To Fight For Read Online Free Page B

‘Why?’
    â€˜Why, my dear? Why what?’
    â€˜Why is it better to drink? Why do you drink?’
    He took time to answer that. He peered at his glass.
    â€˜Well, you see,’ he said, ‘I feel reasonably happy most of the time, and then I remember. Then I drink.’
    â€˜Remember what?’
    â€˜Myself.’
    â€˜You drink to forget yourself?’
    â€˜Not really. I drink to forget what I’ve remembered, and to remember what I’ve forgotten. Understand?’
    I said, ‘No.’
    I don’t think either of them heard me. They’d both forgotten I was there. I didn’t count. I wasn’t in on this thing, whatever this thing was.
    â€˜Yes,’ Brenda said. ‘I understand.’
    Browne turned his head slowly to look at her, and the expression on his face changed. His eyes got softer, his brow lost its creases.
    â€˜Ah,’ he said. Nothing else, just ‘Ah.’
    And I knew that he understood, and that she knew he understood.
    And I knew too that it was something I couldn’t understand. And that hurt, deep, deep down.
    I wanted to say something, to join in their conversation. I couldn’t. I was out of it. Cold.
    By now they were chatting about different stuff. I forget what. Brenda had a few drinks and lightened up. Browne was the same as always, dishing out his usual drunken bollocks.
    The mood in the pub changed slowly as the day got older. Some people drifted out, some drifted in and took up their places, as if it was all staged, an act. Maybe it was. Maybe nothing had changed after all, except me and Brenda and Browne. The more we drank, the more everything seemed different. I don’t know. Maybe nothing fucking changes.
    I remembered how, after we’d come out of the fights, she’d pushed herself into me, gripped my arm, shivered.
    â€˜Are you cold?’ I’d said.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Nothing … it’s just … it hurts me, sometimes, that’s all.’
    â€˜What hurts you?’
    â€˜Everything. All of it. Life.’ She’d pulled on my arm. ‘But I have you.’
    A few days later, I’d taken her to the West End and we’d walked along, her slim hand in mine. We’d walked along like all the rest of them, like the evening-dress-and-dinner-jacket mob, like anyone else. We’d walked along and looked in the windows at the Swiss watches and old oil paintings and diamond rings. People had looked at us oddly but Brenda had been too wrapped up in the glamour of it all to notice.
    So, we’d walked along and tried to pretend everything was alright. Well, for a while, maybe, it was.
    Later, sitting in the Fox and Globe, it was getting too hard to pretend anything at all.
    Now, years later, as me and Browne sat slumped in our seats and waited for whatever was going to happen, I saw that he was thinking of something, remembering, and his eyes went soft and sad, and he lifted the glass to his mouth.
    I asked him what was on his mind.
    â€˜Oh,’ he said, sniffling, ‘I was just remembering that time in the pub, you and her and me. That’s all.’
    I was beginning to understand what Browne meant about needing to drink – the need, as he’d told Brenda, to forget what he’d remembered, to remember what he’d forgotten.
    Now I wanted to tell Brenda that I knew too. But I couldn’t tell her. And thinking that brought me back, and I started to lose myself again, trapped between now and then, between rage and peace, and I wanted to stop understanding and just kill.

FIVE
    My head was singing when Bobby Cole came over. He swam before my eyes and, for a moment, I thought he was Dunham come to kill me. I reached for my Makarov, but, of course, it wasn’t there.
    He’d been in before, the day after I’d killed Paget, but I didn’t remember that at the time. I was losing track, my mind slipping through the cracks