The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy Read Online Free Page A

bees and turned her nose up at the community functions seemed to have nothing to do with it. All she really wanted was to be back in England where she grew up, where Vegemite was Marmite and you could walk in the grass without stepping on a snake.
    All in all, coming back to Europe was probably the only way forward. When I suggested the job at Peter’s lab in London was a possibility, Matilda seized on it. Maybe she wanted to be back on home soil before breaking away from me. Lottie adapted to London quickly enough, but she missed the space and the trees and the ease of Melbourne, where no one thought it strange to have a whole day off for a horse race that only lasted ten minutes.
    â€˜No wonder everyone looks so miserable,’ she said early on, walking down Oxford Street on a rainy December Saturday. ‘There’s no sky and no space, people get tired of bumping into each other all the time. That’s why they get so ratty, because they’re rats in a maze.’
    She gave a big Aussie smile at her own conceit.
    I pick up the telephone and dial Matilda’s number.
    â€˜What do you want?’ she says.
    â€˜I want to speak to my daughter.’
    â€˜She’s asleep.’
    â€˜Will you tell her I love her?’
    â€˜You can tell her next time,’ she says, and for the second time that evening hangs up on me.
    I hurl the phone onto the carpet. Then, remembering what the Friary said, I sit back on the sofa and try to calm myself. I pour myself a glass of mineral water and turn on the television for some late-night nonsense. I flick through the channels, but each has the same frantic live coverage of a wrecked and smoking building. Police and emergency crews are everywhere. Something big has happened. I settle on the BBC and wait for the story to unfold.

2
    The luck of the Irish
    When Caitlin and Sammy leave Victoria Station in London, they take a taxi across town to the flat above the newsagent that is to be their oasis, their safe house, their holiday home. The fridge has been filled and magazines are piled high on the table in the living room. For the next three days they stay indoors, in bed, in love, incognito, plotting their escape.
    The newspapers are full of the arrest and confession of the two young Kerrymen, stopped at Brighton Station as they tried to make their escape. For the first couple of days in London, Caitlin and Sammy follow the story. But for most of the time they are blissfully oblivious to the outside world, cocooned in their hideaway on a busy street in north London. The conversation is full of plans for the future. Marriage, children, jobs, front lawns and summer holidays. Then one morning they hear the flap of the letterbox and see a shadow against the glass door. For a long while neither of them moves, and the silhouetted messenger disappears back into the anonymity of the street.
    â€˜Stay here, I’ll get it,’ says Sammy.
    He opens the letter. Slowly he reads its contents, and then looks at her.
    â€˜So we’re to meet them. Tomorrow night. In a pub in Haringey.’
    Something descends on the room: a foreboding.
    â€˜Take me to bed,’ says Caitlin.
    They make love with a passion and sleep like babes. Hours later, as they wake to each other, Sammy strokes his lover’s back and asks her to tell him how it will be.
    â€˜We’ll be Mr and Mrs Normal,’ laughs Caitlin, stretching like a cat in front of a winter’s fire. ‘You’ll wash the car on Sundays and we’ll go for drives in the country.’
    â€˜And I’ll come home at six and the children will jump out at me from behind the sofa,’ replies Sammy, curling himself around her. ‘Boo, they’ll say, and I’ll throw up my arms in horror and I’ll wrestle the little buggers to the ground and tickle them to death until they surrender.’
    And they look at each other and erupt into laughter. A laughter that falls away to silence as they