The Man Who Rained by Ali Shaw Page B

askance to it, so that they didn’t quite face each other.
    ‘Well,’ said Daniel, ‘are you going to tell me how you’ve been faring?’
    ‘Good, for the most part.’
    Daniel nodded and broke the bread. ‘Dear Lord,’ he prayed, ‘bless this our sustenance, for which we give thanks.’ And, he added in his head, make this wretched
hour speed by.
    ‘Amen,’ they both said aloud.
    Daniel dipped the end of a carrot into the pâté, sighed, and took a bite. Sally Nairn, he thought, was a fine woman – but whether she laboured over a spread, a pickle or a
jam, the result always tasted of chalk and cauliflower.
    ‘And you,’ asked Finn, avoiding the spread, ‘how have you been keeping?’
    Daniel spared his palate with a mouthful of dry bread. ‘Little has changed. There is still this business of Sidney Moses.’
    ‘I’m sure you can deal with Sidney Moses.’
    ‘Of course I can.’
    The crunching of their molars on carrot was the only sound. Daniel liked to bring carrots to these meetings. Time spent chewing was time rescued from trying to talk. In the early days they had
filled such gaps by reminiscing about Betty. She had been their intermediary before she had left, and without her they were like two foreigners abandoned by their interpreter. They had stopped
talking about her for two reasons. Firstly, because the time when they expected her to return had passed. Secondly, because they discovered that their memories of her were so very different.
    ‘Someone visited me,’ said Finn, out of the blue.
    Daniel swallowed his half-chewed mouthful of carrot. It wedged in his throat and he spluttered. ‘Who?’ he demanded when the coughing had settled.
    ‘An American girl. She was nice.’
    He pushed his plate away from him. He was no longer hungry. He had pictured in an instant the light in Sidney Moses’s eyes were he to discover Finn. ‘I don’t much care whether
she was nice . Surely we don’t have to go back over the reasons for being up here. For keeping your own company.’
    ‘I knew you’d take it badly. It doesn’t matter, though. She won’t be coming back.’
    ‘Good. But really, Finn, you should not have opened the door to her.’ He tapped his fingers nervously on the table until his memory finally offered up her face and name. Elsa
Beletti, who had objected when he killed the wild dog. He became anxious. ‘What did you tell her? What did you say about why you are living up here?’
    Finn picked at a piece of bread. ‘Nothing at all.’
    ‘Good. That was wise. Nevertheless, I should speak to her.’ He combed his fingers through his moustache and beard. ‘Yes. I shall warn her not to blab to all and sundry about
you.’
    Finn frowned. ‘She won’t blab.’
    Daniel bit his lip. And now he remembered the look of excitement on Finn’s face when he had answered the door. ‘You know who she is and who she is not, do you? You were hoping it was
her when I arrived here today!’
    ‘So what if I was?’
    In an instant Daniel’s head was full of blood. He gripped the table for support. ‘So what? Damned well remember what you did to your mother!’
    Finn shrank in his chair.
    Daniel stood up and took a deep, controlling breath. He brushed with chopping motions the crumbs from his hands. ‘I should see about her right away.’ He took his broad-brimmed cap
from the hook on which he had hung it. ‘Good day, Finn.’
    Yet even as he charged back down the slopes towards Thunderstown, he discovered that he was oddly grateful to Elsa Beletti. He told himself it was because she’d given him an excuse to cut
short his visit, since his other reason unsettled him. Sometimes his thinkings presented him with sudden emotions or opinions that he did not recognize as his, as if they were intrusions from some
other mind, carried like a tune into his own. This had been just such an unasked-for feeling, which he now snuffed out: he had been pleased to know that Finn had found somebody to smile