A Waltz for Matilda Read Online Free PDF Page A

line, she thought — they’d had to stop five times already so the guard could shift livestock sleeping on the railway tracks.
    ‘Drinkwater! Drinkwater! All out for Drinkwater!’
    For a moment she thought she must have imagined the call, but then the guard came bustling through the door, a smut on his cheek from swinging between the carriages. ‘You lassie, you’re for Drinkwater, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes …’
    He was already swinging her bundle down from the rack. ‘Come on then.’
    Behind her the thin man stood up too, putting on a battered bowler hat and grabbing his Gladstone bag. The fat woman peered out the window. ‘Why, lovey, that must be your dad, come to meet you.’
    ‘But he doesn’t know —’ began Matilda, then stopped as she saw a white-bearded man in a wagon outside. The train only ran twice a week. Maybe he’d got her letter and decided to come to the station! But surely that man was too old to be her father.
    She followed the guard and the thin man out to the corridor then down the stairs.
    The heat hit her like a slap, then seemed to drag the moisture from her lungs. It had been hot in the train, but that heat had been damp with sweat. This heat would dry a loaf of bread into breadcrumbs in a second.
    The flies followed. Flies in her eyes, flies crawling at her mouth. She shuddered and tried to wave them away.
    She looked around. Why would anyone want to stop here?
    No railway station. No platform: just dust, worn hard by feet and horses’ hooves. A rough wooden sign, with
Drinkwater Siding
burned into it with a hot poker. Trees that seemed larger than they had from the train. A white track that seemed to lead to nowhere.
    For a moment she thought the man and the wagon she had glimpsed from the train had vanished. But as the last train carriage moved away, leaving gusts of smoke behind, she saw the cart again, across the tracks. Two men stood next to it, both younger than the man in the cart. They smiled and raised their hats to her politely, but made no move to come over to her.
    Matilda took a deep breath, then coughed as she swallowed a fly. She tried not to imagine it crawling around inside her.
    Was one of those men her father? None of them looked like the golden man of her mother’s stories. They weren’t rushing over to greet her either.
    ‘Well.’ The voice beside her was deep and well bred. ‘I do think your Uncle Cecil might have been here to meet us.’
    ‘The train was early, Mama.’
    ‘That is no excuse.’
    Matilda looked around. Besides the thin man who had been in the carriage, two other passengers from the first-class carriage had alighted: a woman in plum-coloured silk, three feathers in her net-veiled hat, and a girl a couple of years older thanMatilda, dressed in white, despite the risk of smuts from the train. Matilda was vaguely glad to see a large grey smudge on the back of the muslin skirt, staining the lace and the ruffles. The girl’s hat was heavily veiled too. No flies under those, thought Matilda enviously.
    ‘You Patrick O’Reilly?’ The yell came from the driver of the wagon. He waved the stone jug in his hand, as though in welcome.
    The thin man nodded. He picked up his bag and began to cross the tracks.
    Matilda hesitated. Instinct told her to stay with the woman and the girl, not to talk to strange men, especially ones as rough-looking as these. She didn’t like the way they passed the stone jug from one to another either. She was pretty sure it contained what Aunt Ann called ‘spirituous liquor’ and Mrs Dawkins called ‘rotgut rum’. But neither the woman nor the girl had even smiled at her, and the men seemed friendly, at least.
    She grabbed her bundle and followed the thin man across the shimmering train lines.
    All four men were in the cart now, the thin man and the white-bearded driver, the other two in the back. The three locals were dressed alike: big hats, grey trousers tied up at the ankles with string, stained shirts that might