saying this, saying that, telling, contradicting.
From the far end of the long room, he watched them carry George Crab away.
Gradually the machines started up and people went silently back to them, gradually things settled to normal, except that no one laughed across a machineat someone else or made a gesture, waved their arms in some joking sign, and when they went for the afternoon breaks, they sat on the iron stairs or the ledge outside the machine room and drank silently, not meeting one another’s eyes. They had seen George Crab, seen the blood trickle and the way his chest had looked caved in and even though his heart had been beating they had no thought that he could be alive, or if his heart still managed to pump, then alive for long.
Tommy worked through the afternoon in a daze of exhaustion. People glanced in his direction and away. He was one of them and yet apart, and still a pariah because of what they had heard. They preferred to think about George Crab.
Just as the machines began to shut down at six, word came that he was not dead but terribly injured and that Ellen Crab had been fetched to the hospital. People shook their heads and took off aprons and overalls, lifted jackets and scarves and caps down from the pegs and went home quietly and the air and dust settled in the long room as the door closed.
18
THE WEATHER changed and the sun shone. At midnight, Eve sat on the back step looking at the moonlit garden and the air was still warm, the sky pinpricked all over with bright stars. Bert Ankerby had told her what he knew of the names in the sky – the Bear, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia – and now she tried to pick them out on her own but it was only a pattern and confusion again.
Somewhere on the far side of the field a fox barked.
Tommy was sound asleep in the same way he always slept now, heavy as a stone, never seeming to stir and sometimes scarcely to breathe. He slept like it from the moment he lay down.
The past few weeks had been the strangest he had ever known. He walked off in the morning as usualand for the couple of miles that he was alone he felt free and light of heart, things might almost have been as they used to be. He looked ahead to when he could make out the chimneys and gantries of the works and the smoke and the dust stained the sky, and at once, he changed, he felt anxious and wanted to shrink away, to turn back, to slink close to the walls and fade into them. People saw him. People looked and looked away, or glanced to one another, though plenty peered at him, said this word or that before moving on swiftly.
Strangely, once he went in through the gates of the works he could lose himself among the others and then he felt safe. They worked with him, they had talked themselves dry about him and perhaps there was nothing more to be said. But he knew that the calm could not last and all the time he was working, or sitting out in the sun on the iron staircase or the flat roof during his breaks, he felt uneasily that he would not be left alone like this, that something else would happen to turn his unsteady world upside down again.
George Crab had arrived at the hospital half dead yet with the life reviving in him minute by minute. His wife Ellen had come, her face stained with tears and her eyes full of fear, but when she had seen him sitting up, had said they had no right to try and prepare herfor the worst when he was nowhere near death, anyone could see. He was a good colour, he looked himself, apart from a graze on his brow.
‘They said you were crushed by the metal racks.’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘They fell on your legs and chest and half crushed you to death, you could barely breathe, you had blood coming from you.’
‘I knew I was dying.’
‘You cannot have been.’
George shook his head. He spoke the truth when he said he could not recall but he recalled the terrible pain over his heart pressing the breath out of him and the feeling as if a knife were
From the far end of the long room, he watched them carry George Crab away.
Gradually the machines started up and people went silently back to them, gradually things settled to normal, except that no one laughed across a machineat someone else or made a gesture, waved their arms in some joking sign, and when they went for the afternoon breaks, they sat on the iron stairs or the ledge outside the machine room and drank silently, not meeting one another’s eyes. They had seen George Crab, seen the blood trickle and the way his chest had looked caved in and even though his heart had been beating they had no thought that he could be alive, or if his heart still managed to pump, then alive for long.
Tommy worked through the afternoon in a daze of exhaustion. People glanced in his direction and away. He was one of them and yet apart, and still a pariah because of what they had heard. They preferred to think about George Crab.
Just as the machines began to shut down at six, word came that he was not dead but terribly injured and that Ellen Crab had been fetched to the hospital. People shook their heads and took off aprons and overalls, lifted jackets and scarves and caps down from the pegs and went home quietly and the air and dust settled in the long room as the door closed.
18
THE WEATHER changed and the sun shone. At midnight, Eve sat on the back step looking at the moonlit garden and the air was still warm, the sky pinpricked all over with bright stars. Bert Ankerby had told her what he knew of the names in the sky – the Bear, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia – and now she tried to pick them out on her own but it was only a pattern and confusion again.
Somewhere on the far side of the field a fox barked.
Tommy was sound asleep in the same way he always slept now, heavy as a stone, never seeming to stir and sometimes scarcely to breathe. He slept like it from the moment he lay down.
The past few weeks had been the strangest he had ever known. He walked off in the morning as usualand for the couple of miles that he was alone he felt free and light of heart, things might almost have been as they used to be. He looked ahead to when he could make out the chimneys and gantries of the works and the smoke and the dust stained the sky, and at once, he changed, he felt anxious and wanted to shrink away, to turn back, to slink close to the walls and fade into them. People saw him. People looked and looked away, or glanced to one another, though plenty peered at him, said this word or that before moving on swiftly.
Strangely, once he went in through the gates of the works he could lose himself among the others and then he felt safe. They worked with him, they had talked themselves dry about him and perhaps there was nothing more to be said. But he knew that the calm could not last and all the time he was working, or sitting out in the sun on the iron staircase or the flat roof during his breaks, he felt uneasily that he would not be left alone like this, that something else would happen to turn his unsteady world upside down again.
George Crab had arrived at the hospital half dead yet with the life reviving in him minute by minute. His wife Ellen had come, her face stained with tears and her eyes full of fear, but when she had seen him sitting up, had said they had no right to try and prepare herfor the worst when he was nowhere near death, anyone could see. He was a good colour, he looked himself, apart from a graze on his brow.
‘They said you were crushed by the metal racks.’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘They fell on your legs and chest and half crushed you to death, you could barely breathe, you had blood coming from you.’
‘I knew I was dying.’
‘You cannot have been.’
George shook his head. He spoke the truth when he said he could not recall but he recalled the terrible pain over his heart pressing the breath out of him and the feeling as if a knife were
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