Crooked Heart Read Free

Mattie.
    The warden shook his head.
    â€˜Then no,’ said Mattie. ‘Go away, little man, and interfere with someone else.’
    â€˜You do realize,’ said the warden, his voice hardening, ‘that the courts take blackout infringement very seriously indeed. We’re not just talking about fines here; there could be a prison term.’
    He left, crunching along the sandy path to the front gate. Mattie gave a little grunt and Noel looked up at her. Her face was puffy and skewed, as if the warden’s last sentence had been a blow with a boxing-glove. ‘Those places . . .’ she said, and gripped Noel’s hand. ‘Never,’ she said.

    In the weeks that followed, Noel found himself thinking about Dr Long, who taught algebra and physics at St Cyprian’s, and who presented each new law or principle to the class as if he were lifting a jewel out of a casket. Dr Long expected interest and asked for wonder, unlike Mr Clegg, whose Geography lessons were like a series of punishments. Thirty strokes with the principal exports of the Malay Peninsula.
    â€˜Imagine,’ Dr Long had said to Noel’s form last term, ‘imagine Archimedes’ lever. Imagine it stretching from star to star, one end nudging the base of our planet, the centre of it propped on a titanic fulcrum, and at the other end, standing on a cloud of galactic dust, a small man in a toga. He extends a hand, he places a finger on the end of the plank, he presses down . . . and our Earth goes bowling across the universe.’
    One nudge and the world was changed. The warden’s visit had done it; it had flicked Mattie out of her orbit and now she was spinning off on a course of her own.
    She drew up a list of neighbours who might have reported her to the warden. It started off with Mr Arnott, who lived in the next villa, but then she kept adding names until everyone was on it. ‘We shall no longer speak to them,’ she said to Noel. ‘In fact,’ she added, ‘I should prefer not to see them at all.’
    Now, when they went out for their morning walk, Noel had to go to the front gate and check that the road was empty before Mattie would leave the house. Though they weren’t really ‘morning walks’ any more; Mattie wasn’t sleeping well, and woke late, so it was almost lunchtime before they were cresting Parliament Hill. The lessons were replaced by occasional questions: thirty-five multiplied by fifteen, the Roman invasion, the life-cycle of the honey bee. Once Mattie woke him at dawn, and asked him to name three British scientists. ‘Newton, Boyle, Darwin,’ he said, yawning, while a wren shouted in the ivy outside.
    The days became untethered. Mealtimes slid around or disappeared altogether. Noel ate mainly biscuits for three days, and then found a cookery book. The recipes were wonderfully satisfying; it was like doing an equation, in which the correct answer was edible.
    â€˜Very good indeed,’ said Mattie, of the blackberry pie that he made with fruit picked on the Heath, but she ate only a mouthful or two. For the whole of Noel’s life with her, she had been quite large – stout and solid, like a tree-stump, but now she was dwindling. Her stockings drooped. She had no time to eat, she said; there were too many things she needed to do.
    One morning, he came downstairs to find that all the helpful labels he’d written had been crossed out. He was standing with ‘ CUTLERY DRAWER ’ in his hand when Mattie came into the kitchen.
    â€˜Someone’s been breaking in and writing messages,’ she said. ‘I shall have to have a new lock installed on the . . . the object for opening.’
    When Uncle Geoffrey rang the doorbell on the following Sunday, Mattie stayed seated, finger marking a place in her book. Noel stood up, and she shook her head at him.
    The bell jangled twice more, and then they heard the gate creak.
    â€˜There,’