dozen or so of them left. Maybe fourteen—fifteen.”
“And you can manage on your own, do you think—or shall I come with you?”
It was when Mrs Bowen said something like this that Amy was made aware, with a pang, of the great difference in their ages and also of what that difference meant: Ivor would have been longing to try out the new invention. But her grandmother had done the journey once today and once, for choice, was enough. She was old, and old people were obliged to portion out their strength, having only a limited daily supply of it. Amy felt she could go up and down, up and down, again and again, and still not be tired.
“I can manage all right,” she said.
Mrs Bowen inspected the toboggan thoroughly, and admired it.
“I’m glad you thought to put that sack on the front, Amy—it could be dangerous when you come to have a spill if there’d been tin sticking up.”
“Ivor showed me what to do. I ought by rights to bang the sides up as well, so as to stop the snow coming in over—that’s what Ivor did—but I shan’t bother for now. His was a real beauty, though. He’d got some old bicycle tyres and we cut them open—I helped him—and we made holes in the tyres and holes in the corrugated and bound them over the edges with string, all round. It took us a lot of time, but it was worth it. Mine’s not as good as that, not nearly.”
“I think you’ve done it very well,” said Mrs Bowen. “You can always add a few improvements later, if you feel inclined. Do you mean to stay out much longer? I believe it’s getting colder again, if that’s possible.”
“I’ll bring a few more bales down yet. You see, Granny, what I’m planning to do is to make a wall with them—here—between these posts, and that’ll give the ewes some shelter. Oh, Granny—she wasn’t by the stack, that other one. I don’t like to think of where she’s got to.”
“No more do I,” said Mrs Bowen.
It occurred to Amy while she was collecting the next load that possibly instead of being stuck in a drift the missing ewe had taken refuge in Tyler’s Place, and with this thought in her head she stood by the haystack gazing down towards the group of trees that concealed the ruined farmhouse. It was a good way off—half a mile at least. More than that. A mile?
Amy transported two more bales to the cottage, trudged up to the top again and tobogganed down to the stack. Again she stood calculating the distance between her and that group of trees. Her legs were beginning to ache; so were her arms.
Getting there would be easy enough—she could whizz down on her tin toboggan in next to no time at all; but coming back would be harder: a long walk, uphill and out of the sun, the path uncertain, afternoon nearly over. At that moment, for no apparent reason, there flashed into Amy’s mind a remembrance of the hacker as she had last seen it. Of course! She had driven it into the top of the chopping-block, and there it had stayed, upright, its blade firmly embedded.
Amy turned away from viewing Tyler’s Place and lugged another two bales to the top of the hill.
He must have wrenched it out when he decided to use the chopping-block for a seat. Did that mean it was now lying under the snow on the floor of the shed where he—not she—had flung it?
One of the bales had slipped backwards off the toboggan. She struggled to get it on board again. Every time she had to shove or drag a bale it was bigger and heavier, she could have sworn, than the time before. Her face flushed, her thoughts troubled, Amy raised her head and immediately was overcome by astonishment.
She was so accustomed to vast acres of emptiness that at first the two black dots were almost unbelievable. They appeared to come speeding directly out of the sinking sun, down from the uplands, swooping across the snow as birds swoop through the air, coming from the west by the same way the drovers had used long ago but at a pace no drover had ever dreamed of.
“And you can manage on your own, do you think—or shall I come with you?”
It was when Mrs Bowen said something like this that Amy was made aware, with a pang, of the great difference in their ages and also of what that difference meant: Ivor would have been longing to try out the new invention. But her grandmother had done the journey once today and once, for choice, was enough. She was old, and old people were obliged to portion out their strength, having only a limited daily supply of it. Amy felt she could go up and down, up and down, again and again, and still not be tired.
“I can manage all right,” she said.
Mrs Bowen inspected the toboggan thoroughly, and admired it.
“I’m glad you thought to put that sack on the front, Amy—it could be dangerous when you come to have a spill if there’d been tin sticking up.”
“Ivor showed me what to do. I ought by rights to bang the sides up as well, so as to stop the snow coming in over—that’s what Ivor did—but I shan’t bother for now. His was a real beauty, though. He’d got some old bicycle tyres and we cut them open—I helped him—and we made holes in the tyres and holes in the corrugated and bound them over the edges with string, all round. It took us a lot of time, but it was worth it. Mine’s not as good as that, not nearly.”
“I think you’ve done it very well,” said Mrs Bowen. “You can always add a few improvements later, if you feel inclined. Do you mean to stay out much longer? I believe it’s getting colder again, if that’s possible.”
“I’ll bring a few more bales down yet. You see, Granny, what I’m planning to do is to make a wall with them—here—between these posts, and that’ll give the ewes some shelter. Oh, Granny—she wasn’t by the stack, that other one. I don’t like to think of where she’s got to.”
“No more do I,” said Mrs Bowen.
It occurred to Amy while she was collecting the next load that possibly instead of being stuck in a drift the missing ewe had taken refuge in Tyler’s Place, and with this thought in her head she stood by the haystack gazing down towards the group of trees that concealed the ruined farmhouse. It was a good way off—half a mile at least. More than that. A mile?
Amy transported two more bales to the cottage, trudged up to the top again and tobogganed down to the stack. Again she stood calculating the distance between her and that group of trees. Her legs were beginning to ache; so were her arms.
Getting there would be easy enough—she could whizz down on her tin toboggan in next to no time at all; but coming back would be harder: a long walk, uphill and out of the sun, the path uncertain, afternoon nearly over. At that moment, for no apparent reason, there flashed into Amy’s mind a remembrance of the hacker as she had last seen it. Of course! She had driven it into the top of the chopping-block, and there it had stayed, upright, its blade firmly embedded.
Amy turned away from viewing Tyler’s Place and lugged another two bales to the top of the hill.
He must have wrenched it out when he decided to use the chopping-block for a seat. Did that mean it was now lying under the snow on the floor of the shed where he—not she—had flung it?
One of the bales had slipped backwards off the toboggan. She struggled to get it on board again. Every time she had to shove or drag a bale it was bigger and heavier, she could have sworn, than the time before. Her face flushed, her thoughts troubled, Amy raised her head and immediately was overcome by astonishment.
She was so accustomed to vast acres of emptiness that at first the two black dots were almost unbelievable. They appeared to come speeding directly out of the sinking sun, down from the uplands, swooping across the snow as birds swoop through the air, coming from the west by the same way the drovers had used long ago but at a pace no drover had ever dreamed of.
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