April 23, 2007

• Wake of the Raven, Volume 2. Provisional title “Singapore”. An excerpt. (The date is April 1951.)

   

        As Bruce drove, Stuart thought furiously.

  Chain me up in a secret room, he’d said. But he was already chained up in one, and so secret only he could see the room, or the chains. Now how was he to handle this? An appointment with a nun, to argue out a disagreement! He felt as though he were a schoolboy summoned by his headmaster for a severe ticking-off. How the devil did one conduct one’s self in such an encounter? He could hardly shout and storm, could he? Just what did this old bat expect of him? She had given him no clue on the ‘phone.

  ‘What are you expecting from our reverend friend,’ Bruce broke the silence.

  ‘I don’t know really. I suppose it’s not enough that Miles has told her to wait and see. She probably wants to brow beat me herself. It can’t hurt to meet with her.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘On the other hand I hate doing it. Too much like admitting her authority.’

  ‘In a place like this she has some. Play it by ear. See what comes. You might get some clarity that you’re not getting from Miles. Keep calm and see what comes.’ Bruce fell back into silence, attending to his driving, for he was a careful, polite driver.

        Miles won’t like this, he thought, smiling pleasantly as he smoothly shifted gear. Good old Miles. He had come to the dinner as he had a thousand times before, and been wise and important and serious, and then made one of his feeble little jokes, and Eleanor had treated him as some harmless pet, and then he was gone again, thank God.

  As if it wasn’t bad enough having to work with the man, to have to put up with his nonsense in one’s own home. But these things are sent to try us, as he had remarked to Ellis only ten minutes before. One had to keep patience; there was no sense giving in to anger. And if he kept patient, and watched his chance, then one day that silly little monkey of a man would make a slip, hopefully a serious one that would be seen on high, and down he would fall, and if he, Bruce Soames, were standing close when it happened, then how he would stamp on his throat.

        That would be the time to put the knife in! The wretched little oaf! Did he think no one could see how he mooned over Eleanor? She couldn’t, and for a while that had infuriated him more than the little shit himself did, until he realised that it was just Eleanor’s way. She was too good natured.

        And he liked to be good natured too, liked things to be calm and amiable. He didn’t believe in anger and violence at all, it was just the constant nibbling on his patience of that little twit, always so self assured, so right, so self contained, till he felt like storming into his office one happy morning and seizing him by the scruff of the neck and smashing his face into the desktop again and again and again and again until the bones of his stupid little face broke and the blood ran all over the leather top and trickled down the polished wood and soaked his nancy-boy carpet right up to the door.

  Bruce twitched the wheel roughly to go around a leisurely cyclist. ‘Dratted bikes,’ he said in explanation, ‘amble about all over the place. A confounded nuisance.’

  And when the little bastard crawled moaning on the carpet, then stamp on his hands. Wait till he saw a hand clutching at the pile with the fingers bent, and stamp on the fingers so they broke. He saw the face turned upwards in agonised supplication; kick him in the face: slam the leather sole right into his stupid little face. Kick right into the swollen lips with the corner of the heel so that the broken teeth come right through the lips, then get the fountain pen from the desk and stab him in the arse with it, stab him in his skinny little arse over and over and over till his blood runs out mixed with ink.

  ‘Here we are old chap,’ said Bruce, pulling up before a solid, well polished gate set in a high wall, ‘all delivered, safe and sound.’

  ‘Thank you again Bruce,’ said Stuart absently, eyeing the gate as he opened the car door, ‘into the lions den.’

   

  ‘Now just remember old chap, keep calm. Nothing achieved by loosing your cool.’

   

  www.wakeoftheraven.com

  http://www.amazon.com/Wake-Raven-Graham-Worthington/dp/193424807X/sr=8-1/qid=1170299933/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4790616-8172131?ie=UTF8&s=books

   

  • 11:42 pm
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