A Different Kingdom(15)

MICHAEL WAS BEING scrubbed by his grandmother in the bath when she paused in her labour to wipe soap from her nose and fix him with a stare. He squirmed uneasily, thinking of how his body had betrayed him in the river with Rose that time. It hadn't happened since, but he wondered if it had somehow left a mark.



'You're eight now Michael, aren't you?'

'Nearly. Will be in December.'

She shook her head. Her cheeks were flushed and tendrils of wet hair hung over her forehead. Michael saw that the whites of her eyes were ribboned with tiny red veins and the grey irises were cloudy.

'Too big for someone to be bathing you.'

Michael shrugged. Rose usually did it, and by the end they would both be soaked and laughing, the bathroom floor a mosaic of bubbles, the air opaque with steam. It was one of the high points of his week. But Rose was in her room, and he thought she might be crying again. He was afraid to go in, yet could not make himself avoid it. He knew he would knock on her door as he mounted the stairs to bed. And, besides, it had clouded over today and the thunderheads had piled up like skyborne anvils. His grandfather had snuffed at the air and prophesied a storm before the morning. It was in the house now, waiting to break. The air was hot, .the sunset bring no coolness. A thick haze had overlaid the western mountains, and the clouds were still piling. Uncle Sean was worried about the barley. It would be just typical for a storm to flatten the half of it, and it nearly cut, he had said.

'Michael, you're very fond of your Aunt Rose, aren't you?'

He nodded, eyes wide as a deer's. This was a new topic, and he was immediately defensive, wrapping his arms around his knees in the soapy water. His grandmother wiped his back absently with the sponge.

'Well, it might be she'll be going away for a time, Michael, and I don't want you to worry about her.'

'Why? Where's she going?'

'That doesn't matter. Never you bother your head about it. She'll be away for a fair while, but she'll come back.'

'When? How long will she be gone?' He could hear his voice shake and tears burned in his throat.

His grandmother hesitated. 'She'll be away maybe a year, Michael, but it'll soon pass, you'll see.'

A year. A year was an immense expanse of time. The rest of the summer. School, and Christmas. Would she be away for Christmas? And Easter, and then the summer again. A huge time. Hundreds of days. He bowed his head to his knees and his grandmother kissed his crown. 'Come on, Michael, get yourself out of the bath and dried. I'll leave you to do that yourself. You're a big boy now.' She hauled herself off her creaking knees and out of the door. Michael could have sworn by the tremor in her voice that she was near to tears too.

The storm broke in the early hours and from his bed Michael watched his grandfather and Uncle Sean battle across the yard with a swinging lantern to check on the horses, brought in from the fields that afternoon. The stables were a lovely place to sit out the rain, deep in straw, lamplit, warm with sleepy animals, the blue night roaring and splashing down beyond the half-door. Michael wiped at the glass. The rain had hardly begun and the air was close and stuffy. Then a bright burst of forked lightning raced down the sky and lit up his horrified face. He launched himself away from the window, some part of his mind counting seconds. When it had reached six the thunder exploded above the roof of the house, rolling from gable to gable, and he thought the glass shook. A whimper crept into his throat.

Another flare of light, garish across the spilled bedclothes, and another rattle of celestial artillery. He leapt from the bed like a hare, hit the wooden floor with a thump, scrabbled out of his door and darted along the hallway. Rose's door. It was closed. She had not answered his knock earlier in the evening. He opened it to another flash of lightning, and saw Rose pressed up against the window, the bolt burning through her nightdress so that for an instant she was a naked silhouette surrounded by gauze. Then it was wholly dark, and he bumped into her bed, dazzled.

'Michael! I thought I'd be seeing you tonight.' To his relief her voice was normal, even merry. She loved storms.

They climbed into bed together under a flickering barrage of lightning and thunder. He clung to her and she smoothed his hair.

'You're going away,' he said at last, muffled at her breast.

'It's all right, Michael, it's for the best.' Her hand strayed down to her stomach and he saw it caress herself there. He had a sudden feeling of panic, as though things were about to change irrevocably; and this strange mood of Rose's was part of it, the beginning of it, even. He wanted her to be herself again, ordinary and unafraid, making a joke of everything.

Why were these weird things happening? Maybe they were something to do with her, with the arguments in the family. Perhaps she should know.