Four Sisters by Val Wood

Author:Val Wood [Wood, Val]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473571419
Publisher: Transworld

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

He was on a train, although not a long journey, not like, not like – what? Where were they taking him? He wanted to ask, but wasn’t sure what words to say. They were speaking in a language he knew but didn’t properly understand. His head ached if he did too much thinking, so he had just followed or been led across another area where again there was a lot of noise and shouting. Why did they have to shout so much, so that their voices echoed up into the high roof of metal and glass?

He saw birds, big white ones, as they went outside and climbed aboard another vehicle. He could smell something different from the acrid odour of smoke and steam inside and then he saw the water and a ship and they were being taken towards it.

When they got off the vehicle, he and Jeanette, the man called Louis and three other men, all with various white dressings on their heads, arms or hands, were taken to a building where someone in a blue uniform came to talk to them. He was asked questions but only stared at the man who was asking them and wished he would hurry because he really wanted to sleep, and he kept closing his eyes which made him sway, but Jeanette kept shaking him by the shoulder to keep him awake.

Eventually the man in the uniform wrote on several sheets of paper, stamped them and gave them to Jeanette, then pointed to him, saying something, and they were allowed to leave.

They all walked towards the ship and Jeanette handed out the sheets of paper to everyone but him, and he wondered why. One of the sheets fluttered to the ground from one of the other travellers’ hands and he bent, unsteady and giddy, and picked it up, patted his side looking for a pocket to put it in but there wasn’t one, so he pushed it up the sleeve of the black coat which he was still carrying.

Everything was a blur. He followed the other people up a narrow walkway and was shepherded on board the ship. He felt confused as people kept coming up to him to look into his face as if he were a child or a curiosity. He leaned on the ship’s rail and closed his eyes so that they would go away.

He jumped when a loud noise startled him and he felt the vessel shudder and begin to move. It seemed a vaguely familiar motion and he clung to the metal rail as if to a memory, feeling it cold beneath his hands; when he looked at his fingers again he saw that he had scratched blue paint off the rail and flakes of it were beneath his nails.

They went inside and sat down in a group and he took the sheet of paper from inside the coat sleeve. It was mostly blank with indecipherable writing but at the bottom was a name. Jacques Dacey.

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