Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

“Is Reg with you?”

“He had to go out somewhere, but he should be back soon.”

Valerie shuffles into the room and idly dusts crumbs off the kitchen surfaces into the palm of her hand, then deposits them in a bin. She leans back against a counter, puts her hands in the low pockets of her dressing gown and watches as Agatha eats.

“You know,” says Agatha to her eldest sister, “I might come and live here all the year round. I only have to be in the city for business and I can do much of it remotely.”

Valerie makes a noise at the back of her throat which Agatha takes as agreement.

She goes on, “I could take a more active role in managing the estate. I wouldn’t be taking over from you. You could teach me. If I’m being honest, I have no idea how to run a place like this but I’d like to learn. I think I’d find it fulfilling. We could do it together.”

“It’s a big old house,” says Valerie. “And you’d be in it all alone. I can’t imagine Reggie up here all year round. He’s a townie through and through. If they cut him open, he’d bleed Thames water.”

Then the door opens, and Roster walks through it. She didn’t hear the car on the gravel outside, so is startled when he enters without knocking.

“Radio,” he says. His voice is urgent.

There is an analogue radio in the corner of Valerie’s kitchen. Agatha goes over to it, but has a hard time working it. She knows most stations she would need are FM but she doesn’t know much beyond that, like what frequencies she needs to tune to. She finds the power switch, flicks it and is met with the crackle of white noise. There are dials on the top, so she swivels them. The white noise fades in and out, shifts pitch, shifts speed. It sounds old-fashioned to her. It is a sound from the past, now a memory; the stuff of junk shops, vintage stores and museums. And what a noise it is. There is nothing like it in the world. It is like the sea on a shingle beach, or the wind on autumn leaves, or a fire cutting through coal, but not like any of those sounds at all.

Agatha is still fiddling with the radio.

“I’ll do it,” Roster insists, stepping around her. Valerie goes to wash up Agatha’s plate in the sink.

As Roster turns the dial, Radio 4 tunes in and out. They catch loose words.

…

…

“London …”

…

“Total collapse …”

…

Agatha looks at her phone. Nobody has been in touch. The policeman said he would text her to let her know everything had gone according to plan. She looks for the little bars at the top of the screen and sees none. No service. Of course, she would have no service here.

Roster is still fiddling with the old radio, trying to dial in a better signal. The voice of the newsreader is unclear. More snatches of words, incoherent phrases.

He turns to her. “I heard more in the car,” he says. “There’s been some sort of disaster in central London. A building has completely collapsed. They don’t know how many people are trapped beneath.”

“What has that got to do with us?” Valerie asks.

“Valerie, don’t be difficult. You know very well that all your father’s property is in central London.”

“And you think it is one of ours?”

“It is in the West End. And I caught something about a police raid.”

Agatha looks up at Roster.

“It might not be—” he says.

“Yes it is,” Agatha interrupts, curtly. “What else could it be?”

Roster concedes the point and begins to move quickly out of Valerie’s kitchen. He tells Agatha that he is going back to the big house to collect the rest of her things, then he leaves.

Of course, he is right. They will have to go back now, and drive through the night, but in this moment, Agatha doesn’t want to move. She is tired. She is tired of it all: the constant movement, the constant struggle. She wants for things to be easy, for once. She wants to be left alone.

Agatha feels the tears coming before she notices them. She raises a hand and wipes them away, then looks down and sees a smear of black mascara. She lowers her head so her eyes can’t be seen, but the tears instead fall to the kitchen table. A couple drop onto the wood and soak in. She catches more with the sleeve of her woolen jumper.

Valerie asks Agatha a question, but Agatha is unable to answer. If she had answered, her voice would have faltered. Valerie turns around to ask again, then sees the tears, then returns to the washing up. “That’s no use to anyone,” she says quietly.

A Vision

Richard Scarcroft is sitting alone in Soho Square. He left the Archbishop’s group a couple of weeks ago, which he is now regretting. The weather is getting colder, and it has become difficult to find night-time shelter, or a cozy space to sit during the day. He is wishing he had found the patience to put up with that lot for just a little while longer, at least until after Christmas.

Richard has parked himself on a bench to be up off the cold ground and he has wrapped himself in a blanket and a thin sleeping bag. A couple of disassembled cardboard boxes provide further insulation, and the winter coat he got from the army is at least thick and warm, and his leather boots keep out the damp. He is no longer clean-shaven but has grown a thick beard. It ages him. When he catches sight of himself in shop windows he hardly recognizes himself. He looks at least ten years older, maybe more. He looks like his father, or his father’s father. There are wiry gray hairs among the smooth brown ones. He wonders whether it is the street that has done this to him or if it is