Some Rain Must Fall by Michel Faber Read Free Book Online Page A

to wait for it. His eyeballs felt swollen and he was shivering.
    In bed, he fell into sleep as if from a height, as if he were a single, soft-spoken word falling through space. Then he dreamed of going to the back of the universe, his favourite place for finding new toys. This time, however, he heard, as he approached, the sound of someone rummaging there ahead of him. It was another child, the same size as himself, emerging bum-first from the charred shell of an ancient generator. God dashed forward in an ecstasy of loneliness, desperate to be as close as possible before the child turned to show him if it was a boy or a girl.
    He ran and ran, all night, for ever and ever, until, in the morning, he woke, remembering nothing, except that it had been good, and he was happy.

Miss Fatt and Miss Thinne
    TWO FAIRLY YOUNG ladies, having been friends since convent days, still lived together in a small cosy house. They were terribly used to one another, and took turns to do the scrambled eggs in the mornings.
    Miss Fatt, who was not fat, regularly performed such tasks as extracting the different-coloured hairs from the bath plughole, scrubbing the dried toothpaste froth off the bathroom sink, and other jobs which Miss Thinne, who was not thin, detested. Miss Thinne took care of such tasks as washing and ironing, and her friend considered this a fair exchange.
    Physicalities are important in this story: Miss Fatt was a slender woman with long legs, big breasts and a face like Marilyn Monroe’s. Miss Thinne was likewise a slender woman with long legs, big breasts and, in her case, a face like Greta Garbo’s, but fuller in the cheeks. Had they been in the habit of wearing each other’s clothes they might have been mistaken for each other, at least in bad light.
    But they weren’t in the habit of wearing each other’s clothes (however perfectly these might have fitted), because they considered themselves to be as different as chalk and cheese. This conviction (a totally mistaken one) was based on things like the division of the housework. How could they be even similar, they thought, if one of them retched while the other hummed contentedly over a toilet bowl? How could strangers have trouble telling them apart, whenone of them spent three hours a week ironing, and the other had ironed for perhaps three hours in her whole lifetime?
    However, there are deeper truths than division of labour, and in reality Miss Fatt and Miss Thinne were so much alike that they were almost a single organism, growing in two pale branches from an invisible root in the heart of the house.
    On a typical day, the alarm went off at seven in the morning, and one of the women would reach out of bed and turn it off, this responsibility being accepted in turns, as the alarm clock was shifted nightly from one bedside table to the other. Miss Fatt might get out of bed, put on her slippers, and shuffle into the kitchen to make breakfast.
    At the breakfast table, she and Miss Thinne would talk in the drab private language developed by people who share too many minutes of the day.
    After breakfast, the women got dressed, Miss Fatt in her Wonderbra and fashionable clothes, Miss Thinne in her white uniform and regulation cardigan. Then they left for work in the car they shared, Miss Thinne getting off at the Community Health Centre, and Miss Fatt driving on to wherever she was wanted that day.
    Occasionally she wasn’t wanted anywhere and would drive back home, but usually she had plenty of work, what with her Marilyn Monroe looks.
A Typical Miss Thinne Day
    Miss Thinne’s duties as a community nurse were many, and she enjoyed every single one of them. She was one of those health-care professionals who had the knack of generating a sort of breezy warmth impossible to distinguish from genuine affection. This allowed her to get along with anyone, especially the sick and elderly.
    ‘How are you today, Mrs Carbioni?’ she might ask, while changing the dressing on that