After Me Comes the Flood Read Online Free PDF Page B

flapped his hands at the wall as if shooing it away. The paper shuffled noisily then settled in its regiments. ‘Imagine how loudly that’ll sound when the storm comes! I don’t want to miss it if I’m asleep.’ Alex caught his eye, and again made that faint tapping gesture on his forehead. Stifling a smile, John bent to read the nearest sheets of paper, and at once recognised them as pages torn from a Bible large enough to have rested on a pulpit lectern. Some had been cut neatly with a razor, and others were carelessly torn, bringing with them fragments of the white thread that had stitched them to the spine. On every sheet the phrase be not afraid appeared, the verse circled in uneven loops of red ink.
    ‘Are you a drinker?’ said Walker. He withdrew a bottle of whisky from underneath the table, and pulled out the stopper. In the close air of the room, the smell of peat and alcohol stung John’s eyes.
    ‘Not much of one,’ he said apologetically, turning back from the table. ‘I don’t mind the taste but it makes me dream when I’d rather not.’
    Walker’s eyes glinted gunmetal grey. ‘Don’t drink,’ he said. ‘Don’t smoke. What do you do?’ John blushed; he was conscious of having made an opening that could be probed wider if anyone cared to try. He opened the Drum tin, and picked at the shreds of tobacco on the table. ‘Alex tells me you’re being corrupted,’ he said to Elijah, polite as a remark on the weather. The older man nodded gravely and began again the distracted humming; then he sighed, and said: ‘Walker’s doing his best, and of course I’m grateful for his efforts; but I’m not taking to it as easily as I feared.’
    ‘We’ve done drink,’ said Walker, picking up a box of matches and sliding the drawer in and out of its case, ‘But not with much success. He’s far too big a man – look at him: size of an ox. Smoking makes him feel sick – he turns green before the match goes out. Gambling’s a waste of time; it’s like playing with a child. I’m running out of vices, although there’s always women and song…’ Alex set a penny spinning on its edge; the fabric of his T-shirt moved in folds and the painted eyes shifted anxiously to the door.
    ‘And do you mind my asking,’ said John, feeling his way through the conversation with outstretched hands, ‘why you’re doing all this?’ The penny rattled to a halt.
    ‘He had a wasted youth,’ said Walker, striking a match and idly watching the flame flare down to his fingertips.
    John looked at Elijah’s grave unsmiling face, and his forearms solid as oak, and could not imagine him either a youth or a wastrel.
    ‘Wasted it on God,’ said Alex, with his habit of answering unasked questions. He rolled the coin across the table with his thumb. ‘On God, and on doing good.’ At a loss, John decided he’d wait patiently for someone to say something sensible, and began neatly stacking coins. Elijah, taking pity, leant back in his chair, folded his hands across his dark-shirted stomach, and said gently: ‘You ought not to mock our visitor.’ His voice, though rather quieter than that of the other men, was deep and grave, as though it came to them from a pulpit. Walker and Alex both looked a little ashamed of themselves, and Elijah, content with his reproof, turned to John. ‘I wasn’t always like this, you know. I was a pastor, I was respected…’ He thought about this, and then said, as if it had just occurred to him: ‘Admired, actually, and I believe I was loved – but lives change, even at my age – suddenly – quite without warning…’ He paused again, and John thought he saw the man’s heavily lidded eyes brighten with moisture. ‘How can I explain? It was as if I were coming home after a long day, tired and hungry and with aching feet. And there at the end of the road was my house and all the lights were on. And there was the front door I painted and beside it the bay tree I planted the day my