Iron Curtain by Iron Curtain (epub)

Author:Iron Curtain (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

He moved several pairs of muddy boots and an empty cat basket to one side, shoved our bags into the boot and then opened the doors of his mud-spattered car. The Labrador jumped in the front. Jason lifted Charlie onto his lap in the back. The inside of the car was uniformly dirty. The smell of drying mud and wet dog hit you first, then cat and sheep, like the developing bouquet of some complex wine. Unidentifiable matter crunched under my feet and every surface seemed to be growing hairs. I removed a big plastic bone from under my bottom.

‘Shall we take a detour to show your friend our famous Christmas lights, Jay?’ the older man said.

He drove through a medieval gate and up a cobbled street without waiting for an answer, then slowed down. Several multicoloured light bulbs dangled above us on a rope suspended between a pub and a tea shop. He slowed down further.

‘Ah, OK, you spoilt metropolitans. No reaction, I see. I should have guessed.’ He turned towards us, driving on. Charlie wagged his tail.

‘Lovely,’ I murmured belatedly, when I realised that we had just seen the lights. The rest of the little town seemed abandoned. We zigzagged through a labyrinth of narrow alleyways, then back through another medieval gate and alongside the same railway tracks, out into the open countryside.

‘Milena is not a Londoner, Pater. She is my fiancée,’ Jason said, as though the former excluded the latter. I was stunned by the suddenness of his declaration.

Paddy Connor looked at me in the rear-view mirror. His car clipped a hedge and he corrected the steering, still looking at me. No one said anything for another two or three minutes. The dog smell increased as their coats dried.

I turned my gaze past Paddy’s shoulder and at the dimly lit dials on the dashboard, glowing in the dark as though we were in the cockpit during some night flight. The red petrol one was perilously low.

I realised, accustomed as I was to cars being rare and cherished possessions, that this one was newer and more expensive than I thought. It was battered by misuse and neglect rather than age.

‘No, I am most certainly not,’ I said, resuming the conversation.

‘Not a Londoner or not a fiancée?’ Paddy asked, then laughed. I could tell that he was laughing with relief, and wondered why exactly.

‘Neither,’ I said. ‘Your son will need to propose first and then we will see about the engagement bit.’

Jason hit his head against the back of his father’s seat as if in exasperation. The Labrador gave a little bark.

The inside of the car got gradually warmer and the windows misted. Paddy said it was about fifty outside, which was either meaningless or absurd. I guessed it was around eight degrees. This chilliness, accompanied by dampness, was becoming familiar. I had been in the country for two days, but I was already thinking of eight as ‘the English temperature’.

Finally Paddy turned up a gravel path, without indicating,

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