Read Online The Orientalist and the Ghost by Susan Barker - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Barker
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firefly glimmer of his cigar.
‘Are you all right down there, Christopher?’
‘Right as rain, thanks.’
‘I heard you fall down the steps.’
‘Nothing sobers you up like a good fall.’
A loud burp came out of my mouth, catching me unawares. I wiped the stomach bile oozing down my chin on to the back of my hand.
‘Well, I’d best be off to bed, then,’ I said. ‘I have check-point duty tomorrow.’
‘Yes, and the Red Cross nurses are coming. You’ll be assisting them and Evangeline Lim, won’t you?’ He pronounced the syllables of her name in a slow, knowing manner. ‘Evangeline Lim,’ he repeated. ‘She has quite a history, that one. Detective Pang has been telling us …’
I did not like to hear him talking of her. I did not like it one bit. Another burp came out of my mouth.
‘I’d like to take this opportunity to say that it is wonderful to have you here, Christopher,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of anyone better suited to life in The Village of Everlasting Peace.’
I thanked him and wished him goodnight. Then I crawled all the way back to my hut on my hands and knees, without once looking round to see if the Resettlement Officer was still there.
5
JULIA GALLIVANTS ON the estate after dark and there is nothing I can do to stop her. Threaten her freedom and she bucks like a colt, unaware of the injury she could do to an old man like me. When I was Julia’s age I romped on pastures of green. I climbed the highest trees, fished for pike in lakes, and competed in the Middleton Junior School conker tournament. When the rain chased me indoors I assembled model aeroplanes and thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. These innocent pastimes are unfashionable nowadays. On the Mountbatten estate, glue-sniffing appears to be de rigueur.
What my hoyden of a granddaughter gets up to night after night I have no idea, but she returns home with the fading aura of an adventuress. Perhaps, through her twelve-year-old eyes, the Mountbatten towers are as magnificent as Babel, and the menagerie of council tenants, with their rainbow-hued tattooed skin and junk-food-fed obesity, as thrilling as the mythical beasts of the
Odyssey
. Perhaps she believes the glittering fragments of windscreen in the car park are diamonds, and the wacky-baccy smoke drifting from the heavy-lidded West Indians, zephyrs of holy incense. I worry about my granddaughter as she roams the concrete badlands of the Mountbatten estate. I tell her to stay indoors, but off she goes, every night, leaving her orthodontist appointment reminder cards on the mantelpiece to gather dust.
Waiting for Julia to come home tonight, I watched the street-lamp-lit estate from the living-room window. Fourteen storeys below, people were hunched against the cold, pushing illegitimate sprogs in prams or eating from bags of battered cod and chips. The late-autumn chill seeped through the windowpane and I was glad to be indoors, with every bar glowing on the gas fire, and
The Archers
on Radio Four.
‘Well,’ I said, letting the curtain drop back in place, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I vote we start without her.’
Adam shrugged. An apathetic roll of the shoulders is the most the boy can manage these days. I fetched our supper from the kitchen and we dined in our armchairs, with our plates on our laps. I’d cooked gammon steak, tinned peas and carrots, and served it up with slices of buttered bread. Nutritious, well-balanced meals are important for growing children. When I lived alone I never ate such substantial fare.
As we dug in, the radio drama our substitute for mealtime conversation, the front door banged. Then the bedroom door went as Julia ducked inside without so much as a
Sorry-I’m-late
. I set aside my plate and went to give the saucy madam a talking-to. Julia was sitting on her bed in her school blazer, her eyes mean and glittery with cheap make-up, her high ponytail stiff with mousse. She reeked of cigarettes, and her school
‘Are you all right down there, Christopher?’
‘Right as rain, thanks.’
‘I heard you fall down the steps.’
‘Nothing sobers you up like a good fall.’
A loud burp came out of my mouth, catching me unawares. I wiped the stomach bile oozing down my chin on to the back of my hand.
‘Well, I’d best be off to bed, then,’ I said. ‘I have check-point duty tomorrow.’
‘Yes, and the Red Cross nurses are coming. You’ll be assisting them and Evangeline Lim, won’t you?’ He pronounced the syllables of her name in a slow, knowing manner. ‘Evangeline Lim,’ he repeated. ‘She has quite a history, that one. Detective Pang has been telling us …’
I did not like to hear him talking of her. I did not like it one bit. Another burp came out of my mouth.
‘I’d like to take this opportunity to say that it is wonderful to have you here, Christopher,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of anyone better suited to life in The Village of Everlasting Peace.’
I thanked him and wished him goodnight. Then I crawled all the way back to my hut on my hands and knees, without once looking round to see if the Resettlement Officer was still there.
5
JULIA GALLIVANTS ON the estate after dark and there is nothing I can do to stop her. Threaten her freedom and she bucks like a colt, unaware of the injury she could do to an old man like me. When I was Julia’s age I romped on pastures of green. I climbed the highest trees, fished for pike in lakes, and competed in the Middleton Junior School conker tournament. When the rain chased me indoors I assembled model aeroplanes and thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. These innocent pastimes are unfashionable nowadays. On the Mountbatten estate, glue-sniffing appears to be de rigueur.
What my hoyden of a granddaughter gets up to night after night I have no idea, but she returns home with the fading aura of an adventuress. Perhaps, through her twelve-year-old eyes, the Mountbatten towers are as magnificent as Babel, and the menagerie of council tenants, with their rainbow-hued tattooed skin and junk-food-fed obesity, as thrilling as the mythical beasts of the
Odyssey
. Perhaps she believes the glittering fragments of windscreen in the car park are diamonds, and the wacky-baccy smoke drifting from the heavy-lidded West Indians, zephyrs of holy incense. I worry about my granddaughter as she roams the concrete badlands of the Mountbatten estate. I tell her to stay indoors, but off she goes, every night, leaving her orthodontist appointment reminder cards on the mantelpiece to gather dust.
Waiting for Julia to come home tonight, I watched the street-lamp-lit estate from the living-room window. Fourteen storeys below, people were hunched against the cold, pushing illegitimate sprogs in prams or eating from bags of battered cod and chips. The late-autumn chill seeped through the windowpane and I was glad to be indoors, with every bar glowing on the gas fire, and
The Archers
on Radio Four.
‘Well,’ I said, letting the curtain drop back in place, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I vote we start without her.’
Adam shrugged. An apathetic roll of the shoulders is the most the boy can manage these days. I fetched our supper from the kitchen and we dined in our armchairs, with our plates on our laps. I’d cooked gammon steak, tinned peas and carrots, and served it up with slices of buttered bread. Nutritious, well-balanced meals are important for growing children. When I lived alone I never ate such substantial fare.
As we dug in, the radio drama our substitute for mealtime conversation, the front door banged. Then the bedroom door went as Julia ducked inside without so much as a
Sorry-I’m-late
. I set aside my plate and went to give the saucy madam a talking-to. Julia was sitting on her bed in her school blazer, her eyes mean and glittery with cheap make-up, her high ponytail stiff with mousse. She reeked of cigarettes, and her school
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