The Glimpses of the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

been assigned to cover the story; not (as he admitted) because he had any special qualifications for doing so, but because his mooning about the office was beginning to get on everyone’s nerves.
    â€˜I expect you’ll find you’ve seen much worse things in Africa,’ his Editor had said.
    â€˜So I came down to Glazebridge and stayed for a week at The Seven Tuns,’ said Padmore, ‘and that was when I got the idea of … why are we speeding up all of a sudden?’
    The Major explained that they were speeding up because they were about to pass the Pisser.
    Padmore said, ‘I see.’
    â€˜Listen,’ said the Major. ‘It’s making its noise again.’
    There certainly was a noise going on, Padmore realized, and a disquieting one at that. It was being produced by a large, old-fashioned pylon set close against the left-hand side of the lane; and it was owing to the basic character of this noise, the Major explained, that this pylon which issued it was known throughout the neighbourhood as the Pisser (even intensely respectable elderly ladies, the Major truthfully claimed, would ring one another up and say, ‘It’s such a lovely afternoon, why don’t we meet at the gate by the Pisser and go for a walk over Worthington’s Steep?’). Long familiarity with the Pisser had not, however, bred contempt for it. On the contrary, it was universally felt that one of these days the Pisser’s noise would end in a detonation, so that it would release the cables it supported, and these would fall on, and electrocute, anyone who happened to be in the lane at the point over which they passed. Complaints about the menace of the Pisser had at first been pooh-poohed by the electricity people, the more so as its activity was intermittent, so that the first draft of investigating engineers had found it as quiet as an oyster, and had gone away full of indignation at having their valuable time taken up with false alarms. But then, months later, the Pisser had chanced to be overheard by a high official of the Board picnicking near by with his wife and children; the attitude of authority had consequently undergone an abrupt change, and the Pisser was now frequently visited by technicians in helicopters or vans, hoping to catch it making its noise and to decide what was causing it. In the second part of their programme they had so far been unsuccessful, since the Pisser’s noise had not only survived two complete overhauls, but had actually intensified both in volume and in oftenness. For this reason everyone still stepped out smartly when in its vicinity, sometimes even breaking into an agitated trot.
    By the time Padmore had been told about the Pisser’s ways they were safely past it, but as the Major was out of breath from talking and hurrying at the same time, they stopped for a brief rest where a horse was peering at them over the hedge.
    â€˜You awful animal, you,’ the Major said to it.
    â€˜Is it in poor condition?’ Padmore asked.
    â€˜No, no, my dear fellow, it’s just an ordinary healthy horse,’ the Major assured him. The horse rolled its eyes at them, revolving its ears on its skull. ‘Horrible treacherous brutes,’ the Major said. ‘Nip you in two at the neck as soon as look at you.’
    As if to confirm this, the horse bared large discoloured teeth and seized hold of an ash shoot, backing away in an unsuccessful attempt to tug the shoot loose from its moorings in the hedge. ‘But I thought you’d been in the cavalry,’ Fen said to the Major as they walked on. ‘Before it was mechanized, I mean.’
    â€˜Quite right, my dear fellow. Twenty years of it, I had, in India.’
    â€˜But didn’t that get you used to horses?’
    â€˜No, the reverse,’ said the Major. ‘The more I saw of horses, the more
un
used to them I got. I was drunk for a week,’ he confided, ‘celebrating the day