The Water's Edge - By Karin Fossum Page 0,30

of words. He wondered if she wanted something from him or whether she was just in search of an audience.

'But to go for small children is absolutely unforgivable, in my opinion.'

She was fiddling with her headscarf with a wrinkled hand. Her nails were long and curved.

'Adults beating each other black and blue, that's one thing. But he was only a little lad.'

He nodded. She was not looking at him now, she was talking into the air while she clawed at the car door as if to stop him from leaving because she had so much to tell him.

'Anyway,' she said, 'there was something I wanted to ask you. It's only a small thing. If it's not too much trouble. I don't want to be a nuisance.' She scrutinised him with her faded blue eyes. 'But if you don't ask, you don't get, so the saying goes.'

He waited patiently. It was a question of giving her time. The very old, he thought, they trap us in their slowness, it's like being caught in a mass of seaweed. He looked into her withered face; her skin hung loose around her neck and some stray, straggly hairs protruded from her chin. She's no longer feminine, he thought, she's no longer attractive. She's alone at life's outpost and she's waiting. He wondered what it was like to go to bed at night when you were eighty-six, the feeling as the darkness crept out from every corner, perhaps it was the final darkness.

'The lads, you know,' she said nodding in the direction of the storehouse. 'The lads,' she said again, 'they've got nothing to do in the evenings, they miss their wives and their children. I rack my brains trying to think of something for them to do.'

She was referring to the Poles. She paused. She bent down to look at him as he sat there waiting, impatiently, with his hands on the wheel. It cost him a great deal to look her in the eye, she was so firm and staunch and decent that she glowed.

'They don't want to spend any money either, they never go out, they just sit there, bored. They play cards,' she explained: 'poker, I think. But they never play for money, they're so thrifty. We could learn something from them, we live to excess. Well, you might be an exception, I didn't mean it like that. What I was saying was, we're quite spoilt, you can't deny that.'

He waited for her to tell him what she wanted. He was desperate to get away.

'No, what I wanted to ask you was this,' she continued: 'if you might have an old travel radio. The sort with an aerial and batteries, you know. There's no power in the storehouse. That would be a fine thing,' she added, 'if there was power in the storehouse. As if we haven't got enough expenses here on the farm as it is.' She laughed a creaking laughter. He failed to see what was so funny.

'I haven't had one of those for years,' he said, turning on the engine. 'I used to own an old Kur茅r, but I threw it away. Or perhaps I gave it to a charity,' he added.

He revved the engine. She moved, shaking her head. The knot of the headscarf at the back of her head reminded him of a bird with blue wings, it bobbed up and down when she moved.

'It would have been nice for them to have a bit of music,' she said. 'The evenings are so long. They're here from May to November, that's six months away from their families. Away from all the little things.' She fell silent once more, supporting herself on the car with a pale hand.

The whole country is out looking for me, he thought, and she's asking me if I have an old radio. He gripped the steering wheel tightly as a feeling of panic began to surge in him, a sense of violent, internal pressure because he was about to mix with other people and it terrified him.

'Never mind. I shan't keep you any longer,' she said. 'They'll probably manage without one. I'm just an old woman and I worry about these things. I don't have much else to do. And nobody cares about the things that I know and could tell them about, they want to find out everything for themselves. That's the way life goes, you're just told to shut up and go away, but I'm here now and I'm not