Communion Town by Sam Thompson Read Free Book Online

Twilight had submerged the garden, but evening was still bright above the skyline. A few partygoers were dallying out here in pairs and threes, but none paid me any mind. Seen from outside, the party appeared benign. I exhaled.
    ‘You haven’t spoken to me all evening.’
    She sat down beside me.
    ‘I’m glad you’ve been enjoying yourself,’ she said in a pointed undertone. She was glaring at me. ‘I was watching, you know. You should have seen yourself. I should have known better than to bring you. Oh, don’t even try. You’ll only make it worse.’
    As she spoke, it dawned on me that I had never seen her so angry. Dumbly I understood that I’d got the evening wrong. All at once it was obvious: I’d got it all wrong, somehow, from the beginning.
    I said nothing.
    ‘It was so blatant,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t you care what anyone thinks?’
    I wondered what I had expected if not this. It occurred to me there were probably certain words I could say, now, that would change what was happening, but I could not begin to guess what they were. I stared down at my ragged plimsolls and wondered how I would get home tonight.
    ‘Don’t you dare ignore me!’ She shook my arm. I looked up, and her eyes searched my face.
    ‘Did you think for an instant about the position you’ve put me in? No, you couldn’t care less, could you. It wouldn’t even cross your mind. Don’t you have any shame ?’
    She paused, slightly out of breath. Then her fingernails were in my scalp and our mouths jammed together. Her weight laid into me so that we tipped backwards and rolled off the wall into a flowerbed. After a frantic minute I struggled up and hauled her to her feet. I pinned her wrists in my hands and led her deeper into the park, to find privacy among the hedges.
     
    New experience made me bold, and I began to frequent parts of the city I would never have dared before. I found myself walking at a slower pace, happy to get lost in the spacious maze of all these flower tubs and iron railings, these stained white pavements, locked restaurants, fire escapes and commercial accessways, these airy canyons whose windowsills were crowded with geraniums, these deep arcades where shopfronts glinted: chocolatiers and milliners and dealers in delightful bits of junk. One afternoon near the November Bridge I discovered a secluded square dominated by a grand café. I decided to go inside and spend a while writing in the notebook I had bought myself earlier that day. I thought I had an idea for a song.
    Inside, the café was a single high-roofed space, full of wood and brass and potted palms, the customers in pairs or alone. Two or three figures moved among them with silver pots. As I sat, a waiter appeared and took my order: moments later a tiny cup of black coffee stood in front of me and the waiter was melting away again even as he answered my thanks with a bow. His ceruse-white face paint was flawless. The tinkling music-box phrase that accompanied his movements stepped continually from major to minor and back. An overweight customer, sweating into a double-breasted wool suit, watched him narrowly as he crossed the room.
    I sipped my coffee and opened my notebook at the first page. The words, which had seemed to fit so well in my head as I walked along, were harder to get hold of now that the tip of my pencil was resting on unmarked paper.
    The fat man drained a bulbous glass of some viscid, dark-brown liqueur, and signalled to the waiter for more and quick about it. His small features, which were dwarfed by the swags of his cheeks and chins, wore a congested expression. His pointed patent shoes rested wide apart under the table and his short thighs lay puddled over the seat of his chair.
    As the bottle was brought to his table, the customer glowered stolid-faced in the other direction. From my vantage point, though, I could see his hand settling on the back of the waiter’s thigh, and sliding upwards. There was a clatter: the sticky