Read Online The Blue Book by A. L Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B

can lie down.
    See how things are in the morning.
    Not a fucking clue about the morning.
    Lockwood snaps into the actions and the tones of a man who is saying goodbye to an acquaintance. He meets her eye and then quickly states, ‘You touched my arm.’ Before Derek is near enough to hear. Then Lockwood shakes her hand, releases, nods to Derek, nods to her.
    As she goes, Elizabeth does not nod and does not tell anyone – Yes. Yes, I did touch your arm. For 361 reasons, I touched you.

Derek wants to lie. Nothing but that. He says so.
    Like a kid.
    He is curled in their bed, arms folded around his own shoulders although – if he wanted – Elizabeth would hold him. Derek doesn’t want. He is miserable. They didn’t make it to the cabin without him throwing up again. And he has thrown up since. Horizontal, he isn’t sick, but says that he feels as if someone is squeezing his skull. Because he can’t tolerate seeing, she has darkened the room and so she sits in a generalised gloom on the miniature sofa beside their broadish and expensive window, through which is clearly visible a pattern of stars and cloud, rain spatters, the idea of a moon, hints of its greater light. And the shipglow – there’s always that – if she went outside she could see how they burn as they go. But she has to stay in with Derek. She draws the curtains.
    Derek breathes as if doing so annoys him.
    The room is too hot, smells sweaty and sour – oddly like the back of a late-night taxi – and the floor is pressing up beneath them and then flinching away. They have entered a storm, or perhaps simply the ocean’s accustomed state: no more pretending, a week of this.
    Derek is a dim curve, there’s a deeper shade of shadow where he is slanted across the bed – on his side, knees tucked – the shape is vague, more a suggestion, but he’s familiar all the same.
    I should think so, by now – we’ve been together for nearly a year.
    More like thirteen months. And they didn’t move in with each other until quite late. She went to him.
    Slightly surprising.
    His place was nicer than mine – bigger.
    Surprising nonetheless.
    Beth still has some furniture in storage, odds and ends – that’s mostly to do with lack of space, not to provide her with resources should she ever wish to bolt. Derek lives in a thirties bungalow with strangely extensive gardens, even a stream transecting it and adorned with a Japanese-flavoured bridge. The interior is markedly less generous, because of the clutter. Derek inherited a plethora of ugly pieces from his mum and dad – vast sideboards, grandfather clock like a coffin – and he hasn’t been able to throw them away so far – sentimental.
    Sentimental man. Soft areas. He’s still cautious in case I damage one.
    And I’m not absolutely unguarded myself.
    And this is not a disadvantage – it means I can be clear-headed and take care of everyone. It means that I know Derek shouldn’t see Lockwood again – we’ll dodge him. He’s the sneaking type, but we’ll manage so there’ll be no more enquiries – nothing about what Derek and I may or may not do, or how.
    It’s nobody’s business who I fuck.
    Or that I do fuck.
    And I do fuck – we do – we do fuck.
    Lockwood’s voice still there in the verb, his taste – so she uses it to spite him, tries to.
    Derek’s like a kid when we fuck – when we do fuck – and once he’s over, once we’re there, he’s all pleased, like a boy – happy the way he would be if he’d learned a trick and showed it and you’d been honestly amazed.
    Cute.
    Not that he knows any tricks.
    But still cute.
    Sort of.
    Cute could describe it.
    In the distances of the ship, components she cannot name are chafing and whining. There is, intermittently, the reverberating slam of big water against the bows and –