Enchantment Read Online Free Page A

business.
    Tim sat down on the narrow bench opposite the mysterious figure, and relaxed the guard that he had put up against the knowledge of having made an idiot of himself at Gareth’s house. Weird, Gareth had said, with mean eyes, his fat, wet lip sucking what he thought was a moustache. But Tim was right and they were wrong. They were the idiots. Trouble was, they didn’t know it.
    It was a very old and treasured crucifix: the wood paled to silver-grey and intriguingly worm-eaten, the mournful tilted face pitted like acne, the sad folds of the loincloth. He was always draped, on any crucifix. You could never see what He had. Did He suffer that little problem too, along with all his other burdens?
    Tim spread his arms along the back of the bench, straightened out his legs and crossed his feet. He dropped his head and tried to feel the flaming agony of the wounds, the thrust of rusty nails through skin and flesh and ligament, crushing bone, and the dead weight of his body hanging there.
    Footsteps came down the aisle behind him. He straightened up and put his hands in his lap, rubbing his palms to convince himself that he had felt the wounds. Two women walked past the end of the bench. One of them stopped and looked up at the crucifix, and the scarred wooden eyes looked blankly down at her. If Tim were up there on the cross, his living eyes would meet the woman’s upturned face, and she would nod to herself: Yes, that’s him.
    She lowered her head. Turn it to the right, then, away from the pitted corpse, and see on the bench the living man. If he held out his hands and blood dripped from them, would she kneel in tears before the stigmata? She walked on after the other woman.
    Tim got up and went to the back of the cathedral and out of the low exit beside the main door. Still a bit early, so he went into a coffee bar.
    â€˜See the stunning blonde at the counter?’ In the world of
Pocket Pickups
, girls on their own were always stunning or smashing, although if they really were, they wouldn’t be alone. ‘The stool next to her is empty. Sit on it. Order what you want confidently (cappuccino is classy). Ask her to pass the sugar.’
    There were no stools at the counter. Tim took his tea and Bath bun to an empty table. ‘She is sitting alone at a table for two. Ask her if she’s waiting for someone. If it’s no, you say, “Mind if I …” and sit opposite her. If she doesn’t look up, say something, anything, ask her about the book she’s reading.’
Pocket Pickups
girls were always reading. Real girls were not, but if they were, it would take more nerve than Tim had to interrupt.
    Read any good books lately? Read
Pocket Pickups?
    More people came in, and an elderly man with a wobbly mauve lump on his cheek brought his cup of tea to Tim’s table, slopping it over the biscuits in the saucer. Tim went to the counter and got him some more biscuits, the sort of gesture the man would not forget.
    I met this delightful young man in the Coffeepot. Best sort of type. Pity they aren’t all like that.
    Fetching the biscuits gave Tim the licence to talk. Because the man saw him as helpful, Tim told him that he was a psychiatric nurse in a London hospital, and elaborated briefly on the work and the dedication involved.
    â€˜I admire that,’ the man said. ‘Couldn’t do it myself, but it takes all kinds.’
    Tim felt restored. He forgot the eye-rolling and carping of Gareth and Sean, and remembered only the exhilaration of being Tohubo. It was like picking one coin up from a counter and leaving another behind. This was the great trick to life. He had the secret of the universe, if anyone cared to learn. Select your own memories. Throw away what hurts.
    His mother was in the kitchen, waddling pluckily about among the preparations for one of her enormous meals. Her knees had become silted up with arthritis, but her arms and hands were fully functioning.