Happy Family by James Ellis

Author:James Ellis [Ellis, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unbound

9

Decisions. Always decisions. Would it be possible to never make a decision again? Just to be carried through life like a leaf on a river and be taken to the sea, swirling and splashing and gasping but knowing that a greater force was in control? That’s all we are, Germaine thought, a decision-processing engine. People switched from one track to another; their lives a long trail of twists and turns laid out behind them like the slime left behind by a slug.

She could imagine in some celestial museum a large set of drawers that contained all of existence, and in each drawer on a black velvet cushion there were the lives of everyone who had ever existed, silvery squiggles arranged in ranks. And every day more lives were added, more squiggles, more tales each with its own beginning-middle-end, stored and locked away. And for whom, she wondered? Who would ever look at all those trillions of lives, and did it matter to the drawer-owner if one squiggle belonged to a sinner and another to a saint?

Germaine’s immediate decision was whether or not to take Charles to a hospital. He didn’t look good. He sat in the back seat of the car and shivered and stared at the windscreen. Margot was beside him. Germaine was driving.

‘Are there any missing parts?’ she said looking in her mirror.

‘His trousers are ruined. There are twigs and things in his hair. And scratches. But I don’t think they actually bit him. Just pulled him around a bit. More trauma than injury. Poor Charles, they were only trying to bury you for later, weren’t they?’

‘I could take him to hospital? Assuming there is one.’

‘No. I don’t think so. I think Charles would prefer a nice cup of tea and a sit-down. Wouldn’t you, Charles?’

‘Hyanh.’

On the way back to Las Sombras, Germaine thought about the decisions that had led her to be in that car with those people. A long time seemed to have passed since she had drunk three large whiskies and walked out on Borkmann because he had defined her as unadorned. A long time since she had found herself staring into a window in the rain. Decisions, decisions, decisions, and each with its own trail of consequences.

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