The Circle by Elaine Feinstein Read Free Book Online Page A

passionatedly. Lena shared a few sandwiches on to the three boys’ plates.
    –I don’t want those. I think I’ll just have my cake, said Michael.
    –No. Bread first, said Lena firmly.
    –I’m not hungry for bread.
    –Bread first.
    –Then I won’t have anything. Michael got up shrugging .
    Irritated, Lena went on sharing out tomato sandwiches and biscuits on to his empty plate. Then she followed him, into the hall, and called. A bit of a perfunctory shout: she expected no reply.
    *
    From the kitchen she could hear Alan and Johnnie talking passionately.    Arguing over the bumps of uncut grass and the way they put out the bounce of the ball, and then as they sensed her absence the interchange turned into quick meaningless punning, from grass to pass to arse : until suddenly she heard Alan say, irrelevantly again.
    –I’m great at tennis though.
    He wasn’t, she reflected very good at games in general. It worried her to hear him boast, but Johnnie seemed to accept it happily enough.
    –Have you had enough to eat? she came back to press them.
    They had not. So she cut more bread and they were still eating when the phone rang—Kari: Johnnie’s mother, at that moment rather measured and distant as she was trying to organise the return of her several children from different parts of the town.
    –Are you O.K. Lena? she found a moment briefly to ask. But the main point was would Lena make sure Johnnie got the right bus, would she cross the road with him: now, in fact because his father wanted to see him.
    So Lena stopped tea, found Johnnie’s coat and a blue ball he said was his, though she had some doubts about that, and it was almost six o’clock before she remembered Michael again.
    She did so with an intense, ill-defined apprehension, and she wished somehow she had found him before Johnnie’s ball and coat, as she looked through room after room while Alan went on phlegmatically eating up the biscuits.
    Unfairly she yelled at Alan: You aren’t helping much. Where’s Michael? Go and look in the sheds for him, will you?
    At which he made a face of disgust and reluctance. But he moved a foot or two towards the door    picked up an apple and said: I shouldn’t think he’s there really, Mum.
    –Never mind that, go and look.
    –Michael, he just managed to call through his apple, peering at the open door into the garden.
    She gave him a none-too-gentle pat on the bottom, and he went off slowly up the path still eating.
    A moment later she was frozen by a shriek of horror. And rushing out after him she cursed her own sloth, expecting what disaster she could barely formulate, calling Michael , Michael : miserably.
    She came instead upon Alan standing stupefied in the centre of the garden, holding his racquet. Bewildered, she looked about him for Michael, whose tormented or mangled form she somewhere expected to see. Instead there was only Alan crying, real tears of fury, yelling. Puzzled, she came closer.
    –What the hell is it? she asked.
    And then could see. The four central strings were snipped through cleanly and hung loose against the frame of the others.
    –How. Did that happen? How? blubbered Adam.
    –Shut up, she said, automatically. And was thinking of Michael. Oh, Christ, not that much spite in him surely, not that much hatred please.
    –I don’t know, she said. The garden door is open.
    –You mean someone would come in from outside then? Why? said Alan. Why would anyone do a thing like that?
    She examined the racquet again. The strings where they were cut were like hard wax points.
    –I wonder what he used. They’re pretty tough, she speculated.
    And now out of the corner of her eye, she could see Michael. And he had been in the sheds, the white powder of them was all over him. In his hand was a piece of wood he had been carving.
    –What do you think of my boat? he asked both of them cheerfully.
    Lena stared at his face.
    –Michael, she said.    Look what’s happened to Adam’s