A Year of Marvellous Ways Read Online Free PDF Page B

Clerkenwell Green towards the streets beyond. He managed to get to the lodging house moments before a heavy rain fell.
    He waited at a small table in the hallway as damp traffic clambered past. Overhead a body fell upon a bed and the ceiling creaked and the light above him swung to and fro, casting him intermittently into shadow. The smell of wet wool mingled with the smell of overcooked shepherd’s pie and he could feel the rise of nausea again. A young woman passed him and he tried not to look, she tried not to smile. His face was coloured by two summers of a French sun, his body shaped by war and building. His hat was French, his cigarettes too. He travelled light; at his feet a small suitcase carried all the necessities accumulated along the way. He watched the woman climb the stairs. Good legs. In the living room behind him, Louis Armstrong sang low from the wireless.
    He glanced at the telephone next to him and realised there was no one in this world he could possibly call. He felt his chest tighten, felt the languid motion of liquid beneath his feet. He leant forwards and breathed in a deep slow lungful of air.
    Room’s ready, said Mrs Marsh, the landlady, coming down the stairs and handing him a set of keys and a wad of cut-up newspaper.
    Lavatory’s outside, she said. Don’t use too much.
    Ah, England.
    The room was shabby but the sheets were clean. The reading lamp cast a pitiful light across the bed and he went to turn on the overhead light but saw that the bulb was missing. Blue flock wallpaper peeled away at the ceiling edge where a haze of mould had made its home, and a garish picture of chrysanthemums hung above the headboard. He crouched down and switched on the electric fire; one bar blushed but little heat came. He went to the window and looked out on to a dirty night made dirtier still by the drab buildings that huddled either side of him, some boarded up, one derelict. He pulled the curtains to. He took the letter out from his jacket pocket and placed it on the mantelpiece in full view. It seemed different somehow, looking at it back in England, the first part of its journey complete. What he thought was mud was actually old blood, and he caught himself apologising for not coming back sooner. It sounded like someone else’s voice. It was just all a mess, he kept saying, and he had never heard himself say that before and it shocked him because he sounded like a child, all those sorrys.
    He sat on the bed. The mattress, an unwelcome lump beneath his arse. He took out a packet of Gauloises. His hands were shaking again and he wondered when that had started. He lit a cigarette and blew the pungent smoke towards the mottled shade above. In the dingy light it swirled and hovered, thick like mist. He closed his eyes and lay back; imagined he was warm, not cold. Imagined he could hear the sound of seagulls rather than the argument next door. Imagined he was anywhere else other than here in this dismal room.
    It was after the war that he had stumbled to the south of France where the light was soft and the welcome real. He smiled, seeing again his café at sunrise, chairs laid out in the square, a small black coffee as thick as dirt, fishing boats returning to port, selling their catch of octopus and urchins on the quay. Pastel shades of fishermen’s cottages, so beautiful in the syrupy dawn light. He had hauled vegetables from vans, he had served drinks and built decks and fishing sheds, fuck, he’d done whatever they’d wanted him to do and there was always work for him, the Liberator of France. Women had kept an eye on him too, sprayed perfume in intimate places just in case, but he stayed away from the women, seeing that his dick was as soft as brie.
    Days off, he walked aimlessly around, pretending that nothing bad had happened, that the violence he had seen, the violence he had enacted on men like himself, on women like his mother, had been worth it and had left him untouched, with a heart still capable