Before the Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

church. Girls do that sort of thing.’
    â€˜Fox was brave enough to rescue us, so you must be brave enough to ask him to church.’
    The mention of bravery changed everything as far as Daniel was concerned.
    â€˜All right, all right, I’ll do it.’
    Just then they heard Fox returning from the laundry with Mrs Lang.
    â€˜I cannot think why the clothes were still so wet,’ Mrs Lang was saying as they entered. ‘It’s almost as if they had been rinsed again.’
    Emily shot a suspicious glance at Daniel, who looked sheepish.
    â€˜No matter, shall return, for lunch,’ responded Fox.
    â€˜Fox will be returning tomorrow, his clothes are not dry yet,’ Mrs Lang announced as she and Fox entered the room.
    Emily tried hard not to smile. ‘Oh Fox, seeing that you will have to return, Daniel had something to ask you,’ she said.
    â€˜Yes, yes, of course,’ said Daniel at once. ‘Ah, Emily wanted to ask you to church with us. But she didn’t want to embarrass you, in case you, um, don’t go to church. I thought I’d ask, er, in case you did. I mean, if you don’t go, then just forget I asked.’
    Emily bristled at Daniel’s little betrayal, but she said nothing. Once again, Daniel looked sheepish.
    â€˜Chapel, yours, will attend,’ said Fox. ‘For invitation, thanks.’
    Soon after that Fox was gone, hurrying away to catch the last train. Later, lying in her bed, Emily thought over the day’s events, and of what she had learned about Fox. Her father was always saying that modern sailors were too soft, and that the flogging should be brought back as shipboard discipline. Brought back . On Fox’s ship flogging was still practised. Fox had been flogged. Perhaps they still do that sort of thing on Norwegian ships, she decided.
    Fox’s accent was really odd, too. It was curiously cold, hard and precise, and everything that he said was always perfectly clear. It was almost like some dialect of English, she thought. Fox also knew a way to bring drowned people back to life. Some person in the crowd on the river bank had said that it was a Chinese trick. Perhaps Fox’s ship had visited China. Perhaps the strange cinema device from Fox’s trousers also came from China. Perhaps the fighting in which BC had died had been in China … yet the soldiers who had shot BC did not look like Mr Wu at the laundry shop. Emily’s thoughts returned to BC, and for a time she again fantasised that he was not dead and that she was nursing him back to health.
    Emily sat up in bed, trying to regain control of her mind. Whenever she thought of her rescuer, she was as suspicious as Sherlock Holmes investigating a murder, but when it came to the dead BC, her heart began to hammer and she felt feverish. BC had done nothing for her. BC had died before they had even met. Fox had saved Emily’s life, on the other hand, so why could she not worship him? Emily visualised Fox’s face. Somehow his neat hair and sad, serious eyes did not spark any sort of romantic feelings in her. BC was a leader, Fox was not. Being a leader was what made BC so special, she decided. Emily knew that she was a good leader, too, but she had nobody to lead. Every time she told Daniel to do something sensible, he did the opposite unless she forced him to do otherwise.
    â€˜You’re being just like the silly girls at school,’ Emily whispered to herself. ‘Especially the artistic ones with put-on French accents like Muriel Baker. They lose their hearts to boys from the grammar school just because they dance well, or are sporting heroes. Stop it! Girls like you don’t do that.’
    It was a hopeless fight. For the first time in her short life, Emily had toppled, and was now falling out of control.
    â€˜Well at least I am losing my heart to a brave, handsome, young man, not some stupid schoolboy,’
    Emily muttered to herself presently.