The High Places Read Online Free

unsure how long she had been sitting beside Mr Ronald and how long it had been since he stopped making any sound at all. His wife cleaned the walls of their shower and he had been to see orangutans in Berlin. He was too young to have been in that war.
    Without warning, David filled up the space in the passenger door of Mr Ronald’s car. She had been so certain she would hear his footsteps on the road, but here he was in the doorway as if she’d summoned him out of the field.
    â€˜I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t find anyone.’ He was wet and his breath came quickly. ‘I ran and finally found a house but there was no one home. I thought about breaking in. Kept going for a bit but no sign of life. No cars on the road, even. So I came back to try the car again.’
    He looked at the stillness of the man in the driver’s seat. He saw the blood on Mr Ronald’s trousers and the way that it crept toward his belt and shirt, and he searched for blood on Sarah.
    Sarah concentrated on David’s face, which swam in the sound of the rain and the radio. My husband. She smiled because she was happy to see him. Then she placed the wallet in Mr Ronald’s lap. She moved to step out of the car and David made space for her.
    â€˜How is he? How does he seem?’
    When a cat died during an operation, when a macaw was too sick, when a snake was past saving, then Sarah must tell its owners. It was difficult to tell them this true thing, and so along with it she added other, less true things: that the tumour caused no pain, that the animal hadn’t been frightened to go under anaesthetic. Still, it was difficult. It made no difference to Sarah that words were inadequate to her enormous task. Of course they were. There might be a time when she would have to tell her friends, Sheba’s owners, that he wouldn’t survive his infection. Each loss of which she had been the herald seemed to have led to this new immensity: Mr Ronald, dead in a car. But they didn’t know Mr Ronald. David had never even spoken to him. She had been married that midday, with no rain. There were only two witnesses.
    â€˜He’s dead,’ said Sarah.
    She stood and shut the door behind her. David fought the desire to lower his head and look through the window. It seemed necessary to make sure, but more necessary to trust Sarah. He held his hands out to her and she took them.
    â€˜My god,’ he said. She shook her head. He knew that when she shook her head in this way, it meant: I’m not angry with you, but I won’t talk.
    â€˜What now?’ he asked. ‘Should we take him somewhere?’
    David felt that Sarah owned the wreck, owned the tree and piece of road on which Mr Ronald had died, and that he need only wait for her instructions, having failed to find help. He thought of her sitting alone with the unconscious body of an old man, and he thought of the moment at which she must have realised that Mr Ronald was no longer unconscious, but dead. David saw with certainty that Sarah was another person, completely separate from him, although he had married her today. His wife.
    â€˜We’ll try the car again,’ said Sarah. ‘We just have to get to the surgery.’
    â€˜We can use the phone there,’ said David.
    Sarah crossed the road and he followed her. She didn’t look back at the wreck. Waiting on its grassy rise slightly above the road, their car had a look of faithful service, of eagerness to assist. It started on the third try with a compliant hum. Sarah had always been better at coaxing it; even before trying the ignition she’d known it would work. She was unsure if this resurrection was good or bad luck, or beyond luck – simply inevitable. Now that she could see the rain in the headlights, she realised how soft it was, how English. She missed home, suddenly: the hard, bright days and the storms at the end of them, with rain that filled your shoes.
    It