Read Online The Spy Game by Georgina Harding - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Georgina Harding
Ads: Link
we saw it. There
was nobody from the past: no family, no relations, no old friends who came to visit. There wouldn't be, would there, said
Peter, seeing where she came from? But there were no friends from the present either, from the time since we were born. She
almost never had anyone come to the house. She went out. Sometimes she used to dress up and go out, to Cheltenham, Oxford,
London even. Maybe she saw friends then. Who these friends might have been we couldn't begin to guess.
'How about Mrs Lacey?' I asked. 'She was her friend.'
'Mrs Lacey couldn't keep anything a secret.'
'Mr Lacey then?'
'He was with the Japs too. He's just as cracked as she is, but inside so it doesn't show. He looks almost all right, like
a proper colonel, an old soldier, but he isn't, he's fake. They wouldn't use someone like that.'
Of course we couldn't tell Susan. Sometimes I thought Peter liked that. He knew that all this spy stuff put the two of us
apart from Susan and tied us to each other.
Peter was brilliant with facts and systems but he couldn't deal with stories. He should have seen that making up stories was
easy. If he'd done it more he would have understood that. You made up a story and then you could turn to it when you needed
it, and sometimes it might be true and sometimes not but that wasn't what mattered the most. What was difficult was telling
your story to some-body else. If you did that it got stronger and more real, and then you didn't have control any more.
I tried to give the blue exercise book back to him.
'I'm not doing this any more. We haven't found any-thing. We're not going to find anything. There's no point. It's only a
game.'
I said that to hurt him. I knew it wasn't a game.
'You can't do that,' he said. 'Not now. You can't.'
'Yes I can.' I threw it down at his feet on the kitchen floor.
Peter may have been small and thin for a boy his age but he was much stronger than I was. He grabbed me, and took my arm and
bent it up my back so it hurt like it would break, and forced me down over the table. There were glasses and knives and things
on the table, hard, sharp things close to my eyes. I saw the edges of them shiny and glinting, too close to focus, and shouted
at him to stop, and his grip was so hard I didn't know if he would.
'All right,' I breathed, and again, 'Stop,' and, 'It's hurting,' and, 'I'll help you,' and there was a pause when he only
held me and did not press any more, and then, slowly like a machine winding down, he unclenched and let me go.
I t was raining, a heavy summer rain that made every-thing that was green go soft with a weight of water, leaves weeping from
the trees, stems from the borders hanging over the lawn, plants splayed with the wet. It was a rain that fell straight and
did not touch the window, so that you could stand with your nose to the pane of glass and see clear through, see it falling
in fine lines that showed up where the trees were dark behind. A day like that was quiet and strange after so many days out
in the sun.
Susan phoned and I said I couldn't see her, I was finishing a book and I'd see her later.
'Bookworm,' she said, but didn't seem to mind.
When the rain stopped for a time a pigeon flew low across the lawn, slow as if the air was too wet for flying in. The pigeon's
feathers were the same heavy grey as the sky. I didn't want to go out, or see anyone at all. I sat at the table in the kitchen
waiting for Margaret to leave. Margaret did the washing up with heaps of suds and didn't rinse them off so that they bearded
the plates that she put on the rack. My mother used to tell her to rinse them but she was a stubborn sort of girl who you
couldn't expect to change. She stood there at the sink like the cows in the milking parlour at the farm. I wrote in my book
that the yellow Marigold gloves she wore went on to her big pink fingers like milking teats.
'What's that you're writing?' Margaret turned and suds dripped
was nobody from the past: no family, no relations, no old friends who came to visit. There wouldn't be, would there, said
Peter, seeing where she came from? But there were no friends from the present either, from the time since we were born. She
almost never had anyone come to the house. She went out. Sometimes she used to dress up and go out, to Cheltenham, Oxford,
London even. Maybe she saw friends then. Who these friends might have been we couldn't begin to guess.
'How about Mrs Lacey?' I asked. 'She was her friend.'
'Mrs Lacey couldn't keep anything a secret.'
'Mr Lacey then?'
'He was with the Japs too. He's just as cracked as she is, but inside so it doesn't show. He looks almost all right, like
a proper colonel, an old soldier, but he isn't, he's fake. They wouldn't use someone like that.'
Of course we couldn't tell Susan. Sometimes I thought Peter liked that. He knew that all this spy stuff put the two of us
apart from Susan and tied us to each other.
Peter was brilliant with facts and systems but he couldn't deal with stories. He should have seen that making up stories was
easy. If he'd done it more he would have understood that. You made up a story and then you could turn to it when you needed
it, and sometimes it might be true and sometimes not but that wasn't what mattered the most. What was difficult was telling
your story to some-body else. If you did that it got stronger and more real, and then you didn't have control any more.
I tried to give the blue exercise book back to him.
'I'm not doing this any more. We haven't found any-thing. We're not going to find anything. There's no point. It's only a
game.'
I said that to hurt him. I knew it wasn't a game.
'You can't do that,' he said. 'Not now. You can't.'
'Yes I can.' I threw it down at his feet on the kitchen floor.
Peter may have been small and thin for a boy his age but he was much stronger than I was. He grabbed me, and took my arm and
bent it up my back so it hurt like it would break, and forced me down over the table. There were glasses and knives and things
on the table, hard, sharp things close to my eyes. I saw the edges of them shiny and glinting, too close to focus, and shouted
at him to stop, and his grip was so hard I didn't know if he would.
'All right,' I breathed, and again, 'Stop,' and, 'It's hurting,' and, 'I'll help you,' and there was a pause when he only
held me and did not press any more, and then, slowly like a machine winding down, he unclenched and let me go.
I t was raining, a heavy summer rain that made every-thing that was green go soft with a weight of water, leaves weeping from
the trees, stems from the borders hanging over the lawn, plants splayed with the wet. It was a rain that fell straight and
did not touch the window, so that you could stand with your nose to the pane of glass and see clear through, see it falling
in fine lines that showed up where the trees were dark behind. A day like that was quiet and strange after so many days out
in the sun.
Susan phoned and I said I couldn't see her, I was finishing a book and I'd see her later.
'Bookworm,' she said, but didn't seem to mind.
When the rain stopped for a time a pigeon flew low across the lawn, slow as if the air was too wet for flying in. The pigeon's
feathers were the same heavy grey as the sky. I didn't want to go out, or see anyone at all. I sat at the table in the kitchen
waiting for Margaret to leave. Margaret did the washing up with heaps of suds and didn't rinse them off so that they bearded
the plates that she put on the rack. My mother used to tell her to rinse them but she was a stubborn sort of girl who you
couldn't expect to change. She stood there at the sink like the cows in the milking parlour at the farm. I wrote in my book
that the yellow Marigold gloves she wore went on to her big pink fingers like milking teats.
'What's that you're writing?' Margaret turned and suds dripped
Similar Books
