Sarah Thornhill Read Online Free PDF Page A

subject, of course, and Mary chimed in then about the crown of lamb she was going to help Mrs Devlin with. The rosemary and the onions and the new potatoes.
    When we got back I sat in the yard on the woodchop stump, waited for Pa. He trudged up as if he was tired, bent to scrape the mud off his boots without seeing me, his face so heavy I thought better of saying anything. He went to the back door and took his boots off so he was just in his socks. Made to go in, but saw me.
    You been a long time, Pa, I said.
    He walked over across the flagstones, crouched down in front of me.
    They’re poor souls, Dolly, he said. Poor helpless souls. Dying out like all their race.
    That blue stare of his.
    I’d give, Dolly, he said. Ease their passing. Only they won’t take. Oh, they take when I’m gone. Take and eat. If not they’d of starved long since. Only not from me. Not from my hand.
    Something twisted his face out of shape and I thought he was laughing, but he caught his breath in a sob.
    Your mother took their part, Dolly, he said. Made me promise. Why you seen me down there. Why I’ll stand there and beg them.
    His voice was strangling round the words. He’d gone an old man suddenly, eyes blank and dark.
    Stand and beg them, he said. Come again the week after, do it again. Because of your mother.
    On the last word I could hear the feeling come up his throat and stop him.
    By God Dolly, he said, voice just a raspy whisper. By God but I wish that day back again, and have it come out different.
    What day? I thought. What different ?
    Is it cadging, Pa? I said. When you give them? Or Christian duty?
    He cleared his throat with a great cough. Took a breath I could hear going all the way down. Stood up and touched the top of my head, a brush of his fingers.
    Yes, well, he said. Your ma’s of a different view, you know, Dolly.
    His voice was ordinary again.
    If you wasn’t here in them days you wouldn’t know, he said. Your ma weren’t here, she don’t know. In this one thing I got to go against her.
    Stood up, lifted a foot to see the bottom of his sock, where he’d walked on the stones.
    Your ma wouldn’t like it, he said. You girls being down there. Shouldn’t of taken you. No need to say where you was today, Dolly. I’ll tell Jingles, take you down the other track when you go out on the ponies.
    Went over to the back door, took his socks off and laid them on his boots, walked into the house with his big white feet bare.
    What he’d told me was nothing more than commonsense. You couldn’t see people go hungry.
    So what was that terrible twisting across his face? That thing that was like an animal eating away at him from the inside?

M A WAS a great one for visiting. Not gentry, we wasn’t on visiting terms with the quality. Not the folk from along the Branch either, scrabblers with not a boot to their name. The ones we visited with were the better families . Folk on the up-and-up like we were, mostly emancipists. Cobbs from Milkmaid Reach, and the Lewises from Ebenezer, Fletchers from Portland Head. Old Mr Loveday if he was sober. The Langlands. They’d row down of a Sunday afternoon, the river a highway for the families along it. Mrs Devlin would cook up a big batch of cakes and scones, Anne busy all afternoon keeping the cake-stand full.
    Ma knew everyone’s stories, which ones were come free and which ones was sent out , and if they was sent out , what they’d done. Different from Mrs Herring, she didn’t mind telling what she knew. Mr Chapman stole a sheep at Burleigh Fair, lucky not to of hanged. Mr Fletcher knocked a man down, took his watch and two half-crowns out of his pocket.
    What about Mrs Fletcher, I said.
    Can you keep a secret, Dolly? she said, and before I’d said yes she told me. Mrs Fletcher was one of those women sells themselves to men, she said. Got caught when she stole the purse of a man come to take his pleasure.
    How