Read Communion Town for Free Online

been on her breath. My mouth had never tasted like this before, so sugary and rank. My head never ached so dashingly. The sight of her buttoning an oversized old shirt, five minutes ago, standing on tiptoe to see across the rooftops, had rinsed my memory clean. She was making tea and I had no idea what would happen when she came back.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Up in her room, we listened to more old songs. A woman made her acoustic guitar buzz and thrum, and sang in a warbling contralto about romantics and idealists, poets and artists. Silvertongue, you have placed your plans In your sweet, sweet nature and your hard hands …
    When the album had finished, I lay in silence, lingering at the edge of that world. It was late. She was dozing, her face hidden by her hair. The only light came from a decorative jar of red glass in which she had lit a candle-stub. Soft shadows pitched on the wall. My glasses lay on her bedside table, my jeans on the floor.
    Without much thought I sat up and leant over for her guitar. I had never held one before now, and its lightness surprised me. Cross-legged on the bed, I tried how its curve lay in my lap and how I needed to support the neck. I touched the strings, one by one, then together. It hadn’t been played in a while, I thought. I turned the screws, as I’d seen the buskers do at the galleria, until the notes sounded right. I fitted my fingers to the fretboard and let the strings speak softly, then strummed, as quiet as I could, with the pad of my thumb. I didn’t know how to play, but my fingertips began to move up and down the frets, exploring.
    After some experiment I found a clean chord, and then another. I adjusted a finger and the chord opened up, suspending itself; then I lifted the finger entirely and discovered the minor.
    Still quietly, very slowly, cautious not to damage the delicate find, I strummed a sequence of shapes. A tune was buried there. I hummed along with the chords, picking it out. It was a simple song, one I must have heard recently – I didn’t know where or when. I felt my way through, learning how its simple phrases went around, and how they changed in the middle, then changed back. I played it again, and instead of humming, I sang, letting the small sound vibrate in my sinuses and the top of my throat. I didn’t really know the words but I sang the syllables that seemed to fit. My tongue had never stepped so well around my teeth and palate.
    My palm stilled the strings. She shifted drowsily.
    ‘Keep playing.’
     
    The next time I stayed over she went out early and left me sleeping. Later in the morning I found myself in her kitchen with the two girls who shared the flat, old friends from back home. They brewed coffee and insisted on cooking me pancakes, then swapped indulgent smiles as they watched me eat. The flat smelled of cigarettes and perfume. They lolled on the kitchen chairs, clasping their bare feet in their hands to touch up the polish on their toenails, and tugging their fingers through their tangled hair. They didn’t seem to mind discussing their private lives in my company.
    ‘… still in love with me.’
    ‘Oh, yuck.’
    ‘So that’s … fun. Yeah.’
    ‘And this was the one …’
    ‘Cried when I said I didn’t like him that way.’
    ‘Not awkward at all.’
    ‘He keeps sending messages saying I think about you every day . You know.’
    ‘Oh dear.’
    ‘So I’m quite glad I’ll be away in the summer. Give him a chance to maybe find someone, you know?’
    ‘You poor thing.’
    As they talked, a new way of life revealed itself. Theirs was a complicated youth, a fine game: they were free to do as they liked yet they lived at the mercy of lawless passions. Their relationships were troubled with their fathers and mothers, their sisters and boyfriends. They knew how to trade just a kiss for a kiss. They named strange nightclubs. They were jaded and sweet-natured, in and out of love, adventuring in the contradictions of their own