The History Man Read Online Free Page A

big cardboard cases. He asks for the loan of twelve dozen glasses; ‘We don’t lend them,’ says the assistant. Howard delivers himself to the task of persuasion; he emanates concern, he invites the man to the party; he gets the glasses. The assistant stacks the boxes of glasses on another trolley. Howard takes the first trolley, and wheels it, across the open space of the precinct, over the coloured paving stones, past the empty fountain, through the tiled passage, to the lift; he ascends in the lift, and unpacks the cases into the back of the minivan. He returns with the empty trolley; he takes the second trolley of glasses up into the car park, and then back to the store. When he reaches the van again, Barbara has still not returned. He stands by the van, car keys hanging from one finger, in the empty, cavernous place, devoid of people, amid the shuttered concrete planes, the rough surfaces, the angular lines of air and space, light and darkness. He stares out, over the unwindowed parapet, at the topography of the town. There are torn spaces below, where the motorway and the new housing projects are being constructed; beyond are the rising shells of hotels, office blocks, flats. There are two Watermouths; the unreal holiday town around the harbour and the Norman castle, with luxury flats and expensive bars, gift shops and pinkwashed Georgian homes; and a real town of urban blight and renewal, social tensions, discrimination, landlord and tenant battles, where the Kirks live. To one side, he can see the blocks of luxury flats, complete but half-empty, with convenience kitchens and wall-to-wall carpeting and balconies pointed at the horizon; to the other side, on the hill, stand the towers of the high-rise council flats, superficially similar, stacked, like a social workers’ handbook, with separated wives, unmarried mothers, latchkey children. It is a topography of the mind; and his mind makes an intellectual contrast out of it, an image of conflict and opposition. He stares down on the town; the keys dangle; he populates chaos, orders disorder, senses strain and change.
    A Boeing 747 flies in off the coast heading for Heathrow; the engine noise booms in the cavernous building, sounds off the metal of the cars. In the corner of the concrete place, the lift-doors scrape back; someone walks out onto the sounding floor. It is Barbara, walking towards him, in her long white coat; she carries the two red bags, full. Her body is faint colour moving over grey cement. He watches her move through the planes of light and dark. She comes up to the van, and opens the back; into the interior, on top of the boxes, she pushes the bags, holding French loaves and cheeses. ‘Enough?’ she says. ‘Of course, if there’s five thousand, you’ll be able to increase the quantity.’ Howard opens the driver’s door, and gets in; he opens the other door so that Barbara can come in to the passenger seat. She sits down; she fastens the seatbelt. Her face is dark in the shadowy place. He starts the engine, backs out of the space. Barbara says: ‘Do you remember Rosemary?’ Howard drives down the spiral ramp, with its code of arrows and lights; he says, ‘The one who lives in the commune?’ ‘She was in Sainsbury’s,’ says Barbara. The van tilts down the ramps; it makes the sharp turns. ‘So you asked her to the party,’ says Howard. ‘I did,’ says Barbara. ‘I asked her to the party.’ They are on ground level now; Howard turns the van towards the exit, the bright wet daylight. ‘Do you remember that boy she was living with?’ asks Barbara. ‘He had a tattoo on the back of his hand.’ Through angular blocks of air and space, light and darkness, they move to the light square. ‘I don’t think so,’ says Howard. ‘You do,’ says Barbara. ‘He came to one of our parties. Just before the summer.’ ‘What about