The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 176

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Craig refilled the glasses, and Bawu stared at the opposite bulkhead, and suddenly Craig realized that tears were running down the withered old cheeks.

"What is it, Bawu?"he demanded with quick alarm. Those slow painful tears were a terrible thing to watch.

"Didn't you hear the news?" the old man asked. "You know I never listen to the news." "It's. over, my boy, all over. We have lost.

Roly, you, all those young men, it was all for nothing we have lost the war. Everything we and our fathers fought for, everything we won and built, it's all gone. We have lost it all over a table in a place called Lancaster House." Bawu's shoulders were shaking quietly, the tears still streaming down his face. Craig dragged himself across the saloon and lifted himself onto the bench beside him. He took Bawu's hand and held it. The old man's hand was thin and light and dry, like the dried bones of a dead seabird.

The two of them, old and young, sat holding hands like frightened children in an empty house.

On the following Friday, Craig crawled out of his bunk early and did his housekeeping in anticipation of Bawu's regular visit. The previous day he had laid in half a dozen bottles of gin, so there was unlikely to be a drought, and he broke the seal on one of them and set it ready with the two glasses polished to a shine. Then he put the first three hundred pages of the typescript next to the bottle.

"It will cheer the old man up." He had taken months to pluck up his courage sufficiently to tell Bawu what he was attempting. Now that another person was about to be allowed to read his typescript, Craig was seized by conflicting emotions, firstly by dread that it would all be judged as valueless, that he had wasted time and hope upon something of little worth, and secondly by a sharp resentment that the private world that he "had created upon those blank white sheets was to be invaded by a trespasser, even one as beloved as Bawu.

"Anyway, somebody has to read it sometime," Craig consoled himself and dragged himself down to the heads. While he sat on the chemical toilet he could see his own face in the mirror above the hand-basin.

For the first time in months he truly looked at himself. He had not shaved in a week, and the gin had left soft putty-coloured pouches under his eyes. The eyes themselves were hurt and haunted by terrible memories, and his mouth was twisted like that of a lost child on the verge of tears.

He shaved, and then switched on the shower and sat under it revelling in the almost-forgotten sensation of hot suds. Afterwards, he combed his wet hair over his face and with the scissors trimmed it straight across the line of his eyebrows, then he scrubbed his teeth until the gums bled. He found a clean blue shirt, and then slid along the companionway, hoisted himself to deck-level, lowered the boarding-ladder, and found a place in the sun with his back against the coping of the cabin to wait for Bawu.

He must have dozed, for the sound of an automobile engine made him start awake, but it was not the whisper of the old man's Bentley, but the distinctive throb of a Volkswagen Beetle. Craig did not recognize the drab green vehicle, not the driver who parked it under the mango trees, and came hesitantly towards the yacht.

She was a dumpy little figure, of that indeterminate age that plain girls enter in their late twenties, and which carries them through to old age. She walked without pride, slumping as though to hide her breasts and the fact that she was a woman. Her skirt was bulky around her thick waist, and the low sensible shoes almost drew attention away from the surprisingly lovely lines of her calves and the graceful ankles.

She walked with her arms folded across her chest as though she was cold, even in the hot morning sunlight. She peered shortsightedly at the path through horn-rimmed spectacles, and her hair was long and lank, hanging straight and lustre less to hide her face, until she stood below the yacht side and looked up at Craig. Her skin was bad, like that of a teenager who was on junk food, and her face was plump, but with an unhealthy soft look, and a sick-room pallor.

Then she lifted the horn-rimmed spectacles from her face. The frames left little red indentations on each side of her nose, but the eyes, those huge slanted cat's-eyes with the strange little cast in them, those eyes so dark indigo blue as to be almost black they were unmistakable.

Jan, "Craig whispered. "Oh God, Jan, is it you?" She made a heartbreakingly feminine gesture of vanity pushing the lank dull hair off her face, and dropped her eyes, standing awkwardly pigeon-toed in the dowdy skirt.

Her voice barely carried up to him. "I'm sorry to bother you. I know how you must feel about me, but can I come up, please?" "Please, Jan, please do." He dragged himself to the rail and steadied the ladder for her.

"Hello," he grinned at her shyly, as she reached the deck level

"Hello, Craig." "I'm sorry, I'd like to stand up, but you'll have to get used to talking down to me." "Yes,"she said. "I heard." "Let's go down to the saloon. I'm expecting Bawu. It will be like old times." She looked away. "You've done a lot of work, Craig." "She's almost finished," he told her proudly.

"She's beautiful." Janine went down from the cockpit into the saloon, and he lowered himself after her.

"We could wait for Bawu," Craig said, as he placed a tape on the machine, instinctively avoiding Beethoven and selecting Debussy for a lighter happier sound. "Or we could have a drink right now." He grinned to cover his uneasiness and discomfort. "And quite frankly I need one right away." Janine did not touch her glass, but sat staring at it. "Bawu told me you were still working at the museum." She nodded, and Craig felt his chest constricted with helpless pity for her.

"Bawu will be here-" He searched desperately for something to say to her.

"Craig, I came to tell you something. The family asked me to come to you, they wanted somebody whom you knew to break the news." Now she looked up from the glass, "Bawu won't be coming today," she said. "He won't be coming ever again." After a long time Craig asked softly, "When did it happen?" "Last night, while he was sleeping. It was his heart." "Yes," Craig murmured. "His heart. It was broken I knew that." "The funeral will be tomorrow at King's Lynn, in the afternoon.

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