Armistice Read Online Free PDF Page B

her stance slightly, and the brass knob turned easily. Still irrationally afraidof what might happen next but making herself go on, she entered the room, took a further three steps onto the heavy, dark green carpet, so that she stood just inside the threshold, the door ajar behind her. Jonathan Priest put down some papers and rose from his seat. He felt a force, a charge enter the room. Philomena. Striking, as he’d expected. More striking than in her photograph.
    Unsettled, he thought to close the door and set off from behind his desk to do so. As he moved, so did she. She stepped more fully into the room and revolved, keeping her front toward him. An image of opposing magnets flashed through his mind; like poles repel. When he reached the door they were angled slightly away from each other like two animals meeting for the first time, watching each other with their sideways eye. He shut the door and turned to her. She took half a step backward, which prompted him to think that they
had
been too close and that he should acknowledge this by also taking a step backward.
    For a few moments the muffling effects of the carpet, the heavy purple velvet curtains, the baize, the shelves full of books, combined to render the room silent apart from, it seemed to Philomena, her own and Jonathan Priest’s lifesounds: the beatings of their hearts, the passage of blood in their veins, the sighs of slightly quickened respiration.
    Jonathan was taken by her eyes, which were green, and bright when they caught the light so you felt that they were backlit. They reminded him of the luminous eyes of men in the war, who were intent on surviving some intense periodof activity, and of people he encountered through the law, ordinary citizens caught in some great upheaval.
    â€œI’m Jonathan Priest,” he said, trying to sound cheery about it.
    â€œI know,” she replied. “It says so on your door. But another man might have been using your room. But he isn’t. You’re Jonathan Priest. I know.” She faltered and glanced down at the carpet. Why was she babbling and why hadn’t she admitted that she recognized him because she’d watched him in court—and why had she just thought the word “admitted” as though she were embarrassed, had done something underhand? She knew that he was who he said he was because she’d watched him in court, but the moment she could tell him that had passed. Nerves: tell them what to do, not the other way around. She looked up at him and took a deliberate step forward. “I’m Philomena Bligh; Daniel Case’s fiancée.” And she proffered a photo of Dan pretending to smoke a stick, as if it were her calling card. Jonathan looked at it but didn’t reach for it, so it remained in the air between them until Philomena took it back and tucked it in her bag without looking at it. Jonathan had recognized Dan’s pose in the photograph. He’d seen him adopt it numerous times, not always with a stick, with whatever was to hand at the time: a cutlery fork, a Mills bomb, and several times nothing, just a mimed shape.
    Feeling under pressure, he moved further away, saying: “Please, sit down,” moving a chair for Philomena, trying to make a fresh start, begin a new exchange that wouldn’t be as disquieting.
    But “No thank you,” said Philomena, staying where she was, on her feet.
    â€œOh,” he said.
    Why wouldn’t she accept the offer of a seat? He feared he knew why; she remained on her feet the better to confront him—she knew his secret. But how could she know that about him? Get a grip. Nobody knew that about him.
    You don’t know that about me, or, if you do, are unable to communicate, which is not quite the same; it leaves me with my fear, the knowledge that it’s possible that you know
.
    He let go of the chair and there was a catch in his throat that he had to cough out before he could say: “How