Weâve still got that one. What became of the others I donât know. I donât suppose many do marquetry nowadays. He was often down here in his shed after the war, but he didnât make much, less and less in fact. Or he would go out in his boat but not really for the fishing.
Â
I feel on edge, the least thing would do it. But also I feel something youâd hardly credit in me, an insouciance. Really I donât much care what happens next.
Â
31 December
Â
Quite a few came to Brianâs Christmas party, thirty I should say. The men put on suits and ties and since Iâd only ever seen them in work clothes before, they were very strange to me. I donât mean they looked in the least ridiculous or uncomfortable. On the contrary, it felt like manners: this is an occasion, this is how you look. But their hands and faces, especially the boatmenâs, bare in their Sunday best, it brought the outdoors, the weather, the sea into the room, which Brian had gone to the trouble of decorating. The women had dressed up even more. They wore a good deal of makeup and jewellery. And the children, especially the girls, more children than I knew existed, they were also dressed for the occasion. I had no decent clothes to change into.
The first glass and the mince pies were on the house. Then Brian went behind the bar and Chris joined him.
I had a conversation with one of the boatmenâMatthew, I think his name was, he has a ginger beardâabout the way things drift. I told him Iâd found bits of charred wood here on the west side, bits of blue pallet, that I was pretty sure had come from the bonfire on the east side. He shrugged and said quite likely but I shouldnât make a rule of it, you never could tell. Tide, current, wind, you never know. People go in the water here and are never seen again. Perhaps they land up somewhere, perhaps they donât. Take Alf Lewis last summer, he went in the channel, drunk, so you can understand him drowning, but heâs never come up again so far as anyone knows. I donât know about Alf Lewis, I said. Matthew shrugged. He blew in. Now heâs gone. Good riddance, some say. I waited but he wouldnât say more. So instead I nodded towards the bar and said it was nice of Brian to give everyone a drink and a mince pie. Matthew nodded, but as though heâd have disagreed if Iâd been somebody worth disagreeing with. Then I made a mistake. I asked did Lucy ever come to things like this. Matthew looked me in the eyes and slowly shook his head, which I took to mean, Itâs none of your business, and not, No, Lucy never comes to things like this. Heâs a big man, a big beard, with very small eyes. I asked would he like another drink. He said, No thanks, so I left him and went to the bar myself.
LaterâI was already thinking of making my surreptitious exitâSarah and Elaine came over to me in the window. I had noticed their transformation, among the other women, but close up it shocked me, they seemed sent in their beauty and gaiety to remind me of what I had never striven hard enough to possess and now never would and did not deserve. Their arms were bare, Elaine wore a necklace of pale jade, Sarah a bracelet of lapis lazuli, her dress was a dark blue and that colour and the colour of Elaineâs dress, a blue-green, I had often watched travelling over the sea from the top of my ladder in Nathanâs fields in the wind and the swishing to earth of the olive-grey loppings of pittosporum. They were tipsy and full of mirth, knowing their own attractiveness, knowing how their dresses and the occasion, the decorations, the light of the sky and the sea through the window, the wine, how it all worked to increase their youthfulness and beauty, the life in them, beyond what I could bear to contemplate. They were close together, I think of them now as having each an arm around the otherâs waist, and a glass in the outer hand,
C. J. Cherryh
Learning to Kill: Stories
John O'Riley
Brenda Sinclair
Christopher George
Stephen Lloyd Jones
Karl Iagnemma
Celya Bowers
Jill Gregory
Aria Cunningham