Empty World Read Online Free PDF Page B

stayed blank until Neil switched it off. He wondered if that was temporary, too, or if tele­vision had closed down for the duration of the crisis. Not that it mattered.
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    The following morning his grandfather was dead. Neil knew what would happen if he contacted the emergency burial service: the truck would come round and a couple of men would haul out the sheeted body and put it with the others for consignment to Rye. He could not bear the thought.
    He told his grandmother what he proposed, and she turned from looking at the dead face to nod her head. There was a herbaceous border where thedigging was fairly easy, and it was close to the back door. There had been rain in the night and the morning was raw and damp, but he found himself sweating as he dug. His grandmother came out of the house and stood close by. She said:
    â€œI’d help, if I could.”
    Neil paused, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
    â€œGo inside, and rest.”
    She looked down at the trench.
    â€œYou’ll make it deep enough?”
    Deep enough for two, she meant. He said again, but more gently:
    â€œGo inside, Grandma. I’ll call you.”
    When it was done she insisted on helping him to carry out the body and lay it in the grave. She picked up a clod of earth, crumbled it, and threw it on the sheet. She said: “Goodbye, Ted,” then turned away and went back into the house. Neil stayed and covered the body with earth.
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    Neil buried his grandmother a week later. During that time he did not go out except to get food for them both. There were difficulties about that: oneof the shops had reopened, but had scarcely anything on its shelves. He walked out across the fields and found a farmhouse. It seemed to have been deserted: there was no sign of human life and no-one came when he knocked. After he had done that several times without answer, he tried the door. It was only on the latch, and he pushed it open.
    A smell of death contended with older smells of polish and leather and cooking, but he saw no bodies downstairs and did not venture higher. In the kitchen there was spoiled food, but beyond there was a larder which yielded cheese and potatoes and a large bowl of eggs which, when he tried them in water, showed their relative freshness by sinking.
    He made up a bundle of what he wanted and left three pound notes on the kitchen table, weighted down by a potato. He doubted if there would be anyone to collect them, but it seemed the proper thing to do. He had, anyway, more money than he knew what to do with: his grandfather had drawn several hundred pounds out of the bank a few days before his death.
    Going out, he was confronted in the yard by a cow. It mooed hoarsely and sounded distressed, he thought.Its udders were heavily swollen. Neil studied the beast for a moment, then went back into the kitchen. The bucket he had noticed standing upside down on a table looked clean, but he washed it out anyway.
    The cow was still there. It lowered its head as he advanced on it, which he found a bit unnerving, but did not move. He spoke to it reassuringly in a low voice, calling it Daisy, and positioned the bucket underneath. The cow mooed again when he put his hands to her udders, and shifted her feet. He thought she was about to make off and had mixed feelings: there was a good supply of tinned milk at home. But she stayed where she was, and his awkward pulling motions, copied from someone he had seen on a TV feature, produced thin uneven squirts of milk which splashed noisily into the bucket, or sometimes missed it and hit the ground.
    The operation would have been a lot easier with a milking stool, but it didn’t seem worth while going to look for one. They probably didn’t exist, now that cows were milked by machine. He had to kneel, with his face against the animal’s warm heaving side, shifting position when he got cramped.
    With the bucket