Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet Read Free Book Online Page A

wangled an early. The demob officer was a bloke I’d been in Africa with. I thought it would be nice if I got here today.”
    “Is that where you’re come from? Africa?”
    He laughed. “No. Aldershot. Mind you, it took about as long. The ruddy trains. The buggers treat you like dirt.”
    “Do they? Clem, let go of my leg; there’s a good boy.”
    “He don’t know who I am,” George said. “He’s scared of me.”
    “He’ll be all right. That’ll take a bit of gettun used to.”
    “Palestine,” George said.
    “Palestine?”
    She half remembered it from a newsreel. Her and Chrissie in the dark of the Regal, fag smoke wreathing in the beam of the projector. A huge hotel with its side blown off by a bomb. Jewish terrorists. How could there be Jewish terrorists? They were all skeletons. The main feature had been The Best Years of Our Lives.
    George lit a cigarette with a brass lighter that flipped open to the flame.
    Dear God, Ruth thought, who was he? He was different, somehow. Like he could get angry any minute, or something. She would have to sleep with him tonight. With her mother listening. She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t ready. The thought of it made her feel faint.
    “Jerusalem,” he said. “Bloody mad hellhole.”
    To her, Jerusalem was a song. A sort of hymn.
    He could not persuade his son to sit on his lap. Ruth poured weak tea. The cup trembled in her hand, chinking against the saucer.
    “So, love, where’d you get the car?”
    She blushed, not knowing why. “I’ll tell yer later.” She lowered her voice. “That ent exactly new. Painted up.”
    “Nowt wrong with that,” George said. He looked at his son. “Now then, young man. I’ve got a present for you, too. Would you like to see it?”
    Clem looked up at Ruth for guidance.
    “Another present, Clem! Thas nice, ent it?”
    George pulled the kit bag to his chair and untied the complex knot. He rummaged theatrically inside it.
    “Is that it? No. Is that it? No, that’s not it neither. Ah, here we go.”
    He produced an oddly shaped package wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. He held it toward his son, who still lurked behind his mother’s skirt. Ruth picked her child up and carried him to the table and sat him down on her lap.
    “Whatever can this be, Clem, that Dad’re brought yer? Shall we undo it?”
    The newspaper had photographs of foreign-looking men on it, and the writing was black wiggles and dots that looked a bit like music. Ruth imagined, madly, that her husband must be able to read it.
    George’s present for his son was an exquisitely carved wooden camel.
    “It opens,” George said. “See?”
    The camel’s hump was brass-hinged. George reached across the table and lifted it, revealing a hollow slightly larger than an eggcup.
    “See? You can keep your sweets in there. Or money.”
    Sweets, Ruth thought. Clem dunt know what they are.
    George fished in his trouser pocket. He brought out a silver sixpence and dropped it into the hump.
    “There you go, lad,” he said. “That’s got you started. It’ll all add up.”
    “What is ut, Mum?” Clem asked.
    “I’ve got something for you, as well, Ruth,” George said, reaching into the bag again and producing a small soft package.
    “What is it?” she asked stupidly. She was like a child, too.
    “Well, why don’t you open it and find out?”
    It was a silk shawl, diaphanously white, embroidered along its edges with green and silver threadwork. At each of its four corners was a tiny seashell. It was perhaps the most useless thing you could give to a red-haired woman who lived in Norfolk and was saving her clothing coupons for a new winter coat.
    “I spent a whole afternoon haggling for that with a nig-nog in Cairo. I wore him down in the end, though.”
    “Thas beau’iful, George.”
    She held it against her face and wept. It smelled whorishly of foreign parts.
    “Now what are you crying about, lass?”
    “Nothun. Sorry. I’m sorry, George. Just I wunt