Be Near Me Read Free Page B

again about the sweetness of certain wines. 'I would like to go some day to France,' she said, 'and see these vineyards.'
    'Alsace is in the northeast.'
    'Like Aberdeen,' she said.
    'Exactement.'
    A print of Bernini's
Apollo and Daphne
was hung so as to absorb the light from the window that faced the church. I saw myself buying the print long ago at the Galleria Borghese, a small purchase on a spring day after a walk under the pines of the villa gardens. Waiting for Mrs Poole to speak again, I looked at Daphne's anxious face and noticed her fingertips flowering into branches and leaves. The light was very subdued.
    'I wish you'd turn that music off,' Mrs Poole said. 'It gets on my nerves. I hate all that watery music. I borrowed some of it from the library. God. It makes such a fuss of itself.'
    'You just like to argue with me, Mrs Poole.'
    'I do,' she said.
    She smiled and then laughed as she poured herself another inch of Alsace, her eyes flaring, willing me to argue my case.
    'Poor washerwoman that you are,' I said. 'The famous Scottish education system barely left a mark on you.'
    'Father, don't make me swear. Jesus is up on the cross covered in wounds and you're nearly making me swear.'
    'You will never go to heaven.'
    'It's mechanical.'
    'You'll never be happy.'
    'I'll never be sad, more like! Gluttons for sadness, you Chopin fans. Bedwetters.'
    'Goodness, Mrs Poole,' I said. 'Strong words. I should say you were brought up in a bath of coal.'
    'Born and bred. But I still know Chopin is dodgy stuff.'
    'If it wasn't for Chopin his people would still be kicking up their heels in circles and baring their black teeth to the vodka jug.'
    'And you a good whatsit—socialist,' she said, lifting the plates and doing a little victory sashay into the kitchen.
    'Not in a long time,' I said.
    There was a decent pause. I looked at the swirling carpet and felt ashamed of its cheap, nasty appearance, the purple and beige nylon a field of static electricity. 'Three months and we've still got that terrible floor,' I said.
    I looked at the Bernini again and my eye travelled to a framed photograph beneath it on the mantel. It was me at school in my black tie and blazer, a bare hawthorn tree standing behind on the hill above Ampleforth, its branches seemingly shaped by the wind. Next to that was a picture of an elephant rising on its back legs surrounded by workers from a Yorkshire factory. I looked up as Mrs Poole came back. I could see she was happy with the progress of our talk.
    'Sorry,' she said, looking down at two new bowls, the redness high in her cheeks. 'Here's the pudding. It's a bit so-so, I'm afraid.'
    'Never mind,' I said. 'Good things are temporary.'
    The light at the window reminded me that I must soon be off to the school. I wanted to tell her I wasn't half as serious as she thought. I wanted to say that neither of us needed especially to believe what we said. But something in her and something in me made actors of us both when we were together, and I couldn't admit how much I looked forward to being with the young people at the school, just so as to lose myself and to fall in with whatever they were doing. I tried to joke with her but she would always bring me back. She believed my teases were just pauses between big pronouncements, and she wanted them more than anything, the pronouncements, as if I owed them to her.
    'So what are you saying?' she said.
    'Nothing,' I said. 'That I like music with a sigh in it, that's all. The Nocturnes are hymn-like.'
    Mrs Poole lifted a pencil from a pot on the bookshelf. It was idly done, how she examined the pencil, stroked its length and then pressed the point into the fold of flesh between her left thumb and forefinger, before licking another finger and erasing the mark.
    'Oh, who cares?' I said. 'It's all just a way of going on.'
    'Lovely!' she said. 'I've got you going now, haven't I?'
    'Yes, you've got me, Mrs Poole. But I won't argue with you today. I'm in too good a mood and