Magnificent Joe Read Online Free PDF

for this eventuality – I pull out a tube of strong glue I nicked from work a few weeks ago and hack off the nozzle with my knife.
    â€˜Is that special lino glue?’
    â€˜Er…not really, Mrs Joe. It’s…all purpose.’
    â€˜Is it going to work?’
    Of course it’s going to work. I pity the poor bastard who has to scrape this shite off.
    â€˜Aye, there’s no doubt about that. You sometimes have to be a bit creative when you’re dealing with the older houses.’ I try to sound like I know my stuff as I ram the tube into my caulk gun with authority.
    â€˜Not everything in here’s shagged out, son.’
    I feel the tight heat of a smile like the first crease across dried-out Monday-morning boot leather. ‘Oh, aye, there’s plenty of life in the old place yet.’
    â€˜Don’t you forget it.’
    â€˜No danger of that, Mrs Joe.’
    I twist to face her again; she looks less tired now. She smiles back at me. ‘Well, you’re better mannered than he was, despite it all.’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Your dad.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜You look like him.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜You do.’
    Her eyes are focused elsewhere. I realize that she is seeing something in the past as if there were nothing between then and now. I have to turn away from her and stare at the exposed floor. A white slug lands right in front of me with a faint putt . Glue. I glance at the caulk gun in my right hand. I must have squeezed the handle; the stuff oozes from the nozzle like thick, plastic toothpaste. The spot on the floor resolves itself into a shallow dome the size of a tuppence and I feel stupid.
    â€˜Yeah, I know.’
    She is quiet now. In my hand, a longing stirs at the fingers and ripples up my arm, in one of those strange urges for a cigarette that suddenly come from nowhere even though I gave up two years ago. It was the best thing I ever did.
    â€”
    After her moment of reverie, Mrs Joe went and sat in the living room while I stuck down the lino. In the end, it didn’t take me very long, but when I looked in on her, she was asleep. So much for my cup of tea. There was no sign of Joe and I left quietly, but I didn’t want to go home, so I left my bag just inside the gate and set off the wrong way.
    I tramp over the fields. This path is familiar to me, but it must be years since I last walked along it. I’m not a big walker, and I don’t have any of the other reasons – a dog, someone to walk with, or a place at the other end where I need to be – so I’ve never really been out here again. When we were kids, though, me, Geoff, Barry, and Mac used to play out here all the time. At least, that’s the way I remember it.
    The field is pasture and a little boggy, so I can see footprints on the path. I didn’t come looking for solitude, or even expect it, but the evidence of human activity hauls me into the present. The cold wind blusters around my face and cuts through my jeans. Two fields ahead of me looms a large stand of trees, and I see that although I set off with no particular destination in mind, I am walking to the ponds. I stop. From horizon to horizon unbroken grey cloud flows across the sky, but I feel that it will not rain, so instead of turning back, I carry on.
    It doesn’t take me long to cover the distance to the copse. I follow the path through the trees and then I’m there. The surface of the water is covered in dead leaves; sycamore and oak spread out flat and slick in an oily yellow skin. Even with this wind the place smells strongly of their decay. Surrounded by bare trees, all the omens are of death, but I know that really the pond is alive; I used to come here as a kid to collect frogspawn.
    Through a break in the leaves, I see that there is something in the water: a bicycle. I can’t understand how or why anyone brought a bike out here. Any way you come you’d have to lift it