Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert

Author:Rachel Seiffert
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781407091518
Publisher: Random House
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was like his mind got stuck sometimes, turning everything over again to have a closer look. Not like he didn’t know it all already, but when he got that way, it was hard to stop. Thought it was down to David this time. Or down to himself for listening. Thought about the old man a lot that week away with Alice: how he talked, once he got started, just kept running on and getting distracted. Joseph reckoned he knew how that felt: he’d done enough of it over the years, not out loud like David, but in his head. Thinking it might all add up to something, maybe, all the remembering. Different parts of it on different days, and the order of things kept changing, but it was all the same memories and always the same people in them.

September in Ireland, hot for about a week and the local kids swam in the river. Sat on the banks in wet shorts, skinny boys shivering. Sixteen-, seventeen-, eighteen-year-olds, drinking cider out of plastic bottles. Smoking, shouting, the hardest ones jumping off the old stone bridge into the water. Cuts on their legs from the rocks at the bottom, but no limping, no pain showing, at least not while the girls were there on the opposite bank watching. Back at the barracks, in their bunks and the bar, the talk was all about how the girls surely had to go swimming soon, and what the boys should be doing to get them in there. But days passed, boys only, in and out the water, stomachs pulled in from the cold and the skin on their ribs shining blue-white in the unexpected sunshine. Out on Ops, they kept watch on them through binoculars: the boys showing off, charming and persuading, and the girls ignoring them. Joseph remembered being with Lee and Townsend on the hill above the village, always one of them ready for when the girls got their kit off.

The boys nicked some tractor inner tubes from one of the farmers and that was what did it. Genius, Townsend reckoned. Joseph was on stag, but he kept quiet and kept hold of the binoculars when the girls finally got off the banks. Still not showing much skin except leg: pale, wet limbs splayed, floating around on the black inflated rings, mouths wide. Joseph thought he could just hear them from where he was lying. Screaming and laughing, turning with the current, boys swimming out and splashing them, T-shirts and knickers soaked through and clinging so Joseph could see more by then, if he kept the binoculars still enough. Insects dancing in the long grass in front of him, sweat on his belly from the heat of the sun, from lying there for hours on his buckle, bored and uncomfortable. Breath held, pressed down onto the hillside, Joseph kept watching as long as he could, until the girls floated under the bridge and then he passed the binoculars on.

– You dirty fuck, why didn’t you say nothing?

That was Lee.

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