Read Online Voices in the Dark by Catherine Banner - Free Book Online Page A

Aldebaran and my grandfather were talking about the unseasonable weather. My grandmother took bread and cheese and slices of meat pie out of the basket, and Leo handed round the cake, and for a while everything was all right. The sun even emerged.
    ‘Just to think,’ remarked my grandmother after the food was finished.
    ‘Just to think what?’ said my mother.
    ‘Well,’ said my grandmother. ‘Seven years since.’
    The silence settled again, more menacing than before. ‘That is enough,’ said my mother. ‘Don’t talk any more about it.’
    ‘I’m only remarking, Maria. There is no need to take that tone.’
    ‘There is every need to take that tone!’
    My grandmother raised her eyebrows and brushed an invisible fly from her skirt. ‘I’m just saying that it’s seven years since that whole sorry business. That’s all. There, I’ve said it, and you’re free to condemn me as you always do.’
    My mother moved so quickly that none of us saw until it was over. She slapped my grandmother hard across the face. Suddenly everyone was on their feet. The apples rolled off their plate and bounced away down the hill. They weregood apples, and I wanted to pick them up, but I was fixed to the ground and could not move.
    ‘After what I’ve done for you,’ said my grandmother, her voice shaking. ‘After everything I’ve done for you, Maria, and you treat me—’
    ‘I won’t listen to this,’ said my mother. She picked up our rug and our basket, took my hand, and started for home, though it was five miles. Leo ran after us; none of the others dared. There was such a fierce anger coming from my mother that I thought I could see the air trembling around her. None of us said anything all the way back to the city.
    When we got home, my mother locked herself in their bedroom, and we could hear her crying bitterly behind the closed door. Leo’s hands shook as he smoked a never-ending chain of cigarettes. ‘Come on,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll take you to a restaurant and buy you a cake. As it’s your birthday. Anselm?’
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘Please.’
    ‘No, I don’t want to.’
    ‘Anselm, please. Come on.’
    He badly wanted my birthday not to be ruined, but I kept up the resistance. Eventually he gave up and sat down at the table and rested his head against his hand.
    ‘Papa?’ I said. ‘What did Grandmama mean about a sorry business?’
    ‘Nothing,’ he began; then he shook his head. ‘Anselm, listen. Just before you were born, some bad things happened, and your grandmother can’t help remembering them.’
    ‘What bad things?’
    Leo traced a line in the flour lying on the table. ‘Theylost their money and had to move to Citadel Street. Your mama has told you about that, hasn’t she?’
    ‘Yes, she’s told me.’
    ‘Your grandmother sometimes talks as though you had something to do with it,’ said Leo. ‘But you didn’t, and no one thinks you did – just remember that.’
    We sat for a long time listening to my mother cry. Then Leo got up and went to the bedroom door. I could hear their voices, my mother’s tear-choked and Leo’s gentle, saying, ‘Come on, Maria. Come on. Shh now.’After a long time, she stopped crying. I remained where I was, in the silent living room. I was suddenly certain of the truth. If Leo told me the misfortunes of the family weren’t anything to do with me, it meant – somehow – that they were.
    Jasmine listened to that story in silence, then lay down quietly. ‘Well,’ I said,‘that’s the best story I can make of it. It all happened so long ago, years before you were born.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said.
    ‘So?’ I said. ‘What do you think?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    The clock in the square chimed ten. ‘You should probably go to sleep,’ I said. She was already yawning. She reached up to kiss me goodnight and let me arrange the blankets around her. I turned out the lamp and left. But I could tell from the glint of her eyes as I closed the door