No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

clear out?”
    He smiled, shook his head, then shook my hand. “Where’d we go?” he asked. “And anyway, Lily-Anne’s still here. Sometimes in the night, when it’s hot and I have trouble sleeping, I can feel she’s very close to me. Anyway, I know you mean well.”
    That was that. I turned the car round and drove off, acknowledged his final wave by lifting my hand briefly, so that he’d see it.
    Then, driving round a gentle bend and as the old man sideslipped out of my rearview mirror, I saw Ben. He was crossing the road in front of me. I applied my brakes, let him get out of the way. It could only be Ben, I supposed: a big Alsatian, shaggy, yellow eyed. And yet I caught only a glimpse; I was more interested in controlling the car, in being sure that he was safely out of the way.
    It was only after he’d gone through the hedge and out of sight into a field that an afterimage of the dog surfaced in my mind: the way he’d seemed to limp—his belly hairs, so long as to hang down and trail on the ground, even though he wasn’t slinking—a bright splash of yellow on his side, as if he’d brushed up against something freshly painted.
    Perhaps understandably, peculiar images bothered me all the way back to London: yes, and for quite a long time after…
     

     
    Before I knew it a year had gone by, then eighteen months, and memories of those strange hours spent in Easingham were fast receding. Faded with them was that promise I had made myself to visit my parents more frequently. Then I got a letter to say my mother hadn’t been feeling too well, and another right on its heels to say she was dead. She’d gone in her sleep, nice and easy. This last was from a neighbor of theirs: my father wasn’t much up to writing right now, or much of anything else for that matter; the funeral would be on…at…etc, etc.
    God!—how guilty I felt driving up there, and more guilty with every mile that flashed by under my car’s wheels. And all I could do was choke the guilt and the tears back and drive and feel the dull, empty ache in my heart that I knew my father would be feeling in his. And of course that was when I remembered old Garth Bentham in Easingham, and my “advice” that he should get out of that place. It had been a cold sort of thing to say to him. Even cruel. But I hadn’t known that then. I hadn’t thought.
    We laid Ma to rest and I stayed with the Old Man for a few days, but he really didn’t want me around. I thought about saying: “Why don’t you sell up, come and live with us in London.” We had plenty of room. But then I thought of Garth again and kept my mouth shut. Dad would work it out for himself in the fullness of time.
    It was late on a cold Wednesday afternoon when I started out for London again, and I kept thinking how lonely it must be in old Easingham. I found myself wondering if Garth ever took a belt or filled a pipe, if he could even afford to, and…I’d promised him that if I was ever back up this way I’d look him up, hadn’t I? I stopped at an off-license, bought a bottle of half-decent whisky and some pipe and rolling baccy, and a carton of two hundred cigarettes and a few cigars. Whatever was his pleasure, I’d probably covered it. And if he didn’t smoke, well I could always give the tobacco goods to someone who did.
    My plan was to spend just an hour with Garth, then head for the motorway and drive to London in darkness. I don’t mind driving in the dark, when the weather and visibility are good and the driving lanes all but empty, and the night music comes sharp and clear out of the radio to keep me awake.
    But approaching Easingham down that neglected cul-de-sac of a road, I saw that I wasn’t going to have any such easy time of it. A storm was gathering out to sea, piling up the thunderheads like beetling black brows all along the twilight horizon. I could see continuous flashes of lightning out there, and even before I reached my destination I could hear the high seas