Peacetime by Robert Edric Read Free Book Online Page A

to see. I live in a room above a warehouse on the edge of town.’
    â€˜I’d still like to come,’ Mercer said.

6
    Mary Lynch returned to see him the following morning. Knowing what he now knew, he felt uneasy in her presence, conscious of what he might inadvertently reveal to her. She, too, seemed wary of him, and it occurred to him that they were both circling the same forbidden subject.
    He invited her into the tower. At first, she declined, but he knew that she would allow herself to be persuaded.
    Once inside, in the upper room, she went first to the desk upon which his charts and plans lay, and from there to one of the windows which afforded the tower an all-round view. Part of the airfield was also visible from the room, and she stood for several minutes looking out over this.
    â€˜Is this your first time in here?’ He knew by the ease with which she moved from window to window that it was not.
    â€˜We used to come in here all the time.’ She meant herself and the other children. ‘Until you arrived.’
    He began to explain to her why he had chosen thetower as the base for his work, but she showed little interest in what he said. She went to look over the houses and the sea beyond. There were men on the beach. A solitary woman hung washing on a line. It was a still day and the water was calm, its waves barely breaking against the shore.
    â€˜Is that your mother?’ he asked her, indicating the distant woman.
    She nodded once, watching the woman intently.
    â€˜It was good to meet her at last,’ he said.
    â€˜Why?’ She spoke sharply, causing him to remain silent. ‘She said after you’d gone that you thought you were better than us and that we could do without your charity.’
    The remark surprised him. He could not believe it was what Elizabeth Lynch truly thought of him. ‘She didn’t say either of those things,’ he said.
    Her averted glance confirmed his guess, and he wondered what pleasure she had gained from the lie, why she had insisted on telling it knowing he would not believe her.
    â€˜No, but she said them.’
    â€˜Mrs Armstrong?’
    â€˜Who else?’
    â€˜So what was the point of your lie?’
    â€˜Why does it matter who said it?’
    â€˜Of course it matters. I’m going to be here for the next two months.’ He paused. ‘I need to know who my friends are.’
    She crossed the room to stand beside him.
    â€˜In that case, my mother said I was to come and thank you for what you brought us. She said I was ill-mannered when you came.’
    â€˜I should have given the things to you when you were alone. They were yours.’
    â€˜My reward,’ she said, adding a cold emphasis to the word.
    â€˜Is that why you’re here?’ he said. ‘To thank me?’
    â€˜Is that what you want?’
    He filled a kettle from one of the canisters of water and offered her a drink. She accepted and they sat together at the table.
    It was warm in the room. He had tried to open the windows, but most of the panes no longer moved, their winding mechanism seized fast through corrosion and disuse.
    â€˜Are these the houses?’ she asked him, indicating the dwellings on his chart.
    He glanced quickly at the map to ensure that no indication of their future destruction was marked across them.
    She turned the sheet to face her, genuinely excited, it seemed to Mercer, at each of the surrounding features she was able to identify. She aligned the chart to the horizon outside and then set about naming everything she saw. He left her to make the tea.
    When he returned with the cups and saucers – there had been a case from the quartermaster containing forty-eight of each of these – he found her peering closely at the configuration of the drains and sluices flowing beneath the road in the direction of the town.
    â€˜They’ve all got names,’ she said disbelievingly.
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