After the Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

grew used to doing so, and were as natural as children before they have been taught shame, or like Adam and Eve in the Garden before they had discovered the shattering power and pleasure their bodies could give.
    We remained in the house for three days, by which time we had burned the furniture, the bannisters and stair-treads and much of the floor. Wendy’s cough seemed to get no better, but we both felt rested and somehow more secure when the time came to set out again.
    So we went on through that flooded countryside.The water covered the fields, and the flat bottom of the dinghy sometimes scraped the tops of hedges. We had left the Thames valley, and we were lost more frequently as we worked our way westwards along the troughs of water that lay between the hills, until every now and again the hills would come together, so that we had either to turn back or slosh through the mud and rain, dragging the dinghy to the next stretch of water.
    During those days we saw neither animals nor people. Those animals which had not been drowned would long ago, we supposed, have been eaten, and the people of the villages would either be dead or have been evacuated to areas more easily supplied with food. Only once, as the grey of evening grew deeper before nightfall, we came across a little hillock surrounded by water, from which a single gaunt beast—a child’s pony, by its size—stared at us. We drew nearer, and it lifted its head, and neighed, and as we paddled on into the twilight, the sound pursued us for long after the pony itself had vanished from our sight.
    Eventually, still keeping out of the way of towns, we came to Somerset and to Chew Magna, and the only person alive in the flooded and deserted village below Chew Hill was a girl, floating on a piano.

CHAPTER THREE
Under Canvas
    We helped the girl into the dinghy, and, with the effort, the top of the piano was pushed under water. It sank at once, and the girl began to weep.
    “It’s all right,” said Wendy. “Don’t cry. You’re safe now.
    “Silly old thing!” said the girl, still weeping. “I never liked it.”
    I said, “I think we’ve met before.”
    “Why don’t you have a tuner in, I used to tell them. It’s no good having a piano if it’s out of tune.”
    “It was at a party at Bletchley. I spilled some cider cup down the front of your dress. I expect you’ve forgotten.”
    The girl stood weeping, and looked at me more closely. “It’s difficult to say in that hat,” she said. “Still I suppose it keeps you dry.”
    “You were with a ballet company. On tour.”
    “That’s right. It was with the old Cosmopolitan before we broke up. Well, that is strange. I never did get the stains off that dress. One of the girls in
Guys and Dolls
when we were touring said she knew a way withsalts of lemon, but we only burnt a hole in it, and I had to throw it out.”
    “How long had you been on that piano?”
    “Hours. I got so wet, I must say. And I had to take the inside out before it would float. My name’s Sonya. Sonya Banks. What’s yours?” By now the girl was cheerful and at ease with us, her tears forgotten. I have noticed this trait in dancers. They are astonishingly able to live in the moment, switching easily from one thought or feeling to another entirely different in subject or in kind; Sonya will often do it in mid-sentence if some casual incident diverts her attention.
    I introduced Wendy and myself.
    “I suppose you’re going to the Camp,” said Sonya.
    “Has it started?”
    “Well, I don’t know. But everybody’s going to it, so I suppose it must have.”
    Wendy said, “My husband’s parents live here. We hoped to stay with them until the Camp was ready.”
    “But they’ve all gone. They went without me.”
    “Who went without you?”
    “Everybody. In boats and things. There wasn’t anything left but the piano.”
    Sonya had come to stay with her aunt and uncle at Chew Magna when the company of the musical comedy in which