A World of Other People Read Online Free PDF

passes. Only moments before everyone had the worn-out, drained, ghostly look that watchers take on in the early morning hours of an all-night shift. Now they are transfixed bythe spectacle before them. Mr Eliot’s face is animated. His whole being enlivened. As if he were … what? Iris toys with this ‘what’. Afraid? Excited? Awed? No, no, no … what? Then it comes to her. As if he were — and this is all read in a glance — a fox, suddenly shaking himself into life, shivering into action. Lifting his animal nose to the sky. A fox in the night, come across its prey. Even surprised by it. Yes, and Iris’s eyes turn back quickly to the passing spectacle of the flaming bomber. Yes, she tells herself, as if he were … inspired. For this is the stuff of inspiration. And at that moment her eyes too must be as bright as that flaming object up there. Are they foxes together? For she is certain it is not a bomber that Mr Eliot sees, but inspiration bursting from the low cloud on a night of dull, routine duty. Yes, it is inspiration that animates him. He is enlivened; they all are. Mesmerised by the sheer improbability of what is in front of them.
    And then it is gone. Passed from view into the streets behind the square. Sight becomes sound again. The spectacle vanishes, the drone of the plane’s one functioning engine, frantically defying gravity and holding the thing up, fading into the still night. And as it passes she watches Mr Eliot return to hiseveryday human form, a three-piece-suited former bank employee, who, when passed in the street with briefcase and black umbrella, could be just anybody.
    As soon as it is gone the watchers turn to one another. Everyone speaking at once. Everyone simultaneously bursting into babble. And all the same babble. The sheer improbability of it. Only a war, surely only a war, could throw such things up. And the talk continues, the excitement gradually leaving their voices, the babble slowly giving way to measured comment. But all the time returning to the same sentiment — the terrifying, improbable wonder of the thing.
    After five, possibly ten, minutes, when the talk is quiet and their faces have begun to re-assume their drained ghostly look, there is a sudden, distant explosion. The group falls silent. Each staring inquiringly at the others. And the question, unspoken but there to be read in each of their faces, is the same. Was that it? Did they just hear it? Was that death, announcing itself somewhere out there in the dark streets beyond the square or in some quiet, familiar park?
    The explosion, it is eventually suggested by one of the retired officers, may have been some stray bombwith a time delay. Let’s hope. It happens. Not all bombs go off immediately. Some lie in wait in the rubble for their moment. And that, this officer suggests, was just such a moment. But he eyes the horizon and that part of the city from which the explosion came with a look that says he hasn’t convinced himself, let alone anyone else.
    They gradually return to their talk. To the small talk that fills in the hours and gets everybody through a long night. But from time to time the heavy-coated figure of Mr Eliot, defying and possibly oblivious of the vertigo that afflicts him and leaves him trembling even at such modest heights, approaches the railing overlooking the square and, Iris imagines, watching him, sees it all again. You won’t forget me. You won’t forget.
    And, once again, she is convinced it is inspiration that lures him to the railing. He is silent and stands perfectly still, staring out over the park, the Museum and the low cloud in the distance. Not so much memorising it as reliving it. The experience animating him all over again. Its mystery calling him back. And when he turns from the railing and back to the group it is with the same bright eyes and animated face shesaw before: that of the fox turning its muzzle to the night sky, to the white dove, clear in the moonlight, wrapped in