Ash Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

hills wound so much, changed direction so often, that Tinley seemed to belong to another world. The Ash Road people never thought of its lying more or less just over the hill, separated from them by an almost unbroken expanse of forest. They thought of it—if they thought of it at all—as an oddly inaccessible and uninteresting place at the end of a long road that they might travel over once or twice in a lifetime. In fact there were children on Ash Road who knew nothing of Tinley, had never heard mention of its name.
    Julie Buckingham, who was five years of age, opened to the sun like a flower. When the morning sun came strongly through her curtains she stirred; her limbs uncoiled like petals to the light of day.
    It was terribly hot in her room and though she was too young to worry much about weather—was indeed to a great extent oblivious of its extremes—she knew that she was very uncomfortable and very thirsty. She padded to the bathroom because it was easier to reach the taps over the bath than the taps over the kitchen sink. She turned the tap on, but couldn’t turn it off again. Even Stevie, who was nine, had trouble with it sometimes.
    Julie was a bright girl, and usually made the best of things, even things that grown-ups sometimes got excited about: things like wet hair or pyjama coats all dripping with bath water. She was wet, so what did it matter if she put the plug in the bath and sailed her plastic boat up and down?
    When the water came over the top of the bath, she ran to her parents’ bedroom at the front of the house and told her father. He didn’t seem to hear. He made a sound like a grunt or a groan, but didn’t wake up. Then she told her mother, but her mother merely moaned and didn’t wake up either. Then Julie went to Pippa’s bedroom, and from the depths of restless and perspiring sleep Pippa said: ‘Go away, nuisance.’ By this time water was flowing out of the bathroom doorway and down the passage.
    Julie knew that that was very naughty. The last time it had happened she had been given a smack on her hand that had stung, even though she had said it hadn’t. Water was a sort of mystery in her house. At times it didn’t seem to matter how much was used or wasted; at others Mummy and Daddy were very stern about it and Daddy often tapped the tanks outside and listened to the sound they made. Sometimes he pulled a funny face and said: ‘If it doesn’t rain soon we’ll be in trouble.’
    Julie didn’t want another smack on her hand, so she crept out the back door and hid behind the woodshed. After a while, because nothing had happened, she went back to the house, but when she saw water dripping down the steps she started crying just as if she had already been smacked. Then she ran down the hill and hid in the bush behind the raspberry patch. From there she could see Grandpa Tanner’s house. She loved Grandpa Tanner. He gave her silver pennies to buy ice-creams with, and sometimes when he came over for dinner he brought a bag of sweeties. She could see Grandpa standing outside in his pyjamas.
    It was early for Grandpa Tanner to be out of bed. There had been a time when he had been up around dawn almost every day, but there was no need for that now. His family had long since grown up and gone away; his wife Marjorie had been dead for so many years; the relentless bush had reclaimed his once splendid farm; dogwood scrub and blackberries had choked his fruit trees; sorrel and couch grass had overrun his garden; there was no cow to milk or hens to feed. The milkman called these days and Grandpa Tanner bought his eggs at the grocer’s shop. There was not much left for Grandpa, really, except the routine of getting up and of going to bed, and remembering. Without the Buckinghams life would have been pretty drab. The Buckingham children meant much more to him than he would have cared to tell anyone, even the Buckinghams.
    He was up