The Heroes' Welcome Read Online Free PDF Page B

us.’
    Tom did not want to go. Daddy did not want anyone. That was why he had gone into his study. He didn’t know why Mummy didn’t understand something so simple. He wished Mummy would go behind
her
polished door, so that he, in the absence of Riley and Nadine, could go and sit in Max’s basket with him.
    They approached the study. Julia smiled down at Tom as she knocked on the door. There was no response.
    ‘Well!’ she said and, almost shamed, she opened it.
    Peter was sitting in his armchair, an old leathery thing, shiny with the polishing of ancestral buttocks in ancient tweed. He’d lit the lamp and was reading the paper, his long fingers holding the pages up and open. There was no fire, and the whisky glass beside him was already smeared.
    ‘Darling?’ she said.
    ‘Which darling?’ he said, not looking up.
    ‘You!’ she said. ‘Of course.’
    ‘Oh! I couldn’t tell. You call everybody darling.’ He moved the paper half an inch and glanced at her. ‘Well?’ he said, glittering.
    She dropped Tom’s hand, and went away. The door swung shut behind her and so Tom stood there until Peter called him over, ruffled his white-blond hair and, finally, said, ‘Run along, old chap.’
    *
    Most days Julia worked herself up to try again.
    ‘Peter?’
    A grunt.
    ‘There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about.’
    A further, more defensive grunt.
    ‘It’s—’ from Julia, and at the same time from Peter: ‘Well, whatever it is, I’m sure it’s my fault.’
    ‘I wasn’t thinking about anything being … fault,’ she said.
    Silence.
    He had not looked up. It wasn’t the paper now, it was Homer. What might that mean?
Why would he prefer to sit and read all day instead of being with us? Or going to the office like a proper man? It’s not as if he hasn’t read the
Odyssey
before …
    His hair is looking thin.
    He’s only thirty-three.
    She let out a quick, exasperated sigh.
    ‘Peter darling, please listen to me.’
    He turned, put down his book, looked up, and said, coldly and politely, with no tone of query in his voice, ‘What.’
    Oh Peter!
    ‘I just want to know what happened!’ she burst out. ‘What happened to you?’
    ‘What happened?’ he said. He gave a little laugh of surprise. ‘Why, my dear, the Great War happened. Have you not heard about it? You might look it up. The Great War. The clue’s in the name. Now go away.’
    She swallowed.
    She still tuned his cello most days. He hadn’t looked at it since he’d been back. But he might.
    He used to sing and make up little songs all the time. All the time! It was so sweet.
    *
    A few days later Julia knocked on Peter’s door again.
    Go away
,
he thought.
Go away.
    ‘What I was wondering,’ she said, loitering in his doorway, neither in nor out, ‘no, don’t say anything, please – I just … wanted to know what you thought.’
    ‘About?’ Peter said. He didn’t look up. Not out of unkindness, or lack of concern, but out of inability. Julia’s desperate goodwill tormented him – these constant interruptions – and then he was so foul to her – and her face – expressionless, taut, inhuman almost with those terribly human eyes glowing out – her face was a perpetual reproach.
Look at her
, he thought, though he couldn’t look at her
.
    ‘I was wondering,’ she was saying, ‘about before the war …’
    He raised his head and stared at her like a hyena about to howl.
    ‘Why on earth would you do that?’ he said.
    ‘I’m trying to remember whether we were ever happy.’
    You want to remember happiness? Jesus Christ, woman, if one remembers happiness—
    ‘And whether my love for you is based on anything. I can’t remember. It’s been so long. I want to know. Because I think perhaps we were.’
    Oh, God.
    ‘So what?’ he said, bewildered. ‘That’s the past. It’s dead.’ And –
Ha! What a great big lie that is!
he thought.
If only it were dead. But it’s not even past.
The past visited him most