The Will To Live Read Online Free PDF Page A

invited me to the reception and I ought to at least show my face.” He didn’t look too thrilled at the prospect. “There’s no sense in us all getting soaked. You wait here in the warm while I go and get my car.”
    The trouble was, it wasn’t warm in the church. Once all the people had left, the temperature plummeted. We decided we might as well wait in the porch where at least we’d see the vicar when he pulled up.
    Graham and I were standing there, peering through the sheets of rain, hoping that our rescuer would arrive soon, when I noticed a crumpled heap of clothes piled against a gravestone in the corner of the churchyard.
    For a moment I thought they had been dumped there – maybe for a jumble sale or something. But as I stared, a particularly savage gust of wind tore at the material and exposed a white hand – raised up, bunched into a claw as if clutching the air.
    I nudged Graham in the ribs and pointed.
    It was chucking it down and we didn’t have an umbrella. We would get soaked yet again but we had to check if the person needed help.
    We ran across the graveyard, and as we drew closer to the figure we realized it was the tramp we’d seen earlier.
    While we were bending over him and Graham was feeling for a pulse, Reverend Bristow drove up and honked his horn. When we didn’t run to the car, he came over to see what the matter was.
    “Dear God!” he said when he saw the tramp. He sniffed the air. Even with the Noah’s-Ark-style torrents of rain, the smell of drink was unmistakeable. “I’d better call an ambulance. I suppose the poor man’s inebriated. If we leave him here, he’ll die of exposure.”
    Graham and I looked at each other. We could both see it was too late for that. We had encountered enough bodies by now to know he wasn’t dead drunk.
    He was just dead.

FLOOD WATER
    REVEREND Bristow called for an ambulance anyway.
    “They can at least take him off to the proper place,” he said.
    But it turned out that the emergency services couldn’t come and collect the body because they couldn’t reach us. The river had burst its banks and the roads were beginning to flood. According to the vicar, if we left quickly we could just about drive from the church up to Coldean Manor as the big house was on higher ground. But then we wouldn’t be able to leave. As long as the rain kept up, we would be stranded.
    Great. Just great.
    Well, even though he was obviously dead, we couldn’t leave the tramp lying there – it didn’t seem right. Reverend Bristow was deeply concerned about the traumatizing effect it would have on our tender young souls, but he needed our help. The three of us carried the body into the church. It was harder than we’d expected – he was as stiff as a board and his clothes were soaked and slippery so it was difficult to know quite where or how to get hold of him. We dropped him a couple of times but eventually managed to get him up the aisle and into a room at the side, which the vicar said was the vestry. There, we laid him down on a rug in the corner.
    Reverend Bristow opened a cupboard full of those white dress thingies vicars and choirboys wear during services. Pulling one off a hanger, he said, “I suppose I can cover him up with a surplice. That would be a bit more respectable, wouldn’t it?”
    Despite the wind and the rain, the tramp’s hat had stayed firmly on his head the entire time we’d been manhandling him. But when the vicar gave his surplice-thingie a flick – as if he was about to cover a dining table with a cloth – the edge of it caught the rim and flipped it up. For the first time we could see his face properly.
    He had a hooked nose. And his dead, staring eyes were icy blue. My mouth dropped open and a little squeak came out.
    “He’s one of them!” I gasped.
    “I beg your pardon?” Reverend Bristow looked at me as if I’d said something politically incorrect.
    “One of
them
! One of the family, I mean. The Strudwicks. Look at that