The Loney Read Online Free PDF

my seat and slept on and off as a dozen counties went by. Every so often I woke up with the feeling that I was repeating parts of the journey. But then England is much the same all over, I suppose. A duplication of old farms, new estates, church spires, cooling towers, sewage works, railway lines, bridges, canals, and towns that are identical but for a few small differences in architecture and stone.
    The sunlight that, as we left, had begun to creep over the London suburbs, disappeared the further north we went, returning only momentarily on the shoulder of a yellow hill miles away or picking out a distant reservoir in a second or two of magnesium brilliance.
    The temperature dropped and the clouds darkened. The road steamed in driving rain. Shreds of mist hung over the cold lakes and woods. Moorland turned the colour of mould and becks coursed in spate down the peaty slopes, white and solid-looking from a distance, like seams of quartz.
    No one had mentioned it—hoping presumably that it would go away of its own accord—but for the last few miles the minibus had been making an awful racket, as though something was loose in the engine. Every time Father Bernard changed gear there was a loud shuddering and grinding and eventually it refused to shift at all and he pulled in to the side of the road.
    ‘What is it, Father?’ said Mr Belderboss.
    ‘The clutch, I think,’ Father Bernard replied.
    ‘Oh, it’ll be the damp, it gets into everything up here,’ said Mr Belderboss and sat back satisfied with his assessment.
    ‘Can you fix it, Father?’ Mrs Belderboss said.
    ‘I certainly hope so, Mrs Belderboss.’ Father Bernard replied. ‘I get the impression that you have to rely on our own ingenuity out here.’
    He smiled and got out. He was right, of course. In every direction there was nothing but deserted, muddy fields where seabirds were blown like old rags.
    The rain battered onto the windscreen and ran down in waves as Father Bernard lifted the bonnet and propped it open.
    ‘Go and help him,’ Mummer said to Farther.
    ‘What do I know about cars?’ he replied, glancing up from the map he was studying.
    ‘You could still give him a hand.’
    ‘He knows what he’s doing, Esther. Too many cooks and all that.’
    ‘Well, I hope he does manage to get us going again,’ said Mummer, looking out of the window. ‘It’s only going to get colder.’
    ‘I’m sure we’ll survive,’ said Farther.
    ‘I was thinking of Mr and Mrs Belderboss,’ Mummer replied.
    ‘Oh, don’t worry about us,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘We’ve known cold, haven’t we, Mary?’
    ‘I should say so.’
    They started to harp on about the war and having heard it all before I turned to Hanny who had been tugging at my sleeve for the last five minutes, desperate for me to share his View Master.
    Hanny grinned and handed me the red binoculars that he’d had stuck to his face for most of the journey, clicking through the various reels he took out of his school satchel. It had been Mountains of the World until we stopped at Kettering for a toilet break, then Strange Creatures of the Ocean , and Space Exploration until Mummer had finally persuaded him onto Scenes from The Old Testament , which he now urged me to look through again. Eve with her private parts delicately blotted with foliage, Abraham’s knife poised over Isaac’s heart, Pharaoh’s charioteers tumbling in the Red Sea.
    When I had finished I noticed that he had his hands jammed between his legs.
    ‘Do you need to go?’ I said.
    Hanny rocked back and forth, kicking the side of his boot against the door.
    ‘Come on then.’
    While Father Bernard was poking about in the engine, I took him outside and walked down the lane a little so no one else would see. He went over to a dry stone wall and unzipped his jeans while I waited in the rain and listened to it tapping on the hood of the parka Mummer had insisted I bring.
    I looked back at the minibus and thought I could hear