World's End in Winter by Monica Dickens Page B

mother.’ Her father let down his chair. ’If not, why am I going to her blasted committee meetings?’
    ‘They don’t really want her to ride,’ Carrie said. ’They think it’s dangerous. They think it’s no use.’
    ’They think Bristler is a lost cause,’ Michael said.
    ‘If she can’t be perfect, like the others,’ Lester said, ’she’d better be shut away. Helpless.’
    ‘Don’t be bitter, young Figg,’ Dad said, but Mother said, ’Lester could be right. That’s why Priscilla wouldn’t make any effort with exercises, at the hospital.’
    ‘She knew Mrs Agony had given up.’ Michael was gouging deep into the initials P.A. that Priscilla had scratched on the round table last time she was here. ’Well,
we haven’t.
The penknife slipped on a knot and nicked his finger. He rubbed the blood into the A. ’Sweared in blood, Bristler. I won’t give up.’
    Lester and Carrie looked at each other, remembering the time when they had sworn in blood to save John from the slaughterhouse. They had banged the backs of their hands with a hairbrush, whirled their arms to make the blood start, and pressed the back of their hands together. Exchanging a message, as they were able to, without words, they both got up and went outside.
    They had long had a dream of buying the pasture across the lane for hay and extra grazing. They would pull out the ragged hedge to make it part of World’s End, and put gates across the lane, so that people coming this way would have to pay toll to get through.
    They couldn’t buy the field, and they couldn’t shut off the lane - but they took John and Peter, and Michael’s toy pistols and an empty tin can, and waited on the horses ateither side of the lane. Carrie was wearing a black stocking over her head with holes for eyes, nose and mouth. Lester was wearing the big bush hat Jerome Fielding had brought back from Australia, turned up on one side with the brim pulled over his face.
    When a car or a van or a motorbike or a bicycle came by, they pushed the horses out to block the road, pointed the pistols and yelled, ’Your money or your life!’
    The first thing that came was the Post Office van.
    ‘Thanks for stopping.’ Carrie lowered the gun and her highwayman voice. She had been afraid no one would stop.
    ‘Got a parcel for you.’ The postman handed her up a box. It was a Christmas present from the fat little nurse with the pearl barley teeth who had looked after Mother when she was hurt in the fire. He drove on before they could get back to the subject of money.
    The next three cars gave them something. One willingly. One grumbling. One saying, ’I think it’s wonderful whatyou children do. Is it for the Cruelty to Animals?’
    ‘Yes,’ Carrie said, and held out the soup tin. And afterwards, though she did not need to justify it to Lester, ’Well, Priscilla is a small animal, isn’t she?’
    They waited in the lane all afternoon. The horses got cold and restless, and Carrie and Lester got cold and bored. Very little traffic came by. Some of it did not even stop, but drove on through, hooting them out of the way. A bicycle yielded a few pennies. Grandad Barker on his old-fashioned tricycle that was said to have fought at the Battle of Hastings, dismounted creaking and groaning, took off two layers of clothes, searched through the rest for a pocket, turned it inside out to show it was empty, and climbed back into the outer layers and on to the trembling tricycle. Meanwhile a sports car and a plumbing van had got by, and Mrs Potter from Orchards, who shouted ’Is it an accident?’ and drove quickly on in case it was.
    They had made about thirty pence.
    ‘Let’s come out early tomorrow,’ Lester said, ’and get people on the way to work.’
    Before they went in, they stopped a yellow cement mixer truck going home. The driver stopped his rotating drum behind the cab to hear what they were saying.
    ‘Money or your life!’
    ‘What’s that? What’s that about my