Read Life: An Exploded Diagram for Free Online

getting on, Herbert?”
    Hedge looked blank. George trod his smoke out and stepped forward.
    “The lads’ve enjoyed themselves, sir. They’re not trained for this sort of thing, but I hope they’ve made themselves useful.”
    Mortimer smiled at him. “So you’d be Sergeant Ackroyd, I presume?”
    “Sir,” George said, and made as if to salute, but Mortimer stuck out his hand, and after a tiny hesitation, George shook it.
    Ruth, standing a pace or two from the men, studied Sergeant Ackroyd in stolen sideways glances. His braces hung loose at his sides, and his pale khaki shirt was unbuttoned. She had not seen a man’s torso since a bank holiday trip to the seaside in 1938. Ackroyd’s was lean; you could see how the muscles worked. His face was narrow, unusually symmetrical, and, like his throat and forearms, deeply tanned by something fiercer than an English sun. His black hair was cut short at the sides but fell in a sweaty tumble onto his right eyebrow. Ruth had heard north-country accents only on the wireless: comedians doing jokes and songs that made her mother scowl. Perhaps for this reason, she thought there was cheek in the way Ackroyd spoke. Mockery. He had a narrow mustache, like a movie star. She wondered for the first time what it would be like to be kissed on the mouth by a man with a mustache. As she was thinking about it, Ackroyd looked directly at her and winked. Winked! Ruth looked away, feeling her whole body blush.
    Two days later, Ruth left the office at five fifteen, and there he was, right outside, sitting on a brown-painted motorcycle, smoking. She was shocked to a standstill. He was wearing the same light fatigues, but this time, thank God, his shirt was buttoned. She could see that he’d come from Mortimer’s fields; there were sweat stains at his armpits and chaff on his boots.
    “Ayup, lass,” he said. “Fancy a ride home?”
    He’d bundled a jacket or something into a rough cushion and strapped it to the metal pillion.
    Ruth’s eyes skittered around the square. People were looking. Of course they bloody were!
    “Dunt be so soft,” she managed at last to say. “I ent gettun on that thing. Anyhow, I’re got my bike round the corner.”
    Ackroyd regarded her, considering.
    “Suit yourself,” he said, and flicked his cigarette away. He eased the motorcycle backwards off its prop and kicked it into life.
    She turned left at Black Cat corner onto the lane to Bratton Morley. After a minute, he drew level with her, throttling the engine back until its beat matched the chug of her heart.
    “Go away!”
    He laughed. She saw his white teeth. He reached over and put his hand on the small of her back and accelerated, propelling her forward at a speed too great for her feet to stay on the pedals. She cried out in thrilled alarm, and after fifty yards he relented, releasing her. She braked and came to an unsteady halt. She stood with her feet on either side of the bike, feeling hot and inelegant and angry and fearfully excited. Ahead of her, he turned the motorcycle around, maneuvering with some difficulty in the narrow lane, and pulled up alongside her. They were in the deep shadow of a big elm tree; everything outside it was too bright to be visible. When he killed the engine, the silence overwhelmed her.
    “Sorry,” George said. “You liked it well enough, though, eh?”
    “I could’re come off,” Ruth said. “You mad sod.”
    “You should report me, then. I’ll bring you the form.”
    From somewhere close by, a pheasant uttered a raucous laugh.
    “How’d you know where I work, anyhow?”
    George tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger. “Military Intelligence.”
    “What?”
    He looked around cautiously. “MI6. Spies.”
    Ruth looked around, too, anxiously. “What?”
    “I’m pulling your leg. How many knockout redheads work for a man called Lark in Borstead, d’you reckon?”
    (There are phrases, casually spoken, that worm through time. Fifty-three years later