For Everyone Concerned Read Online Free

carefully lifted the Director’s leg, propping it tidily against his knee, and fitted her shoe. She stood, looking off blankly, while this was done, implacable as a horse, or a painting of a horse.

crown the king
    We wanted the knife, both of us. Every Sunday we’d sit with our grandfather and he’d ask us all these questions, how was school? how was cricket? and all the time we were answering in our heads: fine, now give us the knife. Eventually he’d say, would you like to see the knife? He’d bring it out from his bedroom and give it to my older brother to hold first.
    The knife was ancient but it was polished and oiled and its blades and tools swung easily into steely life. It was our grandfather’s army knife. He lived by himself in a council flat and he couldn’t climb onto a bus any more, but he said that the knife had saved his life more than once. He’d killed people, we believed. In Egypt. Egyptians? Anyway, that was the horror of war: kill or be killed. There was always a burnt smell in his flat because after doing the dishes, he used to hang therubber gloves on his heater. Also he had a budgie, that pongy bird, we called it.
    We coveted the knife. We longed to have it and to take it home. We wanted it. We weighed it in our palms: the horror of war, we said to each other. At home we fought hand-to-hand, taking turns to hold the imaginary knife.
       
    One Sunday our grandfather said that when he died we could each have one thing of his; we could choose now. My brother was to have first choice. The knife! he said. I’d like the knife!
    I burst into tears and ran from the room but there was nowhere to go. Run out of a council flat and you’re on the road. I ended up sitting in the kitchen where I pinged my finger against the budgie cage. I’d coax the budgie towards my finger, then startle it by flicking my finger hard against the cage. There’s a moron in all of us.
    A few weeks later I had to drive with my mother to deliver something to our grandfather. Soon, said my mother, we won’t be making this trip. How soon? I said. Don’t, she said. Don’t what? But she couldn’t speak. She just waved her hand for me to stop, or look out the window of the car.
    The back door was always open. My mother called out and we went in. He’d already had his lunch. There was the end of a piece of celery, and there was hissoft-boiled egg in the egg cup. He always put the top of the egg back on the egg once he’d finished. Crown the king, he said.
    We entered his room and found him bent over his feet; he was cutting his nails and scraping away at the dead skin in the corners of his toes. The cuttings were being collected on a piece of newspaper. He was working with the prize knife, the war knife, the knife of death.
    My mother started fussing about it all. It was really repellent. She hated the male foot. Someone’s feet stink, she always said. Go and wash your feet whoever it is. Still it was her father and she had to help.
    I turned quickly to face the shelf where our grandfather kept his golf trophies. Pretty much we despised golf, my brother and I, didn’t understand it one bit. Our grandfather had been playing for years and he wasn’t great at it but he was good enough apparently. He had his own fold-out seat for resting between holes. The largest of the trophies was a silver man saluting the air with his raised club. I touched the silver man’s head. It was a Hole-in-One trophy.
    You like that? said my grandfather.
    Yes, I said.
    When I’m gone, he said, will you polish it?
    I will, I said.
    Liar, he said.
    I will, I promise.
    How often will you do it?
    Every day? I said.
    Ha!
    I will.
    Every day! He turned to my mother, grinning. He’ll think of me every day he says. He looked at me again. Then it’s yours.
    My mother was wrapping up the newspaper.
    I’m surrounded by kindness, he said.
    And rubbish, said my mother.
    Later, in the car, she said to me, Remember, you have made a promise.
    And by what I