Read Online Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History by Ken Liu, Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, Sofia Samatar, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Thoraiya Dyer - Free Book Online
Authors: Ken Liu, Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, Sofia Samatar, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Thoraiya Dyer
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takes wing. “Asked him for a short back and sides.”
The smile startles out of me like the flapping cockerel. “Not enough ruddy brilliantine in the world to make
that
look right with you.”
He sets the hen down onto her feet on the cobbles, leaving her to make her unsteady affronted way back towards the coop. “Wouldn’t know, would I.”
Can’t but put my arm round his shoulders, can I, my husband, my Trevor. “Come back in?”
Lily is the only person in the kitchen now, mopping at a spill of jam on the table with a furious glower on her face. “Why do we marry them, I ask you? – Not you, bach,” she adds when she sees I’ve her brother with me, small fond smile for the ridiculousness of our lives. (Hard sometimes not to be envious of Lily, thirty soon and married to a house-holder. Do we claw at each other because we’ve not got all that we wanted? Or do we retreat into our separate troubles?) “Trevor, I was talking with Helen and we’re thinking that even if Meeting can’t spare the money to send the both of you back over to the Continent, I’m certain they’ll at least be able to help you sort out what you mean to do for work and all?”
Been weighing on her mind something terrible, what her brothers are to do with themselves now. Though Ned’s his soldier’s pension, small token for it all but more than anyone would grudge for my husband. Trevor half-turns from where he’s gone to wash barnyard-smelling hands under the tap. From his face he’s picturing what even Friends will be able to do to find positions for anyone from this notorious family of conchies and suffragists. “Not the civil-service I don’t think,” Trevor says. The irony, that
he’d
have the vote now if he’d not chosen to go to prison. “Go back to helping Aled-mawr maybe?” (And how long will it be that we’re still calling his uncle that, when will we forget the
why
of it now Aled-bach rests in Flanders?) “Or Da.”
“You’re wasted as a builder
or
a baker and you know it,” I say.
Lily’s pinched look speaks to how she’s more than ready to see any of the men in her life find bloody
something
already. Thread of normality to pluck at, as if one small worry can displace all the greater. I take Trevor’s hand and tug him towards the stairs. I can hear the denial of tears in Iris’s voice in the front room, where Violet must be giving her as much of a talking-to as I imagine Violet capable of. But upstairs all is still, just quiet breathing from the room where Trevor’s aunt’s been looking after Lily’s girls and poor Daisy’s little Rhys. As well to have got them all down at once, Nora’s still not been up to much after the ‘flu. We creep past that door, and then the bedroom that Iris still shares with Violet, and Ned’s ajar and a shambles, to our own scant refuge from care.
Suppose we can get on with setting up house on our own now the war is behind us. Suppose we all can, except Iris. Funny how that’s not even occurred to me till just now, where she’d go. We’re all still travelling on the rails the past laid down when the train’s lost its bloody wheels. I’ll be organising another march for the vote next.
We’ve still not got electric in the bedrooms. I strike a match for the lamp and set it back beside the basin, doesn’t altogether chase aside the grey dim of a day that’s never going to go fair but enough for this. The dressing-table arches into an accusing void where a mirror ought to be. I’ve been fixing my hair in the largest shard Iris missed, sliver now of myself standing alone at the edge of the bed beside my husband.
His shaving-soap’s not been touched since he’s been home, or nearly – he’d have
tried
, surely, but I can guess how that had gone, without having the sight of his face in a glass. Trevor’s brows crease into a dark question when I reach to pick it up. “No, Helen, why…?”
“Herbert
is
right, you know, you’re a bit of a sight. I
think
I
The smile startles out of me like the flapping cockerel. “Not enough ruddy brilliantine in the world to make
that
look right with you.”
He sets the hen down onto her feet on the cobbles, leaving her to make her unsteady affronted way back towards the coop. “Wouldn’t know, would I.”
Can’t but put my arm round his shoulders, can I, my husband, my Trevor. “Come back in?”
Lily is the only person in the kitchen now, mopping at a spill of jam on the table with a furious glower on her face. “Why do we marry them, I ask you? – Not you, bach,” she adds when she sees I’ve her brother with me, small fond smile for the ridiculousness of our lives. (Hard sometimes not to be envious of Lily, thirty soon and married to a house-holder. Do we claw at each other because we’ve not got all that we wanted? Or do we retreat into our separate troubles?) “Trevor, I was talking with Helen and we’re thinking that even if Meeting can’t spare the money to send the both of you back over to the Continent, I’m certain they’ll at least be able to help you sort out what you mean to do for work and all?”
Been weighing on her mind something terrible, what her brothers are to do with themselves now. Though Ned’s his soldier’s pension, small token for it all but more than anyone would grudge for my husband. Trevor half-turns from where he’s gone to wash barnyard-smelling hands under the tap. From his face he’s picturing what even Friends will be able to do to find positions for anyone from this notorious family of conchies and suffragists. “Not the civil-service I don’t think,” Trevor says. The irony, that
he’d
have the vote now if he’d not chosen to go to prison. “Go back to helping Aled-mawr maybe?” (And how long will it be that we’re still calling his uncle that, when will we forget the
why
of it now Aled-bach rests in Flanders?) “Or Da.”
“You’re wasted as a builder
or
a baker and you know it,” I say.
Lily’s pinched look speaks to how she’s more than ready to see any of the men in her life find bloody
something
already. Thread of normality to pluck at, as if one small worry can displace all the greater. I take Trevor’s hand and tug him towards the stairs. I can hear the denial of tears in Iris’s voice in the front room, where Violet must be giving her as much of a talking-to as I imagine Violet capable of. But upstairs all is still, just quiet breathing from the room where Trevor’s aunt’s been looking after Lily’s girls and poor Daisy’s little Rhys. As well to have got them all down at once, Nora’s still not been up to much after the ‘flu. We creep past that door, and then the bedroom that Iris still shares with Violet, and Ned’s ajar and a shambles, to our own scant refuge from care.
Suppose we can get on with setting up house on our own now the war is behind us. Suppose we all can, except Iris. Funny how that’s not even occurred to me till just now, where she’d go. We’re all still travelling on the rails the past laid down when the train’s lost its bloody wheels. I’ll be organising another march for the vote next.
We’ve still not got electric in the bedrooms. I strike a match for the lamp and set it back beside the basin, doesn’t altogether chase aside the grey dim of a day that’s never going to go fair but enough for this. The dressing-table arches into an accusing void where a mirror ought to be. I’ve been fixing my hair in the largest shard Iris missed, sliver now of myself standing alone at the edge of the bed beside my husband.
His shaving-soap’s not been touched since he’s been home, or nearly – he’d have
tried
, surely, but I can guess how that had gone, without having the sight of his face in a glass. Trevor’s brows crease into a dark question when I reach to pick it up. “No, Helen, why…?”
“Herbert
is
right, you know, you’re a bit of a sight. I
think
I
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