Leather Wings Read Online Free Page B

lot of working Mums still get home to be with little Jack and Jill by half three. Saturdays are falling off — too much sport and now the supermarkets are open, a lot of shops are open weekends, it’s a shame. But I’m doing all right. Some days children open the door, but Mummy’s usually somewhere there behind them — or Daddy. I try to put on the same face no matter who comes; my Rawleigh’s face, a sort of disguise. I’d have liked a uniform. I’ve never had a uniform unless you count the green jersey we all wore at school, but mine wasn’t even the right green, Mother said it didn’t matter but it did.
    Why did I tell that woman I was a family man? You don’t know what you’re going to say sometimes till you’ve said it, do you? I’m not usually a liar, well only when it’s necessary. That wasn’t necessary. I don’t even want to be a “family man”, God forbid. It doesn’t seem fair to me that a man should be expected to carry a whole lot on his shoulders, wife, kids, paying the bills, letting banks and lawyers boss him around while the family sit at home whingeing. Just because he’s aman. I guess I’m a feminist. The idea of a woman hanging on to my arm, expecting things of me, it gives me the creeps. I don’t know if my mother expected things of my father, but as I say, he was a wizard, so he’d have had no problems. I could never understand why she cringed so much, like he hit her regularly, which he didn’t, only once or twice. I went to the front window and yelled for the neighbour, Mrs Whatsit, that really bad time. I was only nine years old so I didn’t understand what was going on, just a row, nothing to get stewed up about. Anyway the neighbour didn’t come, can’t have heard me, thank goodness. Probably busy with her own row in her own kitchen.
    I don’t expect to have any of my own but I do like kids. It isn’t just because they can be cute; I understand them, I really do, we’re on the same wave length. I know how to play with children. That little girl, Jania — pretty name — she was one of the special ones. You can tell the special ones, it’s something about the eyes: they watch you as if they know what’s there in your head and it doesn’t matter, they know you can be trusted, you wouldn’t hurt them. Jania had this bit of a scar on the inside of her neck — I wonder where that came from? Some people hit kids, there’s a lot of it goes on. I’d never hurt a child, I never have. I’ve had nightmares about hurting a child and I wake up all in a sweat.
    Once it wasn’t a nightmare, a long time ago it was real, or might have been. It wasn’t me, but I was there, I saw it. She was about the same age as this Jania, she was my little cousin, I don’t remember her name. Was it in our house it happened, or did she live nextdoor? It’s really strange the way I can’t remember it exactly, like trying to focus binoculars and it won’t come clear, the picture at the other end. My father had this eye-glass thing he would screw into his eye and twiddle while he worked on his watch parts. Once I disturbed him at it and he lifted his face up with this magic eye in it and stared right into me, I swear I felt it dig like a dentist’s instrument. I expect I need something like my father’s eye to get back into that scene and see it clear. Maybe it was a dream. I think I remember it, but perhaps not. Perhaps it was another nightmare. I don’t know how people can do it, hurt a child.Children are so powerless. If it was me, even if it was an accident, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, would you? I’m not easy to live with as it is, I hate it sometimes, my own company. This is why I choose not to inflict myself on a wife. I could have. I’m not so bad a catch, specially now with this job paying the rent of my little flat, but I don’t know about a wife. If she didn’t expect to lean on me she’d want to boss me around, they’re only one way or the other, women,