The Pure in Heart Read Free Page B

beenkept short so as to be more manageable for her carers, had recently been allowed to grow, and shone in the light of the overhead lamp, the same white-blonde colour as his own.
    Simon pulled the chair out, sat down and took her hand.
    ‘Hello, sweetheart. I’m here.’
    He looked at her face, waited for that change in her breathing, the flicker of her eyelids, which would indicate that she knew, heardhim, sensed him, and was comforted, reassured.
    The green and white fluorescent lines of the monitor flowed on, making small regular wavelets, across the screen.
    Her breaths were shallow as they passed rustily in and out of her lungs.
    ‘I’ve been in Italy, drawing … lots of faces. People in cafés, people riding on the vaporetto. Venetian faces. They’re the same faces you can see in the greatpaintings from five hundred years ago, it’s a face that doesn’t change, only the clothes are modern. I sit in cafés and drink coffee or Campari and just look at the faces. No one minds.’
    He talked on but her expression did not change, her eyes did not open. She was somewhere further away, deeper down and more out of reach than she had ever been.
    He stayed for an hour, his hand over hers, talkingto her quietly as if he were soothing a frightened infant.
    He heard a trolley being pushed down the ward. Someone called out. An immense tiredness came over him so that for a moment he almost put his head down on the bed beside Martha so that he could sleep.
    The bump of the door brought him up.
    ‘Si.’
    His brother-in-law, Cat’s husband Chris Deerbon, slipped into the room. ‘I thought you mightneed this.’ He held out a polystyrene cup of tea. ‘Cat said you’d got here.’
    ‘She doesn’t look good.’
    ‘No.’
    Simon stood up to stretch his back which always ached if he sat down for long. He was six feet four.
    Chris touched Martha’s forehead, and glanced at the monitors.
    ‘What do you think?’
    Chris shrugged. ‘Hard to know. She’s had this all before but there’s an awful lot against her.’
    ‘Everything.’
    ‘It’s not much of a life.’
    ‘Can we be sure?’
    ‘I think so,’ Chris said gently.
    They stood looking down at Martha until Simon finished his tea and threw the cup across into the bin.
    ‘That’ll see me home. Thanks, Chris. I’m bushed.’
    They left together. At the door Simon looked round. There had been nothing since he had arrived, no flicker, no indication, apart from the rusty breathingand the steady blip of the monitor, that the body on the bed was a living young woman. He went back, bent over Martha and kissed her face. The skin was damp and slightly downy, like the skin of a newborn baby.
    Simon thought he would not see her alive again.

Four
    ‘Gunton?’
    There had to be something of course, even today, just to let him know that nothing changed, until eight o’clock the next morning.
    He turned.
    Hickley was holding up the garden fork. ‘Call this clean?’
    Andy Gunton went back into the long shed where all the tools were kept. He had cleaned the mud off the fork as carefully as he always did. If Hickley, the one screw he had nevermanaged to get on with, had found a blob of dirt between two of the tines, then he had stuck it there himself.
    ‘No dirty tools, you know how it works.’ Hickley shoved the fork into Andy’s face.
    Go on, the gesture said, go on, try me, answer back, cheek me, have a go at me with the garden fork … do it and I’ll have you in here another month, see if I don’t.
    Andy took the fork and went over tothe bench under the window. Carefully, he wiped every prong and probed the cloth down between the blades, thenhe rubbed the handle over and over. Hickley watched, arms folded.
    Beyond the window, the kitchen garden was empty, work over for the day. For a single, strange moment, Andy Gunton thought, I’ll miss it. I’ve sown seeds I won’t harvest, I’ve put in plants I won’t tend as they grow.
    He caught his own thought and almost