Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [0]
PART ONE: PUTTING THINGS TOGETHER
1. NORFOLK, EARLY MARCH, 1945
2. THE HEARTBROKEN NAZI
3. LABOR
4. WIN LITTLE
5. DNA
6. RUTH
7. A WINK IN THE BARLEY
8. THINGS RUTH DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT GEORGE AT THE TIME
9. EGG AND SOLDIERS
10. A HOME FIT FOR HEROES
11. THE PERFUME OF AXLE GREASE, THE WHIFF OF HALITOSIS
12. GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT (NEARLY)
13. THE BEST OF ROOMS, THE WORST OF ROOMS
14. 1956: THE CLOCKWORK OF HISTORY TICKS
15. AN UNSENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
16. NORFOLK FROM THE SKY
17. THE END-OF-THE-WORLD MAN
18. WIN’S MELLOWING
19. THE STRAWBERRY FIELDS, EARLY SUMMER, 1962
20. THE GIRL WHO ATE HIS HEART BUMS A SMOKE
21. THINGS CLEM DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT FRANKIE AT THE TIME
22. NERVY PASTORAL
23. A LATIN-AMERICAN INTERLUDE
24. SEEING THE FOREST FROM THE TREES
25. YOU LEARN NOTHING ABOUT SEX FROM BOOKS, ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE BY D. H. LAWRENCE
26. MAN IS NOT AN ISLAND; HE’S A PENINSULA
27. A BIT OF CHIAROSCURO
28. THE NIGHTS DRAW IN
29. THE LIMITED OPPORTUNITIES FOR OBTAINING CONTRACEPTIVES IN NORTH NORFOLK IN 1962 . . .
PART TWO: BLOWING THINGS APART
30. WASHINGTON, D.C., TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1962: “THOSE SONS A BITCHES RUSSIANS!”
31. MAD
32. HAWKS, DOVES, DOGS
33. GEORGE DOES A BIT OF TIDYING UP
34. GOOD EVENING, MY FELLOW CITIZENS
35. THE LAMBS OF GOD ARE SHORN
36. RUTH GETS THE CHOP
37. THE BOGS
38. STUMBLING TOWARD THE BRINK
39. THE SHIFTY WORD Standstill
40. THE BRINK
41. POETRY DOES THE TRICK
42. JACK AND NIKITA TALK TURKEY
43. THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED
PART THREE: PICKING UP THE PIECES
44. MY LIFE AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD
45. BAD TIMING
AUTHOR’S NOTE
RUTH ACKROYD WAS in the garden checking the rhubarb when the RAF Spitfire accidentally shot her chimney pot to bits. The shock of it brought the baby on three weeks early.
“I was expectun,” she’d often say, over the years. “But I wunt expectun that.”
She’d had cravings throughout her pregnancy, ambitious ones: tinned ham, chocolate, potted shrimp, her husband’s touch, rhubarb. Rhubarb was possible, though. Ruth and her mother, Win, grew it in the cottage garden. They forced it, which is to say, they covered the plants with upended buckets so that when new tendrils poked through the soil, they found themselves in the dark and grew like mad, groping for light. Stalks of forced rhubarb were soft, blushed, and stringless. You could eat them without sugar, which was rationed, and Ruth wanted to. So she’d waddled out into the garden on a rare day of early-spring sunshine to lift the buckets and see how things were doing. See if there was any chance of a nibble.
Win had said, “You put that ole coat on, if yer gorn out. There’s a wind’d cut yer jacksy in half.”
Ruth hadn’t seen George since his last leave, when, silently (because Win was sleeping, or listening, a thin wall away), he’d got her pregnant. Now he was in Africa. Or Italy, or somewhere. There was no way she could imagine his life. He might even be dead. The last letter had come in January:
The last push, or so they say . . . Cold as hell here in the nights . . . Hope you and the little passenger are well.
Love, George
Probably not dead, because there’d have been a telegram. Like Brenda Cushion had got, six months ago.
Ruth had gone down the garden path with her huge belly in front of her. She was frightened of it. She had little idea what giving birth might involve. Win had told her almost nothing; she was against the whole thing. Knocked up by a soldier: history repeating itself. Nothing good could come of it. The baby had grown in Ruth, struggling and undiscussed. An unspeakable thing. A wartime mishap. The two women had sat the winter out in front of dying fires of scrounged fuel, listening to the wireless, grimly knitting, not talking about it.
Washing blew on the line: tea towels, Ruth’s yellowish vests, her mother’s bloomers ballooned by the wind, their elasticated leg holes pouting.
There were two rhubarb clumps, a rusty-lipped bucket inverted over each. Ruth had leaned, grunting, to lift the first one when all hell broke loose above her head.