Read Online A Bit of Earth by Rebecca Smith - Free Book Online

Elsie?
    Eventually he slept. He dreamt that he was searching for his oboe. He kept discovering its case in different places, but each time he opened it he found that the oboe was missing.
    The next morning, the first thing Guy did was look for his oboe. He hadn’t played it in ages. How could he have let it go that long? He took it out, cleaned it and pieced it together. The reed was dry and looked about to crack. It made his lip sore. It was just how it had been when he’d first been learning, and was sometimes too lazy to practise. His fingers were stiff. Oil can, he thought, oil can! He was like the Tin Man in
The Wizard of Oz,
all rusted up. What was itthe Tin Man said at the end? Oh yes. ‘Now I know I’ve got a heart because it’s breaking.’
    He’d been in the band for a production of
The Wizard of Oz
too. He played a few bars of ‘Over the Rainbow’. Much too maudlin. Back to
Cabaret.
Felix came in.
    â€˜What’ cha doing, Dad?’
    â€˜Come hear the music play!’ said Guy.
    Felix sat on the bed and listened. Guy played ‘Yellow Submarine’ (rather badly) for him, then ‘How Much is that Doggy in the Window?’ Felix fetched a pile of music books. ‘My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean’, no thanks. ‘Oh Susannah’. Oh hell, thought Guy. Why did everything, all his stupid thoughts, come back to this? If only he could stop having thoughts, if only they could get away. Get away! What a dolt, what a dunderhead, what a dunce not to have thought of it before!
    Susannah had spent hours poring over brochures of holiday cottages, circling some in coloured felt pen and then making longlists and finally shortlists. She consulted Guy and would let him pick from the list she had drawn up. It was very strange that his first choice always turned out to have been booked already, and that the one she favoured always happened to be free. This time Guy would draw up the shortlist and let Felix decide on the first choice. There was still a pile of brochures behind the sofa, now several years out of date. Guy rang up for new ones. Wales, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset. He wasn’t sure which was best. Maybe North Wales was the place for a father and son holiday. He pictured them climbing mountains, placing a small rockeach on the cairn at every summit, maybe a bit of kayaking … or at least playing football or Frisbee on some almost empty golden beaches. Maybe they should borrow a dog to take along.
    â€˜This one is in Wales, and Wales is the one with the dragon on the flag, right?’ said Felix when Guy showed him the brochures and the shortlist.
    â€˜Right,’ said Guy.
    â€˜I like this one,’ said Felix. ‘It has a swing in the front garden.’
    That settled it.
    They crawled along the A5.
    â€˜We would have got there quicker if we’d walked,’ said Felix. He was feeling sick. At Little Chef they’d been told it was a three-quarters-of-an-hour wait for hot food. They’d ordered chocolate cake. It had been damp and heavy. And now that they were in Wales …
    â€˜It doesn’t always rain in Wales,’ said Guy. It had the ring of ‘You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here …’
    Oh, the A5, thought Guy. The A5. If only it were as small and neat as a piece of A5. How they would zip across that. If only the journey to the holiday house could be as smooth and frictionless as tearing along the diagonal folded valley of a sheet of A5. If only they could just zoom along the hypotenuse … but they were stuck in a long line of traffic. The Misselthwaites’ old Golf, though reliable and fast enough, was woefully inadequate for this trip. It had no top box, no bikes on the back, and seats for just five people, only two of which were occupied. And their luggage! Well,Guy had tried, but even with a football and a plastic cricket set it didn’t amount to much, and the view through the rear window was