Refuge
Page 27
Suter’s thoughts became disjointed. He fell asleep.
At some stage when his sleep was at its lightest, he emerged to find the armchair occupied once again. The young woman sitting there, although dark, was certainly not Helen. Her hair was far too short. It had been trimmed into shape, but the cut appeared crude and uneven. Her pale face showed signs of exhaustion, of some physical or psychological ordeal, mental torture.
He had already guessed who she was. The head man’s daughter. The other Helen.
Her garment was a plain pullover in camel-coloured wool, worn over a tweed skirt. A silk scarf at her neck, predominantly white, carried some sparse pattern in yellow and brown. She was watching him.
‘I’m not supposed to be here,’ she said, when she saw that he had awoken. ‘I came to thank you.’
She extended her hand. Her fingers took his own and he realised he was touching another living person. Until coming upstream that had not happened since the plague, and until this moment he had hardly touched anyone except in a desire to push them away. Human contact had no place in his world. The warmth and animation of her grasp conveyed something else that was strange: regard.
She, like himself, was still suffering because of Bex.
Suter felt very tired. He was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. She said, ‘You found Martin, didn’t you?’
Yes. He had found Martin. Had uttered a few words. Or so he had told Muriel.
Startled, she raised her eyes to the other side of the room. Suter assumed the door had opened. To his disappointment, she let his fingers slip.
In that attitude, in her countenance and the way she held herself, she seemed just as beautiful as the other woman had, last night, when looking at the clock.
Josephine appeared. Without asperity, she said to Helen, ‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’
She rose. ‘I’m very sorry.’
Josephine put an arm round her shoulder and started moving her aside. ‘You’re in no state for visiting. And, this morning, neither is he.’
‘He’s going to be all right, though?’
‘Yes, he’s going to be all right.’
Suter allowed his eyes to close. He could still feel the sympathetic touch of her fingers. He hoped she would come again. He knew she would. She would sit talking at his bedside and, later, as time passed, she might stroll with him, out there in the gardens, keeping him company while he recovered his strength. They would cross the sunlit lawns to the river, to the shade of the copper beech, and rest for a while on the cast-iron bench.
Sleep, like the river, wished to claim him.
He did not resist: for he had just decided that, if ever she asked him, he most willingly would stay.
Other novels by Richard Herley
The Pagans, a trilogy comprising:
The Stone Arrow
The Flint Lord
The Earth Goddess
The Penal Colony
The Tide Mill
The Drowning
Darling Brenda
Dismemberment
Visit the author’s blog or find his books at
Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk
Apple’s iTunes store
Smashwords
Unglue.it
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