Long Sonata of the Dead Read Online Free

Richmond train on the District Line. Kew Gardens was the last stop before Richmond. It was now late afternoon. The carriage was at the end of the train and nearly empty.
    I sat down and stared at my reflection in the black glass opposite me. I saw an untidy middle-aged stranger where I half-expected to find a slim, sharp-featured student with shaggy hair.
    It was still raining when I left the train and took my bearings. Kew was a nice place, just right for nice people like Adam and Mary. You couldn’t imagine poor people living there. But it wasn’t not for the very rich, either, for people who flaunted their money and slapped it in your face. In a perfect world I might have lived there myself.
    Rowan Avenue was a gently curving road about five minutes’ walk from the station. The houses were terraced or semi-detached-solid Edwardian homes, well-kept and probably unobtrusively spacious. The cars outside were Mercedes, BMWs and the better sort of people carriers designed for shipping around large quantities of nice children.
    Number 23 had a little glazed porch with a tiled floor, a green front door and a small stained glass window into the hall beyond. I rang the bell. Adam and Mary had no children—I knew that from Who’s Who —but there might be a cleaner or a secretary or something. Mary might be out. The longer I waited, the more I hoped she would be.
    There were footsteps in the hall. The stained glass rippled as the colors and shapes behind it shifted. My stomach fluttered. I knew it was her.
    With a rattle, the door opened a few inches and then stopped. It was on the chain. I felt unexpectedly pleased—London is a dangerous city, growing worse every year; and I was relieved that Mary was taking precautions.
    “Hello,” she said, giving the word a slight interrogative lift on the second syllable.
    “You probably won’t remember me.” I cleared my throat. “It’s been a long time.”
    I could see only part of her face. She seemed a little smaller than in memory. The hair was carefully styled and much shorter.
    She was frowning. “I’m afraid I don’t …”
    “Mary, it’s me—Tony.” Despair nibbled at me. “Don’t you remember?”
    “Tony?” Her voice was the same. Slightly breathless and husky. I used to find it unbearably sexy. I still did. “Tony?” she repeated, frowning. “From university?”
    “Yes,” I said, more loudly than I intended. I touched the beard. “Imagine me without this.”
    “Tony,” she said. I watched recognition creep over her face. “Tony, yes, of course. Come in.”
    She unhooked the chain and opened the door. She was still Mary, my Mary. She was wearing jeans and a green shirt with a jersey over it. Cashmere, I thought. She was looking at me and I was acutely aware of my own appearance, something I rarely thought about.
    For the first time I saw her face properly. “What have you done?” I said. “Are you OK?”
    Her upper lip was swollen on the right hand side as if a bee had stung it. Or as if someone had hit her.
    “I’m fine. I walked into the bathroom door last night. So stupid.”
    The hall was large and long, with rugs on stripped boards. Mary took me through to a sitting room dominated by an enormous TV screen. The furniture was modern. There were hardback books lying about—new ones, recently reviewed—and a vase of flowers on the coffee table.
    “This is … nice,” I said, for want of something to say.
    She switched on a couple of lamps. “Do you want some tea?”
    “No, thanks.”
    I thought she looked disappointed.
    “Do sit down. It’s good to see you after all this time.”
    That’s what she said: what she meant was: Why are you here?
    I sat down on a sofa. There was another sofa at right-angles to mine. She chose that one.
    “It’s been ages, hasn’t it?” she said. “How’ve you been?”
    “Fine. I—”
    “What have you been doing?”
    “This and that,” I said. “I review—I do odds and ends for publishers—reading