Chapter Three

He is frail, crumpling, curled and greying, a fragile relic of parchment inside his tired stature. If he were in a scrum now his head would snap off. In his old age a game of rugger would leave him shaken out like a Russian doll. Inside and inside and inside again there would be a small foetus-like creation. There he would be, vulnerable without his skin. The effort to bring the tap into full song was the cause of his current exhaustion. Since his sculptural fingers showed no real enthusiasm in coaxing the torrent out of the drip he tried persuasion. She finds him crooning to the tap's silver neck. "A little water, a little water, sing to me the river's melody" he hums. No more rugby chants she thinks. "Wet my lips and sing like a stream" he mumbles and his voice rumbles like stones in a leather barrel.

"Benedict" she sings out, adding notes of music to her voice, joining in with the spirit of things. "Benedict".

He turns. He stares. It is the flat-eyed stare of the startled. There is fear in the brown flecks of his grey eyes. There is a hint of confused panic in his frown. There is the beginning of a smile. It grows wider on only one side of his mouth. The other fixed in a dreadful resentful grimace. She waits. She grows impatient for a word. She waits. She stands frozen on the flagstones. She cannot tell if she is giving herself away. He stares and She waits.

"Is you", paralysed speech.

"It is", paralysed response.

"How di you kno where do find m-me?"

A paralysed answer.

The flagstones absorb the silence and the evening light is sheening everything up. The tap is in its best light and still isn't singing to his melody. Benedict turns his resentment away from her towards the tap. She is waiting now for a her own answers.

She moves away from the flagstone which seems as though it might lift suddenly and topple her over. She waltzes oddly to the tap. The anxiety is making her unsteady. Each step takes another two to sustain it. He watches. She turns with strong and dignified hands the cold metal grip. She is on the wrong side of his resentment now.

She drinks and he is thirsty. He waits and she stares. Her hand reaches out, the glass seems to glide across the air alone, the water is moving at its own pace. She tries to pull back the sustenance from his lips but it is done. He is drinking. She is shaking.

"Why?" Benedict speaks.

Her heart beats too many times. She can't sustain it, if it carries on beating so fast something will crack apart.

"Because" She breathes sharply upwards, shoulders lifting.