The Sunlight on the Garden by Francis King Page B

toppled back into the arm-chair. Then the man was laughing as the words jerked out of him: ‘You don’t mean to say …? Did I get it all wrong? … Is that what you’re trying – rather too brutally – to tell me?’
    Luke kicked out, the toe-cap of this shoe catching the other’s kneecap. There was a dry sound at the impact, like a rifle shot heard from far away. Then he rushed to the front door, pulled it open and strode out. Having descended three steps at what was almost a run, he returned and pulled the door shut.
    He raced down the staircase into the darkness and rain. Head lowered, he ran down the almost totally deserted street. By the municipal library, only two of its windows, high up in the façade, still lit, he took his usual short-cut across its triangular courtyard. Usually, even as late as this, there would be skate-boarders rattling and thudding over its paving. But now there was no one. A street-lamp illuminated miniature lakes of water, between which he zigzagged. Then, all at once, he slackened his pace, approached one of the benches in front of the building, and sank down on to it, gasping for breath. God, what a shit! What a shit! He ought to have killed him. Suddenly he thought of the cleaner (‘quickly digests organic matter such as hair, paper, grease, rice, pasta, soap, fabric, fat, slime etc.’) bought at the request of his charming, fat, inefficient Colombian char, mother of five children, for the bathrom basin only the day before. Quickly digests slime … CAUTION. Contains sulphuric acid . That would do the trick.
    Then, abruptly, that fantasy died. All at once tiredness overwhelmed him. Despite the savage downpour, he stretched himself out on the bench and stared for several seconds up at the livid, lowering sky. He closed his eyes. He felt the water trickling through his hair and sidling under his collar on to the flesh beneath it. He tasted it, cool and faintly metallic, on his lips. It was in his nostrils, even in his ears. It was wonderfully cleansing, wonderfully soothing, wonderfully consoling.
    He had the illusion that he was now lying not on a hard bench, its struts digging into his shoulder blades and haunches, but on a quiet stream, drifting on and on under a velvety, star-studded sky to total oblivion.
    Then a dog barked. Barked again. He jerked up, swung down his feet. An old, bowed, hooded man, with a dripping black-and-white mongrel on a long lead, was passing. ‘Shurrup! Shurrup!’ the man shouted at the dog. Then: ‘Sorry about that,’ he said in a hoarse voice to Luke. ‘He’s a real idiot. Always barking, barking, barking at nothing.’
    Luke got to his feet and began to trudge on through the darkness and downpour.

The Appeal
    S he stepped over one puddle. She stepped over a larger one. She winced on the second occasion, as though she had twisted her ankle. But in fact she had merely landed on one side of her shoe. The new laptop that they had just given her seemed heavier than the old one. They had said that she would find it much more convenient, but it was certainly not more convenient now. She had thought at the time that they had given it to her as a reward for always refusing, unlike some of the other adjudicators, to be bamboozled by a succession of shifty, shameless appellants. But at this moment it felt more like a punishment.
    She had just spoken to Jake on her mobile.
    â€˜Oh, Maddy wait a mo. I’ve got gunge all over my fingers. Let me wipe them. Sorry! I’ve been throwing a pot.’
    â€˜I’d like to throw a pot at you, you bastard!’ She laughed, to indicate that she was joking. But she was not joking, and he knew that.
    â€˜Oh, Maddy, don’t get mad at me!’ Had she really once thought his feeble word-play funny? Had she really once thought his American accent attractive? ‘What’s the matter? What have I done?’
    â€˜The car. Didn’t you