First Person and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t get to choose when Christmas begins and ends.
    The whisky I’d choked on had gone down the wrong way and had formed a burning gutter along the inside of my windpipe. I ignored it. I read my paper. It was about how the Gulf Stream was being eroded at an almighty rate. Soon it would be as cold as Canada here in the winter. Soon the snow would be six feet high every winter and winters would last from October till April.
    Magic roofs, the woman said. Christ. See the house with the Alfa Romeo outside it?
    The man went to the door and opened it.
    I can’t see an Alfa Romeo from here, he said.
    The third along car from the left, she said without raising her voice.
    I saw some cars, but I’ll take your word for it that one’s an Alfa, he said coming back in.
    They call him the German in the village, she said. His name’s German-sounding. He never comes in here. He hit black ice round the Ranger Bend with his two sons in the car two years ago and the son that was in the front seat died. The car hasn’t moved from outside that house since itcame back from the garage with a new side on it. He walks to work, he walks out his gate and past it every day. We all go past it every day. It’s filthy. It needs a good clean, just from sitting there in the weather. He had a German-sounding name and all, the son, I mean. He was eleven or twelve. He never came in here before it, the father I mean, the German, and he never comes in now. And the house next to his. That’s where the girl lives who’s in debt because of the pyramid.
    Egypt? the man said.
    Scheme, the woman said. Not to tell tales or nothing but I was at Asda and I heard her telling someone on her mobile that she had a dream.
    The man leaned on the bar.
    You’re a dream, Paula, he said.
    This is her dream, the woman said. Would you believe it. An angora jumper she’d bought on her credit card, listen to this, upped and left home because it was unhappy living with her. Then the jumper phoned her from the airport but because it couldn’t speak, because jumpers can’t, can they, she didn’t know what it was trying to say.
    An angry jumper? the man said.
    No, an angora jumper, she said. It’s a kind of wool, a warm expensive kind. And the house next to that. His daughter’s a druggie. Whenever she comes back to the village he won’t let her in thefront door. First she throws stones at the living room window. Then the old bloke calls the police. The house next to that. Divorced. He had an affair. She got custody. He’s a nice guy. He works in the city. She’s a teacher. She’s got a Cinquecento.
    She held up a glass, examined it against the light.
    The house next to them, she said.
    Uh huh? he said.
    That’s my house, she said.
    You’re not married, are you, Paula? the man said.
    You are, the woman said. I can tell a mile off.
    I’m not married, the man said. I’m as single as the day is long.
    This time of year you’ll be less single, then, she said.
    You what? he said.
    The days being shorter and all, the woman said.
    What you laughing at? the man said. What you looking at?
    He was talking to me. I pretended I hadn’t heard or understood.
    What’s she think she’s looking at? the man said.
    Won’t be long, the woman called over to me. Sorry to keep you waiting.
    No worries, I said. It’s fine.
    She went through the door at the back. Haveyou not thawed out the scampi? she was shouting as she went.
    The man stared at me. There was quite a lot of hostility in his stare. I could feel it without me even looking back properly. When the woman came through from the kitchen and put down in front of me, like a firm promise that I would definitely be fed, condiments, and a knife and fork both neatly wrapped in a napkin, he shouted over at me from his place at the bar.
    You
agree with me. Don’t you?
You
think it looks just like magic, he said. Like a magician off a TV programme when we were kids just, you know, waved his hand in the sky over all our home towns