Madeleine reaches out, lifts Emm’s hand. Cool, limp. She tucks it under the blanket. She draws the blanket up round his neck, wraps the folds under his chin. The wound across his cheek is drying, but still seems horribly naked, exposed.
Something stirs under the boy’s coverlet, wriggles. A brown snout pokes out. Brown eyes. Seeing Madeleine, the Alsatian stiffens, growls, stretches its neck towards her. The boy clasps the straining body. Hush, girl. Hush. Madeleine gets to her feet and moves back.
The boy strokes the brown head. The dog looks Madeleine over. The boy sighs, whistling spittle through his teeth. I feel safe because I’ve Dinah with me. She’d fly at anyone coming too near. That’s what lets me go to sleep. D’you see?
The boy yawns, lies down again. He settles himself around the dog’s humped shape. Madeleine says: I’ll come back in the morning, shall I? I could help you get him to the hospital.
The boy flings out one arm across the body of the sleeping man. He says: don’t interfere! You leave us alone. We’ll be all right.
He turns his face into the dog’s coat, presents Madeleine with his rigid back. The clammy-looking nylon top moulds his thin shoulder-blades.
Madeleine fishes out all the loose change from her purse, puts it on the ground next to the boy’s pillow. He doesn’t move. The Alsatian growls. She backs off, pads away.
Forget buying wine. Just get back to the pub, to her waiting friends. She selects a tunnel opening almost at random. Jazzy pattern of oblong wall tiles in red, green, blue. She turns a corner, finds the exit she needs. She hurries up the walkway. She plunges into the wet, windy street. She’ll catch a bus, be back in Borough in no time at all.
TWENTY NINE
Joseph
They walked away from the common. He offered Mrs Dulcimer his arm, and she took it. Her hand rested on his coat cuff. Their boots crunched over wet grit, packed rubble. For a while they went along in silence, as they had done before, just a few days back. Then Joseph said: you’ve never told me your Christian name. May I know it?
Mrs Dulcimer shook her head. That’s not a subject for the street. We’re late. We should make haste home.
She dropped his arm and strode away, towards the main road. Her cape, her skirts streamed out behind her. She turned a corner, vanished behind an angle of brick walls.
Had he offended her? He sighed. The rain had stopped but the cold wind whipped his face. He shivered in his fog-damp clothes. Perishing weather, this. Where were those girls? Would the sitting-room fire still be alight? The kitchen range? He was supposed to be cooking supper. Right, then. Look sharp. Get a move on. Catch her up.
Someone ahead of him began humming. Then singing. Mrs Dulcimer’s contralto voice, dark honey, flowed back through the darkness. I know where I’m going,/ and I know who’s going with me.
He picked up the tune. Joined his voice to hers. I know who I love,/ but the Lord knows who I’ll marry.
THIRTY
Madeleine
She presses forward along the deserted pavement, making for the bus stop. Puddles black as oil spills. Advancing cars’ headlights blossom yellow-white in the darkness then vanish. Glitter of the metallic shutters of locked shops.
Footsteps sound behind her. Male footsteps, a long stride, firm and definite. She glances over her shoulder. Beaky nose; short hair; a peacoat. The man increases his speed, passes her with a nod, a slight lift of the hand. A gesture of reassurance, as Toby explained to her once: if you’re walking behind a woman on a lonely street then you either cross the road or you make sure to pass her, then she knows you’re OK, you’re not out to attack her.
The man’s glimpsed profile: very like that of her new neighbour’s, his dark silhouette at his open window above her, as she sat in her garden and peeped at him. What’s his name? If he does turn up at the pub, she’ll find out.
He halts at the bus stop just ahead. As she comes up with him he’s humming a song.
I know where I’m going,/ and I know who’s going with me.
Madeleine joins in. I know who I love,/ but the Lord knows who I’ll marry.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Alexandra Pringle, Antonia Till and all at Bloomsbury. Thanks to Sarah LeFanu and Jenny Newman, my first readers, for their writerly support, close reading and helpful criticism. Thanks to all my other writer friends, too, for their affection and encouragement.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Michèle Roberts is the acclaimed author of thirteen novels, including Daughters of the House, which won the WHSmith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her most recent novel Ignorance was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and her memoir Paper Houses was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week. She has also published poetry and short stories, most recently collected in Mud: Stories of Sex and Love. Michèle Roberts is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She lives in south-east London.
micheleroberts.co.uk
Also available by Michèle Roberts
Ignorance
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2013
Jeanne and Marie-Angèle grow up, side by side yet apart, in the Catholic village of Ste Madeleine. Marie-Angèle is the daughter of the grocer, inflated with ideas of her rightful place in society; Jeanne's mother washes clothes for a living and used to be a Jew. When war arrives, the village must play its part in a game for which no one knows the rules - not the dubious hero who embroils Marie-Angele in the black market, nor the artist living alone with his red canvases. In these uncertain times, the enemy may be hiding in your garden shed and the truth can be buried under a pyramid of recriminations. A mesmerising exploration of guilt, faith, desire and judgement, Ignorance brings to life a people at war.
‘A gripping story of fear, arrests and personal tragedy’ Independent
‘Moving and involving. Only the most hard-hearted reader will resist its spider web of injustices’ The Times
‘Powerful and lyrical ... Her deceptively simple narrative provides a devastating critique of religious hypocrisy and bourgeois morality, couched in gloriously pointillist prose’ Michael Arditti, Daily Mail
‘A magnificent writer’ Helen Dunmore, Guardian
http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/michele-roberts
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First published in Great Britain 2017
This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© Michèle Roberts, 2017
Michèle Roberts has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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