Broken City

Chapter Eight

“I guess it’s up to Tom now,” Ralphs face is averted, his eyes searching some distant spot. “You don’t have to worry about the kids; Nella is staying with Uncle Jep and Tom for a while.”   

I don’t think that Ralph realizes that this knowledge hurts me, no one likes to think that they can be replaced but it’s particularly unpleasant to know that you can be replaced, and easily at that. Then the bland way that Ralph has offered this information registers and I feel a pang of compassion.

That Ralph is hurt and that he’s up here tormenting himself in some foolish but somehow inevitable way fills me again with the depression I was hoping to escape.

“That’s good,” I swallow convulsively, trying to make my voice light. “The children will feel more comfortable if she’s there.”

“Will they?”

The suppressed passion and anger in his voice surprise me, I guess I never thought him capable of that sort of thing before and his fervour elicits an answer that had I been thinking clearly I would have tried to soften.

“Probably not.”

He turns again in a strangely tense and controlled way that for some reason seems familiar, odd because I’ve never seen him look that way before.

“I—she’s only trying to—.”

“Spare me Deeta, I know. Somehow that only makes things worse.”

He turns to me relaxing a little, trying to explain something that I can’t understand, my experience of love being limited to the platonic kind and my knowledge of love unrequited nonexistent .

“It’s like being bashed over the head with a mallet every time she does or says something right or kind showing me the worth of something I can’t have.”

His words are said in that strangely compelling and angry way that reminds me of that something else that though familiar stays irresistibly beyond my memory. He stops and with an attitude of embarrassment, turns his head away from me.

With great difficulty I look from his face and try to ease the sudden parched feeling in my mouth. Why is it that when things are good they’re very good but when things are bad everything’s depressing, like that old saying ‘it never rains but it pours’?

“They won’t let him.”

Ralph looks at me startled, not understanding the sudden change of topic.

“How do you mean?”

“The only chance we have of getting Dec and Keya back is if the tribe as a whole will trust Tom and they won’t, not now.”

“I can’t see that they have much choice in the matter,” replies Ralph shortly.

“Ralphie, you were there last night, you saw what happened. Within five seconds our tribe was split down the middle and it had become them and us, two separate groups of people who had no trust and no liking of each other. They don’t see Tom any more they just see an Andak and that’s all they’ll ever be able to see from now on in.”

My voice is bitter causing Ralph to casts me a side long glance; on catching my eye he drop’s his gaze flushing a little.

“Don’t be so hard on them, Deeta. It was a shock, they need time to adjust and you—you don’t understand.”

He hesitates shuffling a little as though unsure how to go on.

“What are you trying to tell me Ralph?”

“That’s the whole problem Deet; it’s what I’m trying not to tell you,” he raises his hand and rubs his neck. “It’s the stories about the Andak, you don’t know—you’ve been told they’re bad and so that’s what you believe but you’ve never been told why they’re bad and just what they’re capable of.”