Divided Kingdom Read Online Free PDF Page B

immediately.
    â€˜There was rioting in the Yellow Quarter last night,’ he said. ‘The police used tear-gas and rubber bullets.’ He mentioned a place I’d never heard of ‘I used to live round there, when I was in my twenties.’
    He wasn’t talking to anybody in particular. He was just talking. As I watched him, it struck me that he might be addressing the space that had formerly been occupied by Jean, his wife.
    â€˜There are tanks on the streets,’ he said. ‘There are
curfews.’
This last word came out high-pitched, a measure of his disbelief.
    Marie was slouched over the table, face propped on one hand, eyes lowered. Her other hand rested loosely against a mug of tea, which she had yet to touch. I had heard her come in late the night before, swearing under her breath as she collided with the linen chest outside her room.
    â€˜What’s a curfew?’ I asked eventually.
    In truth, I wasn’t all that curious. I was just trying to fit in. The events that had upset Victor seemed academic to me, remote, even foreign. Perhaps I lacked the proper context – after all, I had spent five months in the middle of nowhere, shielded from the worst of what was going on – or perhaps it was the eerie matter-of-factness of a child who, having experienced a trauma of his own, decides simply to get on with the business of living, which in my case meant acquainting myself with my new environment. And there was so much to get used to, so much to explore.
    The house itself was more than a hundred years old. Appropriately enough, an antiques dealer occupied the ground floor, though the over-elaborate and gloomy furniture didn’t sell, and a health-food shop soon took its place. We lived in the maisonette above. The staircase that led up from the pavement was dark and uneven, with creaking wooden steps, and the walls bulged, as if, like bodies, they contained a variety of soft yet vitalorgans. There was a sitting-room on the first floor at the front and three smaller rooms – kitchen, store-room and toilet – at the back. From the sitting-room I could look down into Hope Street, a narrow, bustling parade of shops, and if I leaned out far enough I could see the pub on the corner, the Peacock, where Victor sometimes stopped for a pint on his way home from work. Climb another flight of stairs, which felt still more rickety, and you would find three bedrooms and a bathroom. Victor spent most evenings up there with his door ajar and his radio tuned to the concerts of classical music that were broadcast live from the capital. He had become involved in redesigning a section of the Red Quarter’s railway network, a task which he appeared to relish. When going to bed, I would often glance into his room, and there he would be, poised over a sheet of tracing-paper with a pencil. His detailed maps of electrical systems covered every available surface, the long, slim cardboard cylinders in which his finished drawings travelled to and from the office leaning against the wall in the corner like so many snooker cues.
    One night, though, just a few weeks after my arrival, I stopped in his doorway and saw a high-heeled silver sandal on the table, illuminated by a lamp. Victor was sitting in front of it, hunched over, a pair of kitchen scissors in one hand. When he sensed my presence, he almost jumped out of his chair, trying at the same time to hide the sandal under a newspaper. ‘Off – off to bed, Thomas?’ he stammered. ‘Well, goodnight. Sleep well.’ I looked at him for a moment longer, then I, too, said goodnight. I couldn’t expect to understand everything about these people, I thought to myself, not all at once, and there were probably questions I would never be able to ask.
    Moving away across the landing and down a short corridor, I passed Marie’s room. I would often pause to gaze in wonder at her clothes, which would be lying in a tangle on the