Benny & Shrimp Read Free Page A

a leap inside me, jumping and splashing and turning somersaults and sending out frantic signals, “This way! This way!”
    I wanted to shout to it, “Sit!”
    I turned my head so I was looking away from the Forest Owner and instead peered furtively at his hand on the bench. He was twisting a Volvo keyring between his two fingers and thumb. Where his ring finger and his little finger should have been, there were just smooth knuckles. His hands were ingrained with earth and perhaps oil, and the veins stood out on the back of them. I wanted to smell his hands and caress the empty knuckles with my lips.
    Good God, I’ve got to get away from here! Is this what happens to a grown-up woman who lives without a man for a while?
    So I stood up, grabbed up my bag in my cold hands and ran, taking the most direct route to the gates, across graves and low hedges.

 

     
    I’m way behind with the accounts. It feels as if everything’s going to the dogs; wonder if that’s why I’ve put off getting down to the bills and paperwork. The piles of paper spilling out from Dad’s old bureau feel explosive , as if there’s some bloody letter from the bank sitting ticking in there, a letter telling me I’m scraping the bottom of my overdraft agreement. I scarcely dare answer the phone in office hours any more; it might be them.
    I’ve never been any good with money, or paperwork.That was Mum’s forte. She used to sit at the bureau muttering under her breath; now and then she’d turn round and look at me over her glasses and ask some question that only needed a straightforward answer: “Are we all right for seed? Have you paid the vet?”
    She took care of everything else. And all I had to do was tell her how much cash I needed; she never asked questions, not even when I took it into my head to buy a wide gold bracelet for Annette, who I was with for a while. Annette was always going on about how much she liked Bismarck chains – that’s almost the only thing I remember about her.
    Mum said once, near the end, that I ought to call in the Farm Management Service to take care of all that now. She lay there thinking about things like that, although she had a drip in her arm. The drip meant she kept needing bedpans, and she found it really embarrassing . I always said I was going out for a smoke when the nurse brought the bedpan in. And I hadn’t the heart to tell her I wouldn’t be able to afford the Farm Management Service; the milk cheque seemed to be shrinking every month.
    In any case, it’s not called the Farm Management Service any more, and they employ all those slick young stockbroker types there nowadays. Just being in their office makes me feel uncomfortable.
    Mum’s overriding feeling seemed to be one of frustration with her cancer for stopping her getting up and doing anything useful. The chemotherapy really knocked her out, but whenever I came in, the impression she gave was along the lines of: “What a wretched nuisance. It’s too bad! I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.”
    Oh hell, she’s back, the beige woman! Hasn’t she anything better to do? She looks like someone who stilllives at home with her parents, with some nice little job while she waits to marry the bank manager. She blasted well looks as if she might work at my bank.
    She sits down and gives me a sideways look, as if I were a bouncing cheque – an embarrassment, but not her problem. Then she sighs deeply and gets some kind of writing book out of a big flowery bag. She makes a great performance of taking the top off a pen – a fountain pen? I didn’t think anyone used those since biros were invented – and starts writing, slowly and in spidery little handwriting.
    And of course, I’m itching with curiosity. Who is this woman making notes by a grave? Does she keep a record of all the husbands she’s finished off? Suddenly she frowns and I hear a distinct, abrupt snort: she’d noticed I was sitting looking at her. To pay her back for her