Arcadia Read Online Free PDF

The two of them (Pink’s too little) are set to work wheeling barrows back and forth between the north fields and the Club, carrying loads of cut barley and spelt to the big shed. Rory pushes the sliding door aside one time and finds Laurel sitting on the bare floor with her legs and arms crossed, staring furiously at nothing.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    The place smells of dust and straw.
    â€œI hate them,” she says.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œAll of them.”
    â€œWhat’s happened?”
    â€œThey think we’re lying. Me and Pink.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œMissus Anderson said Ol would never have gone to Briar by himself. I heard her. They think we made him go. Everyone just wants it to be my fault.”
    Rory feels a flush of uncomfortably hot shame. “It’s not your fault.”
    â€œâ€™Course it’s not. I’m not the one killing people. But they can’t do anything about Them so they blame me.”
    â€œSorry,” Rory says.
    â€œThey’re just stupid old women.”
    Rory tips the barrow out, sending up another dirty cloud of dust.
    He says: “You know what Missus Grouse said?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAbout catching one of Them. Hanging them.”
    â€œStupid cow.”
    â€œThey couldn’t really do that, could they?”
    Laurel chokes out a contemptuous laugh. “Can you imagine?”
    He’s spent the last couple of days trying very hard not to.
    Â Â *  *  *  
    It’s another whole day before he finds a chance to slip off on his own. His mother’s gone to the Abbey for a Meeting, adults only. Everyone will be inside for a while. Pink and Laurel aren’t allowed at the Meeting, which means they’ll go to the place they found at the back of a laundry cupboard upstairs in the Abbey, where there’s a hole in the wall that lets them spy on what the adults are doing. He went with them once or twice but it was so boring he couldn’t see the point. He’s told his mother he’s going to stay at Parson’s and read comics.
    Once he’s sure the coast is clear he goes out up the Lane and takes the path at the top past the north fields. It’s a gustier day, grimmer, with spots of thin rain, and grey showers moving around in the distance. They always look like they’re hardly moving at all but he knows how different it is if they catch you. He keeps a nervous eye on them. There can’t be any wet clothes around when his mother gets back.
    It feels like summer’s over for good. In The Old Days, every day had its own name and number. Like Thursday the Seventeenth, or the Twenty-Fourth of April. Despite being invisible these labels were terribly important, and told you whether it was summer or not, whether it was the week or the weekend. It’s impossible to imagine now. It’s like trying to tie words to the wind. Missus Anderson claims to know “what day it is” still—she says she’s kept count, though no one believes her—but Rory can’t see the point: this is the day it is, these stately drifting clouds and pellets of rain. They used to know what the weather would be like before it happened, he remembers that too. It used to organize so much of what he did, which clothes he put on, where and when he could go and play, whether Dad was going to get the boat out after school. When he concentrates on The Old Days that’s the impression he gets most strongly: patterns, timetables. At School there was a piece of yellow paper pinned to a board. The paper had a grid on it which parceled up each day into rectangular chunks and told you what you were supposed to do in each chunk. Everything was like that. First it was time for this, then that, then time for something else. Particular things happened in particular places, separately. Their house was different from other people’s houses and their stuff was different from other