Read Online Healer by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page B

make it an even contest; in fact, you might have thought the garden had been actually built for the purpose, though obviously the trenches were really there to allow Mr. Stott to garden comfortably from his chair.
    Almost accidentally Barry glanced at the view, and all of a sudden his whole focus changed. Mr. Stott and his garden and the game had been odd enough to occupy his conscious attention, and he had been only vaguely aware of height and of the whistling spaces around the bungalow. It was a soft midwinter morning, moist but clear. The valley and its buildings were out of sight, and beyond it stone-walled fields rose to moorland and the ancient shapes of hills pocked and moulded by mine workings. None of the tips and tracks and conduits had been used for more than fifty years, and now most of them had begun to look like natural outcrops of underlying rock. Even where they were still obviously man-made they seemed to have moved outside ordinary time and become as immeasurably old as the great stone circle up at Ferriby. Above them all hung the grey sky full of this wide, soft wind. It was easy to feel, up here, that you were as much a creature of the air as of the earth. Barry had said it was a funny place for someone with a bad leg to live. Now he realised it was a funny place for anyone to live. It was very different from 9 Viola Street, but the two houses had one thing in common: They were ways of being alone.
    Barry was trying to see whether he could actually spot Ferriby—not the circle but the parking lot—when the bellows of the game were joined by screams. Mr. Stott’s manoeuvre had worked. He had surprised Pinkie by a sudden reverse and met her head on in the central trench. She fled, screaming, making no attempt to dodge around a corner. Mr. Stott was racing up behind her, yelling that he was going to get her now, when she shot up the ramp to the porch and clung to Barry, burying her head in his chest and making a noise which could have been real screams. Mr. Stott braked with the step of his chair only a couple of inches from her calves.
    â€œBloody cheating,” he roared. “Hand her over.”
    â€œNo! No! No!” screamed Pinkie.
    â€œBayonet the both of you!”
    â€œThat’s a star game, sir.”
    Mr. Stott snorted so violently that he might have been trying to blast his moustache off. Barry smiled. Pinkie’s screams were clearly laughter now.
    â€œYou’ve got a terrific view, sir. I was trying to see Ferriby.”
    â€œCan’t—just around the corner. Beat you that time, young woman. Let’s have some cocoa.”
    On the way back in the bus Barry said, “What’s the problem then?”
    Pinkie looked at him and shook her head. She was almost right back into her usual self. All the time at Mr. Stott’s she had been more like other kids, fidgety, overexcited, a bit of a nuisance. Barry had walked up on the moor after cocoa, telling himself he was giving them a bit of time to themselves, but really more to get away from Pinkie. That wasn’t the Pinkie he wanted, a kid sister, a spoiled one, too. Mr. Stott would obviously do anything for her…Or was it that Barry minded about her not needing him while she had Mr. Stott? Yes, probably. Anyway, he let some of that come out now.
    â€œLook, kid, didn’t I tell you? I was supposed to be going for a bike ride with Ted this morning, but I cried off because you gave me the signal you had a problem. I’m not going to do this again unless you can stick to the rules. We agreed it had to be something important. I’ve got better things to do with my time. And money.”
    (That rankled, too. He’d only worked out too late that if he told Mrs. Proudfoot that he was going over to Dallington anyway, he couldn’t then ask her to pay for his bus fare. It had had to come out of his jam jar.)
    â€œWas important,” said Pinkie.
    â€œYou just said there wasn’t