If the Invader Comes by Derek Beaven

Author:Derek Beaven [Derek Beaven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007394241
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

THE WHITE ENAMEL bowl rocked back and forth over the blue flame with a click, click, to the water’s rhythm. Clarice rinsed and warmed the flannel once more. Then she laid it to Vic’s naked shoulder, drawing the cloth down, smoothing his chest and side. In washing his body, she felt she was wiping the grave dirt from him, rinsing away death and corruption. It was under her hands he’d come back to life.

His head was turned slightly away. The eyes were closed. She couldn’t tell whether he was asleep, now. The breath lifted softly back and forth in his ribcage. His taut white skin with its tangle of hairs rose and fell under her touch. ‘Vic, dearest.’ She bent to kiss him, over his heart, and his eyes flickered open. She read the fear in them. ‘It’s all right, darling Vic.’ With her free hand she smoothed the hair back over his forehead. ‘You can sleep if you want to. You can rest now.’

Suddenly he was wide-awake. ‘There isn’t time,’ he said. He was staring up beyond her, and trembling. She felt the ridges of agitation under her palm. He tried to sit up. ‘Surely there isn’t time,’ he said again. ‘Jack …’

‘There is, darling. Time enough. In fact, we’ve got all the time in the world.’

‘I’ve got to go back. My son.’ His voice was full of urgency. And then he looked at her, and his eyes softened as he realised who she was. He smiled. ‘But I want to keep hold of you. I want to make sure you’re here, I’m here.’

‘I am here, Vic. And you’re so tired. Come on, you can rest. You haven’t got to go back. You must rest.’ She smoothed his brow once more and watched the eyelids droop as he fought his exhaustion. There was a pause. Then he gave a long sigh and the breathing deepened. She dried his shoulder with a corner of the shirt he’d taken off, and covered him with a blanket where he lay, on the worn mattress’s thin, black-striped ticking on the floor of the little cabin.

The dusk was blue-white, underlit by the snowfall. Outside, the flakes, as they drifted past the window-panes, were already shadows on a leaden swirl. She lit a hurricane lamp – it reminded her of another life – and stood it on an orange box. Then she took her own clothes off, and crept shivering in beside Vic under the blankets. She put her arms around him, and drew herself against him. He stirred and turned over on his side. Then she pressed herself all along the length of his back, and placed her knees into the crooks of his knees.

So she rested and thought, of how she had gone down into the darkness to fetch him, and how, at the cost of her own rape, she had brought him back. And here he was wasted and frightened, with the tatters of the underworld plainly still upon him. But he was the same Vic she had fallen in love with.

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