The Lightning Cage by Alan Wall Page A

jumped. They found his body all smashed up down there the next morning.
    â€˜Mick Tiller,’ I said, very quietly when I was back in the little blue house. I held the obit page in front of her. ‘He’s dead,’ I went on, ‘my old friend. We climbed together, and now he’s dead.’ Alice looked briefly at the column. I felt I couldn’t touch her, though I wanted to.
    â€˜Following the route of denial,’ she said, after scanning the page, ‘acting as though he’d never needed the womb in the first place.’ This I presumed was once more the wisdom of Hermann Siegfried. It was the wrong thing to say, and for some reason I felt that Alice knew it was the wrong thing to say, and that was why she was saying it. Each word put more distance between us.
    â€˜Yes, well anyway he’s dead,’ I said, growing angry, ‘and he was braver than your Mr Siegfried and your Miss Orley put together. And funny with it. I shouldn’t think you spend too much time laughing at those therapy gigs of yours up in North Kensington, do you?’
    â€˜I was wondering when the contempt would finally come out, Chris,’ she said, with a curious air of satisfaction as though she had at last been proven right. ‘Contempt and what often passes for humour are more often than not disguises for fear, you know.’
    That afternoon she took the train to London. I drove her to the station and stood on the platform as she climbed aboard.
    â€˜I’ll see you back here on Thursday,’ I said, trying to disguise the urgency in my voice. ‘Remember I’ve rented this place for a fortnight.’ Alice looked out of the carriage window and said quietly, ‘How long did you rent me for, Chris?’
    â€˜What?’ I said, but the train was already pulling out. ‘Thursday night then,’ I shouted.
    Back at the little blue house I looked around and realised that Siegfried’s book had gone along with Alice. Why hadn’t she left that behind for me to read? But then, perhaps she needed it for her meeting. That was probably it. I remembered how I would drive her up to that group of hers, and how one evening I’d even managed to peer down into the basement where it all took place, and caught a glimpse of the brisk and busy lady who ran the affair, Miss Orley. Very professional looking in her wire-rimmed spectacles, with her salt and pepper hair pushed back seriously from her face, and tied up with a black silk ribbon. I had felt envious of her intimacy with Alice, but not envious enough to want to attend the meeting, as Alice had once suggested I should. I’d left one church and didn’t feel like joining another just yet. Or could it be that I’d never entirely left the first?
    The rain let up, but the cold remained. I drove along the coast and walked about here and there, and when Thursday night came I prepared a vegetarian feast. I bought a bottle of expensive wine to go with it. But Alice never came back that night, so I drank the Margaux myself. Then I started on what was left of the whisky bottle. At midnight I emptied the last of the whisky into my glass as I sat in the little alcove by the window with Mick Tiller’s obituary in my lap as his face stared up at me from the crumpled newspaper.
    And then the rain came back.

Thunder
    What is the cause of thunder?
    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE , King Lear
    Â 
    To the great irritation of his wife, Lord Chilford remained at Twickenham. He decided to lessen her annoyance by arranging a surprise ball for her at the villa that Friday evening. Her pregnancy was still in its early stages, long before any confinement would be required, and she did take a particular delight in dancing. Jacob and Josephine were set to work with the preparations. Meanwhile, each day Chilford interviewed Pelham for hours at a time, in an attempt to arrive at an objective account of his condition.
    LORD CHILFORD : Do you know what