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Back The Night of the Flood
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. 1954
  7. PART 1
  8. 1.
  9. 2.
  10. 3.
  11. 4.
  12. 5.
  13. 6.
  14. 7.
  15. 8.
  16. 9.
  17. PART 2
  18. 1.
  19. 2.
  20. 3.
  21. 4.
  22. 5.
  23. 6.
  24. 7.
  25. 8.
  26. 9.
  27. 10.
  28. PART 3
  29. 1.
  30. 2.
  31. 3.
  32. 4.
  33. 5.
  34. 6.
  35. 7.
  36. PART 4
  37. 1.
  38. 2.
  39. 3.
  40. 4.
  41. 5.
  42. 6.
  43. 7.
  44. 8.
  45. 9.
  46. 10.
  47. 11.
  48. 1954
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the author
  51. An Invitation from the Publisher

At the other end of the table, Verity was sitting next to Jack. She seemed entirely absorbed, her head bent, listening. Arthur found his eyes caught by the picture: the dark head next to the red. As he watched, Jack looked up and smiled at him and Arthur was sure it was a smile of complicity as if they shared a secret. He took a draught of sherry and closed his eyes, imagining the gun going off and shattering the American into a thousand tiny pieces of pink flesh.

2.

The minute she got into the interview room, Verity knew it was doomed. The room was panelled and dark, not unlike her father’s study, and the don was short – shorter than her – but he had the same distant air of disapproval that her father had. She tried to answer his questions on the great sweep of Modern History: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Great Reform Bill. But he gazed at her from under his white eyebrows and his eyelids began to flicker, and finally close. Was he listening? She cared about history – at least, she remembered caring. The dates, all the years and years, the actions and the inactions and the consequences. The millions of dead, piling up, all the names and all the places and the names of the places. The long-dead men and the long-dead ideas lay one on top of the other in a higgledy pile in her head. The sense of order from which she had once taken comfort no longer seemed to be working. And she knew that all the hours over the hot summer when she had been drawing in her sketchbook were hours when the dates and the great men had receded and lost their power over her. She didn’t yet know what would take their place.

She stopped talking.

The clock in the don’s study ticked on. The don breathed through his nose. Behind him, the mullioned window framed a quadrangle. The leaves on the trees were yellowing and falling, and across the quad strode two students, their black gowns streaming out behind them. They were turned to each other, laughing silently with gaping mouths.

From somewhere came the sound of coughing. The clock ticked. In the window, the students had gone, and in their wake, yellow leaves fluttered in the wind.

A door slammed and the don’s eyes flickered open.

‘Yes, yes, that will do, Miss…?’ And he looked down at the sheet on the table in front of him, to remind himself of her name.