Read Online The Man in the Shed by Lloyd Jones - Free Book Online Page A

knew well enough how it irritated him. But when the bus had left the border to enter Russia and Maggie took her husband’s hand, there was no attempt to wrestle it away. The Simpsons were on their way to Leningrad. At the thought of which Mr Simpson managed a smile: Leningrad, and the idea of taking a bus there. On two occasions he had taken an intercity bus—once, while work was being done on the car; and another time, after Wellington airport was fogged in, he had bussed up to Palmerston North. But Leningradcould not be mentioned in the same breath as these other times of inconvenience. Great armies had marched on Leningrad.
    It was Maggie who had planned the trip. Two weeks ago Mr Simpson was reading the Sunday papers in Holland Park and Maggie had asked if he would like an ice-cream. She left him sitting on the bench for rather a long time; at least, it had seemed that way as the sun faded over the city into a bank of cloud. Picnickers reached for pullovers; Mr Simpson rubbed his bare arms. Frankly it was irritating to wait that long, particularly so when he viewed his wife returning across a field empty-handed. She hadn’t been able to find an ice-cream vendor, and Mr Simpson had rolled his eyes: it was ridiculous not to be able to find ice-cream in a park on a Sunday afternoon. His wife had walked all the way to Kensington, where she realised—‘silly me,’ she said—that an ice-cream would not survive the return journey. This was the news she returned with, before presenting him with a small cardboard notice. Maggie had found it pinned to a bulletin board in a shop entranceway. The notice—written in both English and possibly Russian—invited ‘interested parties’ to join a bus tour to Leningrad.
    Ice-cream, thought Mr Simpson at the passing scenery in the bus window, and alternatively, So this is Russia. It did not seem like a superpower. There was barely any traffic on the road, and the passing farmland looked unproductive and unkempt. All the same he was glad they were off to Leningrad—and not, say, Rome or Venice or those other postcard cities. The Simpsons didn’t know anybody who hadbeen to Leningrad, not even Yvonne, their oldest daughter, who taught English to businessmen in Turkey.
    They had to get themselves to Berlin. The rendezvous was a street corner in the Kreuzberg where the unexpected number of daytime prostitutes, Turks, kebab bars and nightclubs had caused the Simpsons some alarm. Mrs Simpson had needed to push her husband from behind to get him to board the bus. It was her idea. She had to provide the enthusiasm. Put a brave face on things. Out of the bus window, Mr Simpson had watched a young man sit down in a shop doorway, roll up a shirtsleeve and plunge a needle into his arm. Mr Simpson felt a sudden rush of panic; and it was perhaps just as well that the way out was blocked by their fellow passengers humping suitcases and cardboard boxes along the aisle. He could smell food, foreign food—the sharp rotten smell of unrefrigerated meat and forgotten cheese. This was the other time on the trip Maggie had reached for his hand and given it a firm squeeze, as if to say, ‘Everything will be all right.’
    Last night they had driven through Poland. Around dawn Mr Simpson briefly awoke to discover they were in a city. He thought it might be Warsaw; and he had thought about waking Maggie to say they were in Warsaw, but instead he fell asleep again, and the next time he woke they were travelling in the countryside. It wasn’t until the bus had reached the border, or shortly before it, that the Simpsons were given a rest stop.
    Tonight they would be in Kaunas; Daugavpils; Riga around dawn, and, late afternoon, Pskov, and Leningrad later that night.
    Mr Simpson started a letter to Yvonne. He wrote that they had spent much of the day passing through ‘no-account country’. But he fell asleep before he could explain himself.
    Shortly before dusk the bus stopped, but not at Kaunas. Mr