Brother in the Land Read Online Free Page A

Keep your eyes skinned and give us a yell if you see owt.’ He unbuttoned the shop-coat and hung it on a nail. I nodded and climbed out into the night.

Eight
    He’d used rubble to make a sort of low wall across the corner. I moved to and fro behind it with the pick-handle in my hand or stood, straining my eyes into the dark. He was right: it was quiet. I don’t think I’d ever known real quiet before. I mean, when you live in a town there’s always noise, even in the middle of the night. You don’t notice it but it’s there. Real silence feels like something’s pressing in on you, and so does darkness. It’s never dark in town.
    I was more tired than I’d ever been. My eyes ached and my body felt like it didn’t belong to me. I kept taking these very deep breaths and hitting the side of my leg with the pick-handle to keep awake. I tried talking to myself but even a whisper sounded loud in the silence and I gave it up. I thought, maybe this is what it sounds like to be dead.
    I thought about Mum, but it was unreal. Any other time I’d have wept for a week. I’d often imagined myself after her death, prostrate, clutching her picture, refusing food, wanting nothing of this world except to be shot of it and go to her. Maybe it was tiredness or shock or something, but it didn’t feel like that at all. I was able to think about her in a detached way, as though she died a long time ago. I even thought, there she is, in a parcel under the counter like somebody’s order, waiting to be collected.
    It was a long night, but nothing happened. Eventually Inoticed that the sky to the east had paled and I could see the silhouettes of broken buildings against it. Imperceptibly, the paleness pearled and turned to faintest pink. It was cold, and all the smashed bricks had moisture on them. Soon, it was light enough for me to see that the street was empty. I laid my weapon on the wall and began breathing on my hands and rubbing them together. My feet were numb. I curled and flexed my toes over and over again till warmth came.
    Presently I heard movements below and Dad came up, treading softly. There was a three-days growth of whiskers on his face. His chin was blue.
    ‘All right?’ His voice was low. I nodded.
    ‘Quiet, like you said. Funny how shadows move when you’re straining to see.’ He laughed.
    ‘You can say that again. Scare myself daft sometimes. By heck!’ He rubbed his palms together. ‘I’ll be glad when that sun gets some heat in it. Somebody’ll come today, I shouldn’t wonder.’
    ‘Aye.’ My crotch was killing me and I thought about the man in the black outfit. ‘I just hope they do summat for us when they do.’
    Ben was still asleep. Dad went down again and came back with a big cardboard box. ‘Here.’ He set it down on the makeshift wall and handed me a tin-opener. ‘Get cracking and open that lot while I find us something to drink.’
    The box was full of tinned food, baked beans, spaghetti; stuff like that. There must have been twenty tins. I opened a couple, then waited till he came up again with some pop and sterilized milk. ‘D’you want all these open?’ I asked. He nodded and I said, ‘Why? There’s enough for about forty people here.’ He nodded again. ‘That’s right. And it won’t be long till there’s forty waiting for it. We’re not the only ones, y’know. Here.’ He passed me a bottle of pop. Orangeade. I screwed the cap off, took a long swig and shivered. ‘Ugh! Nice cup of coffee’d be more like it. Who’re you feeding?’
    He was quiet a minute, thinking. ‘There’s Mrs Troy and her lot, and that couple next to the filling-station, the Hansons. There’s Les Holmes and his lad, his missus copped it like yourmum. Then there’s Mrs North from number sixty-three, the widow. And there’s some others that I can’t remember. A lot of folk still have stuff of their own, but they’ll start running out in a day or two.’
    I took another swig of the pop. ‘Are we