This Is the Life by Alex Shearer Page A

looking kind and comfortable, and Meg, who was maybe eighty-three, looking cryptic, and Halley being genially sarcastic whenever Derek expressed a political opinion. And the afternoon passed, and everyone kept talking to Louis, even when the conversation wandered and he could follow it no longer, trying to keep him included.
    But he just sat there, more Buddha-like with each passing minute and with the slow declining of the sun.
    â€œSo you’re back at radiotherapy tomorrow, Louis?” Babs said.
    He gave her the milky-eyed look, and there was the usual moment of suspense when you wondered, Has he heard, will he answer? Then he nodded and said, “That’s right, Babs. First thing tomorrow.”
    â€œThen that’s good, Louis,” she said. “And we’ll all be thinking of you.”
    And he gave her the Buddha smile, peering out from under the beanie hat.
    â€œThank you, Babs,” he said. “That will be nice.”
    â€œWe’ll be thinking of you, fella,” Derek said. He had large hands, like garden forks, the kind of thing you might use when repotting.
    I looked at Louis and shared a glance with him. They were nice people, but they didn’t know about the long-ago, nor the day I had come home to find Louis waiting for me in the back garden to tell me the bad news. And I didn’t know about their long-agos, and that’s the way the world is. You meet on the open ground somewhere, at Fried Fish or somewhere similar, out in the sunlight. But your dark cave of memory is your own. And even if you once shared that cave with someone, they don’t always seem to remember the same paintings on the walls.
    â€œLouis,” I said to him once, “our childhood was the most miserable thing, wasn’t it, though? I used to go to sleep praying I wouldn’t wake up again. And I was only ten.”
    He looked at me with incredulity and hurt bewilderment.
    â€œIt wasn’t that bad,” he said. “There were a lot of good things there. Apart from the soup.”
    The past isn’t just a foreign country; it’s a place we see different parts of. Louis had gone and looked at places there I hadn’t even known existed.

8
    Matadors
    Iona didn’t take too warmly to news of the sun-kissed blonde from New Zealand by way of the Black Mountains. And she hadn’t even met her yet. I think it was the sun-kissed blonde part she took exception to, as if to ask what was wrong with redheaded Celts with freckles? She and Louis had clashed before, like when he said to her, “Your sense of humor underwhelms me,” and as a consequence I got it in the neck.
    â€œWhat does he mean, my sense of humor underwhelms him?”
    â€œIona—I don’t know.”
    â€œWell, he’s your brother.”
    â€œIt’s just the kind of thing he says. Don’t take it seriously.”
    â€œWas he trying to be funny?”
    â€œWhat about?”
    â€œWas he trying to be funny about my sense of humor?”
    â€œIona—”
    I think she had it in for him after that, at least for a whileuntil she forgot about it and something else came along instead.
    â€œSo is he going to bring this so-called sun-kissed blonde back here like he did the other one and have sex on the sofa while we’ve got to listen through the wall?”
    â€œIt was a one-off,” I said.
    â€œIt was a one-off that went on all night,” she said. “How come he doesn’t stay on his boat?”
    â€œHe’s only got a small mattress,” I said.
    â€œI expect they’ll want breakfast too.”
    â€œWe can spare two bits of toast.”
    Sure enough, Louis turned up with the sun-kissed blonde and they gave the sofa a good pounding.
    The sun-kissed blonde was used to equestrian living and wide-open spaces, and terraced houses and small flats seemed quite a novelty.
    â€œLook at the funny little houses, Louis,” she’d say.