The Man Who Rained Read Free Page A

Peter had despaired because on the first few days of their holiday she’d wanted to do nothing
but research the route of their flight, until at last she came upon the town’s name and repeated it over and over to herself like the password to a magic cave.
    Kenneth restarted the engine and they began their descent. As they drew closer to the little town, the view slowly levelled, turning the glimmering spiral into an indistinct line of buildings
and street lamps disappearing into the distance. Then the road bent around a towering boulder that jutted up from the earth. Its grey bulk hid the approaching town for a second, and the headlights
opened up the jaw of the night.
    There was something out there in the darkness. She saw it and let out a startled cry.
    The lights picked out two animal eyes. Fur and teeth and a tail. Then whatever creature it all belonged to ducked out of the beam and was lost.
    ‘It’s okay,’ said Kenneth.
    ‘Was that a wolf ?’
    He laughed. ‘Just a dog, I think.’
    They cleared the boulder and the buildings drew close enough to make out individual windows and doors.
    ‘Here we are,’ said Kenneth. ‘Home.’ He spoke that word with deliberate heaviness. An invitation as much as a statement. Elsa had never been to Thunderstown, but –
sitting bolt upright, wide awake now and stiff with anticipation – she did feel a sense of homecoming.
    In the first street they entered many of the houses were boarded up. They were terraced slate cottages, with rotted doors and windows locked by hobnails. ‘Nowadays there are more
houses,’ explained Kenneth, ‘than there are people to live in them. We cannot keep them all in good order, especially when the bad weather comes. Nobody lives on this road any more. But
don’t worry, we’re not all dead and buried in Thunderstown.’
    The car bumped along the road’s broken surface. The final tenements in the street weren’t so derelict, yet there were still no lights inside. It was late at night, but these houses
would not be coming to life at dawn. Their doors looked like they could no longer even be opened, shut as tightly as the doors of tombs.
    In the next street the houses were taller but still seemed strangely cowed, as if they had been compressed under the weight of the sky. Their walls had been plastered and painted, and outside
one front door a lantern fended off the shadows with a reassuring glow. Beside the lantern hung a basket full of wild mountain flowers, winking orange and yellow like the lamplight. The shutters on
the ground floor had been flung wide, and through the window Elsa saw a sitting room lit by a chandelier. A thin mother in a nightgown rocked a baby in her arms, and stroked its forehead. It was a
welcome sight after all the decay. The mother looked up as the car drove by, as if it were the first motor vehicle in an age of mule-drawn carts.
    They passed a bar, the Burning Wick, with outer walls of sooty slate and an interior panelled with caramel wood. A bare light bulb shone inside, but the bar had long since shut for the night and
its stools were stacked on its tables. Nevertheless, in the doorway an old man in a raincoat remained, cradling a bottle of something wrapped in brown paper. He wore a leather rain cap, the broad
brim of which flopped down at the sides like the ears of a spaniel. He stared up mournfully at Elsa as the car passed, and then the road turned and he vanished from view.
    More houses followed, some of their slate fronts painted in muted colours that brought tentative life to the streets. Then the road curved into an enormous square lit by antique lamp posts, save
in a few instances where their glass heads had shattered.
    Suddenly Elsa gasped. At first she had missed the square’s principal landmark. It loomed so large that her tired eyes must have skipped over it, mistaking it for an intrusion from a
dream.
    ‘The Church of Saint Erasmus,’ whispered Kenneth, and slowed the car down.