The Island Walkers Read Online Free Page B

sandwiches towards Jamie. On her own plate was a lone scoop of cottage cheese and a slab of beefsteak tomato, red as blood. Another of her diets, Alf thought ruefully. She was thin enough, he felt, hardly heavier than when he’d first met her twenty-three years ago, that evening at the servicemen’s dance in Henley-Under-Downs. It was something people remarked on. “If only I knew Margaret’s secret! I think she’s made a deal with the devil!” Her skin seemed nearly as clear as it had been in 1942. Her hair, which she wore in the same style as then, brushed away from a central part, was as dark and wavily vigorous. All the same, he knew she had changed. There was a hint of sallowness in her face. In her eyes, he glimpsed what he feared was disappointment.
    Yet all that week she’d been bubbling around the house, in a much better mood than usual. Jack Ramsay, he thought. Jack Ramsay was the new minister at the Anglican church. Jack was from England, like her, a tall young man of thirty or so, with a brightly boyish face and an affable manner Alf found a bit glib. He had a fine tenor voice, though. That afternoon he was not only going to officiate at the wedding, but was going to sing with Margaret. All week Alf had heard her rehearsing her part, the words of the duet wafting through the house in her clear soprano.
The sparrow hath found her an house,
And the swallow a nest
Where she may lay her young:
Even thine altars
Oh Lord of Hosts …
    Alf supposed she was in love, after a fashion, with Jack Ramsay. He was used to her falling in love — with men and women both, or with singers or authors or symphony orchestras. It never lasted for more than a few days, or a few weeks, and while it was happening she was effervescent and pleased with everything. He had tried to be philosophical about Jack Ramsay — after all, nothing but high spirits came from these infatuations, and her high spirits were a good deal easier on all of them than the grim patches she fell into at other times.
    “I think you’re an atheist at heart,” Joe was saying, looking at his brother.
    “No I’m not.”
    “You don’t even know what an atheist is.”
    “Yes I do.”
    “What is it then?”
    “He doesn’t know,” Penny said with scornful certainty, biting a pickle.
    “I do ,” Jamie insisted, his eyes bulging at his sister. They had been at each other all morning.
    “Tell him then,” she sang. Jamie stared hard at Joe, as if by ferocious willpower he could force the answer to appear in Joe’s face. Jamie had his mother’s clear, open face, a believer’s face, it seemed to Alf. The boy worshipped his brother, and considered him a source of impeccable truth.
    “It’s somebody who doesn’t go to church.”
    “Close but no cigar.”
    “Perhaps you could just tell him what an atheist is,” Margaret said impatiently while sawing at her tomato. A couple of weeksbefore, Joe had announced he was no longer going to church. Alf knew his withdrawal had hurt her.
    “An atheist …,” Penny began.
    “I want him to tell me,” Jamie insisted, pointing to Joe. Alf noticed that Bob Horsfall had appeared in his garden next door. It never failed, whenever they ate outside, Horsfall or his wife would come out and hang around, pretending to be busy, like children hoping to be asked to play. Horsfall — a small man in baggy shorts — scowled at Alf (his face was set in a permanent scowl anyway, he only needed to darken it a little) and gestured violently to something in his garden: some tomato that had rotted, no doubt, or some broken stem, more evidence that the world was going to hell. Alf looked away. Both Horsfall and his wife were deaf. They could speak only after a fashion, in grunts that scarcely resembled human speech.
    “… is somebody who doesn’t believe in God.”
    Jamie’s eyes slowly grew bright. He looked at his sister, his quarrel with her forgotten. He looked at his father.
    “ I believe in God,” he said almost in