Some Rain Must Fall by Michel Faber Page B

Christine instructed him, but he refused. The magazine in his trousers was rather bent by now, suppled up by the warmth and movement, and he was afraid that if he took his parka off people would see it poking through his football shirt. Christine looked at him imploringly, but he couldn’t help her on this one, and she could see it in his face. Instead, she went up to Mrs Fuller and said hello to her, making forty-five seconds of cheery conversation. But when Christine rejoined Scott, she was as white as the marble statues guarding the entrance to The Nineteenth Century.
    ‘Take me by the hand,’ she whispered anxiously. ‘Everything’s going black …’
    Scott hesitated, terrified. He wasn’t big or strong enoughto catch his sister if she fell, didn’t want to have an unconscious girl sprawled at his feet with people swarming around asking questions.
    ‘ Take me somewhere, Scott, for fuck’s sake!’
    He grabbed her hand, which was cool and damp, and led her into The Nineteenth Century, where there was an upholstered bench in the middle of the room. He sat down on one edge, guiding Christine as she collapsed onto the rest of it; she grabbed him round the waist with a groan. Once horizontal she immediately seemed to relax, adjusting her position with infantile abandon, treating his thighs as a pillow. Within moments she was asleep.
    Scott sat as still as he could, so as not to disturb her. Her head in his lap felt strange: he couldn’t see her face, though he felt her damp breath permeating his jeans through to his thighs, couldn’t feel her head except as an indistinct pressure on the magazine, whose buckled spine and sweaty pages were cutting into his groin. He wondered if Christine was in a coma, or if she would vomit, like Auntie Marian always used to after an operation, except into his lap.
    ‘Chris?’ he ventured, shaking her gently.
    ‘Leave me alone,’ she slurred. ‘Stay with me.’
    For almost three hours Scott sat there, trying to shift his weight subtly from one buttock to the other so that only half of his bum went to sleep at a time. At one point, even his genitals went to sleep, torturing him when the feeling came back. Christine slept through his muffled complaints and his changes of position, but when he tried to lift her off him altogether, she whimpered and clutched. And so, he stayed. Impossibly bored at first, he soon passed into a state beyond boredom, in which he stared in a meditative trance at the four paintings he could see from his seat.
    The one straight in front of him was of a naked womancombing her hair at the side of a pool, with three old men peeking at her over the top of some shrubs. They had long beards and robes, and their faces looked as if they’d just seen a laser bomb go off nearby. The woman had a ghost-like, silvery veil between her legs, and glistening hair obscuring one breast. She was beautiful. Her eyes were as green and luminous as Ghostbusters ectoplasm. Her one naked breast was as real as his own desire. He would remember this picture until he died.
    Closing time came, and a gallery guide asked Scott and Christine to leave. Fortunately, Christine woke up at the sound of the stranger’s voice, seemingly in better shape after her rest, and together they left the building, Scott limping more than his sister by this time. It was six o’clock, already two hours later than Mum expected them home, and they still had to get there, of course.
    ‘Are you all right?’ asked Scott as they stood at the bus stop.
    ‘I’ll survive,’ said his sister. The sun was setting and the wind turning chilly. She hugged herself, rubbed her palms against the white fluff of her jumper. Scott simply zipped up his parka. Lower down, the cold breeze was heavenly against his chafed and overheated groin. He longed to go home and get undressed, into pyjamas, into bed. Unknown to him, so did his sister.
    ‘Hey, Scott?’ She was crying again, reaching for his hand again. ‘Thanks,