Carn Read Online Free PDF

of manure. Mr Galvin and his garden, man and wife.
He loved his ridges more than his real wife. Ridges and manure and a little garden fork.
    Christ Jesus, thought Sadie, I wonder does our Sandy tend her ridges in London? The smell of manure in Croydon. Oh I’ll get away from this godforsaken hole yet, I’ll not die here an
old biddy with veins and a teapot and hair like wire. ’Ello Mr Galvin, just got ’ome, didn’t I? How are your sweet peas coming along? Climbing up the trellis okay?
    Sadie smiled as she saw him in her mind, doffing his cap and searching its fabric for an appropriate response.
    —Oh aye Sadie, climbing, climbing sure enough, no trouble with the sweet pea but there’s damn the sign of the lettuce. I wonder did the grubs get at it? Them brown grubs are a curse.
Do youse have much trouble with the brown lads Sadie? Eh?
    —No, as a matter of fact we don’t, said Sadie aloud, to tell you the truth we don’t have any grubs at all. No brown grubs. No black grubs. Not a grub in sight. And do you know
what Mr Galvin? No ridges either. Nope. Not one.
    She saw the disbelief on Mr Galvin’s face. He looked at her as if someone dear to him had just been assassinated.
    —No, repeated Sadie, no grubs or ridges or manure. I’m a London secretary Mr Galvin. Do you like my Mary Quant dress?
    —Oh is that right, replied Mr Gavin, is that right now? God but isn’t the world a queer place too? Well I dare say you won’t be planting much curly kale in London. Boys oh boys
oh boys.
    Finishing up her daydream, Sadie watched Mr Galvin as he settled his cap on his head and whistled a little tune as he bent beneath the clouds and went rigid as he spotted a rubbery grub making a
bee line for a potato stalk.
    —I can’t wait, said Sadie, gonna be great, innit? Wotcher, gels? Wayne or Scott around?
    “Got you!” cried Mr Galvin as he leaped on the grub squeezing it between forefinger and thumb as Sadie opened the front door and heard her mother’s voice squirming out through
the yellow bar of light under the kitchen door,
is that you is that you Sadie
and the bus for Croydon took off down the road as the furry slippers padded across the lino and she stood
sourfaced as always surveying her daughter up and down as if she had just contracted a foul disease.
    For every day was the same in the house for Sadie and her mother and father.
    —Have you the tea made? her mother would say, there’s more to be done around here than lie about the Golden Chip with Lacey and all the rest of the layabouts. Get that skirt off you
and go down on your knees with this rag and you’ll find a bucket under the stairs.
    Carn Poultry Products took most of her steam away, so often she went to it without a whimper but what it was she wanted to say bubbled away inside her head—Ah to hell with you and your
floor and Mr Galvin and his grubs, I’m going to England if it’s the last thing I do there’s not one of you can stop me, I’ll get a ticket and a bus to Euston and the whole
lot of you can go to hell.
    ROOM TO LET: REASONABLE RENT YOUNG LADY PREFERRED
    —Wouldn’t that be nice now, she thought, just the one wee room, what more would I need, my hair backcombed and a wage packet on Friday for all the mod gear. Dahn the West End. Could
I drink? Yes I could. In the Irish Clubs? The Walls of Limerick and Take Me Home to Mayo? Not on your life. Let the chambermaids and the country gawks jive to their hearts content. I’ll be in
my stripey trousers and knee boots in a club where the lights carry you off into space and that will be the last you’ll see of Sadie, gone for good dahn the Old Kent Road.
    The sound of her father’s key in the lock sent all her thoughts scurrying for cover, gone with the wind like smoke. He stomped across the floor, all the dirt and dust of the town on his
dungarees as he hung them up behind the door and whacked his hip with his squashed cap and sucked his Woodbine, the final favour of a