As the Earth Turns Silver by Alison Wong Read Free Book Online Page B

life, his tragic, untimely death. To give his absence form. Solidity. She gazed at his casket, its profusion of flowers. Which has more colour, she wondered. A man’s life? Or his death? Draped in black, she sat quite upright, willing herself, unwilling herself, silently to believe.
    Afterwards – after the endless cups of tea and polite farewells – Katherine returned home with her children, Edie dry eyed and utterly silent, Robbie tearful and clutching his father’s pocket-watch, stopped at 3.05, the exact time he had hit the water.
    Since his death, every window had remained covered, like Donald’s dead eyes; each day darkened like water closing over. Yet even as Katherine raised each blind, her spirit did not lighten. After her initial delight, lying in bed luxuriating in a tumult of wicked thoughts, she had been suitably morose, relief giving way to a rising fear.
    She took in laundry and sewing and a succession of distasteful boarders. Edie learned even better how to cook and sew and wash and iron. Robbie got a job selling newspapers, which Katherine disliked intensely, but how else could they get by? When the boarders didn’t work out, Katherine had to find somewhere smaller, shabbier: a rundown two-bedroom villa on Adelaide Road with no bathroom or hot water. Edie shared a room with her mother.
    They’d received a little money from Donald’s colleagues at the paper and from Mr Truth himself, John Norton, but this did not last long, not after funeral expenses. They received a couple of shillings each week from the charitable aid board, but Katherine hated the way the inspector wiped his fingers on the door frame and across the grate, the way he checked that she bought nothing extravagant like butter or oranges, the way he inquired with the neighbours about any unsuitable men who might come calling.
    Sometimes Katherine had hated Donald for living; now when the bills arrived she could hate him for dying. I’m so, so sorry , she would write after she’d deliberately sent an empty envelope and then received a polite but firm reply. It is the shock of it all. I do not know how I shall recover from my poor husband’s sudden passing. Please find the cheque enclosed .
    The first time she visited the neighbourhood fruit and vegetable shop, the Chinaman added free unblemished fruit to her bag of cheap, speckled ones. She felt the heat rise in her face and left quickly. Afterwards she didn’t even know if she’d given the courtesy of a thank you.
    Sometimes they went to the soup kitchen, and again Katherine felt ashamed. What would the neighbours think? What would her mother? Yet the children needed to be fed, and Mother Mary Aubert and the sisters were kind – there was never a hint of condescension.
    Robbie got a job as a butcher’s boy after school, something he was far too young for, but as a favour from Mac Mackenzie, who’d enjoyed a beer with Donald in his time. Mac taught Robbie how to sling the basket of meat over one arm and urge on his mount with the other. It was a job Robbie loved, especially racing the boys from Kuch’s and Preston’s; and they got the odd free mutton bone, knuckle or kidney, and some money to help pay the rent.
    They ate bread and dripping or bread and jam, broken biscuits, turnips and carrots and cabbage, marked-down apples or the occasional overripe banana, the good fruit the Chinaman gave them, and meat once or sometimes twice a week. Katherine quietly despaired, searching the newspaper’s Wanted columns, inquiring at offices, factories, shop counters, even knocking door to door, seeking work.

Apples
    The first time she came into the shop, Yung was polishing apples, rubbing them with a soft grey cloth till the skin gleamed red with promise. With each apple he took a pair of secateurs and cut each stalk to the same neat length, then took the soft green apple-paper and wrapped it back round the fruit like a nest. One by