The Crocodile Bird Read Online Free PDF Page A

battered Dolomite shifted the caravan with the slow weary competence of an old carthorse. It groaned a bit and expelled a lot of black exhaust. Liza got into the passenger seat and banged the door. Car and caravan lurched off the grass verge onto the harder surface of the lane.
    “Where shall we go?”
    “We have to go where they’ll let me park the van. Before you come I was thinking of trying Vanner’s. They’re wanting pickers for the Coxes. We could both of us do that.”
    “Coxes won’t be ready till the third week of September,” she said, always glad to show off something she knew and he might not. “Anyway, how far is it?”
    “Twenty-five miles, thirty. Far enough for you?”
    “I don’t know. What else can you do?”
    He laughed. “Electrical work, sort of, put washers on taps, grind knives, I’m halfway to a motor mechanic, wash your car, do your garden—as you should know—clean windows, most things, you name it.”
    “Why apples, then?”
    “Apples make a change. I reckon I always do pick apples in September and cherries in July.”
    “I’m hungry,” she said, “I’m so bloody hungry.”
    “Don’t swear, Liza.”
    “You do. Who d’you think I got it from?”
    “It’s different for me. You’re a woman. I don’t like to hear a woman swear.”
    She lifted her shoulders, the way Eve did. “I’m tremendously hungry. Can we buy some food?”
    “Yeah, we can get takeaway.” He looked at her, remembered and explained, “Stuff they’ve cooked for you in a shop, right? Or we’ll find a caff, maybe a Little Chef if there’s one on the A road.”
    She was no longer afraid. Fear might not be canceled, but it was postponed. The prospect of going into a café excited her. And she’d be with Sean. Shops she had been in, one or two over the years, but a real restaurant, if that was the word, that was very different. She remembered what she had taken with her when she left the gatehouse.
    “I’ve got money. I’ve got a hundred pounds.”
    “For Christ’s sake,” he said.
    “It’s in the van, in my coat.”
    “Did you nick it?” His tone was stern.
    “Of course not. Eve gave it to me.”
    He said nothing. She looked out of the window at the passing countryside, all of it new, all uncharted for her. They drove through a village as the church clock struck three, and ten minutes later they were in a sizable town with parking in the marketplace.
    On either side of the carpark the roads that enclosed it were lined with shops. She had seen something like this before, though not here, the dry cleaner’s, the building society, the estate agent, the Chinese restaurant, the Oxfam shop, the sandwich bar, the building society, the insurance company, the Tandoori House, the bank, the pub, the card shop. An arch, in pink glass and gold metal, led into a deserted hall of shops. Perhaps all towns were like this, all the same inside, perhaps it was a rule.
    Sean’s practiced eye quickly summed up the situation. “The caffs are closed, it’s too late. Pubs are meant to stay open till all hours, but they don’t never seem to. I can go get us pie and chips or whatever.”
    Her hunger was greater than her disappointment. “Whatever you like. Do you want some money?”
    She said it cheerfully, trying to strike the right note, having never said it before. Yet for some reason he was offended. “I hope I’ll never see the day when I’ve got to live off my girlfriend.”
    Once he had gone she got out of the car. She stretched her arms above her head, tasting freedom. It was heady stuff, for something was making her shiver and it couldn’t be the day, which was as warm as high summer. She had never felt like this before, dizzy, faint was perhaps the word, as if she might fall.
    She opened the door of the caravan and clambered up inside. Five minutes’ sitting down and a few deep breaths and she felt better. The bed was stowed away in the wall, the sheets and blankets folded, and the table down,