The River Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

die before he became an old man.
    I said to Wilson James, ‘When are you going away?’
    ‘Well, I don’t exactly know. I was planning to stay three months.’
    ‘You have stayed longer than the others.’
    ‘I wasn’t sure I’d like it here.’
    ‘Do you like it here?’
    ‘Yes, I do.’
    ‘Have you seen many places?’
    ‘A few.’
    ‘Have you seen the ocean?’
    Wilson James looked more keenly at me. I could not tell what both sides of his face were thinking.
    ‘Have you?’ he asked.
    I saw that it would not be wise to answer him.
    ‘Why did you come to this place?’ I asked before he could say another word.
    ‘I’m writing a book—or avoiding writing. More the latter. I have been trying to find a story but all the stories have run away from me and are hiding.’
    ‘Perhaps you need the snow to come,’ I said.
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘In the breath of winter it is possible to hear the oldest stories.’
    ‘Ah, yes, but I am looking for a new story,’ he said. ‘The old ones have all been heard before and no-one wants to hear them again.’ He threw a stone in the river.
    ‘Why do you need a story?’
    He sighed. ‘I am a writer. Writers need stories.’
    ‘You have found stories before?’
    ‘I have written four novels.’
    ‘I would like to hear one of your stories,’ I said.
    ‘They’re long and complicated,’ said Wilson James.
    ‘Good.’
    ‘Now?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, now,’ I replied.
    ‘It’s not like that.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well, they’re novels.’
    ‘Stories?’
    ‘Yes, long stories.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘I will try then,’ he said, and rolled his damp moss in paper and lit it with a red-tipped flint from a box in his pocket.
    ‘I gave it up years ago and then I found this packet of tobacco in the house and it seems to go with being up here,’ he said.
    ‘Are you cold?’
    ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘I’m not cold. Perhaps it’s the being alone. A cigarette is good company.’
    ‘My father, when he put his stories away, he also grew cold. It will pass.’
    Wilson James looked across the river where the frothing water plunged and ferns shivered in a pale grey mist. The day was warm and the rocks on the riverbank glowed. Two large bronze-winged insects hovered together under the far bank which curved out over the river. Blue and white flowers dipped their heads towards the sound of the water as it rushed and danced by our feet.
    ‘You are a ghost, aren’t you? Or some kind of apparition?’
    ‘I think you may be the apparition, Wilson James.’
    ‘Surely one is true and not the other.’
    ‘Oh, I cannot be sure. I cannot be sure of anything at all since your arrival.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I will wake up.’
    ‘You are quite awake and you are going to tell me a story.’
    He looked away and smiled. ‘Then I will begin,’ he said. He began and began again. He said, ‘They are easier to write than they are to tell.’
    ‘You do not trust them.’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not.’
    ‘When cold lies on the land like a secret you will hear stories too fragile for the light of day.’
    He gazed at me with his blue eyes. ‘It is very remote here, for a woman.’
    I skipped a small pebble across the river and downed one of the bronze-winged flies and almost leapt in to eat it but thought better of it.
    ‘Do you live with many people?’ I asked him.
    ‘No,’ he said. His eyes went flat and his face revealed a grey shadow. ‘No. Well, yes. When I open my door I’m in a city of thirty million.’
    ‘Is it a good place?’
    ‘A good place, a bad place. Hell, it’s a city.’
    ‘It must have many stories.’
    ‘That’s one way to describe it.’
    ‘Who tends your forests and rivers while you are here?’
    ‘Well . . . nobody. There aren’t any forests.
    And the river . . . well, it’s not like this at all.’
    ‘How is that possible?’
    ‘How is it possible you don’t know? Please don’t tell me you’ve been here your whole life.’
    I said, ‘I