The Northern Clemency Read Free Page B

with astonishment, “their birthdays, star signs, the lot. The telly programmes they watch, even.”
    “That’s because you live in a terraced house,” Daniel said. “You could hear everything through the walls. When they fuck.”
    “Do you mind?” Barbara said, objecting to the word rather than Daniel’s snobbery. But she drew close again, pulling him with her out of the light from the street towards the empty, overgrown garden.
    “They were all saying,” Daniel murmured, his mouth against hers, running his tongue against her lips as they walked backwards into the lyric night, “they were all saying, who’s that gorgeous girl, goes into the neighbours’ gardens with Daniel Glover—”
    “They were not,” Barbara said, her eyes bright, her hand running down Daniel’s side.
    “They were,” Daniel said, his hand, his rippling fingers rising, weighing, cupping, down and under, beneath and within. “And I said—”
    “Oh, give over,” Barbara said. But Daniel carried on, his hushed, exuberant voice now muted, and as they fell back against the lawn, which had grown into a thick meadow, she gave in to what he knew she felt. There was some indulgent amusement deep within him, and he never completely surrendered to the sensation, was never reduced to begging animal favours or further steps in the exploration of what she would grant him. His gratification, always, lay in seeing her so helpless; his pleasure in the expert and improving knack of bestowing pleasure. The noises she made were on some level comic, “Nnngg,” she went, and an observation post in him kept alert over the expanding border territory between her propriety and her desire. They began when he chose to begin; they ended when he said he had to go, and when he knew that she would say disappointedly, “Do you have to?”
    Barbara was in his maths set; he’d heard some of the things she’d been letting out about him. Flattering, really. He didn’t talk about her. Another couple of times, and that would be it; he’d seen the way Michael Cox’s sister looked at him, though she was eighteen next month. That would be something to talk about.
    .   .   .
    It was not clear to any of the Glovers what the purpose of the party had been. Not even to Katherine, whose idea it had been. He hadn’t come, after all. When the last of the guests had gone, the other two children went upstairs, Timothy holding a book. Malcolm sat down and, with his heels, dragged the armchair into a position facing the television. He did not get up to turn it.
    Katherine put the letter on the shelf over the radiator, and began to go round the room, picking up glasses and plates. Malcolm had put the empty bottles in the kitchen as he had got through them. There were two open bottles left, one red and one white. The food had mostly been eaten, the tablecloth around the large oval dish of Coronation Chicken stained yellow where spoonfuls had been carelessly dropped. She began to talk as she collected the remains. She was wiping the thought that Nick, after all that effort, hadn’t come. He’d said he would.
    “They seemed to have a good time,” she said. “I thought the food went well. I was worried they wouldn’t be able to eat it standing up, but people manage, don’t they?”
    Malcolm said nothing. She sighed.
    “It’s a shame the new people over the road haven’t moved in yet,” she said. “It would have been a good opportunity for them to meet the neighbours. Most people came, I think. There was a nice little letter from the lady in the big house, saying she was sorry she couldn’t come. She doesn’t like to go home after dark. Silly, really—it’s only a hundred yards, I don’t know what she thinks would happen to her, and it’s not really dark, even now. They get set in their ways, old people.”
    Malcolm gave no sign of listening.
    She couldn’t be sure what the reason for the party had been. But for her it had been defined by the people who