Read Online Blood on the Wood by Gillian Linscott - Free Book Online

pointing up the hill to Oliver Venn’s neat little mansion. It was perhaps unfair to Oliver Venn, given that he was after all a socialist of a kind and the host of the gathering. Still, somebody had to stand in for the capitalist system and as far as I was concerned Harry could be as unfair to him as he liked.
    â€˜They keep the best things for themselves but the pity of it is they’re so full of fear that somebody will come and take them away that they can’t enjoy them. They have food and they can’t enjoy it because they’ve lost their honest appetite. They have music and they can’t hear it because they’re too busy listening to their cash registers…’
    I noticed Daniel Venn standing opposite us, nodding vigorously when Harry talked about music.
    â€˜They have their womenfolk dressed up in clothes worth six months’ wages, but there’s no honest love or beauty there because they’ll sell themselves to the highest bidder in the marriage market…’
    Felicia? Surely not. Harry was firing at random, knowing nothing about the Venns. Anyway, why should I assume there was no honest love there?
    â€˜So remember, demand your fair wages, demand your better working conditions, demand your eight-hour day.’ A thump of his great boxer’s fist into the palm of his hand on each ‘demand’. He dropped his voice again. ‘But remember, you deserve more than that. You deserve the fine food and wines, the pictures and the music and all the beautiful things they hug to their mean and frightened little hearts, because you’re the ones who can enjoy them best. And if they won’t give them – and believe me, they won’t willingly give them – then it’s your work and duty in life to go and take them. And enjoy them.’
    Back to a roar for the last three words, and a storm of clapping and cheering. I thought: If he led a charge up the hill to the Venns’ house, I do believe they’d follow him, and more than half liked the idea. But he didn’t. He grabbed a mug of beer from somebody, put his arm back round the plump girl’s waist and drank like a man with a steelworks thirst. The music started up again, the concertina at first then the fiddle joining in. The expert dancers formed up in the space lit by the bonfire, this time without sticks. They seemed less sure of themselves, probably a new dance they were learning. They appealed to Daniel and he took over somebody’s place in the dance, calling out the moves when they wavered. In motion he was a jumping jack of a man with such buoyancy that you could tell he was having to rein himself in so as not to bound higher than the others. At one point the dancers got themselves in such a tangle that even Daniel was at a loss and the music died away. He ran a hand through his curls and called to the girl fiddler, ‘Daisy, how does it go? Is it leaders change places, then straight to two bars clap hands?’
    â€˜No. Four bars change places, six bars side step, then clap hands.’
    The fiddling girl’s voice was working class with an accent that might be Wiltshire or Berkshire.
    â€˜That’s not the way I learned it from Mr Sharp,’ he said.
    â€˜Well, he learned you it wrong then. It’s like I tell you.’
    â€˜Six bars side step it is, then. Thank you, Daisy.’
    The fiddle and concertina started up again and the dancers circled. I wondered if Daniel Venn had managed to get home yet to see his fiancée. I was curious about the relationship between the two of them. Why was he capering down here in a field instead of spending time with her? There was a pause in the music and I thought of going over to ask him if there’d been any progress about the picture, but then the violin and concertina started again and his head went up like a horse hearing the feed buckets clanking. This time it was a different kind of dance, with just four men