Mr Golightly's Holiday Read Online Free PDF Page B

investigate. Mr Golightly felt regretful again over the sugar lumps. But no doubt the horse’s owner would anyway disapprove. Itwas discouraging how few of the world’s prodigal comforts were nowadays available for enjoyment. Mr Golightly had been cautioned by Martha against exceeding the recommended number of ‘units’ of alcohol he drank in a week. There had been times when her boss had supped of the vine in a manner which would throw a modern health practitioner into a frenzy, and yet, Mr Golightly couldn’t help feeling, he was not obviously any the worse for his past excesses.
    Next door, Ellen Thomas was lying on her sofa. She looked out to where the rooks were dredging the fields clean of the new-sown wheat. A saying of her late husband’s drifted into her mind. ‘Forbear not sowing because of the birds,’ he had used to say, when counselling against needless caution. Her new neighbour, with his big head, reminded her a little of Robert. She might give him some of the duck eggs, azure, like the sky’s watery reflection in the puddle which had collected on the upturned barrel she had put outside for some purpose she couldn’t now remember.
    What did ‘remember’ mean? Robert had told her this once, too. Wasn’t it putting back together the body’s members which had been torn asunder…?

6
    I T WAS T HURSDAY , AND CONSEQUENTLY THE YEW tree was not a safe hiding place for Johnny Spence. The Reverend Meredith Fisher was at home and would be back and forth, sticking her nose into other people’s business or attending to her parish duties, depending on your point of view. Johnny’s attitude was laissez-faire: he didn’t mind what the lady vicar did so long as she didn’t interfere with his use of the churchyard.
    The concept of sanctuary is an old one and in using the environs of the Lord for this purpose Johnny followed a long and venerable tradition. But he was not the first to be ousted from safe-hiding by one of the Lord’s appointed. Who can say how far the Lord Himself, were He to be consulted, would sanction the attitudes of those who undertake to speak on His behalf? As it was, Johnny had to look for an alternative place of concealment.
    Great Calne’s church, with its square Norman tower, stood flanked on one side by the rectory and on the other by the Post Office Stores. A little way down the hill, on the opposite side of the road, lay Spring Cottage where only the previous day Johnny had watched the arrival of Mr Golightly.
    Johnny had practised being invisible since his mum took up with his stepdad. Like all early training, this stood him in sound stead. At school his absences were so regular as tobe generally overlooked and often his name was omitted entirely from any official register. A conviction that one is nothing acts as a powerful charm against being perceived, but Johnny was experienced enough in the ways of the world to know that you mustn’t take anything for granted. Despite the fact that, to the authorities, he didn’t exist, that didn’t mean he should be careless. Like a young tomcat, he whipped down the street and inside the gateway of Spring Cottage. He felt cautiously well disposed towards the bloke he had spied on and he wanted, anyway, to get a closer look at the Traveller.
    The sky had turned indigo and the sun set up at once a contesting sheet of light. A cloud of rooks, with the mysterious concordance of flocking birds, rose, hovered in the petrol-coloured sky, gathered together again, then, as suddenly, parted into factions to flutter like confetti from some Satanic wedding on to the fields, or settle in the stands of reddening beech. Splashes of sunlight on the birds’ plumage made fitful, darting gleams. And now the sky, as if surrendering to an eloquent seducer, cleared rapidly again, stretches of blue wash appeared and scraps of cloud, as picturesquely puffed as any on a painted Italian ceiling, began to scud wantonly across the renewing sky.
    Mr Golightly,