Firefly Gadroon by Jonathan Gash Page A

Then there’s a space where I used to have my Wellington chest before I flogged it for bread six months back. Then there’s a tatty reddish curtain busily festering in whatever feeble sunlight totters through the window’s grime, and that’s about it. The shadow had stretched obliquely up from the black grate’s mantelpiece almost as far as the corner. Climbing up there to mark it in the darkness had been really difficult. I’d nearly broken my bloody neck. I had the odd feeling I wouldn’t have been so frightened of the odd lopsided shape if it had stayedexactly like the firefly cage. It was the skewed slanting weirdness of it on the wall that was so petrifying. But why? I closed my eyes. Maybe I was going off my nut. I’d gone clammy again.
    Helen came back and put her arms round me. ‘Don’t be scared, love.’
    That really got me. I broke away, annoyed. ‘Who’s scared?’ Some women really nark me, always jumping to stupid conclusions with no reason. ‘It’s a . . . a scientific problem, you daft berk.’
    ‘ ’Course it is, love,’ she said, not turning a hair. ‘You’re right. Sorry, sweetheart. I meant . . . preoccupied.’
    That mollified me a bit. ‘Well, all right then.’ But my eyes kept getting dragged to the grotesque quadrilateral on the wall. I’d used crayon and charcoal to. thicken the outline here and there. I’ve been scared of some real things before, but never a bloody shadow.
    ‘What do you want for breakfast, love?’
    ‘Er, I’m not hungry . . .’
    Her eyes narrowed. She went searching.
    ‘Ferreting in people’s cupboards is very rude,’ I reprimanded.
    She started to slam about, flinging some clothes on. ‘There’s nothing here, Lovejoy! Not a single thing to eat.’
    ‘Isn’t there? Good heavens! I forgot to call in—’
    She had wet eyes when she finally stood over me, arms akimbo. ‘What am I to do with you, Lovejoy?’
    You feel such a twerp lying down starkers when everybody else is up. Socially disadvantaged. ‘Look, love,’ I said uncomfortably, but she swept her coat and handbag up and slammed into the hall. The outside door shook the cottage to its foundations. I sighed. Unless you count Tinker, that meant I’d alienated practically all mankind, and even Tinker was narked because I hadn’t charged JoeLampton over divvying his book. Anyway, what is grub to do with Helen? She only eats yoghurt. I lay there listening and thinking, aren’t people a lot of trouble. Helen’s car started and scuffed away.
    The shape scared me. All right, I admit it. Somehow it made my scalp moisten and my palms run. Somewhere it had scared me even worse than now, not as a mere scraped outline done in a wobbly hand during the dark hours, but in a solid terrifying reality, with the great oblique rectangle . . . I’d seen it before.
    I was in the garden in my pyjamas when Helen returned. There’s this unfinished decorative wall I keep meaning to brick to an end when I get a minute. It’s a sitting and thinking wall. She drew the car up. You could tell she was still mad from the way it slithered.
    ‘What are you doing out here, Lovejoy? You’ll catch your death.’
    ‘Oh, just watching the birds.’ They walk about on my grass being boring. What a life. Nearly as successful as mine. Helen’s eyes left me and observed the open cottage door behind me. I was frigging freezing. It was an airy fresh morning and the grass wet through.
    ‘Come back in with me.’ She got out, her arms full of brown bags. ‘Let’s feed you up before we do anything else. I’ll go in first.’
    ‘Caviare and chips, please,’ I joked, following her. My bum was frozen from the wall. Helen didn’t smile. I always think that’s the trouble with women. No sense of humour.
    About Helen: she is reserved, in charge of herself and usually boss of everybody in arm’s reach. She isn’t like Angela, say, or Jill or Patrick, who couldn’t have made it as antique dealers without considerable fortunes