The Kind Folk Read Online Free PDF

"I'm sorry, you're a relative, aren't you?"
    By now Luke has concluded that his looking like the Arnolds is one reason why he was misidentified after he was born. "You can tell."
    "Do you mind if I ask what took him?"
    "A heart attack. Two of them."
    "Didn't he know to be careful of himself? I suppose that's men. He'd been drinking a lot, you know."
    "I didn't," Luke says and feels inadequate.
    "He'd let the whole street know when he came back from the pub. He was carrying on to nobody at all."
    Luke feels compelled to ask "What was he saying?"
    "From what we could make out he wanted somebody to stay away from someone else. You'd have thought they were there, he was being so fierce with them."
    Luke imagines Terence's voice resounding in the darkness of the arch that's taller than his house. "We'll pray for him," the woman says and indicates the church.
    As Luke thanks her she glances at the upstairs window. She retreats towards the church while Luke unlocks the mortise lock, and she's gone by the time he turns the Yale. He's remembering a moment from his early childhood, when Terence flung the door open with a cry of "Here's our magic boy" that embarrassed both Luke and Maurice. The door gives a few inches before it's blocked by an obstruction. It has crumpled a bunch of dun official envelopes—bills, which he lays at the foot of the stairs that bisect the hall. A stale smell meets him as he shuts the door: old food and musty paper, a smell he would expect from a house that has been abandoned longer than this one. It makes him feel guilty for not having spent more time with Terence. If he had, mightn't Terence still be alive?
    He's heading for the front room when thunder masses overhead. It's closer than the sky and too prolonged for a thunderclap, and he seems to feel the house shudder. A train is rumbling along the line above the roof. Perhaps you can become unaware of anything if you've lived with it long enough, or at any rate take it for granted. It looks as if Terence was growing too used to solitariness, given the state of the front room.
    It feels steeped in dusk, no longer lit by Terence's stories or his enthusiasm for them. An inch of stagnant beer is turning murky in a bottle next to an armchair that slumps in front of the television. A worn pair of slippers is splayed on the carpet as if to represent a step in a grotesque dance. A coat Terence sported for many years is draped untidily over half of the back of the chair. The latest issue of the local newspaper is strewn across the floor, and on the television listings page the Brittan show has been marked so fiercely that the inky blotch resembles a black hole. Could all this untidiness have been why Terence didn't want anybody in the house?
    Luke advances down the hall, which is decorated with framed images. A painting of a windswept river shows figures in midstream huddled in a boat—the ferry that was rowed across the Mersey centuries before a bridge was built at Runcorn. There's a tattered brownish photograph of the Liverpool waterfront under construction, with one lonely sculptured bird perching on a domed tower to await its avian twin. A fragment of mosaic preserved under glass depicts another winged creature, though it's impossible to guess its species, since it has a jagged gap for a head. All these are souvenirs Terence collected from properties he demolished. They're just some of his attempts to keep the past alive.
    His brother never understood why Terence chose to stay here when he could have afforded so much better, and Luke is beginning to wonder; it resembles a hiding-place more than a home. The next room was meant for dining, with a hatchway in the wall giving access to the kitchen, but the unpolished table is bare except for several magazines. Luke wonders if they're Terence's guilty secret until he sees they're devoted to angling, not a pastime Luke associates with him. Was it a bid for distraction? While a rod and tackle occupy a corner of the