Somebody Loves Us All Read Online Free PDF

are!’ Her voice itself not just the echo but the actual voice of the girl she’d been.
    That was the old house. Now you had to buzz people in. They stood in the street, looking up.
    After washing her breakfast things, Teresa had left the apartment building by the stairs; she was still not quite used to the lift. The alley was deserted. The shops weren’t open yet and she walked in a large pointless circle, around the waterfrontand back to Courtenay Place, taking in almost nothing. There was a small man in a yellow woollen hat juggling tennis balls, grinning at her. Had he been left over from the night before? Yet he wasn’t drunk because he was keeping four balls, or even five, in the air. She didn’t want to pause and count. She turned away from him as she passed and became aware that he was following her. He was bouncing a ball in time with her steps. After a few paces he stopped. In her head ran the same few words. Vendredi. Novembre. Mercredi. The thermometer’s mercury again, the sounds of each word seeming silvery, globular, liquid, as they slid backwards into each other in a sort of song that was tiring, catchy, impossible to get rid of.
     
    Leaving Moore Wilson’s with the supplies, she felt her teeth become strange, heavy, partly locked, her tongue caught behind them, its tip pressed hard against the roof of her mouth. Her jaw was suddenly tight. She didn’t seem to be willing any of this. A kind of paralysis, she thought. Stroke. I’m having a stroke. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
    That the idea failed to bring her to her knees gave her a strengthening boost of pride; even if she were dying, there was a decent streak of realism in her. My speech has been affected in the direction of the Romance languages. And still she was able to swing her arms, carry her shopping, walk along this Wellington street. She didn’t have the nice bag with its elegant scrollwork, the surprising teeshirt, the fixed wavy hair—there were no fontaines or montagnes—but she had still become this, a slightly French woman on her way home.
    She moved through the covered car park with her bags, a little fearful, but determined. A van had to stop for her though she was only aware of it after she’d crossed in front of it. That woke her up to the world. The dread of collapsing in public did it. She’d seen these women, lying on crowded footpaths, their sweaty heads propped up on someone’s balled-up jacket, semi-conscious, apologising; the deathless instinct to cover one’sknees. Let me go in my own place, she prayed. She was carrying the world’s most expensive sausages, chocolate bread.
    People passed her, going to work. Gusts of wind struck at her in contradictory ways, wrapping the plastic shopping bags against her legs, and then releasing her, giving her a shove. Off you go. Her step was steady and fierce. She realised she was going past Helena’s work and she kept her head down. She didn’t want to meet the kind Helena now. Helena was a busy lady too. Such a meeting might easily knock Teresa off her feet completely. The temptation would be to fall weeping and close-mouthed into those arms. Unfair unfair.
    She glanced up at the sign: Capital Language School. The irony stabbed at her, pin-like in the tops of her arms, a joke injection. Languages. A Japanese girl waited on the steps, cuddling her backpack to her chest, her smile fixed in terror and uncertainty. Perhaps it was her first day and she’d just stepped off the plane. The girl’s eyes widened as they met Teresa’s. Don’t ask me a question, Teresa thought, ducking off. Where is art gallery? Look at weeping willow. Reaping rillow .
    She walked on for a moment, thinking of the people she hoped not to run into.
    Then Teresa turned back to see whether the Japanese girl on the steps of the school needed her help but she was gone and under this blow Teresa bent lower in her limbs. How heavy these best sausages were. Pith and rind were swimming and sinking