After Me Comes the Flood Read Online Free Page B

went on and on, the shrill alarm one of those old-fashioned phones that were only ever used for bad news.
    The sound of it brought on my headache again, and broke through the indolence that had settled on me with the heat and the wine. I got up and followed the sound to a low table at the foot of the stairs and stood looking down at the receiver waiting for someone to come running. Then it stopped, and the silence was so complete I heard the cat purring in another room. I sat on the bottom step and looked at the front door. The key was in the lock and on the other side was the road home, and there was no-one to see me leave. I began pulling myself to my feet – I knew I’d been foolish to stay as long as I had, and little better than a liar and a thief when you thought about it, taking their food and their kindness – then I realised that of course I was drunk – my head ached, my legs were slow and heavy. I could no more drive home than run there. I sat heavily against the stairs, jarring my spine against the step. Then the phone began to ring again, and with a sort of reflex action that had nothing to do with me I snatched it up and said, ‘Hello?’ At the other end someone was shouting. It was a bad line, from a mobile phone or a call-box, and I could hear traffic and noisy passers-by. A man’s voice said, ‘Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? Hester, is that you?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, she isn’t here.’ And then, because for my own sake I wanted to hear my name spoken I said, ‘It’s John Cole.’
    But the other man couldn’t hear me, or wasn’t listening, only went on shouting against the passing cars: ‘Hello? Is anybody there? Hester – is that you?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid she isn’t here.’ My voice when I heard it was brisk and impatient as I imagine a secretary’s might be. Then he swore and said, ‘Well, take a message can’t you?’ I said that I would, of course, and he said: ‘Tell her it’s Jon Coules here, Jonathan Coules, and I’m delayed – I’ll be a week at least –’ The line broke, and when it returned it was clear he’d given some explanation I only caught at the end: ‘– couldn’t be helped… have you got that – have you got it? A week, and I’ll be with you.’
    While I write this I imagine I have a reader, one who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t believe a word I’ve written here, or – and would this be worse? – believes me, but finds me too dull, my handwriting too cramped, to read any further. Well – if you’re there, holding this page nearer the light to see more clearly, wishing I’d told you more, hoping I might do better on the next page, or the next – I want to make you understand that what I did next wasn’t a plan. I didn’t do it out of malice or mischief. Do you believe me? Can you believe it could have been an impulse that was nothing to do with me, that I didn’t know was coming, or I would have done everything I could do prevent it?
    When I looked up from where I sat, Hester was standing in front of me. Her dark blue dress was black and damp under the arms and in an irregular patch at the base of her throat; her hair had come loose in greasy coils that seemed to have an animation all of their own; and her broad ugly face was oily with sweat. But in the dark hall her dark eyes glowed, and she stooped and put her hand on the crown of my head where the hair is thin, and her palm felt hot and gentle against my skin. Then she said, ‘You must be tired.’ She said it so kindly, and so certainly, that I realised at once how many years it had been since anyone had noticed whether I was tired or not. Then she said, ‘Go up now, go on. Go up before the others come in. Sleep as long as you can. Nothing will happen here tonight or tomorrow, nothing ever does.’ Then she glanced down at the telephone and said, ‘Did I hear that earlier? Did you answer it, my dear? How rude of me – you didn’t come here to be my secretary,