Other People Read Online Free PDF Page B

solidified, as if damaged tissue were being welded back on to her like honey-cells. Even now she knew that language would stand for or even contain some order, an order that could not possibly subsist in anything she had come across so far—that shadow driving across a colourless wall, cars queueing in their tracks, the haphazard murmur of the air which gave pain when you tried to follow it with your mind ... Reading might well hold the key to any order the world disclosed, Mary felt; and she was keen to exercise this new skill of hers. There wasn't much to read in the public house. Only a few stark announcements of exchangeability, and one or two things like 'you don't have to be mad to work here— but it HELPS!' and 'all right, sojou 're difficult. with a little effort, you could be IMPOSSIBLE!'
    ''Fuck. Whoops!' said Sharon. 'Beg pardon. Gone on my dress. Don't usually use bad language. We all do it though, don't we. We do, don't we.'
    Sharon went to the bar again. She was gone quite a long time, but she came back without a new Stingo. She sat down heavily. 'Fuck,' she repeated. After a while, and with an expression of dignified appraisal, she began to contemplate Mary's unattended glass. Her hand moved across the table. 'I don't know why it's so dead in here,' she said.
    Mary looked briefly round the room and listened to it. She wondered why people kept using that word fuck and its cognates quite so often. It wasn't like all the other words, although the people who used it pretended that it was. And they used it so often that the air seemed to quack.
    In the centre of the room two men were pushing one another while several onlookers shouted encouragingly. But you could hardly hear them anyway. Mary thought: If this is what it's like when it's dead, what's it going to be like when it's alive?
    'I mean, but with some blokes,' Sharon went on sadly, 'well—it's like electricity, isn't it? Bigger than both of you, you know. I get that electricity thing with quite a few blokes. With most blokes, actually. Just lucky, I suppose. I—' A harsh shout jumped from between Sharon's lips. She had clamped a hand over her mouth, but just a second too late. 'Ooh... Excuse me. I mean, I just like a good time. No harm in it. But they're buggers sometimes, aren't they Mary? The trouble is, and I've been with an awful lot of blokes, is that if you go with a lot of them they give you these diseases. You're supposed to stop then. My trouble is—I can't! Why should I? I mean I'm a healthy young girl!' Tears began to run unhindered down her cheeks. Mary wondered whether other people often just melted like this. Sharon sniffed and said, 'When I was little I was going to be a nun when I grew up. My mum said I'd look lovely in a nun's veil. I can, I mean it's still—never too late, is it Mary? It's never too late to change. And then you have all those years of happiness to look forward to, don't you? Father Hoolihan was the only man who ever really understood me. I'm going to go and— There they are! Yoo-hoo, Jock! Jock, we're over here!'
    Two men joined them, and Mary saw that she was in quite serious trouble. For one thing, it was instantly clear that Sharon was no longer on her side, if indeed she had ever been. Sharon had brought her as far as she was going to bring her, and now Mary was on her own again. Sharon wasn't on Mary's side any more. Sharon was on the other side.
    Not that the men weren't sufficiently alarming in their own right. Lumpy Jock was tall and slow and much too big. His black hair was coated with wet light. Even though he said little, his mouth remained open at all times, the tongue idling on the lower teeth. It was hard to tell how much danger Jock contained. His companion, who went by the name of Trev, was an altogether more effective-looking unit. He was small and hard, packed tight into his clothes; he gave off a freckled, caramel sheen all over his body, a sheen just like his smell; and his hair was dirty orange