Read Online Catch the Fallen Sparrow by Priscilla Masters - Free Book Online Page B

them,’ he said gruffly.
    Alice turned on him fiercely. ‘Tell them what?’ she challenged.
    â€˜What you saw.’
    She gave a sudden low laugh. ‘You don’t know what I saw, Jonathan. You was sleepin’.’
    â€˜But I do know,’ he insisted, and he looked at her sideways, scratching the side of his mouth. ‘You saw it all, didn’t you?’
    She shrugged her shoulders. ‘What business is it of yours, Jonathan Rutter? Or of theirs either?’ She jerked her head towards the slope of the mountain and wiped her nose on her filthy sleeve. ‘And do you think, Jonathan, that they will leave us alone if I tells them? Do you think that will be an end to it all? No. No, I tell you, I would have to go to the court – like when they had a go at evicting us from here. I would have to testify and identify and the newspaper people would be taking pictures and then they would all know we was livin’ ’ere.’
    He grunted. ‘And why shouldn’t we stay? We don’t do no harm.’
    She gave him a quick look. ‘You don’t understand, do you, Jonathan, they don’t like us up ’ere.’
    â€˜Why ever not?’
    â€˜Because most people don’t live in caves no more.’
    â€˜More fools them,’ Jonathan sneered. ’Avin’ mortgages for places when there’s good, dry caves for the takin’.’
    â€˜They don’t like us bein’ ’ere because we is different. People only trusts what is the same as themselves. We is different, so because we is they don’t like it. That’s why they wants us to live in one of the council places in the town. Conformin’, the social workers calls it.’
    â€˜Well, I don’t want to live in one of them council places,’ he said, flinging another stiff brown blanket around his shoulders. ‘I is perfectly comfortable livin’ ere. These moors ’ave provided an ’ome for me all o’ my life ’ceptin the years I spent in the war. I won’t never leave now.’ His voice was low. ‘Perhaps you’re right. We should leave well alone. Then maybe they’ll leave us alone.’
    â€˜Huh.’ She grunted and sat back on her haunch.es, a motionless figure watching the search.
    â€˜It might already be too late,’ she said quietly, an hour later. ‘Look.’
    A red car was winding along the road, furiously swinging round the corners. At the foot of the crag the car screeched to a halt. A slim woman with yellow hair climbed out, with a man holding bulky camera equipment, and another man dressed in a thick, white sweater and Wellington boots. The woman glanced upwards and Alice and Jonathan moved back inside the cave, hidden from view by the tall rock that stuck out into the skyline like a dark, granite tombstone.
    The three put their heads together, then one of them returned to the car and pulled out a large floodlight lamp.
    The two in the cave watched fearfully. Alice spoke first. She was crying now. ‘Why did they have to bring the child here? Why did they have to come to our part? We don’t want you here.’ She stood up. ‘Go back.’
    The camera crew clumped around the car seemed to be in deep discussion. A decision was reached and slowly the man with the huge camera began aiming it at the wide sweep of moors and moving it slowly around ... the granite crag of the Winking Man, the jutting rocks, down the smooth hillside and finally into the massive dish of the valley far down below as though viewed from an aeroplane. He seemed to keep the camera trained, for a while, on the distant town of Leek. Then he removed the bulky equipment from his shoulders, and the woman stood in front of the camera and, lit by the white lamp, spoke into it.
    Jonathan shook his fist from the mouth of the cave. ‘Leave us be!’ he shouted. ‘Leave us be. Go back!’ His words were lost in the wide sweep