Sect Year 5 · fourth month · night of day 2 · the forty-eighth life: Kettle Bend, his forty-third year
Lin lay down on the cot by the kitchen range, calm and willing.
“Cry for the stranger on time.”
“Perfect Recall.”
The card hung in the window of Fenwick and Son, between a bolt of black crape and a brass urn with a dent in its lid. Someone had lettered it in a neat, upright hand, the kind that is taught for ledgers and never allowed to show a feeling. The card gave three prices, and the last, the widow’s, was written larger and underlined twice. The prices were not by the day. They were by the bell.
Wend Oatley stood on the step with his hands in his coat pockets and read the card for the fourth time since the morning. He had read it every morning for twenty-three years. He knew the figures as a farmer knows the sky, without having to look up. Behind him the street smelled of river water and wet coal smoke. At the end of Church Lane the lych gate bell was ringing for somebody else’s dead, one stroke and then a long quiet, while whoever pulled the rope seemed to wait and see if anyone would come.
