Deathwatch Read Free Page B

done a good job. He is not ashamed that this is his job, even though he has spent his life researching insects, has lectured in America and Australia in his time, has travelled the world with his work. But after his illness – nervous exhaustion or breakdown it used to be called; stress they call it nowadays – he just didn’t feel like going back to it, the lecturing, the constant demands to publish research. Then his wife died, and he’d opted out of life, and what a relief that was.
    Now he spends his days quietly, caring for the collection, and other things in the museum, just to be there, just to breathe the air, with its faint and probably imaginary tang of formaldehyde. Occasionally he gives a talk to the nice ladies of the Women’s Guild. Things like that. It’s a soft and gentle life. And he likes it. Away from the pressure and expectation of success.
    Back at the doorway, carrying his bag, he turns and looks at the kids. At such a distance he can watch them more easily. They flit from cabinet to cabinet, bashing green buttons. Silly kids. He doesn’t want to be close to them. He hates children. Maybe that’s a horrible thing to have in his mind. He finds them disgusting, primeval, uncivilized, ugly.
    He has a moment of cruel pleasure as he recalls one of the traditional names for a dragonfly: the Devil’s Darning-needle. So called because they are said to sew up the eyes and mouth of a misbehaving child. Some children could do with such a threat, he thinks.
    Children frighten him because you can never be sure what they’ll do. In a sudden flash of intuition, he thinks the girl must feel the same about the insects. His insects.
    She shouldn’t be frightened.
    Not of insects. She should be frightened of other things maybe, but not insects.
    She should be much more frightened of people than of insects.
    The girl is still standing there. She begins to walk towards him. Or towards the door. Suddenly he recognizes her – he has seen her somewhere before. Does she live near him? Yes, he’s seen her near by, definitely; maybe at a bus-stop or something. She is quite striking.
    For a moment their eyes meet. Only for a moment, for they both look away. He is embarrassed, because he didn’t mean to be looking at her and there was nothing bad in his mind, only recognition. She moves to the spider display – for there are spiders here, even though they are not insects – and he runs from the room, finding himself suddenly in a room with some pointless exhibition of data processing technology or something.
    He will leave now, and go to his next task. Light bulbs in the bird room. Birds are boring, but they still need their light bulbs changed. Before he moves on, carrying his toolbag, he glances back.
    She is standing there, her face screwed up in slight horror, as she looks at the bird-eating spider. Another girl joins her, with big eyes and thick, dark hair. The second girl speaks. “How does it eat the whole bird, do you think?”
    He is out of sight now, but he hears his girl answer, “I don’t think it eats it all in a oner.”
    And she is quite right, he thinks. Bit by bit the spider eats the bird. Bit by bit. It takes its time.

CHAPTER 5
MONDAY MORNING NEWS
    CAT McPherson and her friends pushed their way through the mess of bodies towards the hall for assembly. Jostling and noise, the usual. Always louder on a Monday – so much more to say.
    And today, today especially, there was plenty to say. News had spread of Cat’s success on Friday. She’d won the under-16 age group at the regional biathlon competition. Biathlon was a tough discipline – swimming and running, using her body to its maximum – and not many people could do it, with its different demands on the muscles and body shape. She was still high on the feeling of winning, buzzing with it. It made the training worthwhile, made her think perhaps she
could
do this for the rest of her life. Though she’d probably feel differently next time she