The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

was Old Mrs. Hempstock, her apron held between her hands, and in the hollow of the apron so many daffodils that the light reflected up from them transformed her face to gold, and the kitchen seemed bathed in yellow light.
    Lettie said, “Something’s causing trouble. It’s giving people money. In their dreams and in real life.” She showed the old lady my shilling. “My friend found himself choking on this shilling when he woke up this morning.”
    Old Mrs. Hempstock put her apron on the kitchen table, rapidly moved the daffodils off the cloth and onto the wood. Then she took the shilling from Lettie. She squinted at it, sniffed it, rubbed at it, listened to it (or put it to her ear, at any rate), then touched it with the tip of her purple tongue.
    “It’s new,” she said, at last. “It says 1912 on it, but it didn’t exist yesterday.”
    Lettie said, “I knew there was something funny about it.”
    I looked up at Old Mrs. Hempstock. “How do you know?”
    “Good question, luvvie. It’s electron decay, mostly. You have to look at things closely to see the electrons. They’re the little dinky ones that look like tiny smiles. The neutrons are the gray ones that look like frowns. The electrons were all a bit too smiley for 1912, so then I checked the sides of the letters and the old king’s head, and everything was a tad too crisp and sharp. Even where they were worn, it was as if they’d been made to be worn.”
    “You must have very good eyesight,” I told her. I was impressed. She gave me back the coin.
    “Not as good as it once was, but then, when you get to be my age, your eyesight won’t be as sharp as it once was, neither.” And she let out a guffaw as if she had said something very funny.
    “How old is that?”
    Lettie looked at me, and I was worried that I’d said something rude. Sometimes adults didn’t like to be asked their ages, and sometimes they did. In my experience, old people did. They were proud of their ages. Mrs. Wollery was seventy-seven, and Mr. Wollery was eighty-nine, and they liked telling us how old they were.
    Old Mrs. Hempstock went over to a cupboard, and took out several colorful vases. “Old enough,” she said. “I remember when the moon was made.”
    “Hasn’t there always been a moon?”
    “Bless you. Not in the slightest. I remember the day the moon came. We looked up in the sky—it was all dirty brown and sooty gray here then, not green and blue…” She half-filled each of the vases at the sink. Then she took a pair of blackened kitchen scissors, and snipped off the bottom half-inch of stem from each of the daffodils.
    I said, “Are you sure it’s not that man’s ghost doing this? Are you sure we aren’t being haunted?”
    They both laughed then, the girl and the old woman, and I felt stupid. I said, “Sorry.”
    “Ghosts can’t make things,” said Lettie. “They aren’t even good at moving things.”
    Old Mrs. Hempstock said, “Go and get your mother. She’s doing laundry.” Then, to me, “You shall help me with the daffs.”
    I helped her put the flowers into the vases, and she asked my opinion on where to put the vases in the kitchen. We placed the vases where I suggested, and I felt wonderfully important.
    The daffodils sat like patches of sunlight, making that dark wooden kitchen even more cheerful. The floor was made of red and gray flagstones. The walls were whitewashed.
    The old woman gave me a lump of honeycomb, from the Hempstocks’ own beehive, on a chipped saucer, and poured a little cream over it from a jug. I ate it with a spoon, chewing the wax like gum, letting the honey flow into my mouth, sweet and sticky with an aftertaste of wildflowers.
    I was scraping the last of the cream and honey from the saucer when Lettie and her mother came into the kitchen. Mrs. Hempstock still had big Wellington boots on, and she strode in as if she were in an enormous hurry. “Mother!” she said. “Giving the boy honey. You’ll rot his