Read Online Eden Falls by Jane Sanderson - Free Book Online Page B

gazed balefully at the world. Angus was trying hard, but failing, to love Timothy. The creature’s pink eyes were unsettling, and he shrank from human contact. Angus squatted in front of the hutch for a while and stared at his pet. Timothy, unblinking, stared back. In a box by the hutch were some carrots, and Angus considered them now, trying to decide if his rabbit deserved the treat. No, he decided. He shook his head firmly at Timothy and stood, then took two carrots anyway and went looking, instead, for pit ponies. They grazed on the common after retirement and they were so accustomed to human contact that Angus had once persuaded one to follow him into the kitchen. By the time it was discovered he was feeding the pony Cox’s Orange Pippins from the fruit bowl. Lilly had hit the roof, Angus had cried and the pony had bolted, smashing two tureens and a milk jug on its way out. Now he understood that ponies were strictly an outdoor diversion, but he knew their haunts and they knew his.
    ‘Don’t go too far, Gussy.’ This was Eve, who had followed him through the back door and now watched him opening the gate to go onto the common. ‘Tea time soon.’ He smiled at her and waved a carrot, and Eve went back into the kitchen.
    ‘Where are the girls?’ She could tell from the quiet that her daughters weren’t in the house.
    ‘Eliza’s at that Evangeline’s again,’ Lilly said. ‘She’ll end up with rickets at this rate.’
    ‘I doubt it, Lilly,’ said Eve. ‘It’s not caused by ballet dancing.’
    ‘Mary Sylvester ’as bow legs from rickets.’
    Eve looked at her. ‘From rickets, yes, not from ballet. And it’s because she’s half-starved, not because she likes dancing.’
    ‘Aye, well.’
    Lilly snapped out the tea towel she’d been using and it cracked like a pistol. She folded it twice and hung it on the brass rail in front of the range. ‘That’s me done then.’
    ‘Is Ellen in?’ Eve said.
    ‘Outside wi’ mine. Doubtless black bright by now, though that pinafore was clean on this morning.’
    ‘It’ll wash.’ Eve walked to the back door and looked out. Four children squatted in a circle at the back of the garden where the grass met the hawthorn hedge. Ellen, true to her reputation, had mud on her frock and a headdress of leaves and fern. Her face was flushed with the effects of recent exertion and fresh air. She was talking: issuing instructions, no doubt. She had a long stick in one hand, and she stood suddenly, wielding it like a spear and making a fearsome, ululating war cry, which her gang immediately, obediently, imitated. Eve called her name, shouting over the racket, and Ellen, sensing rather than hearing her, scowled.
    ‘Mam! We’re busy.’ She looked like Seth had at the same age: plain as a pikestaff, with her dad’s ears jutting out like the handles on a sugar bowl and a pugnacious little face to match her hard-boiled personality. She kept her hair as short as she was allowed, and if she could have worn shorts in place of her pinafore, she would have done.
    ‘Come on, Sitting Bull. Time for tea.’
    Lilly materialised beside Eve on the back doorstep. ‘Cheerio then,’ she said. She’d hung her housecoat on a peg in Eve’s kitchen and was shrugging herself into a lumpy green cardigan, which at least had the advantage of making her look plumper. She was skin and bone, always had been. Even now, when she had her own weekly pay packet from Eve and two of her boys had jobs at Long Martley Colliery, she still looked as if she lived on potato water. She stepped out onto the path and without raising her voice said, ‘Right,’ and her children, responding at once to the higher authority, stood up and cut shamefaced looks of apology at Ellen.
    ‘That parkin’s all gone,’ Lilly said to Eve. ‘And you’ve no milk.’
    She walked off, her dishevelled posse trailing behind her. Ellen flung her spear over the hedge and onto the common. She had a good arm and a good eye; in a