After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry Read Free Book Online Page A

something more like denial, and then there was another voice, and a name said softly several times over: Alex, Alex, Alex …
    As his eyes accustomed themselves to the hall’s dim air, he saw the young latecomer from the night before crouching against the door and resting his head on his forearms. He looked diminished, as though overnight he’d lost half his height and strength, and when he raised his head his eyes were rimmed with shadow. Beside him stood Eve, stooping to rest a hand on his shoulder, her arm showing white against the dark fabric of his shirt. Neither acknowledged John, but talked instead in low urgent murmurs, the young man gesturing towards the door as though he’d seen something slip out or come in. Then Eve turned to John and without speaking communicated a plea that conferred on him a responsibility and knowledge he neither felt nor understood. With a slight dip of her head, she gestured towards Alex, who’d drawn himself up a little and was picking at a graze on his knuckles with all the concentration of a craftsman. The movement plainly conveyed that John should do something, and that he would instinctively know what it was – she raised a hand towards him in mute appeal then passed it wearily over her forehead. Then she came towards him, put her mouth close to his ear and whispered: ‘Look, I’m sorry, it’s your first day, I know – only I have tried, and Hester will be gone awhile now – won’t you have a word?’ She drew away from him, and said – with delicacy, as if a boundary had been overstepped: ‘You understand. Don’t you? That is, you know …’ She paused, and he felt a moment’s pleasure in seeing her disconcerted before the sensation of being entirely at a loss overwhelmed him. He began to protest, but the schoolboy stammer held his tongue, and before he could frame the words to keep them all at arm’s length Alex stood, with a quick fluid motion wholly at odds with his defeated posture a moment before.
    ‘Eve, look – it’s John. Why didn’t you say!’ He cuffed at his eyes, and it was as if the rough gesture dislodged the misery and weariness that had weighed him down. Patting at his clothes, which were dusty from his huddling against the door, he came towards them, and landed a friendly blow on John’s shoulder. Then he patted at the wall behind them, where a strip of paper unfurled from the damp plaster, and said vaguely, ‘I might go and have a snooze.’ He paused beside Eve, frowning as though he’d forgotten something, then briefly gripped her hand and said: ‘Yes, I think so,’ and slipped behind them into a room which John had not yet seen. As he did so a small brown envelope fell from his hand or pocket to the floor, and grateful for an excuse to conceal his confusion John stooped to pick it up. When he straightened, Eve had not followed the young man, but stood instead with folded arms, examining him as though he’d just arrived. She beckoned twice, imperious, and John passed her the envelope, noticing the stamp had not been franked. She folded it over and over as if she might eventually reduce it to nothing, and pushed it into her own pocket. ‘Shall we go? Clare has something to show you, I think.’ Then, with an authority that sat so curiously on her John could not have resisted it, she indicated that he should follow her down the hall and out into the garden.
    It was early still and there ought to have been dew on the grass, but already the hard-baked earth had stored up the morning’s sun and John felt it through the thin soles of his shoes. The forest pines huddled against the garden wall were shedding their needles to lighten their load, and up ahead an elm had been struck with disease so that half its branches were damned to perpetual winter. In the shade of the elm Clare in her white shirt knelt over a series of irregular white objects which might have fallen from the blighted elm. Drawing near John saw they were a dozen small parcels