Being Dead by Jim Crace Read Free Book Online Page B

not waste herself on any of these men. There’d be a week of silences. She’d hold them in contempt. She was too big and free for them. Too tough and odd. Too ugly-beautiful. ‘Shut up,’ she called out from the veranda. One of the men – smug Victor, she suspected – was trying not to laugh aloud, and failing. ‘Shut up. Shut. Up. We’re sleeping here.’ She had not felt so cruelly liberated for a year. Less preferred than prostitutes, indeed!
    It was soon after one o’clock, and Celice was still not sleeping, when Joseph – she’d forgotten Joseph – came back to the study house without colliding with the doors or furniture. The first thing that she heard of him was his small voice. Where had he been, the three men asked, more sober now, and more subdued. And why the torch? And why – some boyish comments here – the muddy knees?
    They jeered, of course, when Joseph said he’d only been walking along the coastal track into the dunes to watch the stars and see what nightlife he could find.
    ‘Nightlife? Oh, yes?’ said Hanny. ‘Was that nightlife in skirts? Nightlife with harry arses?’
    ‘Furry foxes.’ Joseph’s voice was careful and defensive; the brainy boy unused to body jokes. ‘And there were rock owls and moths and some fine sea bats. This big.’ He spread his hands.
    ‘Big tits,’ remarked the ornithologist. ‘Come on! You’ve not been prancing on the beach. You’ve found yourself a little farm girl . . .’
    ‘Some short-sighted little farm lass . . .’ Hanny squinted into the corners of the room, contorting his face and pursing his lips, acting the half-blind village nincompoop that Joseph might attract.
    ‘Sea bats. This big, as a matter of fact,’ insisted Joseph, unembarrassed by their drunkenness and delighted, even, by his own eccentricity. ‘I’m not tall enough for girls.’
    ‘What kind of person – as a matter of fact – goes bat-hunting . . . ?’
    ‘A zoologist,’ suggested Joseph. And then, more playfully, ‘You’ve seen some fauna of your own, no doubt.’
    ‘Oh, yes. Wild beasts. We’ve been riding wild beasts . . . !’
    ‘Well, that was foolish,’ Joseph said. ‘You took a risk. The light’s all wrong.’ And then, no warning, he began to sing, hardly lifting his voice as if his comic riddle and its innuendoes should not be heard beyond their yellow ball of lamplight. This was not intended for Celice’s ears.
    It isn’t safe to ride the beast
    When the light is in the east.
    All riders of the beast will die
    Unless the moon has crossed the sky.
    Be still while beast light’s in beast east,
    Bestow beast man with your best beast,
    For, once beast star bestrides beast sky,
    Beast moon bestirs and beast will die.
    Who dies? The beast? The sky? The moon?
    The light? The man?
    We’ll all know soon.
    Now they wouldn’t let him go to bed. ‘Again,’ they said. ‘And sing it fast, sing it fast, sing it fast.’ The little man was more amusing than they had expected. He could be the drunkest of them all, by far, even if he’d only drunk with bats and moths. They insisted that he take a bottle of ‘their’ beer and sit with them at the common-room table, staring at the ducking flame in the lamp. They wanted more of his exquisite nonsense.
    Celice was now despairing and infuriated. The bantering of Joseph and the drunks next door, her snuffling room-mate, fast asleep, the midnight wind wheezing through the timbers of the roof, the far-off whistling of the sands, the disappointments of the day would still not allow her any rest. She was excluded from the passion and the ardours of the night, and yet kept from the anchorage of dreams by all the laughter that was coming from the common room. She knew better than to show her face again. The joy and whispering would end and, given that her tongue and temper were unpredictable, the shouting would begin. She hoped they’d caught some bad disease, she’d say. She hoped their dicks fell off.
    ‘Keep