The History Man Read Online Free

Barbara pulls on her seatbelt; she says, ‘I can tell when you’re feeling good because you always want to make me feel bad.’ Howard follows the arrows and the directional marks, the lefts, the rights, the no entries, that lead him up the hill and towards the new shopping precinct. ‘I don’t want you to feel bad,’ says Howard. There is a turn to the left, barred by a red arm; it is the entrance to the high multi-storey car park on the edge of the precinct. ‘Well, I do feel bad,’ says Barbara. Howard makes the turn; he stops the van in front of the arm; he takes a ticket from the automatic machine. ‘You know what you need?’ he says; the arm rises, and Howard drives forward. ‘Yes,’ says Barbara, ‘I know exactly what I need. A weekend in London.’ Howard drives up the ramp into the blank concrete of the place, through the flickers of light and dark, following the wet tyre-tracks. Howard says, ‘You need a party.’ The van spirals upward through the high, blank building. ‘I don’t need a party,’ says Barbara, ‘it’s just another sodding domestic chore I have to clear up after.’ Driving through the concrete and the metal, Howard sees, on the fifth floor, a space for the van to park; he drives into it. The garage is dark and grey; he pulls on the handbrake. ‘You just had a very dull summer,’ says Howard, ‘now everything’s happening again. Come on, let’s go and shop.’
    The car park is a low, cavernous place, devoid of people, a place for machines only; out through the unwindowed parapet, you can see the town spread out below. The Kirks get out of the van; they walk together, over the oily, roughened floor, to the blank metal door of the lift shaft. Barbara says: ‘Your excitement fails to infect me.’ Howard presses the button; the lift grinds in the shaft. The doors open; the Kirks get in. There are aerosoled scribbles on the lift walls: ‘Agro’, ‘Boot boys’, ‘Gary is King’. They stand together and the lift descends. It stops and the Kirks walk out. A long tiled corridor leads towards the precinct; there is human excrement against the walls of the brightlit passage. They come out among the high buildings, into a formal square. The precinct has straight angles; it has won an architectural award. There are long glass façades, the fronts of supermarkets, delicatessens, boutiques, the familiar multiple stores, displaying the economy of abundance; there is a symmetry of tins and toilet rolls in the windows of Sainsbury’s; spotlights and shade permute the colour range of sweaters and shirts, dresses and skirts, in the Life Again Boutique. In the open space in the middle are multicoloured paving stones; amid the stones, in some complex yet deducible code, are tiny new trees, fresh-planted, propped by wooden supports. A waterless fountain contains much litter. The Kirks divide their tasks, half to you, half for me. Barbara walks towards the automatic glass doors of Sainsbury’s, which slide open mechanically as she approaches them, and close again as she passes inside; Howard goes on down the precinct, to the wine supermarket, which is called Your Wine Seller, and has very special offers at very special prices. He walks inside, under the bright spotlights; he stands under the anti-theft mirrors, and inspects the bottles of wine that have been tossed carelessly together in the wire bins. He goes to the small counter at the back of the store.
    The assistant looks at him; he is young, with a beard, and wears a maroon jacket with a yellow Smile badge on the lapel; this leaves his face free to be very surly. Howard sees with gratification the indignation of the employed and oppressed, the token resistance. He gives his order, for five dozen litre-bottles of cheap red wine; he waits while the man goes into the storeroom, and wheels out, on a wire trolley, a stack of