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The boy padded along the back of the house where the shabby thatch was so low that it pricked him through his jersey as he grazed by the edge. Stinging nettles and docks made a rank and painful jungle here, and he was glad to reach the side of the house where the hens had pecked a bare patch. A little window looked out on this side and Bob peered within.
As far as he could see, it was Lucy's primitive larder. A dish or two stood on the shelves, and some onions were hanging from a hook. There seemed to be little more, except for cobwebs.
The front of the house was in full moonlight. Two small windows, cracked and grimy, glinted in the moon's brilliance. Through one Bob could see little, for a tattered curtain obscured his view, but he heard the sound of a cat jumping to the floor, as though he had been observed, and the cat was making for cover.
All around him was silence. His heart had ceased to thump so dreadfully, but he still sweated with fright and die nape of his neck felt tight with terror. As he edged along to look into the remaining window, the clock of St Patrick's struck twelve, and the boy froze with renewed horror. Now was the witch's hour!
As the last clear note died away into the warm stillness, Bob looked into Lucy's living room. Moonlight lit the dishevelled apartment, and at first sight it appeared empty. Then suddenly, in the shadow beneath die window, Bob saw a dark figure roll from a low couch or mattress hard against the wall. He shrank back, out of sight, his mouth dry with fear.
Lucy was clad in her daytime black, her grey hair looked wilder than ever in the light of the moon. Her crazy eyes and one long tooth glinted from the shadows as she stumbled, muttering, about the room.
She snatched a black shawl from the tumbled bed and dung it round her shoulders. From a peg on the door she clawed an old black trilby hat of the long-dead Seamus's, and clapped it on her eldritch locks. Then, with purposeful haste, she emerged from her door and made her way towards the lean-to.
But before she reached the broomstick, Bob Widet had fled.
'So you never found out,' I commented, as Mr Will' finished.
'I found out one thing,' said Mr Wilier grimly. 'And that was not to go scaring folk at night. My dad heard me coming in and caught me on the stairs. I got a cuff on the ear as made me see stars as well as moon that night, I can ted 'ee.'
He paused for a moment, contemplating that distant night encounter.
'Looking back now, I'd lay a wager the poor of gal was making for her privy in the lean-to, but that warn't in my mind at the time, as you can guess.'
He rose stiffly from the gravestone and picked up the bill-hook.
'Wed, best get back to work, I s'pose. But it makes you think, don't it? You see, I reckons I was as keen to believe in my witch, as little of Joe is to believe in his King of the Sea. It's a sort of hunger, if you takes my meaning.'
'"More things in heaven and earth, Horatio",' I quoted. Mr Widet looked a little startled.
'I wouldn't know about Horatio,' said Mr Willet reasonably. 'I'm only telling you my opinion.' And he resumed his onslaught on the long grass.
The next day Amy came to tea. She was elegant in a new brown and white dog-tooth check suit which I much admired.
'You could have bought it for yourself,' said Amy. 'It's been in the window of Bakers in Caxley High Street for over a week.'
'I haven't been to Caxley for three weeks,' I said. 'Nor anywhere else, come to think of it.' Amy pursed her hps impatiently.
'Are you ever going to get yourself out of this rut?' she demanded. 'You were excessively naughty about that Devon job, and ad because you didn't want poor little Lucy Colgate to come here.'
'Poor little Lucy Colgate,' I pointed out with some warmth, 'weighs over eleven stone, and is the last person on this earth needing anyone's pity—great, smug, insensitive lump of self-congratulation that she is!'
'Now, now!' warned Amy. 'You see what I mean? You are getting positively warped living alone here—a mass of neuroses—coveting my suit, and now picking poor Lucy to bits.'
'Let's have some tea,' I said. 'It might sweeten me.'
She followed me into the kitchen, and watched me stack a tray.
'My cousin teds me,' she said, 'that there is an excellent post going at a comprehensive school in her town. I think she said there arc four thousand puplis and two swimming pools.'
'Good luck to them!' I said. 'But I prefer thirty-six pupils and two buckets of drinking water. And who knows? I may live long enough in Fairacre to see water laid on to the school! No, Amy, "I won't be druv!"'
Later, we walked across to our Harvest Festival. It was a perfect evening of mellow September sunshine. Through the west window the golden sun lit the nave and burnished the sheaves of corn and ad our offerings of fruit and dower.
Mrs Pratt was bumbling happdy at the organ, improvising a voluntary until such time as the vicar and choir entered. As this was an important festal day in Fairacre, and the church was suitably crammed, there would be a procession from the west door down the nave.
Suddenly there was a scuffling noise behind us, the west doors were thrown open, and the sunlight streamed in. Bathed in its golden light the choir and the vicar slowly made their way eastward while we scrambled to our feet.
Come, ye thankful people, come!
Raise the song of harvest home!
we sang fortissimo.
Mrs Pringle, foremost among the contraltos, swayed past me lowing powerfully. Mr Willet was not far behind, holding his own among the basses. Ahead, several of my puplis, unnaturally clean and holy, raised their voices in song.
It was good, I thought suddenly, to be taking part in something which had happened in this church for many years, without fail, an act of thanksgiving for the harvest which surrounded this ancient building on every side. Just so did Sally Gray, Fred Hurst, poor Job the Fairacre ghost, Mrs Next-Door and a host of others who now lay so quietly outside these walls, rejoice together, as we did, for mercies received. I looked about me. Amy, friend of many years, stood by my side. In front of me I could see Elsie Blundell and her husband. Two pews ahead were Mr Annett, from Beech Green, and his wife Isobel with Malcolm, my god-child, and dear Miss Clare. My eye roamed to the chancel where the choir was now in place and still singing lustily. Mr Willet's honest face was red with his exertions, and I remembered, with affection, the story of his midnight adventure.
How right he was, I thought! We do ad need a story, as he said. There is a hunger in us which needs to be assuaged. With what avidity I have listened to my neighbours' accounts of tales of long ago, and with what unfailing curiosity I observe the happenings of today!
Here, around me, are all the folk of Fairacre, both the quick and the dead. The story of the village goes back a long, long time; and it still goes on. Every hour that we live the story unfolds, now tragic, now comical, but always and everlastingly absorbing.
Can you wonder that we are never dull in Fairacre?
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MISS READ is the pen name of Mrs. Dora Saint, who was born on April 17, 1913. A teacher by profession, she began writing for several journals after World War II and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, but she is especially beloved for her novels of English rural life set in the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955 by Michael Joseph Ltd. in England and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Miss Read continued to write until her retirement in 1996. In 1998 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. She lives in Berkshire.
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