of it, a process begun as soon as he clapped eyes on her.
     Waited for his self-discovery, and then his discovery by the rest of the world, and now, still waiting for this long process
     of revenge to work its way out. Never, ever blaming him. There’s no such thing as a future you haven’t built with your own
     hands, she had told him with her sweet stutter, which was worse when she was cross. And I don’t see how you can build one
     on destruction. You may have grown up with bombs and evil. You don’t have to continue.
    ‘We shouldn’t have stolen from him, should we?’
    It was kind of her to say ‘we’, when all the decisions had been his, wrong decisions of course, however justifiable at the
     time. Stealing from Johnny because Johnny had never paid him and had told him to get rid of her. Knowing that even if Johnny
     had put one of the houses in his name, it didn’t mean it was his. Futile to try to take something from Johnnyboy. Oh, yes,
     he’d stolen quite a bit and let Johnny frame him for more. He thought of the explosives made at Johnny’s behest; shuddered;
     never, ever again. Thought of thepicture he had bought to launder the money, and the fact that it was now all that was left, with his dwindling reserves of
     cash. Thought of Johnny’s revenge, played out in this game.
    ‘What’s happening out there?’ she asked.
    They were warming each other: she pressed his hands between her thick-clad thighs. Her own palms were callused with work;
     he fancied he could feel them rubbing his back. Cannon coughed quietly, loud in the silence. ‘Not so much yet. I got rid of
     the house. We just have to wait and see. Until Christmas. He promised. He keeps to