After Me Comes the Flood Read Online Free

everyone, he’s here!’ She dashed round the table, took my hand, and pulled me further into the room. And I couldn’t resist, of course – she smiled up at me as if she’d been waiting all day to have me there, as though I were something she wanted to show off. ‘I told you I’d look after him, didn’t I,’ she said. ‘Well I did, and here he is.’
    I think I said ‘Hello’, or ‘Good evening’, but before I could pull my arm away and begin to explain the older woman stood and turned to face me. She was very tall, so that her eyes were almost level with mine, and she came towards me with her arms outstretched. I found my hands going up to meet hers, not from any impulse of my own but as if she compelled them to her. She held onto me and said, in what was both a welcome and a chastisement: ‘ Finally . You look pale – have you slept? Well – I’m Hester, of course.’
    I said, ‘Of course’, because it was expected and because she startled me. Her eyes were black and fiercely lit: I couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. It was like being put under a magnifying glass and inspected for flaws or virtues, and it made me flush more than ever and think how unfit those clear fine eyes were to the rest of her. I never think much about appearance, my own or anyone else’s, and I don’t think I’d ever thought of someone as ugly before. But for her it’s the only word that will do: everything about her seemed poorly assembled, as though she’d been put together from leftover pieces – her eyes set under a deeply lined forehead, her nose crooked like a child’s drawing of a witch, her skin thick and coarse. It looked to me as if she must have stolen her wonderful eyes from someone else. I didn’t notice her body then, but remember it now, her heaviness as she sat passing wine or getting up to look out of the glass doors – she was padded everywhere with flesh so there was no distinction between her shoulders and her waist, and had covered herself in a shabby dark blue dress. Her ankles were swollen in the heat and she wore ugly leather sandals with broken straps.
    I went on saying ‘Of course, of course’, letting her hold my hands, while she looked at me as though she knew what I was thinking and wasn’t hurt, but found it amusing. Then she pushed me towards a chair, and gesturing around the table said, ‘Clare you know of course. This is Elijah’ – the man in the high-backed chair nodded gravely and went on tapping at the table – ‘Have you met Walker? No? Walker, pour our guest a glass of wine. White, I think, John?’ I nodded. The grey-haired man leant forward rather slowly, and passed me a glass that was much too full. He gave me a disinterested look, shrugged faintly, and turned back to the boy beside him. Hester flung out her hand towards the boy and said, ‘Eve, my darling, remember your manners.’ Then she leant and whispered to me, ‘I do what I can with them all, but really…’ I took a sip of wine and the black-haired boy turned reluctantly from the man beside him to look at me. I spilt my wine, which was so cold on my shirt I shivered – it wasn’t a boy at all, but a young woman who must have cut her own hair in a fit of rage or boredom, because it stood out from her head in irregular curls, some of them clinging to the sheen of sweat on her forehead.
    She stood and reached across the table to shake my hand. Hers was as small as a child’s and her nails were dirty. She was very slender, and I could see how fine and sharp her bones were, with a thin covering of white skin glossy in the heat. In a voice on the verge of singing she said: ‘You must be hungry, John. Do sit, won’t you? And don’t let Walker frighten you: he will, you know – if he can.’ She gestured towards the man sitting next to her, who concealed a smile, then struck a match on the table’s edge and lit a cigarette.
    I think I said that yes, I was hungry; then straightened my