The Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

old year’s garbage. Pity one couldn’t clear the rubbish out of one’s life as easily, Cormac reflects, and have it taken away in a truck.
    They wheel their bicycles across the main road, then they mount to take on the track that the kids call the Snakey, which curves upward to the lofty Georgian splendour of Saxe Coburg Place. Davy goes ahead,his bottom high above the saddle, his feet pushing strongly down on the pedals. Cormac finds himself puffing a little. He ought to get in shape, go to a gym or something like that. No, not a gym, he still remembers the awfulness of that at school, not having any talents in that direction. With the start of another new year the newspapers are full of healthy living plans, telling you what to eat and mostly what you must not (or drink), and which exercises will develop your weaker parts. All his parts feel weak at this time of the day. He always hated nine o’clock classes when he was teaching. He never got quite into his stride until after morning break.
    He catches Davy up and in five minutes they reach the school. The puddled playground is deserted except for one or two stragglers dawdling towards the main door. It doesn’t seem to matter what time they get into primary school these days. In his era it was almost a hanging matter to arrive after the bell. He was never late; his mother saw to that.
    ‘See you later!’ Cormac taps his son on the bottom, hopes that the gesture will not be misconstrued by hidden watchers, watches while the boy stows his bike in the shed, carefully padlocking the front wheel and then flees into school without looking round to wave. Fair enough. Cormac doesn’t mind. He didn’t look round at his mother, either. His father never took himto school; at this time of day he was intent over his last, working on his shoes, totally absorbed, as intent as any artist. And when he gave that up, in order to better himself and so please his wife, he was away from home much of the week, out on the roads of Ireland, selling shoe polish.
    On the way back Cormac goes by a longer, more devious route. He cannot seem to resist it. Of course he could resist anything if he wanted to, couldn’t he? That is what Rachel would tell him. He is far too conscious of what other people would tell him. Does it indicate a lack of self-regard?
    The playground is empty of people. The teachers’ cars are lined up in their allotted places. He recognises most of them, though not a red Citroën. He wonders if it might belong to his successor, a young woman, not long qualified, whom he has heard likes the kind of art that wins the Turner prize. This very moment she might be saying to a class, ‘Now take Rodin – or rather, don’t take Rodin. He was a tremendous sculptor of course, no one really could deny that, but his approach is old hat nowadays. You want to move forward with the times. You want to start thinking in terms of dead sheep or cow heads in formaldehyde. Shake up the world! That’s the artist’s role.’
    He shook with laughter when the preserved deadsheep came to Edinburgh and the art gallery-goers looked round at him as if he was off his head. ‘What a con man, eh!’ he said to Rachel, who would never let herself get so far out of control as to laugh too loudly in a public place. ‘What a brilliant con man! But if people are fool enough to go for it good on him!’
    Leaving the school Cormac cycles up to the High Street where he has an errand to do at the City Chambers, then decides to have a coffee before starting work. The city is bristling with new coffee houses offering cappuccino and caffé latte and croissants plain, almond, or au chocolat . He took up the café habit after his suspension, working his way round a large and varied selection. He had to do something, he’d have gone clean off his rocker if he’d sat in the house all day watching old films, and he couldn’t bear to go up to his studio at the top of the house. The piece he’d been working on