England and Other Stories by Graham Swift Read Free Book Online Page A

He’d never before had this thought about umbrellas, only the usual thoughts—that they were like bats’ wings or that they were vaguely funereal—and this was like other thoughts and words that came into his head on this day, almost as if newly invented. It was a bit like the word kindly suddenly presenting itself as the exact word to describe Mr Reeves.
    As they turned the corner of their street it began to pelt down and they broke into a run. Inside, in the hallway, they stood and panted a little. It was dark and clammy and with the rain beating outside a little like being inside a drum. They climbed the stairs to their flat, Lisa going first. Nick had an erection and the words ‘stair rods’ came into his mind.
    It was barely two o’clock and the lower of the two flats was empty. Nick thought—though very quickly, since his thoughts were really elsewhere—of how incredibly lucky they were to be who they were and to have a flat of their own to go to on a rainy afternoon. It was supposed to be a ‘starter home’ and they owed it largely to Lisa’s dad. It was supposed to be a first stage. He thought of stages again, if less bleakly this time. Everything in life could be viewed as a stage, leading to other stages and to having things you didn’t yet have. But right now he felt they had everything, the best life could bring. What more could you want? And they’d even made their wills.
    He’d hardly dropped the sopping umbrella into the kitchen sink than they were both, by inevitable progression, in the bedroom, and he’d hardly removed his jacket and pulled across the curtains than Lisa had unbuttoned her red blouse. She’d let him unzip her skirt, she knew how he liked to.
    It rained all afternoon and kept raining, if not so hard, through the evening. They both slept a bit, then got up, picked up the clothes they’d hastily shed, and thought about going for a pizza. But it was still wet and they didn’t want to break the strange spell of the day or fail to repeat, later, the manner of their return in the early afternoon. It seemed, too, that they might destroy the mood if they went out dressed in anything less special than what they’d worn earlier. But just for a pizza?
    So—going to the other extreme—they took a shared bath, put on bathrobes, and settled for Welsh rarebit. They opened the only bottle of wine they had, a Rioja that someone had once brought them. They found a red twisty candle left over from Christmas. They put on a favourite CD. Outside, the rain persisted and darkness, though it was May, came early. The candle flame and their white-robed bodies loomed in the kitchen window.
    Why this day had become so special, a day of celebration, of formality mixed with its flagrant opposite, neither of them could have said exactly. It happened. Having eaten and having drunk only half the bottle, it seemed natural to drift back to bed, less hurriedly this time, to make love again more lingeringly.
    Then they lay awake a long time holding each other, talking and listening to the rain in the gutters and to the occasional slosh of a car outside. They talked about Mr Reeves. They wondered what it was precisely that had made him so sweet. They wondered if he was happily married and had a family, a grownup family. Surely he would have all those things. They wondered how he’d met Mrs Reeves—they decided her name was Sylvia—and what she was like. They wondered if he’d been perhaps a little jealous of their own youth or just, in his gracious way, gladdened by it.
    They wondered if he found wills merely routine or if he could be occasionally stopped short by the very idea of two absurdly young people making decisions about death. He must have made his own will. Surely—a good one. They wondered if a good aim in life might simply be to become like Mr Reeves, gentle, courteous and benign. Of course, that could only really apply to Nick, not to Lisa.
    Then Lisa fell asleep and Nick lay awake still