Cry of the Children Read Online Free PDF

decided to call Molly at Matt as she grew more confident. He’d take her straight home after this, so she’d better make the most of it.
    Matt waved to the joyous girl and smiled at her. He was thinking enthusiastically of the night ahead and his lovemaking with the eager Mrs Gibson.
    Then, after what seemed a long time, the ride was slowing and Lucy was giving him a hasty wave before her last sounding of the bus’s horn and her final twist of its wheel. The bus stopped on the other side of the circuit from Matt. Lucy must be exactly opposite him, he reckoned. He’d wait here for her. If he went round to the other side of the ride to meet her, she might go the opposite way and they’d miss each other. He didn’t want her to panic.
    But Lucy didn’t come. Matt peered into the darkness, wishing that there weren’t so many lights in his face to dazzle him and make things even ten yards away so indistinct in the gloom. He went round to the other side of the roundabout, then back to where he had stood whilst it was operating. All the other children on it had rejoined their parents and left now. He went back to the other side of the ride and yelled into the darkness. ‘Lucy, if you’re hiding, come out! This isn’t funny! This isn’t a joke!’
    But Lucy didn’t come. Nor was there any answering shout. Matt raced round the ride another three times, then roared off into the blackness beyond it and into the wood beside the common. He yelled Lucy’s name hopelessly into the night air.

THREE
    L ambert couldn’t remember being quite so tired on a Saturday evening. Surely he must have been as exhausted as this many times before, when he’d worked long hours in the garden? But that was a different sort of fatigue; he loved unwinding in the garden after the rigours of his working week.
    That was the kind of fatigue he loved to feel in his ageing limbs, the sort he still occasionally eased away with a hot bath and a long soak, lying with closed eyes and shutting out the problems of the world. Soon it would be time for the autumn clear-up in the garden, when you threw out the annuals, divided the odd perennial, took in the dahlias and then lay in the bath planning your garden work for the spring. Perhaps he’d be able to begin that next weekend, after the clocks had been put back.
    It was wonderful to have grandchildren, to see the second generation beyond your own growing up and preparing to take over. But youngsters had boundless energy, and their swift growth reminded you constantly of your own accumulating years. On this pleasantly sunny autumn afternoon, he’d taken the boys to the common with his son-in-law and played football with them for a while. He’d become breathless far too quickly; he’d been secretly relieved when Richard had said it was time to pack up if they wanted to visit the fair at the other end of the common.
    The boys were seven and five now. John Lambert had been delighted when Harry, the five-year-old, had asked if Grandad would go on to the ride with him and sit in the engine with the cheerful face which looked so like Thomas the Tank Engine. John had folded his legs awkwardly within the cabin, whilst Harry had stood self-consciously on the footplate and pulled the cord which made the whistle sound each time they passed his father and George, standing and waving at the side of the ride.
    Each boy had ridden on three of the smaller rides at the side of the fair. Then Grandad and Dad had taken them for their last ride, a special treat on the least frightening of the big roundabouts, the Caterpillar. The boys had clung wide-eyed to the adults as the cars had accelerated and moved more swiftly round the undulating track, then screamed with delight and excitement like everyone else when the canvas hood came suddenly over them and left them in noisy darkness. The sound of the wheels rattling beneath them over the rails was suddenly much