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astragal
He put on his jacket and they
stood together.
‘I’ve had a couple of drinks,’
she said. ‘Are you ready for
this?’
She walked stiffly over to the
railing and spoke back to him.
‘I’d rather it were one of us,
you know. I’ve been sitting
upstairs thinking it should
have been one of us. Either
of us. You could go on without
me.’
He thought of Magda’s body
on the rocks, tugged out of
icy water, her purple flesh
and rolled eyes. It was true,
the image was easier. He was
ashamed. With Luna, the idea
would not come to him and
his mouth ran dry.
‘Do you remember how we
were?’ Magda asked him. ‘You
do, don’t you?’
He did. He remembered
her waist, encircling it;
consecrating himself to her
mound.
‘It was not so terrible,’ she
said. ‘In my way I felt loved
by you.’
He listened toher surrendering
her thoughts. For decades he
had never troubled himself
over her, and he knew the
way he cared for her had been
indistinct. In those middle
years he had loved her with a
bestial desire, she had been
a raft to topple and grind to
the floor. Then, for an age, he
had ignored her body; it had
grown florid and creased as it
stood before him.
They heard a sound from the
other end of the valley. At first
it was muffled, and might have
been a low aeroplane, but
soon enough they saw it was
a helicopter approaching. The
craft dropped steeply over the