The collected stories Read Free Page B

make sure his son was safe.
    Richard was in darkness, too. Robarge kissed the child's hot

    WORLD S END
    cheek. There was a bright cube on the floor, the present from Aberdeen. He picked it up and saw that it had not been opened.
    He put it beside Richard on the bed and leaning for balance he pressed something in the bedclothes. It was long and flat and the hardness stung his hand. It was the breadknife with the serrated blade from the kitchen, tucked beneath these sheets, close to the child's body. Breathless from the shock of it Robarge took it away.
    And then he went to bed. He was shaking so badly he did not think he would ever sleep. He wanted to smash his face against the wall and hit it until it was bloody and he had torn his nose away. He dropped violently to sleep. When he woke in the dark he recalled the sound that had wakened him - it was still vibrant in the air, the click of the front gate: a thief was entering his house. Robarge waited for more, and perspired. His fear left him and he was penetrated by the fake vitality of insomnia. After an hour he decided that what he had heard, if anything, was a thief leaving the house, not breaking in. Too late, too far, too dark, he thought; and he knew now they were all lost.
    '4

    Zombies
    Miss Bristow was certain she had dreamed of a skull because on waking - gasping to the parlor and throwing open the curtains -the first face she had seen was skull-like, a man or woman looking directly in at her from the 49 bus. It verified her dream but was simpler and so more horrible, with staring eyes and bony cheeks and sharp teeth and the long strings of dirty hair they called dreadlocks. She went to the small cabinet and plucked at the doors with clumsy fingers before she remembered that Alison had the key. And then she felt abandoned in dismal terror, between the bedroom where she had dreamed the skull and the window where she had seen the face moving down Sloane Street.
    She was still in her slippers and robe when Alison arrived at ten. Alison was an efficient girl with powerful shoulders, a nurse's sliding tread and humor in her whole body; the distress was confined to her eyes. She said, 'Have we had a good night?'
    Miss Bristow did not reply to the question. She was tremulous with thought. Her arthritis gave her the look of someone cowering.
    'You took the key.'
    Alison appeared not to hear her. 'I hope you haven't forgotten that you have a lunch date today.'
    She had forgotten. She saw the skull, the teeth, the cowl of hair grinning from the far side of a table in a restaurant where she was trapped. She said, 'Who is it?'
    'Philippa - that nice girl from Howletts. She left a message last week.'
    Miss Bristow was relieved. She said, 'The Italian.'
    'Philippa is not Italian,' said Alison in the singsong she used when she repeated herself. 'Now you must put some clothes on. You haven't had your bath.' She opened the blue diary and said, 'She's coming here at twelve. She'll have news of your book.'
    'In a moment you're going to say you've lost the key.'
    Alison said, 'We promised we weren't going to be naughty, didn't we?'

    WORLD S END
    The Italian, she thought in her bath. At the party, months ago, the girl Philippa had sat at her feet and a sentence was fully framed in Miss Bristow's mind. 'I can remember,' she said, rapping the words on the arm of her chair, struggling to say them, 'I can remember when we were Romans.'
    'And now we're Italians,' the girl had said quickly.
    Miss Bristow peered at the girl's blank face. The girl scarcely knew how witty she had been, and so Miss Bristow felt better about appropriating the remark and making it her own: We are Romans turning into Italians.
    The girl had been attentive, with a hearty dedication, saying, 'Your glass is empty again!' But the criticism in the words was not in her tone. Miss Bristow felt the need to sip; she panicked and became breathless when there was nothing to sip. But the girl had made sure there was something