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.‘Lionel p-put the bunks together and she was in the lower bunk and he in the other, and I was on top like, and he told her stories half the night.’George looked as if he understood.He sat down and regarded Balfour gravely for several seconds.‘Did you sing?’ he asked, his eyes sliding away from the face below him, studying the map above Balfour’s head.‘No,’ said Balfour.‘I thought I heard singing last night from the hut … I thought I did … I wanted to come back and join you, but I felt I should wait till I was included …’‘We weren’t singing,’ protested Balfour.‘Nobody sang a note.He just told her stories all night – all about someone called Larry O’Rourke.’‘Is he Irish?’ George enquired.‘The Irish are very fond of singing.’‘They weren’t stories really,’ Balfour floundered.‘I mean I couldn’t hear them properly.They were private like … all about this fella O’Rourke and a t-temple somewhere.’ He closed his mouth at the memory.‘He was in the East,’ George said.‘He was in Palestine.’Bloody hell, thought Balfour, angrily jabbing at his inflamed neck.He wondered whether Lionel was awake now, already muttering his tales into the ear of the little woman.What a way to greet the day, like ‘Lift Up Your Hearts …’ with a kick in it.George said, ‘You could help me carry the logs over to the hut later if you have a moment.’ He stood up, shifting his head a little from side to side, looking down at Balfour and away again.He went out of the hut and on to the rain-drenched plateau.He wasn’t at ease about Balfour – the drinking of the first evening, the rhyme about the Jew in a cave of last night.Like the sudden outbreak of fire in the scrub, nothing was entirely accidental nor entirely planned.Chaos could escalate to such a point that what preceded it achieved a degree of order.He didn’t wish the chaotic Balfour to become less ordered.No man could foresee with accuracy the type of feeling generated by another.Evil lay beyond the Glen – the emotion of evil – waiting to devour the trees and the valley, waiting to burst into flame.Soon he would be able to discuss such problems with Joseph.They wouldn’t of course allude to evil by its name, they would talk about faulty materials and bad planning and cheap design.He didn’t delude himself that Joseph would be of much help to him.He had too many things adhering to his life that hindered – marriage and women friends and a responsible job.He must wait a few days until the peace of the Glen had smoothed out the creased Joseph.Balfour made a clumsy job of securing the wood into a bundle that could be carried.He was hampered by the fact that he wished to get away across the stream before Lionel and May awakened and sought him out.The thought of facing them with only the detached George for protection filled him with anxiety.‘That’s no use,’ George told him.Methodically, he placed the logs in correct lengths on the plateau, slipping a leather belt underneath the roll and drawing the thong tight.Balfour looked in the direction of Hut 2 and imagined he saw the curtains move across the window.Loaded correctly, he was set on the down path to the stream.George turned about from time to time to comment on the vista before the Big House.‘We should lop a few more trees,’ he said.‘From certain angles the plateau is quite obscured.’Balfour could smell the bacon frying even as they climbed the slope above the bridge.Roland was being pushed on the swing by Dotty, still in her nightdress.She looked, he thought, a funny girl, standing there in the damp grass with her large feet sticking out from beneath the bedraggled hem of her gown.The child and the girl looked at George in his odd hat and Balfour with his pile of logs, but they didn’t speak.Balfour thought they were all a bit daft, all of them – no one saying a word of greeting, not even a bit of a smile.Gloomily he went to the door of the hut and waited for George to open it for him.‘What’s all this about?’ Joseph asked of George authoritatively, pointing at the wood with a long knife in his hand, ignoring the beast of burden beneath it.He hadn’t really noticed the stove alongside the settee.He kicked at its brick base with his shoe and wanted to know if it worked.He wanted to know if it smoked much, if they could use it for cooking [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]