World's End in Winter Read Online Free PDF

push her?’ Michael walked beside him with the slight limp that made him look as if he had one foot on the pavement and one in the gutter.
    ‘Help yourself. I get enough of it.’
    ‘What’s wrong with Priscilla?’ The boy was so cheerful and relaxed that Carrie was able to ask it.
    ‘Old Priskie? She’s all right.’
    ‘Why do you all say that?’ This boy seemed so direct and easygoing, and yet here he was, lying like his parents.
    ‘What do you want us to say - that she’s a hopeless cripple who’ll never walk again?’ He kept smiling, but he banged his tennis racquet savagely against a juniper bush.
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Her spinal cord was injured. Her pony reared and fell back on top of her.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ Carrie did not look at him either. ’I shouldn’t have asked you if you rode.’
    ‘Oh,
we
never did. Priskie was the horsy one. She’d have won at all the shows. That stinking pony cost the earth.’
    ‘Was it too much for such a small child?’
    ’Look - she was more than seven,’ Victor said scornfully, as if Carrie should have known that all Agnews were champs as soon as they could toddle.
    ‘How old is she now?’
    ‘About nine.’ Didn’t people in wheelchairs have birthdays?
    ‘She doesn’t look it.’ ’She’s gone babyish.’ ’Who says she’ll never walk?’
    ‘Everyone. She might have. But she wouldn’t try. She won’t do exercises or anything. She’s given up.’
    They had been walking towards the house, thinking that Michael was walking behind them with the rapt, careful face he had put on when he took charge of the wheelchair. But when they reached the terrace and Victor turned to help lift the chair up the steps, they saw that Michael had gone in the other direction, and had taken Priscilla to the back gate to see the horses.
    He had opened the gate and pushed her through.
    ‘My mother will burst a blood vessel. Hey, Ma!’ Victor ran across the terrace, Carrie turned and ran to the gate, and the mother came hurtling out of the house behind her with a cry.
    Outside the back gate, the chair was bogged in winter mud. Michael held Oliver close to it and had picked up Priscilla’s small hand and pulled it forward. The child showed no fear. Her grave eyes watched the pony’s full blue eye.
    ‘Let him smell you, Bristler.’ Michael pulled off the woollen mitten and held her hand against the soft twitching nose. Oliver liked the smell of people. He blew curious breaths into the tiny hand, white and fragile against Michael’s blunt brown workman’s fingers.
    ‘Horses smell by breathing out, not in,’ Michael instructed Priscilla chummily.
    ‘Yes.’ It was only a whisper, but it was the first word she had said.
    Her mother had no breath to shout. With a sobbing gasp,she came through the gate and snatched the child up out of the chair and held her close, boots dangling at the end of the wrinkled red tights. Priscilla began to put on the high baby wailing they had heard before. Over her mother’s shoulder, her face was screwed up fretfully, but with no tears.
    ‘What are you trying to do?’ Mrs Agnew asked Michael angrily.
    ‘She likes the horses, really she does.’
    ‘She’s terrified of them.’ The mother had backed away to the gate, as if she were the one who was terrified. ’You must leave her alone. I told you.’
    ‘She’s lonely.’
    ‘She wants to be alone. She doesn’t like other children. Leave her alone – please!’ as Michael reached up to put the mitten on the dangling hand. ’Don’t upset her.’
    Carrying the light weight of the child easily against her strong shoulder, she went through the gate. Carrie began to follow with the chair, but she said, ’Leave that. I’ll send Victor out for it.’
    They watched her stride back with the wailing child across the garden and into the house and shut the door.

Six
    The big stubble field had been ploughed now. They picked their way along the sticky outside furrow in single file, not talking. When