Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

her: you’re still his father, he’s not prepared to defy you absolutely,

he won’t leave home, he has no money, he isn’t ready. All you need

is stubborn insistence, stamina. He’ll complain, or stay silent, or

stomp about the house or something, but he really wants you to get

rid of her. Her? It. It. Concentrate, please! That look on his face

when he stopped laughing: he wasn’t just worried about your reaction, he was torn up inside, he wants to get out of the mess he’s in, but he can’t do it himself, he needs you to say no for him.

Danny thought about Tom’s mother, recalled her face as best he

could. She’d very rarely smiled, and when she had it was a pretty

sickening sight. Everything she’d said to him had been a sarcastic

put-down of one kind or another, or so it seemed. Selfish bitch. He

wanted her to be sitting beside him in the dark room, more than

anything else in the world. Simply sitting there in the dark, not

touching him, not speaking a word, invisible. He w-anted that very

badly. He felt sure that her silent, intangible, invisible presence

would have made everything immediately all right, calm and solid.

Tom stood in the doorway.

‘Dad. I’ve switched her off.’

‘For eood?’

‘No.’

‘Come in here. I want to talk to you.’

‘I promise not to bring her here again. It’s your house.’

‘Okay. Come in here and sit down for a second.’

‘I’ve got to get some sleep. I’ve got to get up for school.’

‘You can miss school for one day. Just come in for a second.

Please.’

‘Goodnight.’

Danny fell asleep, and dream t that someone sat beside him, but

The way she smiles, the things she says

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he couldn’t figure out if it was Tom or Tom’s mother. When the sun

rose and he woke to the sound of birdsong, he remembered waking

that way as a child.

M r Lockwood’s narrative

©

YVONNE ROUSSEAU

At this point of the housekeeper’s story, she chanced to glance

towards the timepiece over the chimney; and was in amazement on

seeing the minute-hand measure half-past one. She would not hear

of staying a second longer; in truth, I felt rather disposed to defer

the sequel of her narrative myself.

Mr Lockwood, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

1801 — The hearth gave out so grateful a warmth that I did not trouble with yawning and nodding in my chair; it seems I fell straight into sleep, as into a well of molten lava. How else explain the abrupt dream

I had? of sudden release, as if from one of the dampening snowdrifts

of Thrushcross park that I had blundered into so freely yesterday

morning — except that this drift was hot, and myself emerging u n scalded, like a salamander! In the same instant, I was dizzied with beholding an impossible multitude of images from my life, seemingly simultaneous — in babyhood, in boyhood, in manhood; purposing

this, performing that; at the seaside, in St James’s Street, as an infant

on my dear mother’s knee. A revelation, surely! It blazed forth — it

sank and was gone. I now knew myself to be asleep, and my memories

lay quiet, too, all in their proper order, but my sleep grew dark and

disagreeable. I thought that I lay helpless while somebody inserted me

into all the garments which I somehow lacked, even the most intimate

ones. Then I thought there was a trundling sound beneath me, as if

I were wheeled along on a truckle-bed. The sound stopped after a

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M r Lockwood’s narrative

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weary while; I felt myself being tumbled into a chair; the trundling

sound resumed, and steadily retreated into silence. I dreamed on, but

drearily, as if sleep were an allotted task or a judge’s sentence, to be endured with no diversion of incident or colour, without a m oment’s remission. No end in prospect; yet suddenly, in the most arbitrary

fashion, I seemed to wake.

I found myself alone, not in the study but in an unfamiliar chair,

and in a room dimly lit, not by any hearth but by an entire wall of windows. My instinctive survey revealed, through the glass, a brighter apartment whose own window was open, not upon the darkness of

Yorkshire’s snowy moor, but on what seemed a summer garden, where

golden butterflies sported about a bush spread with vivid purple blossoms. Five chairs and a sofa were all the furniture; five young women were the occupants.

At the centre stood a veritable goddess, instantly enchaining my

susceptible heart! She alone was modishly dressed, her gown being a

polonaise, the overskirt very elegantly bunched behind, and opening

at the front upon the most ornamental of petticoats. H er face and

form were of the most smiting beauty, only heightened by the

awakened sensibility which parted her coral lips and deepened the exquisite blue of her eyes — for she seemed to feel a wonder at her situation, equal to that under which I was