Peacetime by Robert Edric Read Free Book Online Page B

have.’
    â€˜Not out here. They usually get called by the last thing that happened there.’
    â€˜It’s a common enough way of doing things.’ He rattled the cup at her and she took it from him, holding the saucer in both hands.
    â€˜Sorry there’s nothing more practical,’ he said.
    She studied the two pieces of cheap crockery and the spoon he had laid beside the cup.
    â€˜Why did the all-knowing Mrs Armstrong think I was being high-handed?’
    â€˜Who cares? She would have said the same whatever you’d done. She reckons that whatever you say, you’re here to knock down the houses and kick us all out.’
    It was not part of his work to destroy the dwellings, but he could not deny that their demolition was included in the future plans for the site. The houses had originally been built for the lighthouse-keepers and the crew of the earlier lifeboat that had once, briefly, been stationed there. Now neither existed, and the houses – costly to maintain and repair in such an isolated place – were surplus to all practical requirements.
    â€˜She worries where she’ll go.’
    â€˜Where would any of you go?’ he said.
    â€˜You say that as though it would be a problem,’ she said. She set her cup down.
    â€˜Would you move into town?’
    â€˜I’d keep going until I reached somewhere worth living,’ she said. ‘It can’t all have been bombed to rubble.’
    â€˜A lot of it was,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a long time before a lot of people get back on their feet.’
    â€˜But they are building it all again?’
    â€˜Of course they are.’ A month earlier, he had been in London, living in the home of his dead parents.
    She considered this for a moment. ‘So what you’re saying is that it’s the people like us who are at the bottom of the list for getting new houses.’
    â€˜Not necessarily. It’s just that—’
    â€˜Just that nobody cared much about us before the war and nobody cares much about us now.’
    There was nothing he could say to her. The crockeryrattled in her hand and she separated the two pieces to stop this.
    â€˜I probably know as little as the rest of you,’ he said. He slapped his hand on the charts. ‘All I know for certain is that the new Coastguard Station has to be built. Beyond that …’
    After several minutes, she said, ‘I know,’ and nothing more.
    They listened to the machinery and the shouting of the men beneath them.
    â€˜The house is going to be crowded when your father comes home,’ he said eventually, watching closely for her response.
    She considered this before answering him. ‘No more crowded than it was before,’ she said.
    It occurred to him that the house contained only two bedrooms, and that she shared one of these with her small brother, that she had shared it as a girl upon her father’s departure, and that she shared it with him still.
    He considered all this without speaking, and when he next looked at her, she was watching him closely.
    â€˜What?’ he said.
    She said nothing, and he thought for a moment that she had seen something through the window behind him which had attracted her attention.
    â€˜You don’t have to pretend,’ she said eventually.
    â€˜Pretend about what?’
    â€˜About him.’ She meant her father.
    â€˜What am I pretending?’ he said.
    â€˜That he isn’t in an Army prison and that he wasn’t sent there because he tried to run away.’
    â€˜How long have you known?’ he said.
    She shrugged.
    â€˜Who told you?’
    â€˜Nobody told me. They didn’t need to. You only have to listen to what they say to each other. You can hear people whispering through those walls. I’ve known for about a year. I was there when they came for him. She said they’d just come to give him a lift back to his camp, but I saw how they