Katie's War Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dafydd’s voice was prattling on. Barney drifted towards the middle of the road while she was turned. She heard the growl of the approaching lorry too late to do anything about it.
    â€˜Look out!’ Dafydd yelled as the lorry came around the corner with a snarl and a great gush of black smoke.
    Barney side-stepped alarmingly as the lorry nearly grazed the trap. Katie braced her feet, leaning all her weight on the reins to turn his head from the ditch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a line of green uniforms and intent faces, the light flashing from the goggles they wore against the dust. Rifles were standing upright between soldiers’ knees.
    â€˜Crossley Tender,’ she shouted to Dafydd as the dust swirled about them. ‘See how the soldiers sit back-to-back. Can shoot in any direction.’ Barney was still dancing and short-stepping.
    â€˜Well done, girl,’ Mr Parry said.
    Katie’s mind went racing back, remembering another day and another road, when the uniforms were not green but were the hateful black and khaki of the Black and Tans – the scum of the British Army and the scrapings of their prisons, Father had called them. It was the last summer of their walks together. There had been room on the road for the English Tender to pass them but the driver had deliberately forced them both into the ditch. The jeering faces of the men looking down were still fixed in her mind, their dust-goggles the glazed eyes ofmonsters. As they passed they had levelled their rifles at them.
    â€˜Get down, Katie,’ Father had shouted, pushing her into the ditch and lying on top of her. No shot came; perhaps they were short of ammunition. But she was covered in nettle stings. Later that day, they had climbed together to a place called the Graves of the Leinstermen and sat looking out over the lake. In the scent of summer gorse, while the sun dipped towards the hills of Clare, beyond the Shannon, Father had told her how his regiment had got in the Welsh miners to explode a mine under the Germans and how something had gone wrong – and he had lost his hand. It was then that he had dropped his head and whispered, ‘I ran, Katie, God how I ran.’
    Which way had he run? Could shame cause madness? Was Father mad? He had never used her name before, not in one of his fits, and to this day she could not tell whether or not he knew that he had told her of these terrible things. She had locked her thoughts up deep inside her and told no-one.
    * * *
    Katie was relieved when home came in sight. Their house always appeared smaller than it really was, set below the level of the road, the farm buildings backed up into the hill, but the walls gleamed white with a dash of blue from the washing-blue her mother ceremoniously added to the barrel of whitewash when it was ready each Easter.
    â€˜There we are, that’s home,’ Katie announced.
    â€˜Beautiful,’ Dafydd said. ‘Hey, Dad, look – it’s like snow. Not like our Welsh houses,’ adding by way of explanation, ‘ours are all dark stone.’
    â€˜That’s our quarry, straight ahead, past the farm. You can just see the tips and the sheds.’ Katie held Barney back firmly as they dipped steeply down through the gate into the farmyard. Marty appeared from an outhouse, saw Katieat the reins, and fled in mock terror.
    â€˜That’s Marty,’ Katie explained resignedly. ‘He’s the farmer of the family. Don’t pay any attention to him, he’s always fooling around.’ Then she added loudly, so the still-apprehensive head poking round the corner of the shed could hear, ‘He’s terribly afraid of horses.’ Marty came out, grinning sheepishly. As if on cue, Mother appeared from the kitchen and Seamus from the harness room, where he usually went to think; he seldom mended any harness. He was tall, with dark eyebrows that formed a bar across his forehead. He had a slow smile that