Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [105]
“Deliverance? Deliverance from what?”
“Death.”
Underwood glanced around the square, uneasily. The crowd, though still small, had increased in number. The expressions on its faces ranged from scandalized outrage to coarse glee. There was, unmistakably, ugliness, or the promise of it, in the Sunday-morning air.
Someone called out from the crowd, “They’re waitun fer the Bomb to drop, Vicar!”
There was the kind of pause that precedes laughter, but no one laughed.
Ruth had her hands in the sink, peeling potatoes, when the phone startled her. She peered out of the kitchen window and called George but got no reply. No doubt he was in that bleddy shed of his, with the transistor radio on. She wiped her hands on a tea towel, hurriedly.
“Hello?”
She heard pip-pip-pip and the clunk of a coin.
“Ruth? Thas Chrissie.”
Which made Ruth uneasy straightaway. Chrissie Slender was a regular visitor, Wednesday afternoons, sometimes Saturdays, but had hardly ever phoned.
“Chrissie? Whassup, then?”
“Ruth, you better come downtown. Thas Win.”
“Mother? Whatever d’yer mean? Hev somethun happened to her?”
“I dunt rightly know howter tell yer, Ruth. She’re in the square with Hoseason and that lot.”
Ruth felt a chill run through her. The hair on the bedroom floor. Oh, my God.
“Whas she doin in the square, Chrissie?”
“She’re makin an exhibition of herself, Ruth. They all are. I dunt like to be the one that tell yer.”
“Oh, Chrissie!”
“Get you down here, Ruth. An if yer got a spare coat, you bring that an all. Or a blanket or somethun.”
“Whatever for, Chrissie?”
She heard Chrissie hesitate.
“Win hent got hardly nothun on,” Chrissie said. “I’m worried she might catch her death.”
Ruth sat down heavily on the little chair beside the telephone. One of those hot, distancing spasms ran through her, and she clasped her hands on her plump knees until it was over.
When she came back to herself, she thought about Clem. Why hadn’t he come back to tell her what was going on?
She felt an inrush of incomprehension, of being excluded from events. She got to her feet and took off her pinafore and went outside to find George.
Frankie and Clem lay down on her coat in the soft shadow of the World War II gun emplacement. Their wet feet had gathered sand, so that they wore gritty pairs of ankle socks. They kissed, lengthily. She pulled him tight to her but kept her legs together. He pushed her away a little so that he could put a hand to her breasts. They murmured each other’s names when they paused for breath. After a while he thought she might be expecting him to force her, so he slid his hand down between her legs. This did not have the effect he’d desired. She levered herself into a sitting position.
“Oh, God,” she said.
“What?” Clem asked thickly.
Frankie groped under the coat and produced from its pocket a small flat bottle. She twisted the top off it.
“Brandy,” she said. “For Dutch courage. Strictly speaking, Dutch courage should be gin, I suppose. Do you like brandy?”
He was fixated on the little display of flesh between her knickers and the rucked-up edge of her sweater, and the two dimples above her bum.
“I dunno. Never had any.”
Frankie took a swig and inhaled through her nose while swallowing, like someone in pain. She held the bottle out toward him. He sat up and drank. His throat and then his chest caught fire, and he coughed, spluttering spit and spirit into the palm of his hand. She laughed and took the little bottle back.
“Do you have any ciggies? I’d like one. The Condemned Woman Smoked a Last Cigarette sort of thing.”
“Frankie . . .”
“Please, Clem.”
He crawled over to his jeans and fumbled the cigarettes and matches from the pocket. They lit up and smoked in silence for a while. Then she took another swig from the bottle and passed it to him, shuddering.
“No, thanks.”
“You must. You have to have the same as me.”
“Why?”
“You just do.”
He drank, this time keeping the brandy down, and felt a shelf of heat form itself at his diaphragm. When he turned to her, she was smiling and serious. She threw