Absolute Hush Read Online Free PDF Page A

like, ‘You’ve got plenty of rooms. They should sleep apart.’
    Elizabeth had considered, briefly, taking Mrs Lovage’s advice but a vision of Sissy’s tight face and eyes bright with anger came into her mind, and she dropped the idea. It was not exactly that Elizabeth was afraid of Sissy. More that she could not bear the unpleasantness. Sissy would freeze into an angrymood, and remain in it for weeks. It was easier to leave the girl alone.
    That night Sissy sat up, looked at George sleeping, and felt a shiver of thrill at the idea of this plump, quiet boy being filled, unknown to anyone but her, with a desire to destroy. She gazed into his pale wide face and tried to understand his motives. She stared at his closed eyes and wondered what they were seeing behind their heavy pale-lashed lids. She leant her ear to his nostrils and listened to the soft child breaths passing in and out. Perhaps he was dreaming of crackling flames and people screaming. It excited Sissy to imagine fat George quietly moving through the world and sowing destruction. One day, she knew, it was going to end in trouble, and the idea made her glad. She thought this must be because the adults in her life were so destructive. They tossed bombs on to each other’s towns, killing children, and thought nothing of burning to death young men with nervous eyelids and bushy eyebrows.
    Once she and George had lain on their stomachs, looked through the warped ceiling-boards of the room below, and watched their mother embracing Teddy. They had both been naked, had grasped each other not only with their arms, but with their lips and thighs as well, and the tangle of nude body had rocked and thrashed and tossed as though on the waves of some violent sea.
    â€˜Why are they groaning?’ asked George. ‘Are they in agony?’ You could almost see him searching for the fire that had caused the pain and the excitement.
    â€˜Shh,’ said Sissy. She knew that it was love, not pain, that made Teddy and her mother groan.
    Elizabeth, although she had threatened to eat a hundred aspirins for the sake of a chopped cucumber, had not even mentioned killing herself because Teddy had been burnt to death; but Sissy thought that if
she
ever loved anyone until she moaned, not even a thousand ring doves would make her forget. The idea of George prowling the world of adults withhis matches and his ruthless joy seemed proper vengeance on a generation of grown-ups who did not love properly.
    Sissy was in the Apostle Bedroom, skinning a dead fish she had found in the moat. She had planned to cure it with salt and make it into a purse. She heard the sound of fire roaring, dropped the strong smelling fish body, and, spilling salt, rushed over to the window. The thatched cottage in the High Street was burning.
    She heard her brother’s heavy footsteps tearing up the stairs. He flung open the door and stood there gasping, black streaks across his face, his eyes bright with excitement, his body shaking with terror.
    Panting, he told her, ‘I didn’t do it, Sissy! I didn’t do it!’
    As Sissy shook old fish liver from her fingers, the sky grew bright with flames and she could hear the distant sound of fire engines approaching.
    â€˜Shall we go and look?’ George whispered. ‘Do you think it would be safe to watch from the window?’
    They went down into the big drawing-room and saw the sky fill with pink light and pieces of debris. The villagers were shouting and the sound of fire engines grew louder.
    Elizabeth was in her bath and, hearing the clamour, came running into her bedroom, wrapped in a towel. She leaned out of the window, and tears suddenly sprang into her eyes at the sight of the destruction of the cottage.
    She had felt a flash of envy for a sensitivity she suspected she herself lacked when George had told her about the Hindu widows. She had felt anxious, too, wondering if her son had made the remark because he