Animal People Read Online Free Page A

to do with their father, that it was simply for Margaret to show off to her friends—and she had talked him into it too. Cathy probably wanted to parade her boyfriend in front of the geriatric Rundle crowd. She was as pathetic as their mother.
    He dragged a shoe from beneath his bed with a hooked finger, filling with bitterness. Mothers were supposed to think you were magnificent no matter what. Sisters were supposed to side with you. But instead they kept grasping at him, making him feel guilty, expecting things of him he could not be expected to deliver.
    A weariness rose in him as he realised his mother would straightaway call Cathy to complain. He could add another martyred, angry phone call, then, to the troubles that lay ahead. The acres of the day unrolled before him: all the different kinds of disappointment he would be, all the various arenas of his failure.
    He turned away from the mirror, and stood to worm first one narrow foot, then another, into his trainers.

    The sun was high, relentless in the clear sky as he slammed the door behind him and turned out of his gate. As he stepped from the shade of the house onto the footpath he was stunned motionless for a moment—Christ almighty!—by the white brilliance of the heat. He stood shielding his eyes with his hand—he would have to go back for a hat—when Nerida from up the road called out to him. He hesitated, looking down towards the Plaza. He wished he could pretend he hadn’t seen her, but he was caught.
    Neighbourliness made him uneasy. In Stephen’s trudging back and forth to the outdoor toilet over the years he had developed almost without realising it an intricate sonic awareness of his neighbours’ private lives: the wheedling voices they used to talk to pet cats and dogs and birds, their habits with power tools and garbage bin lids (droppers or lowerers). He knew which back doors had aluminium flyscreens and which were sliding glass, he knew whose water pipes banged and filled at strange hours in the night, and he knew who had sat in their courtyards illicitly smoking when their partners or children were in bed. Occasionally, on the night air, came the floating grunts of sex.
    But this was backyard knowledge. In the street, at their front gates, Stephen and his neighbours maintained the barest of greetings and he imagined that, like him, they were happiest that way.
    Except for Nerida.
    Retired Nerida and her girlfriend Jill—he was sure they were gay, though never sure enough to venture any remark that might reveal this—lived two houses from Stephen, on the other side of Bridget and Keith, who had moved out with the new baby while the renovations were done. Today the builders were absent, the house silent.
    From her gateway Nerida beckoned at him again with a box of snail pellets. Stephen moved down the pavement and into the shade cast by her verandah. This was necessary—the sun was unbearable—but regrettable, as she took his nearness as a signal that Stephen was waiting for confidences. She beamed, tilting her head towards Bridget and Keith’s.
    â€˜Spending a lot of money in there,’ she said, in a tone that meant fools and gold were soon parted.
    â€˜Right,’ said Stephen. To keep out of the sun he had to lean towards her; it might look eager. He must make it clear he was in a hurry. ‘What’s up?’ he said.
    Nerida’s face was square and masculine, like a nun’s, her metallic grey hair swept back from her forehead. She wore short-sleeved floral blouses with the collars ironed flat—today’s was maroon. The cobweb thread of a fine gold chain with a tiny crucifix lay against the sun-damaged skin of her chest.
    Nerida said again, nodding at each word: ‘A lot . Of money.’ She still held the snail pellet box aloft. A cartoon snail grinned evilly from the box, showing its white human teeth, raising its villain’s eyebrows. Strange, how poisons were so