Empty World Read Free

to lose; nor her parents as justifying such anxious devotion. Her life in fact seemed fairly wretched compared with the one he had known in Dulwich. Yet he had never had the sort of fears she described. Did that mean he had failed to appreciate what he’d got? He felt a vague guilt, and had a panicky moment of wondering if that was why it had happened—if the God in whom he mostly didn’t believe had read his ungrateful mind, and casually sent down destruction.
    But he had no time to brood on it because at that point Hendrix joined them. He ignored Neil, and said to Ellen:
    â€œI thought I told you I’d see you outside the library at half past?”
    His tone was truculent. Ellen did not reply, but looked at Neil. He had an impulse to tell Hendrix to push off, but it was easily controlled.
    Hendrix said: “And haven’t I told you about hanging about with other fellers?”
    He was not just truculent, but bullying and contemptuous. Ellen looked at Neil again, in direct appeal this time.
    Neil had no fear of the other. He was bigger, possibly stronger, but Neil was fairly sure he was no boxer while he had done quite a bit. If this had happened a couple of months ago he knew what he would have done—told Hendrix to shut up, or he’d sort him out.
    He supposed really that was what he ought to do now, but he could not be bothered. Neither the girl nor Hendrix meant enough to be worth his getting involved. The girl, after all, had chosen Hendrix in the past, or let herself be chosen by him. It was not his concern, but if he fought Hendrix and beat him it might become so. Her eyes stayed on his face, but he said nothing.
    Hendrix said, openly contemptuous of Neil as well:
    â€œCome on. Leave this London wet. It’s Geography first and I didn’t have time to do any prep last night. We’ll go and get yours.”
    Neil watched them go off together. He was a bit surprised he could feel so detached about it.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    He walked back through the churchyard in the late afternoon. The air was windless, warm for earlysummer, and the crab apple trees were loaded with blossom. Although many of the graves were old, the inscriptions on the stones rendered illegible by time and weather, some were new, and he passed two graves freshly mounded with flowers. The churchyard represented one of the few ongoing enterprises the town still possessed, the only one really.
    Neil thought of Ellen and her nightmares, and wondered about them. Perhaps they did not stem, as he had assumed, from love of her parents, but the reverse. Perhaps that was why the daydream was so persistent.
    He wondered too what the future would bring, for her and Hendrix. Most likely nothing: they were very young and there was no reason to suppose anything permanent, like marriage, would come of it. Though it might, of course. Hendrix enjoyed bullying, and Neil had an idea that a part of Ellen, at least, liked being bullied. Maybe they would marry, and she could change her nightmares to imagining her husband being killed.
    Again his thoughts surprised him. He looked up at the sky, nearly cloudless, where—he was fairly sure again—no invisible vindictive God lurked,reading minds and fashioning thunderbolts to toss down. The church was grey and squat, brooding over its generations of worshippers. All around were the quiet houses with, at this moment, not a person in sight. A car revved up the High Street and roared on towards Hastings, leaving velvety silence behind.
    Rye was a quiet town after London, but a Babylon compared with Winchelsea. He thought again how glad he was to be here, but thought that even here there were too many people. It would be nice to live on a desert island, with only a parrot for company. Though the parrot wasn’t really necessary, either: the sound of the surf or the wind in the palms would be company enough.
    His grandmother came out of the kitchen as he let himself in at the