Tamar by Mal Peet

Author:Mal Peet [Peet, Mal]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5214-2
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2007-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

On the morning of 5th January, Tamar sat at the kitchen table of Sanctuary Farm. A map was spread in front of him, and the deciphered signal that had come in from London the previous night was by his right hand. The first part was clear enough, unfortunately. His requested supply drop had been postponed because of bad weather and a shortage of aircraft. There were a number of inconsistencies and contradictions in the remainder of the message; now and again Tamar would mutter to himself and utter small sounds of frustration. It seemed unlikely that London had cocked up the coding, and he had checked his own deciphering twice and found nothing wrong. If Dart were with him, he’d probably see the problem in no time at all.

Dart wasn’t there because Tamar had taken over responsibility for the transceiver for the time being. It had been absurd to expect Dart to struggle back and forth through the white hell of the weather. They’d agreed this on Christmas morning, but the conversation had been strangely spiky and Dart had left abruptly immediately afterwards.

It had been the first morning that Oma had been too ill to leave her bed. Dart and Marijke had spent some time with her, then Dart had come downstairs alone. He’d talked about Julia’s condition in a curiously distant, matter-of-fact way. Then, just as Tamar had been about to raise the subject himself, he’d said, “I can’t keep slogging out here if the weather stays like this, you know.”

His tone of voice had been strange, like familiar music played in the wrong key.

Tamar said, “No, of course you can’t. You could die on the road if you got caught in a snowstorm. I was going to suggest that I take over wireless operations here until the weather improves.”

“Good. You’ve got a copy of the schedule, haven’t you?”

“Yes. It’s bloody ironic, though, isn’t it? While Oma is sick you have the perfect excuse to come here.”

Dart paused in buttoning his coat but didn’t look up. “Ironic,” he said. “Yes, that’s one way to describe it.”

And that had been it. Dart had downed most of a cup of tea and left, shoving the heavy bike up towards the road, leaving an irregular woven track that was later obliterated by afternoon snow.

The memory of that morning, their last meeting, occasionally nagged at Tamar like a torn fingernail. Still, there was probably a simple explanation for Dart’s apparent ill humour: he’d been hungover. They both had.

Tamar concentrated on the map and the coordinates again. He looked up when Marijke entered the room. She put a half-full bowl of broth and a spoon down on the table; then, without touching him, she went to the window and stood there with her arms folded. He watched her back, waiting.

“She wants a priest,” Marijke said.

“Ah.” He stood up to go to her.

When she heard the scrape of his chair, she said, “Don’t touch me. If you touch me, I’ll cry. And I’m not going to cry.

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