From a Distance Read Online Free

clapped slowly. ‘You’re good, it’s the music hall for you guys,’ he shouted.
    They spun a circle in the road ahead of him. The bike wobbled but kept going as the girl leaned to call, ‘I don’t know where you’re going, but the station isn’t far now. Good luck, and welcome back to England.’
    With a jaunty trill on the bell, the couple wove away down the road.
    The moment of laughter and ordinary human contact was exhilarating. Michael dropped his bag and stretched. What was the rush? Once he was out of uniform, he would be a non-soldier for the rest of his life. A tobacconist was opening up again after lunchtime, in the next street. An old man sat outside with a dog, cleaning his pipe in the sunshine, knocking it on the arm of his chair. Michael negotiated past him into the shop. The woman behind the counter had a brown overall on, a hankie tied around her head and her gaze was direct.
    ‘Can I help you? We’re out of newspapers but then you’re the big news around here, aren’t you? You lot still coming back, dribs ’n’ drabs ’n’ all that.’ Her mouth was pursed. Michael looked at her curiously. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone might not be pleased they were home.
    He spun a coin. ‘Could I have some matches, please?’
    The smell of pipe tobacco in this little room was reassuring. Michael glanced around, intrigued by the barber’s shop room through a glazed door at the back. He wondered if he had time for a haircut. Really, he had time for whatever he wanted. He realised the woman was still talking. ‘And I s’pose if you want cigarettes, you just come back and help yourselves. Cigarettes, girls, beer. I don’t know where you think this will all end.’
    ‘No,’ said Michael. Then on an impulse added, ‘Where do you think it will all end?’
    She was arranging a stack of matchboxes next to a photograph mounted on board. She stopped, her arm raised, a red matchbox in her hand. The photograph showed a team of young men in naval uniform. Her crossness drained away under his scrutiny.
    ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, flustered by the attention, ‘but I do know you’ll miss the train any moment. The two fifteen is due in ten minutes and you’ll want to be on it, won’t you, lad? Got people to be home for. A life to take up. You don’t want to miss it now you haven’t been killed, do you?’
    He looked at her, then at the photograph by the till. A sports team, the names beneath. Another photograph pinned to the wall behind her of a young sailor holding a small, smiling dog. Michael looked out of the window. The same dog was scratching vigorously, its whole body shaking with the effort of applying claw to ear. The shopkeeper followed his gaze, and bent to open a drawer behind her. She pulled out a ledger.
    ‘Your son?’ The question hurt like a new bruise.
    She nodded, put a hand to the thin silver chain at her neck, blinked hard. ‘Don’t miss that train, love,’ she said.
    Michael felt her courage, warm as the sun when she smiled.

Chapter 2
    The new triptych clock above the kitchen door displayed the time in Kerala and New York as well as Norfolk. New York time was straightforward, the clock had come with it. Something to do with Wall Street and the stock exchange, no doubt: six forty in the morning. Five hours earlier than Green Farm House and Greenwich. Glancing up at it gave Luisa a sense of industry and virtue. It was easy to warm to this reality, she was the urban superwoman, ahead of the game. As a New Yorker, she would have got up – no, make that gotten up – especially early to fit everything into her day, she was a busy working mother with an over-flowing life, calls upon her time beaming in from every direction. Listen! That electronic ping was probably a very important email from someone requiring her immediate attention, or was it the oven timer? Domesticity. The enemy of promise to some, but not to Luisa. In her busy life, it was just a quick reminder