The Pure Land by Alan Spence Read Free Book Online

his feet with a kind of confused urgency. The room came into focus, unfamiliar, a place in a dream. Then he remembered. The journey. Where he was. The ends of the earth.
    The banging came again, a knocking at the door, and for no good reason he braced himself, ready for confrontation. But it was only a young Japanese man, a porter delivering his luggage.
    The man bowed. ‘ Guraba-san ?’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Glover, ‘I don’t understand. But that’s my luggage, if that’s what you’re asking.’ He nodded and smiled, pointed at his old trunk.
    ‘ Hai ,’ said the man, bowing, and he dragged the box into the room, bowed again.
    Glover mimed patting his trouser pockets, pulling them inside out to show they were empty. He shrugged his shoulders, turned down the corners of his mouth in a clown-mask, a grimace of regret. The young man laughed, waved his hand, bowed one last time and was gone, light and barefoot down the stairs.
    Glover lay down again. Just a few minutes more. He plunged into a deep heavy sleep, and when he half-woke the room had grown dark. He hung in a kind of limbo, trying to surface, treading water, then with a huge effort willed himself awake, sat up. His dreams had been vivid but incoherent, were already starting to fade. Fragments came back to him, a sense of himself in a huge empty house, wandering from room to room, something small and white flitting ahead of him, just out of reach, and behind every door a vague nameless threat.
    He poured cold water into the basin, splashed his face. He would wash properly in the morning, shave, put on clean clothes. For the moment he just wanted to wake himself sufficiently, wipe the bleariness from his eyes. He would stretch his legs, go outside, see what his prison had to offer.
    The night air was mild, the scents and smells that heady mix of familiar and strange, the sea tang a constant, just the same. Across the way was the building Mackenzie had mentioned, faint light shining from the windows, the dull muffled rise and swell of male voices from the bar. He pushed open the door, went inside. The accommodation was simple and basic, a counter of dark wood along the back wall, a few tables scattered about the room, an old upright piano in the corner. There was a momentary lull in the conversations as he entered. A few men turned to look in his direction, but there was no acknowledgement, no word of greeting. The conversations picked up again. At the counter he ordered a beer from the surly barman he guessed was Dutch. The man took a bottle from the shelf behind him, put it down on the bar, put beside it a halfpint glass he’d wiped on his apron.
    ‘Chit?’ said the man.
    ‘Sorry?’ said Glover.
    ‘You work for Jardine’s?’
    ‘That’s right, aye.’
    The man pushed a piece of paper towards him, handed him a pen, an inkwell.
    ‘You sign.’
    ‘Fine,’ said Glover, and he signed his name in full, with a flourish. Thomas Blake Glover . He sat by the wall, raised his glass to two men at the next table.
    ‘Your health, gentlemen!’
    ‘A new arrival!’ said the man nearest, darkhaired and thin-faced, the accent unmistakeably English.
    ‘Another Englishman?’ said the other, a sallow, balding manwith a wisp of moustache. His inflection was European, most likely French.
    ‘A Scot,’ said Glover.
    ‘Oh, well,’ said the Englishman. ‘Next best thing, eh?’
    ‘I’m Tom Glover.’
    ‘Charles Richardson.’
    ‘Montblanc,’ said the Frenchman.
    ‘Cheers!’
    ‘Down the hatch!’
    ‘ A la vôtre! ’
    Perhaps it was his tiredness, the strangeness of the place, but he didn’t feel at ease with these men. They maintained an amused detachment, as if they were assessing him, weighing him up with an air of condescension, ready to find him wanting. The tiredness had also rendered him particularly susceptible to the beer, even this insipid brew he was drinking. Three bottles and he was drifting. The faces of his companions began to look