Madame Zero by Sarah Hall

Author:Sarah Hall [Sarah Hall]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780571290031
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2017-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

· Later, His Ghost ·

The wind was coming from the east when he woke. The windows on that side of the house boxed and clattered in their frames, even behind the stormboards, and the corrugated-iron sheet over the coop in the garden was hawing and creaking, as though it might rip out of its rivets and fly off. The bellowing had come into his sleep, like a man’s voice. December 23rd. The morning was dark, or it was still night, the clock was dead. He lay unmoving beneath the blankets, his feet cold in his boots, chest sore from breathing unheated air. The fire had gone out; the wood had burned too high again with the pull up the chimney. It was hard keeping it in overnight. Coal was much better; it burned longer, but was hard to find and too heavy to carry.

He pulled the blankets over his face. Get up, he thought. If he didn’t get up it would be the beginning of the end. People who stayed inside got into trouble. No one helped them. Part of him understood – who wanted to die outside, tossed about like a piece of litter, stripped of clothing by the wind and lodged somewhere, dirt blowing dunes over your corpse? Crawling into a calm little shelter was preferable. He understood.

Something hard clattered along the roof, scuttled over the slates, and was borne away. There was a great ooming sound above, almost oceanic, like the top of the sky was heaving and breaking. Whatever had been kept in check by the gulfstream was now able to push back and lash around. People had once created aerial gods, he knew, fiends of the air or the mountaintops. He took it personally, sometimes – yelling uselessly up the chimney, or even into the wind’s face, his voice tiny and whipped away. Not often though, because it didn’t really help, and the chances of getting hit were worse.

When it came from the east a lot of the remaining house roofs went, and whole walls could topple – another reason not to stay inside too much, you had to be alert to the collapses. But this house was good; it had survived. He turned on his side and shivered as the cold crept down his neck. The sofa he was lying on always felt damp. The cushion he was using as a pillow smelled of wet mortar. He didn’t usually sleep in this room, but Helene was now in his. He would have liked them to sleep together, to be warmer.

Another object crashed past the house, splintering against the gable, and flying off in separate clattering pieces. He couldn’t remember the last still day, the trees standing upright and placid. Stillness seemed like a childhood myth, like August hay-timing, or Father Christmas. Last night, he’d slept restlessly; his dreams were turbulent – wars, animals stampeding, and Craig, always Craig. After a night like that it was hard to get going.

Get up, he thought. And then, because it was too difficult today, he thought, Buffalo.

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