The Lie by Dunmore Helen

Author:Dunmore, Helen [Dunmore, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

11

Men removed masks at times when they thought that the gas had disappeared. As a result of this continued removal and adjustment of the mask, the men must have breathed a certain amount of gas.

GRAVY SPILLS OUT of the squab pie as Felicia cuts it in half. She gives me the larger piece. I hold my knife and fork as she does, but I can’t copy the slowness with which she eats.

‘It’s a long time since I tasted proper squab pie,’ I tell her. ‘They put pigeon in it upcountry, did you know that? I had it once in London. I couldn’t eat it. London pigeons, they’re like vermin. You wouldn’t want to put the flesh in your mouth.’

The thick, fat taste of the mutton is cut with apple. They’ll be from the old tree on the back wall. Pig’s Nose. That’s good keeping fruit.

‘You may as well finish it, Dan.’

‘You and the little one will want it tomorrow.’

But she heaps pie on to my plate. When I’ve finished, she rises and goes to the larder, comes back with an earthenware jug covered with a muslin cloth.

‘I asked Dolly to fetch me a jug of beer. I don’t know what she must have thought.’

I know exactly what she must have thought. There she is, my blessed Felicia, with her thin wrists and an expression that gets wiped off the faces of most kids before they’re ten years old. She’s innocent, that’s what she is. Never mind the death of Harry Fearne, the birth of Jeannie. Frederick’s death.

I push my chair back and take a deep drink of the beer. This is how it must be, if you’re married. Felicia moving around the table, clearing plates, wiping the wood. But if we were married, she’d have made the pie herself. She’s playing at something she doesn’t know how to do. Same with the baby. Maybe that’s why Jeannie cries to go down to Dolly Quick’s, because there’s a sureness in the old woman that Felicia lacks.

She carries the plates out into the scullery, for Dolly Quick to wash tomorrow I dare say. She leaves the door of the scullery open. It must be damp in there, because a smell creeps out. At first it only touches my nostrils, like a coil of smoke, but then it thickens. I cough, and put my hand up to my mouth. It’s all around me now, thick as fog. Gas gets into the earth and stays there. Nothing could flourish in that soil, except rats. There’s chloride of lime, or creosol, and the ooze from the latrines. We stink worst of all when we unwrap our puttees. No wonder the rats are close enough to lick our hair-grease. They eye us up like chums. You’ll do, they say. You’re worth coming back for.

Did you know that a rat gets finicky if he’s overfed? He’ll eat the eyes and liver out of a dead man and leave the rest. He’ll pop out of the hole he’s made in a dead man’s cheek.

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