Read Online Tom All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd - Free Book Online Page A

do you think you’re doing? I could have killed you!’
    The old man is leaning against the wall, spluttering. ‘Mr Charles, sir,’ he gasps, his Scotch tongue tempered by the best part of fifty London years. ‘I never meant to startle ye. Yerlandlady wouldna let me wait in yer room, so I was keepin’ an eye out—’
    â€˜Let me guess – from the snug of the White Horse?’
    Stornaway smiles weakly. ‘A wee nip ne’er goes amiss on a night like this. And then when I saw ye go past I couldna keep up with ye. The legs bain’t what they once were, and that’s a fact.’
    Charles looks at him. He is – what – seventy-five now? Even eighty? He has a pitiable old scarf round his neck and a much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves, but neither will be  much good in these freezing temperatures. Whatever it is that’s dragged him from his comfortable fireside, it must be important.
    â€˜Look,’ he says, ‘let me make amends for Mrs Stacey’s lack of hospitality. She is a kind woman at heart, but her infatuation with Gothic novels has her seeing ghosts and vampyres under every bed, especially after dark. Come back to my room and I’ll have her get us some hot coffee. And then you can tell me what this is all about.’
    Stornaway is soon installed in front of Charles’ small fire, with a mug gripped in both hands and the powerful aroma of coffee filling the room. The cat wakes, stretches languorously on the bed then turns himself slowly upside-down, inviting adulation. Stornaway takes his time to get to the point, but Charles is in no hurry and sips his own coffee patiently, stroking the cat and contemplating his companion. Stornaway bears all the marks of his brutal career: twisted fingers gnarled with scar tissue; a nose that’s been broken more than once, and the thin white mark of a knife wound running from his brow to the corner of his mouth. He was lucky not to lose the eye; Charles’ father even let drop, some years before, that another such encounter left him with a fractured skull and a metal plate holding his head together.
    â€˜It’s the guv’nor, Mr Charles,’ he says eventually, his face troubled.
    Stornaway is not a man given to delicacy of feeling, or finding problems where none exist, and Charles is troubled in his turn, not least because it’s been rather longer than he cares to admit since he last saw his great-uncle. Maddox spent the summer on a long-postponed tour of northern Italy, but he must have returned to his house near the river at least six weeks ago, and Charles has still not found the time to visit. Given the relationship they have – or had; given what Charles said of him only yesterday (and every word of that was true), this lapse might strike you as rather odd. It might strike you, too, that there must be a reason for it that Charles seems rather reluctant to admit. What this might be we may yet discover, but it is, in itself, instructive: he may be a meticulous observer of the habits and behavioural patterns of other creatures, human or otherwise, but he is singularly blind to his own. Abel, meanwhile, has said nothing, but Charles is in no hurry. Best the man comes to it in his own way.
    â€˜He’s not his’sen, Mr Charles. Not at all. Not since we got back.’
    â€˜Is he unwell?’
    Stornaway looks perplexed. ‘That’s just it. I dinna rightly know. One day he’s as right as rain, the next he dinna seem to know who I am. One day he just sits there in his chair, starin’ into space mumblin’ to his’sen; the next he’s as sharp as a razor, setting everything to rights from the state o’ my collar to the state o’ the nation.’
    Charles puts down his mug. ‘I suppose he is very old now.’ He’s trying to be reassuring, but he’s not as confident as he sounds. Maddox has an incisive mind, yes; but he was