Cosmo Cosmolino by Helen Garner Read Free Book Online Page A

himself narrow. He waited, with shoulders clenched, for the boots to pass.
    They halted in front of him. In his stupor and weakness, Raymond fixed his eyes on them. Never in his life had he really examined or considered the meaning of what anyone wore on their feet. The boots were very worn. They were black, and old. They met the ground with leisurely authority, and yet their Cuban heels gave them a lightness, a fanciful quality that was poised, vain, almost feminine. The man whose boots they were, from whose footwear Raymond was trying to read his fate, breathed steadily in and out. He was in no hurry. Still Raymond did not raise his eyes.
    At last the grating voice began. ‘So you were the one, were you,’ it said. ‘You were the one who was fucking her.’
    Raymond made blinkers round his face with his cupped hands and kept his eyes on the boots. ‘No, mate,’ he said. ‘Not me.’ He hardly recognised the sound of himself. ‘Oh, I knew her, sure. Sure thing. I knew Kim. Everyone knew Kim. She was a nice girl. But I only came today because Ursula, because her mother wanted me to.’
    The boots shifted, emitting a faint leathery squeak. ‘Bit old for her, weren’t you?’
    A whiff of cigarette smoke dropped to Raymond’s level and spiked the lining of his nose. ‘Listen, mate,’ he said, cupping his eyes, keeping his eyes down, ‘you’ve got the wrong bloke. It wasn’t me. I don’t know who she—’
    â€˜Anyway,’ said the man, moving his weight on to his left foot. ‘She’s dead now. No point worrying who was up who. Is there.’
    â€˜This is right,’ said Raymond. ‘Nothing can help her now.’
    Over in the garden beyond the carpark a bird uttered three notes of a mounting song, and fell silent.
    A butt landed with force on the black ground beside the boots. It lay on its side, saliva-stained, twisted, still burning; Raymond could not resist, at last, the urge to reach out one foot and perform the little circular dance of crushing it. Still he did not look up.
    â€˜There is one thing, though,’ said the low, harsh voice above him. ‘There’s one more thing that has to be done. For the girl.’
    â€˜I have to go, actually,’ said Raymond. He drew in his feet and placed his hands on the step as if to stand. This movement raised his gaze to the knees of the man’s black jeans: the cloth was beaten, necessary, seldom washed, carelessly pulled on: as flexible as skin. ‘I think I’ll get on home,’ said Raymond. ‘I have to find my brother.’
    â€˜Hang on,’ said the voice, patiently, firmly. ‘You can’t leave yet. I want to show you something.’
    The boots took two steps back, then another two, then two more. The garden, until now blotted out by the hugeness of the boots, the legs, the voice, spread suddenly into Raymond’s frame of vision. This he didnot want. He did not want movement, noise, softness; he wanted a permanent berth inside his grey casing.
    He raised his chin to argue.
    Where one man had been standing, there now were two. Raymond sat in his crouched posture, head back, on the threshold of the chapel. His lips parted to speak, but he could not properly see the two men’s faces, for the afternoon sun hung exactly behind their two heads which were leaning together ear to ear, calmly regarding him, calmly waiting for his next burst of excuses; and these died in his mouth at the sight of the corona of light whose centre was their pair of skulls, one furred with yellow hair, one shaven bald as ivory.
    The two men stepped apart.
    â€˜I know who you are,’ said Raymond to the bald man. Again his own voice rang oddly to him, as if his thoughts were forming on his tongue and not in his brain. ‘Are you her father?’
    â€˜Hardly,’ said the bald man, and laughed. ‘Don’t be a dickhead all your life.’
    The