The meanest Flood by John Baker Read Free Book Online Page B

fingers on his flesh and the warmth of her body next to his and the idea of his meeting evaporated into the night.
    Sam wondered if in some strange, metaphoric way he had murdered every woman he had ever known. If he had managed through his own sense of ego to distance, alienate and eventually smother the essence of his relationships. He couldn’t remember how many years he’d been telling himself he was getting better at it, that he was learning from past mistakes and failures. But the women still kept coming and going. When they came they were keen and excited, and invariably, when they went, they were a little greyer, not quite as perky in the life-force department.
    Was he in the process of doing the same thing with Angeles? He hoped not. She filled his waking and often his sleeping thoughts. He couldn’t remember who it was but someone had once told him that we can’t exist unless the heart is full - we become dry and crumble away. Sayings, lines from songs, snippets of received wisdom, they lodge somewhere in your brain, never seem to leave.
    In the small hours of the morning he came awake with a vision of his ex-wife, Katherine, a knife in her chest and dead staring eyes. He closed his eyes and fitted his body into the curve of Angeles’ back and within a minute or two he was sleeping again, like a man without a conscience.
     

7
     
    ‘How many times has he been married?’ Janet asked.
    Geordie looked up and closed his eyes. ‘You don’t wanna know,’ he said. He scooped a teaspoonful of green mush out of the bowl and fed it into the open mouth of Echo, their daughter.
    ‘Come on, Geordie. How many? Seems like I’ve finally got a grasp of his emotional history and now another wife crops up.’
    ‘Dunno if you can say she’s cropped up when she’s freshly dead.’
    Janet turned her mouth down. ‘That’s bad taste.’
    ‘Taste is bad, the last I heard. It’s part of one-upmanship. One of the ways the middle classes keep ahead of the competition.’
    ‘OK,’ Janet said. ‘Don’t change the subject. How many wives?’
    ‘Depends what you mean by wife, how you define marriage.’ Echo had had enough of the green mush and was sitting with her mouth firmly closed. ‘Just two more spoonfuls,’ Geordie said. ‘Then you can have custard.’
    ‘It’s spoonsful, not spoonfuls.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ Geordie said. ‘Strictly, it’ll be spoonful. But I’m talking baby-talk.’
    ‘Let’s say we define marriage as in people who’ve been through a wedding ceremony.’
    ‘If I asked Sam he probably wouldn’t know. I think he’s had more than four wives and a lot of girlfriends.’ lanet shook her head. ‘Bluebeard.’
    ‘He doesn’t kill them. He chooses badly. He can’t discriminate. First he goes for women who’re too young for him, then he’s bored because they don’t understand what he’s talking about.’
    ‘They’ve got different cultural references,’ Janet said.
    ‘Yeah. That’s what I said.’ Echo opened her mouth and Geordie slipped another load of mush in there. ‘Also he likes wild women, you know what I mean, over the top?’
    ‘Indulge me,’ Janet said.
    ‘You know what I mean, Janet. Too much makeup, skirt up around her ass, deep cleavage, a mouth like a foghorn.’
    ‘Oh, tarts,’ she said. ‘You mean he likes tarts?’
    ‘Yeah, I guess. The guy’s damaged. This is one of the ways he shows it.’
    Janet smiled, showing her teeth.
    ‘What?’ Geordie asked.
    She shook her head. She leaned over the table and mopped Echo’s face with her bib. ‘D’you want me to feed her the rest?’
    ‘No, I’m doing it,’ Geordie said, irritated. ‘What’re you laughing at?’
    ‘Too much makeup,’ she said. ‘Mouth like a foghorn. You’re not questioning your boss’s taste, Geordie? Using bourgeois concepts to keep the working classes in their place?’
    ‘You led me into that,’ he said. ‘You took me by the hand and walked me into a trap.’
    ‘Would