Whispers Through a Megaphone Read Online Free PDF Page B

The corner of the box was chipped. “You’re a lucky girl,” he said. The room was full of old smoke. He was wearing a brown corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows and mustard fingerless gloves. There were no batteries inside the Walkman.
     
    Miriam is watching the ten o’clock news and wondering why newsreaders never sniff, sneeze or blow their noses. Do they take special pills? Do they have special noses? It seems rather suspicious. Are they robots? Mechanical clones with acceptable accents and inactive noses? These newsreaders are calm, dispassionate, unruffled by the terrible events occurring all over the world. They have clean clothes, tidy hair, inexpressiveeyes. They don’t show emotion, they don’t upset us, but Miriam doesn’t buy it. The newsreaders disturb her. These people are the bearers of unspeakable news, so where is their shock and disgust? If they were really sane, they would look haunted and dishevelled as they spoke of murder, war and debt.
    Beware the madness that looks like sanity, thinks Miriam. It is everywhere .
    She switches off the television. Bye-bye newsreader. Bye-bye members of the public who have been asked to make a comment about something that has happened out in the world. (He was such a lovely boy he really was. Are they trying to make us homeless, is that what’s going on? My husband shouldn’t have to live like this—this isn’t living, it’s constant pain. When will this government realize that our teenagers are being bullied online and they are killing themselves, they are actually killing themselves .)
    Trees rustle in the wind.
    Water drips from a tap.
    The house creaks.
    Someone walks past the house, whistling a tune, then they are gone.
    Miriam wonders if the tune was ‘Careless Whisper’ by George Michael.
    There is no one to say this to.
    She can hear her own breath.
    (It sounds like sorrow.)
    She frowns.
    Blinks.
    This used to be easier.
    The passing of time.
    The slowing down and the
    slowing down.
    Now it hits her in the stomach.
    It makes her throat hurt.
    Move Miriam.
    Move .
    (Listen to yourself.)
    Move .
    She gets up and walks through to the kitchen.
    That’s better .
    Makes a hot chocolate, takes it up to bed.
    She sits and stares at her bedroom curtains, pink and cream, made by her mother twenty years ago.
    These curtains have never fully closed. The outside world leaks in. The inside world leaks out.
    I am the whispering wind, she thinks. I am the small breaking wave. But human? I just don’t know.
     
    Imagine a woman abseiling down the side of a cliff. When she looks up at the person holding the rope, she sees that there is no one there. At that moment, halfway up and halfway down, she realizes that this has been the story of her life. She has never been alone and there has never been anyone there. This is Miriam’s dream when she finally falls asleep after drinking her hot chocolate, after reading an old letter from her grandmother, after crying about nothing in particular.

6
PAIN THAT FELT LIKE LOVE
    R alph arrived home to find his house full of Leonard Cohen. How unusual—someone was playing some of his music. He made his way from room to room, bumping into no one. Was this his birthday present? An empty house and ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’? If so, he liked it. It was the perfect gift.
    He went to the bathroom and took a shower. With a towel wrapped around his waist, he walked into the bedroom to find that Sadie had emptied the entire contents of her wardrobe onto the bed. She was standing by the window, wearing a red bikini.
    “Hello gorgeous,” she said.
    “Hello.”
    “Happy birthday.”
    “Thanks. What’s going on in here?”
    “I have one word for you darling, and it’s Turkey .”
    “Turkey?”
    “We should go to Turkey. What do you think? I’m just making sure I can still fit into my bikini.”
    Ralph imagined spending an entire week on a beach with Sadie. He sat on the bed. He felt exhausted. He wondered if hemight