Red Shift. Alan Garner

not been—I’ll believe you.” Generosity, thought Tom, is infinite. “But I’m not apologising to someone who uses foul language in my home.”

      “Wait there,” said Tom. He lifted his hands from his mother’s shoulders. The cotton dress was tacky and clung to him. The prints of his palms and fingers were clear. He went to the kitchen. Jan and his father had cleaned up the glass and were putting hardboard over the window.

      “My mother’s upset by your swearing: so am I. Will you take it back?”

      “Go on, love,” said his father. “Sticks and stones—”

      “Sorry,” said Jan. “I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done.”

      “I needed to know,” said Tom.

      “How are your hands?” said his father.

      “Right as rain,” said Tom. “I’ve remembered: it was Plautus.”

      “What was?”

      “First said ‘right as rain’. Stay there until I’ve settled my mother.”

      He went through to the lounge.

      “Jan doesn’t feel very accommodating. And I can see her point.”

      “Then she’s not welcome here,” said his mother.

      “Suit yourself. I’m going over to ‘The Limes’ with her now, neither to be intimate, nor to have relations, but to work.”

      “Your hands are bleeding.”

      “I’ll survive,” said Tom. “Hey, turn the sound up on the telly: there’s a commercial for removing biological stains.”

      “What we want,” said Tom, “is a communications satellite.” He walked with Jan through the wood. It was a clear moon. The M6 was like a river, and the Milky Way a veil over the birch trees. “I suppose any would do. How’s your astronomy?”

      “Non-existent.”

      “You must know the basic constellations.”

      “They never fitted the pictures in the books. I like that kite, though.”

      “Where? Kite? Kite? That’s not a kite, you goof, that’s part of Orion. Those three stars are his belt.”

      “Well, I’ve always liked them.”

      “OK. We’ll have Delta Orionis: over there on the right. It’ll be with us all winter. We’ll be together at least once every twenty-four hours.”

      “How?”

      “What’s a good time? Ten o’clock? Every night at ten o’clock we’ll both try to look at that star, and be together because we know the other’s watching, and thinking. At the same moment we’ll be looking at the same thing.”

      “If it isn’t cloudy,” said Jan. “I love you: you’re so impossible.”

      “It’s impossible.”

      “It’s not. It’s a marvellous idea. That star and us. Like now.”

      “There’s never ‘now’,” said Tom. “Delta Orionis may not exist. It isn’t even where we think it is. It’s so far away, we’re looking at it as it was when the Romans were here.”