Fallout Read Free

said Aunt Mat, ‘that’s a guard from the gallery.’
    ‘What does he guard?’
    ‘The paintings – and he makes sure people behave sensibly.’
    ‘ She isn’t behaving sensibly.’
    The woman on the steps was rocking back and forth, pulling at her cardigan, and the boy and the guard seemed to be arguing. Aunt Mat took Nina’s hand again.
    ‘They’re probably tramps. Let’s go inside and see if we can’t find a cup of tea.’
    They began to walk towards the steps, just to one side so as to avoid the scene rising in pitch between the guard, the boy and the woman in the wellington boots. Passers-by had become bystanders; bystanders developed into an uncertain crowd as the woman began to wail, a stream of sounds punctuated by words and phrases.
    ‘. . . there were seven hundred of them ,’ she was saying, ‘ sept cents, vous voyez ? Not all of them were alive. You’re not a policeman . . .’ And she shied away, as if she were being assaulted.
    ‘Where do you live? What’s your name?’ asked the guard as the boy went from one foot to the other, glancing anxiously between them.
    ‘She’s all right,’ he kept saying, white-faced. ‘Please – you’re making it worse.’
    ‘Come with me, Nina,’ said Aunt Mat. ‘It’s none of our business.’ And she pulled Nina through the doors.
    Inside the gallery were muted echoes, lowered voices, and the soft shush of the tall heavy doors brushing the floors as they opened and closed. Nina twisted her head to look, but the woman and strange boy were out of sight. Her mouth felt dry. She had been frightened going past them, as well as fascinated.
    There was something else. Everyone had looked at the woman – her distress, her pallor. She was so fragile, with the scruffy boy who was too young to look after anybody standing over her, resolute and protective. Nina realised what she felt; it was envy.
    She tugged Aunt Mat’s hand. ‘She was very pretty, wasn’t she?’ she said.
    ‘I can’t say I noticed. French, possibly.’
    ‘Like Mummy.’
    ‘Like your grandmother. Your mother is as English as I am, nearly.’
    ‘What will happen to her?’
    ‘They’ll take her away, poor thing,’ said Aunt Mat.
    ‘Where will they take her?’
    ‘Never you mind.’
    ‘Poor lady,’ murmured Nina.
    She imagined her, wrapped in soft ropes like the painted maiden and taken by soldiers to an unseen salvation. It seemed to her a wonderful thing to be so helpless; to be taken up, and saved.
     
    It was long after midnight when Tomasz Kanowski opened the door to his son and the two policemen. There was an orange shade over the dim bulb in the hall – fabric with flowers on it – and Tomasz was a dark bulk in the doorway. A smell of stewed onion, cigarette smoke and, faintly, sour fish floated round him from the inside of the house. The policemen took off their helmets to show that this was a family matter.
    ‘Mr Kanowski?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Come into the house, Lucasz.’
    His voice seemed to struggle from his throat, the accent thickened by drink and feeling.
    Luke went sideways past his father and looked at the two pasty-faced constables from behind his shoulder. The policemen exchanged looks. Tomasz stared at them in odd and passive challenge; it was decidedly un-English. They waited for him to say something else but he did not speak.
    When they had gone, he closed the door slowly. Luke hung his head, weaving with tiredness, weak with relief to be home safe in their solid, stinking little prison. His father held the back of his neck and drew him towards the bulk of his chest until Luke’s forehead rested against the thick collarbone beneath his father’s shirt.
    ‘This was a brave and very stupid thing to do,’ he said softly, his big fingers pressing Luke’s skull.
    Luke nodded, burning with sorrow. His father’s smell of beer and sweat was in his nostrils.
    ‘I think you must have frightened your mother very much.’
    ‘I don’t care,’ said Luke,