Breaking Light by Karin Altenberg Read Free Book Online Page A

so cold it felt damp against his skin. And then there was the nauseating wash of the first waves of sleep – the sinking in and out of folds of velvet and the island of emerald green in blue behind his closed eyelids. And somewhere, nuzzling up against the beginnings of his dreams, their underwater voices:
    â€˜Well, Cecilia, I’m very sorry, but it was inevitable that this would happen – sooner or later.’
    â€˜I suppose, but why now?’
    â€˜I don’t know, sis, but let’s be reasonable. Let’s try to keep the children out of it.’
    â€˜He must never know. Do you hear me?
Never
.’
    â€˜But Cecilia …’
    â€˜No: it’s my final decision.’
    *
    It was well into the afternoon, the feeble sun barely reaching over the hedges, when Mr Askew set out for his allotment again. As he shuffled along the street, past Wilkinson’s, which was now the deli, and a group of Gore-texed ramblers outside Rowden’s, he wondered whether he needed to employ a woman to come and do a bit of cleaning for him; somebody who could come – and be gone – while he was out for a walk or at the allotments. The thought was unsettling but he had to keep at it, unflinchingly. However, his mind soon slipped towards more pleasant thoughts. He quickened his steps as he remembered the planhe had worked out during his after-lunch doze. He was going to plant an herbaceous border on the side of the allotment that faced the silent woman’s plot. He could already see it in his mind’s eye: the taller achillea and delphiniums at the back and then anemones and sea holly at the front. Perhaps a few poppies. Lapis lazuli flanked by gold, white, purple and red – a rainbow of goodwill and neighbourly consideration.
    As he turned on to the path to the higher ground, he could see a glimpse of colour in the dull field. ‘Ah, good,’ he said to himself. ‘She’s back.’ Leaning into the wind, he stumbled towards her, waving his hand and shouting, a bit too eagerly, ‘Ah, I thought you might come back this afternoon – it’s such a nice day for it, isn’t it?’ He had made his mind up and would not have it otherwise, although the wind did bite and the sky was darkening over the hills in the west. A few gulls, having detoured from the coast beyond the horizon, scattered reluctantly from the beds of fat worms as Mr Askew charged up the broken path, his coat catching briefly on last year’s brambles. He was suddenly uncertain whether she had heard him – the wind was still against him – and threw his words at her with renewed force. ‘Lovely afternoon, wouldn’t you say?’ He faltered as he saw that she had stopped digging and was looking at him. In the flurry of the afternoon, she seemed remarkably still – the kind of stillness learnt in solitude. She was younger than he had thought at first, perhaps in her early fifties, and her dark gaze, as it finally settled on him, was more intense.
    â€˜Not necessarily.’ Her voice was clear, the pronunciation distinct but foreign.
    He was taken aback for a moment, then murmured, ‘No, I suppose you’re right. Weather is always a matter of opinion –quite subjective, really. What is fair to one may be quite foul to another.’ How stupid he sounded.
    And yet her smile was without irony, or so it seemed. The headscarf had slid back to reveal her black hair, streaked with a few strands of silver. ‘Our nature makes it difficult to reach absolute certainty and consensus … but some things are indisputable –’ her eyes were the colour of reeds in a river – ‘such as, a rectangle has four corners, or, if I sow, I will reap.’
    The wind was fretting with his hair, lifting the fringe, which he kept long out of habit, and blowing it about. He tried to hold it down until he remembered the cap in