Birthday Read Online Free PDF

don’t we, duck?’
    â€˜Aye, and a right bleddy ta-tar it is, lifting me in and out of this thing.’ He looked at Brian, ignoring Jenny. ‘I ain’t been in the White Horse for years. Not that I could put much back if I did. Apart from having to watch my weight, I’ve got too many pills inside to swill ale down as well. Still, I can let myself go a bit when I’m in Ingoldmells. When I’m away from home, if you see what I mean. I don’t have Jenny fussing over me every second of the day and night. It’s the only time we get a rest from each other, and I’m sure she deserves it. I know I do.’
    She kissed him on the forehead. ‘It makes a change. You like to have young nurses pushing you up and down the seafront, don’t you? And all that sea air! You do look a lot better when you get back.’
    â€˜Jenny takes me, and then she fetches me. Anyway,’ George said to him, ‘you manage to get around a bit?’
    Brian set his empty cup on the table. ‘When I can. I drove through Yugoslavia to Greece last year, and put the car on a ship to Israel. It was a treat, steaming through the islands.’
    â€˜Did you look in on Libya? Or Crete, where we changed ships as prisoners of bloody war.’
    â€˜It wasn’t on our way. We stopped an hour or two at Cyprus, but there wasn’t time to get off.’
    â€˜I’d like to go back and see Tobruk.’ He gazed at the window. ‘On the other hand, I wouldn’t. You can’t go back, can you? Not if you don’t want to you can’t. Or you can’t if you’re knackered like this. It would be funny if I did, though. Still, wanting to satisfies me. As long as you can dream you can tell yourself you’re still alive.’
    He was sorry for George, because who wouldn’t be? But you couldn’t tell him so to his face. George was well aware of what everybody felt when they looked at him, knew they had to feel sorry, nothing else they could do. George would feel the same for somebody like himself if he was all fit and full of beans, or even if he was all fit and full of sludge. He’d much rather be the one who was feeling sorry, and if it happened that he was such a person he wouldn’t say he felt sorry for fear of being told to fuck off, though he’d still be over the moon at feeling it.
    So the projection bounced back at Brian, to inform him that there was no need to feel sorry for George, or feel bad because you weren’t a cripple as well. George was done for, and comments of sympathy would be no help. He too had a roof over his head, all the food he could get into himself, any clothes he thought of wearing and, under the circumstances, the finest care in the world. He was all right for as long as Jenny stayed by his side, so it was her you should feel sorry for, and how could he not, heart bleeding drop by drop into his liver at her fate, and though it was proof that he could still feel pity for somebody he much preferred dealing with the emotional turmoil that came from himself, always useful for channelling into his work.
    She stroked her husband’s pale hand. ‘Maybe one day we’ll win a lottery, then we’ll hire a private plane and go to Tobruk.’
    â€˜Don’t be daft.’ He pushed the hand away, smiling at Brian as if to apologize, though not to Jenny, for his abruptness.
    She didn’t have much of a life, shackled to his side and waiting for any little request that might pop into his circumscribed brain, but she was glad at hearing Brian tell of his drive through the Balkans, the description of a squalid night-stop in Macedonia exaggerated into as much of a narrative as would interest George and amuse Jenny. Set apart from the world, no such talk could lift them out of their imprisonment. By now he had taken in all he could, and had to leave, Jenny offering to show him out because she wanted to see what sort of a car