The Courage Consort Read Online Free PDF Page B

them all, he was as baby-faced at fifty-five as he'd been when the Courage Consort first formed. He'd always been immense, too, though perhaps marginally bigger now than a couple of decades ago. Quietly competent and poised in every sphere of life, he had just this one area of weakness, his Achilles' stomach. Each concert tour brought more surprises from his store of hitherto unsuspected talents—last year he'd dismantled the engine of a broken-down tour bus and got it going with a necktie and two wedding rings—but he just wasn't terribly good at feeding himself.
    'Hello,' he said, and a rumbling noise not a million miles removed from the moans he contributed to
Partitum Mutante
issued from somewhere inside him.
    Catherine had no doubt he could have solved whatever physical and intellectual challenges a cooking pot and a box of oats might pose, but, plainly, there was some reason why he couldn't bring himself to tackle them. He looked at Catherine, his eyes sincere in their supplication. He was telling her, with that look, that he loved his own wife dearly, but that his wife was in London and Catherine was here with him, and what were they going to do about it?
    'Would you like some porridge, Ben?' she asked him.

    'Yes,' he immediately replied, colour rising to his great cheeks.
    'Then I'll make us both some,' she said.
    It turned out that the Courage Consort had already been lacking its contralto even while its soprano slept the morning away. At first light, Dagmar had cycled off into the forest with Axel, and had not yet returned. Perhaps she'd gone to Mar-tinekerke or Duidermonde to fetch more supplies; perhaps she was merely exercising. She was gone, anyway, so Roger was typing correspondence on one of the computers, Julian was reading a paperback in the sitting room, and Ben had been waiting around for someone to offer him breakfast.
    'Say "whoa,"' said Catherine as she began to pour the milk.
    'Whoa,' he murmured regretfully, when the bowl threatened to overflow.
    Overhearing the sounds of nurture, Julian found his way back to the kitchen, where he'd fed himself on tinned rice pudding and coffee a few hours earlier. He was dressed in black jeans, a black T-shirt, black socks. From the top of his blow-dried head to where his ankles began, he looked like a French film star.
    'Morning,' he grinned, still holding his book aloft, as if he'd just glanced up from his reading and noticed the kitchen had sidled up to him.
    'Hello, Julian,' said Catherine, trying not to be sour-faced as the moment of benign simplicity—the bowl of hot oatmeal, herself as provider, Ben Lamb as mute recipient—was ruined. As Julian stepped casually between herself and Ben, she noted that the book spreadeagled in his elegant hands was some sort of thriller with a frightened female face on the cover, and she suddenly thought,
I really, really dislike this man.
    'Julian, would you like some porridge?'

    During the first five words of her question his eyes lit up, but they dulled in disappointment when she reached the end.
    'No thanks,' he said. 'There's nothing … ah … more substantial is there?'
    'I don't know,' said Catherine, gazing wistfully at Ben spooning the steaming
havermout
into his mouth. 'Porridge is quite filling, isn't it?'
    'I was thinking of eggs, actually,' confessed Julian.
    'Perhaps Dagmar will bring some back with her.'
    'Mm.' Plainly, for Julian, the prospect of asking Dagmar to share food with him was not a realistic one.
    Scraping the remnants of the
havermout
into a bowl for herself, Catherine asked Julian how he'd slept.
    'Lay awake half the night again,' he grumbled, settling himself on a stool. His paperback nestled on his lap, its glossy image of a wide-eyed beauty staring up from between his slim black thighs.
    'You heard the cries, then?' said Catherine.
    'Cries?'
    'Cries, out there in the forest somewhere.'
    'Probably Dagmar's baby,' he suggested. 'Or bats.'
    She could tell he hadn't heard