The Stone That Never Came Down Read Free Page B

morning it had uttered foul-smelling smoke, and he had had to let it cool down, take it to bits, and clean the charred wick. Actually he needed a new one, but he couldn’t afford it.
    And for another thing, he had the radio on. It was all he could offer Toussaint to keep him amused. He had had to turn in the TV last time the rental payments went up.
    –Kind of ironical, I guess. Me, a trained TV repairman, and I don’t have a set of my own!
    But he was out of work, of course. Had been since that horrible, incredible day when the boss had called him in and told him bluntly that he’d have to leave because so many women clients of the firm, on their own during the day, objected to having a black man enter their homes.
    –As though I could rape them! Me, a scrawny runt of five foot four! Hell, I couldn’t screw them buckra bitches without they help me, start to finish!
    He’d tried to lodge a complaint under the Race Relations Act, but nobody was paying much attention to that any more.
    The radio was saying, “According to informed sources the chief constable of Glasgow will appeal for the assistance of troops if yesterday’s order by the Industrial Relations Court is not obeyed. Now in its ninth week, the strike at …”
    Which was not calculated to amuse a six-year-old kid. He wound the knob around in search of music or a comedy show. Meantime the third thing which had prevented him from hearing the bell continued from the bedroom next door, a series of horrible racking coughs.
    –If I knew where that she-devil was, I’d …!
    But he couldn’t think of anything bad enough to do to her, the wife who had walked out on him when she grew sick of being mocked and taunted every time she went to the shops with Toussaint.
    –Moral, never marry an English girl, not even if you were born on the next street from her home. It oughtn’t to make any difference. Hell, I married her because she was pretty and fun to be with and wasn’t all made of wood from the waist down like half the English girls. Right from the next damned street! But she turned out the same as the rest in the end.
    This time the oil-heater lit cleanly and burned with a nice blue flame.
    “Okay, son!” he shouted. “It’ll be warmer in a minute!”
    Whereupon the bell rang a second time, and he answered cautiously, not really expecting that bastard, the local school attendance officer, who had been persecuting him these past few weeks because even with a doctor’s certificate he didn’t believe Toussaint was too sick to go out, and found Cissy Jones, bright and plump and sixteen and thoughtful, who had brought a bottle of a special cough-mixture her aunt said was very good and should be tried on Toussaint. He liked her, and even before she had measured out a spoonful of the medicine for him he had quietened, as though some of the time he were forcing himself to cough to attract attention.
    –But he looks so peaky and he shakes so much …
    The bell rang again, and here came the rest of them, the rest of the brothers and sisters for whom he ran an informal class in what the authorities at buckra schools didn’t want them to find out. A couple of them were playing truant, being not yet past the official leaving-age of fifteen. Some would have liked to stay on at school in spite of all, but hadn’t been allowed to. These days it was a common habit to pass over a black kid who talked back to the teachers, and slap on his record a rubber stamp saying ineducable. And half of them were glad to be out of school, but furious at being out of work as well. Altogether there were ten today.
    Five minutes’ socialising, and he called for order. From a stack on the mantel Cissy distributed copies of the pamphlet issued by RBR, Radical Black Revival, which they were currently using as a textbook. The pamphlets were numbered because they were precious. One couldn’t buy them any more.
    Stumbling a little, she read aloud the paragraph at which they had stopped