A Clear Conscience Read Free Page A

safe.
    C ath’s lampshade was yellow. A colour once parchment, a nice shade from a second-hand shop, faded even then, the fringes dark brown. A pig of a light for sewing, but Cath liked it. Not that she could sew here, anyway; she hadn’t done such a thing for months. Perhaps it was years. She just sat by the lamp and waited.
    The room around her bore traces of effort, now sustained on a less frequent basis. The walls were smudged from frequent cleaning and the patchy renewal of paint. She shuddered to think what was under there. Some of her blood, she supposed, a lot of her sweat and a bucket of tears.
    Joe had offered to cook. Ready-made, frozen pancakes with something called chicken ’n’ cheese in the middle, about as good for a man as they were for a small woman, accompanied by frozen peas, boiled to death, and the bread and butter which was better than the rest put together, her contribution. She sat listless although aware, ready to spring into an attitude of appreciation, her eyes tracking his progress in the kitchen, stage left, while her head was turned towards the TV screen. When the meal arrived, she knew she was supposed to murmur appreciation, ooh and ahh as if the man was a genius to find a plate; she was already rehearsing the lines, dreading what he might burn, unable to suggest a better method. So far, the mood augured well. Cath did not quite know the meaning of relaxation, but as far as she could, she allowed herself lethargy, listening to his movements and his voice as she slumped, forever guilty in the slumping.
    â€˜Anyway,this bloke says to me, Jack, you’re a very fine chap. Know an ex-army chappie when I see one. Got discipline, knows how to mix a cocktail even better than I know how to get’em down, hah bloody hah. That’s fine, I said, but the name is Joe, sir, not that it matters, much. And then, Cath, do you know what he did? Right in front of the bar at the Spoon, the bastard downs his drink in one and falls off his chair. Could not rouse the silly old sod. He was a picture, I tell you. Gets this look of surprise on his face, grinning all the time, trying to focus, just before he slides away. Laugh? I could have died.’
    She tried to match the pitch of her own laughter to his shrill giggle, managed fairly well, encouraging him to continue. Surely, oh surely, there was a formula for managing her own tongue.
    â€˜What did you give him, Joe, to make him fall down like that?’ Joe worked in the kind of pub which catered to what he called the gentry. And their ladies, haw, haw, haw. And their bloody sons, baying at one another and sticking crisps in the ear of the next person, all good clean fun with Daddy picking up the bills when they were sick or went outside to kick cars on their well-heeled way to somewhere else. Joe had a love-hate view of the officer class, mostly love, an adulation which also got a thrill from seeing them in the dust.
    Cath, tired beyond even her own belief, which marvelled constantly at how exhausted and how hurt a person could be while still remaining conscious, sometimes pretended to share his prejudice. People’s problems, she reckoned privately, were all the same, provided you liked them enough to listen.
    â€˜Isaid, what did you give the bloke to make him fall over, Joe?’ There was a smell of burning from the kitchenette: the transformation from frozen to carbon, all too easy.
    â€˜Vermouth, gin, mostly gin. Oh, a touch of Campari to give it colour; a smidgeon of fruit juice. Mostly gin and French. He downed it in one. For the third time, would you believe?’
    The smell of burning increased, a waft of smoke drifted in from the oven, bringing with it an end to relaxation.
    â€˜Can I help you, Joe?’
    â€˜No.’
    Anger stirred. Because he would not let her salvage the food. Because of the vision of some poor, lonely old man, buoyed up to spend his money until he fell off his stool, poisoned by a barman he