The Owl Service by Alan Garner Page B

looked full again. He had five cigarettes left in his hand.
    Gwyn went into the parlour, and found two boxes, but the first he opened was nearly empty and he dared not take any. Three from the second box.
    More: more. But there were no more boxes, and knives were clinking in the hatch. He ran to the kitchen and started to wash up as his mother brought the cutlery in. She took the coffee to the dining-room.
    Minutes. Gwyn dried his hands, trying to make an inventory of the house in his head, but no boxes showed themselves. Eight cigarettes were as bad as none.
    Gwyn went back to the sitting-room and looked behind the cushions on the chairs and found nothing. There was time for only one try. He stepped into the cloakroom, and put his hand in the pocket of Clive’s fishing jacket.
    This is where the light always goes on, thought Gwyn, but nothing happened, and his fingers gripped a flat metal box.
    Back in the kitchen Gwyn put the ten cigarettes in a drawer. One was bent, but he had not time to straighten it. He opened the kitchen door to the outside passage, took the lids off the dustbins, and began to turn the contents over.
    Then Gwyn finished washing up. He came down from his bedroom a quarter of an hour later. Nancy sat by the stove, drinking the remains of the coffee.
    â€œWhere you been, boy?” she said. “You was clumping about no end.”
    â€œUpstairs, Mam.” Gwyn pulled a chair to the stove. “Mam,” he said. “I’m sorry about last night. That was a rotten trick with your purse. I bought you a present, see.” He held out a cigarette packet. “I couldn’t get your usual. Will these do?”
    Nancy took the packet. Unless she noticed the wet stains from the tea leaves in the dustbin; if he had managed to fold the silver paper tightly; if the bent cigarette was not the first she picked—
    â€œMm,” said Nancy. “All right, boy.” She twisted a spill of newspaper and lit it from the stove. “Mm. They’ll do. Where you find the money?”
    â€œI’ve been saving a bit,” said Gwyn.
    â€œI thought you was coming it yesterday,” said Nancy.
    â€œMam, if I’d belted Roger what would have happened? Would we have been sacked?”
    â€œDepends how hard, doesn’t it?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t mind if I belted him?”
    â€œHim? Ha! ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Where’s my photos?’ he says. ‘Who’s moved them off the table? You got no right,’ he says. ‘Don’t you touch anything without permission,’ he says. And there was all that sticky on my table I just polished. And then he comes in and thinks he can flash his pound notes around.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œHim. Lord Muck.”
    â€œMr Bradley?”
    â€œâ€˜Mr Bradley’! When I think of the titled heads I’ve seen in that dining-room—! He’s not even a gentleman!”
    â€œHow do you know he isn’t?” said Gwyn.
    â€œThere’s ways of catching them,” said Nancy. “And when he was flashing his pound notes, I thought, right, I thought, if there was justice in Heaven there’d be others with cheque books. I’ll lay knife and fork, and we’ll see how you manages a pear, my laddo.”
    â€œA pear, Mam?”
    â€œIt takes a gentleman to eat a pear proper,” said Nancy. “He had it on the floor in no time – oh, I made him look a fool!” Nancy coughed at her cigarette.
    â€œWhat happened then?”
    â€œThat Alison covered for him. She picked hers up and ate it in her hand, but she knew. She knew. She’s a twicer, that one.”
    Nancy pulled on her cigarette, and her eyes narrowed. Gwyn said nothing. When his mother did this she was living in her memories: it was her x-ray look. “Yes,” she said. “If we all had our rights there’d be others with cheque books. My Bertram could eat a pear lovely.”
    Gwyn held his