The Beacon Read Online Free PDF Page B

bacteria and microbes, how the air flees the lungs as oxygen evaporates, how decay begins, taking over what is left.
    She could see it.
    The body on the bed did not belong there now, did not belong in this place at all, and she could no longer relate to it. She reached out to touch one of the hands but drew back. She had nothing to do with this strange thing.
    She switched off the lamp and closed the door, leaving it to itself and to the ongoing work that death must do.
    In the kitchen she poured a beaker of water. The wind had got up a little more and was rattling the larder window. She took the water to the table and sat down.
    She knew what she was doing. Everything had changed the moment her mother had died, but now it had settled and she clung on to what there was because once the calls had been made the next change would be greater and she did not feel ready for it.
    She was fifty and felt older, felt a thousand years old and weary, and how would her life be now? She sensed that there would be things she might have to fight for and she had done all the fighting years ago.
    There would be no fighting with Colin. He was too like their father, needing peace and ready to pay for it. Berenice would fight in her own clever, soft-footed way, the blade always concealed.
    But Frank? What would he do?
    Surely Frank would not come. He had too much to lose in a fight which must be all three of them combined against him.
    Frank would not come.
    The telephone was in the hall. It was put there when they first had a telephone thirty years ago, put where people used to put their telephones but where no one kept them now, out among the coats and in a draught. She had thought for a long time that one day she would have it moved, into the kitchen or the front room, but making changes to the way thehouse was and had always been had not been easy, even when her mother had finally taken to her bed.
    But now, May thought . . . now.
    The only change had been when the old heavy black receiver had to be changed for a push-button model, and in a moment of self-will, May had chosen cream because a cream telephone seemed stylish. But all a cream telephone did was become grubby.
    It was grubby now.
    ‘Hello?’
    It was Eve who answered, dark-haired, brown-faced Eve who had been born old, like a hobgoblin in a story and then had had to grow into her ancient looks. Eve had become a nurse, abandoned nursing, married a farmer, abandoned him, moved away, come back and married the other stockman who worked alongside her father, and who was twenty years older. They lived in the next door cottage which was small and dark like Eve, and where they were as happy as children.
    ‘It’s Amma.’ Amma for Aunt May. Even now the children were not allowed to call her May.
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    It must have sounded in her voice. ‘Is Colin there?’
    ‘I’ll get him. What’s the matter?’
    ‘Let me talk to Colin.’
    Eve made an impatient sound with her tongue against her teeth.
    ‘May?’
    ‘She’s gone.’
    She heard the long sigh first, then he asked if the doctor was there.
    ‘No. I don’t have to get him tonight, do I? I don’t think so. I’ll wait till morning.’
    ‘Whatever you think. You know best, May.’
    I don’t, she thought. I have never known best, I have always made the wrong decision, been asked and not known the answer.
    ‘Do you want me to come now?’
    He should have said, ‘I’ll come,’ not asked her to choose. She could not expect him to drive thirty miles when there was nothing he could do because it was done. Everything.
    ‘Have you told Berenice?’
    ‘I rang you first.’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You shouldn’t be there on your own with . . . with her. Shouldn’t you get the doctor now, then the undertaker would . . . shouldn’t you do that?’
    ‘I don’t think so. There’s no urgency. She’s dead,Colin. She can surely stay here the one night in her bed.’
    Though as she spoke, as she