The High Places Read Online Free Page A

grew bright and then dark in Mr Ronald’s car as their headlights passed over him, and it remained dark as they left that piece of road and that tree. David watched Sarah drive. They didn’t speak. As the distance between their car and Mr Ronald’s grew, it seemed that the roads were all empty – that all of England was empty. It lay in its empty fields while the mice moved and the airplanes flew overhead to other places, nearby and far away.
    They reached lit buildings and the surgery so quickly that David was embarrassed at having failed to find help. Sarah walked calmly, and she spoke calmly with the nurse about Sheba. She didn’t look at the telephone. There was no blood on her clothes. David watched his wife as she made her way toward the cat, who rubbed his head against the bars of his cage. He was waiting for the pain to stop. And then he would be let out, healed, to hunt mice in the wet grass.

 
    Art Appreciation
    Henry Taylor had always known he would have money one day, and this confidence was vindicated when his mother won the lottery on a Thursday in the August of 1961. He could afford to get married. But he wasn’t yet sure if he could afford to quit his job, so he went to the office the day after he heard the news. The sun came through the window blinds in long tedious slats and time passed outside, far below, with the noise of the road and the joy of boys on bicycles. Above, where Henry was, women walked among the men, delivering coffee and papers. They were all decorous, even the young ones – even those reproachable few who lingered with one hip against the corners of desks. One particular girl had caught Henry’s attention. She was new to her job, but had already made a name for herself with her prettiness and good nature. She dressed modestly, with a sense of pleasures offered all the same: a heightening of her body’s secrets through her polite attempts to conceal them. Her name was Eleanor, and she called herself Ellie.
    Henry thought, now he had money, that he would marry her.
    He didn’t tell anyone that his mother had won the lottery, and a considerable amount of his delight had to do with his windfall being secret. That was the great thing: to sit at his desk, observing as he always did the movements of the office – and Ellie’s movements among them – but as a profoundly different man, with a new and superior perspective. There was no longer anything to keep him from approaching Ellie, but he held off even so, not out of hesitation but in order to savour his own intentions. Henry noticed that she stole frequent looks at him. She had the quality of a bird among grasses, peering out in nervous excitement, eager for a mate but afraid to abandon safety. He was certain she was in the office not to make flimsy dates with different men but to find a husband.
    As he left work that Friday afternoon, Henry made sure to say goodnight to Ellie. She was flattered and demure.
    â€˜Enjoy your weekend,’ he said, and she said – she almost sang – ‘You too!’ She wore her hair pulled back with a navy ribbon.
    Henry, as usual, took the stairs to the ground floor of the building – this was part of his fitness regime, to exercise his legs in the morning and the evening – and when he reached the lobby, the elevator doors sprang open and Ellie stepped out from between them.
    â€˜Fancy that,’ Henry said. He looked at her with pleasure. Her waist was small, she had pale, plump arms, and her hair had a good-natured sheen.
    Ellie stood swinging her handbag this way and that.
    â€˜Walk me to the station?’ she asked, and he offered his arm, which she took.
    It had begun to rain, and they walked beneath his large black umbrella. She tucked herself in beside him and her small, uneven steps limited his stride. He wanted to lift Ellie up in his arms the way you might a child at a parade.
    â€˜I’d like to take you out