Our Picnics in the Sun by Morag Joss Read Free Book Online Page A

outside.
    And because the breakfast routine was upset, all that followed was upset. When she came back downstairs dressed she didn’t help him to his usual chair in the sitting room. Hadn’t time, she told him, and he was supposed to walk by himself with the frame as much as he could, that’s what they said at Stroke Club. She forgot about his tablets and he had to mouth at her and point at the cupboard where they were kept. Digger was loitering at the open door, the dog jumping and barking behind him. She rattled the tablets on to his plate next to his cup of milk and he lifted them one by one to his mouth; as soon as he had taken the last and brought the cup down from his lips, she pulled it away. Then she left, telling him she wouldn’t be long and he’d be fine.
    She didn’t tell him to finish the milk or wipe his mouth. She didn’t wait to see that he’d managed to swallow the pills. When the dog’s barking at last grew faint, Howard emptied the bitter, chalky spittle into his hand and wiped it down his thigh. He ate the last piece of banana on his plate and finished the milk: children’s food. In the quiet of the kitchen, the empty space of the morning ahead opened up, wide and uncrossable. He heaved himself up to his walking frame and pushed it along toward the sitting room. Behind him, the clock spat out a tick between each shuffling step. Between each step hestopped and waited, longer each time; with every tick and every step, he wanted to be dead.
    When she came in later she stank of sheep. He wouldn’t look at her and wouldn’t eat the sandwich she made for his lunch, because it also stank of sheep. She told him he was tired and helped him to bed. He could tell she was excited about something; there was life in her, maybe because today she was doing what she liked doing, keeping away from him. More and more, she wanted to keep away from him. He lay awake on his bed while the sun’s blaze filtered through the drawn curtains and his lips worked in silence, forming unsayable words of pleading. A memory of his own voice droned in the warm air over his head. A little later when she looked in on him he pretended to be asleep, and after a while he heard the back door shutting and the van starting up in the yard.
    There must have been a time that afternoon when he did fall asleep, and there was a time when she came back and got him up and fretted around him and made him another sandwich, which he ate. He couldn’t be sure of the order of those times or how long any of them took. Later, he was back in his chair in the sitting room, that much he knew; also that she switched on the television and went out again.
    The room was stifling and dark. Noise, color, and also, it seemed to him, heat radiated from the television. Since the bedroom partition had gone up there was only one window in the sitting room and he’d wanted it opened but hadn’t been able to say so. Why hadn’t she opened it before she left? She knew he couldn’t do it; it took two good arms to lift the sash. He could die in here like a dog in a car. She was trying to kill him. If he could hurl a shoe far enough to break the glass, he would. He’d enjoy the sound of shattering glass. He remembered that she’d promised that morning to trim his hair; that, too, she had forgotten. It was simple fury that gave him the strength to grasp hold of his frame and go to the kitchen drawer where the scissors were kept.
    Deborah always cut his hair in the kitchen, so he would not; besides, he didn’t want her or Digger barging in on him before he’d finished. For no reason but to hear the words aloud, he tried, andmanaged, to call out “Cut hair!” and then his voice cracked with laughter. “Too hot, cut off!” he cried, but on the
ff
he bit down on the moist flap of bottom lip that was caught between his teeth and drew blood.
    Sucking on his mouth, he shuffled back to his chair in the sitting room. He turned up the volume on the television—it was