The Girl From World’s End. Leah Fleming

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СКАЧАТЬ the shadows of her own life rolled into one.

      Yet even this shadow could not blot out the sun’s rays and fire. It was an illusion of time and circumstance, just an illusion. The sun’s life burned regardless, the crown of fire would win through with power. Each of those twenty-three seconds seemed like an eternity of suffering burned up, devoured in the heat of life.

      Would the sun ever return them to brightness? What if Joe was right and this was the end of the world? Was she fit to meet her maker, this sad, shrivelled-up, old-before-her-time woman? More than anything she longed for it to be over, for colour and life to return, for the warmth to touch her very heart as it had when she was a child so many years ago.

      She turned to look at Joe afresh, her husband, her boys, Tom and Wesley safe, this farm, her life, and young Mirren, their second chance. This was what mattered now, not the past lives.

      Suddenly the Totality was over and the shadow slipped away. Light was beginning to return. The clouds raced in, closing the curtain on the sun. There was nothing to see.

      Huge cheers went up, a stirring of relief and excitement as the dark moment passed. The moors began to clatter with the roar of vehicles and engines revving up. Normality would soon return, but Adey was transfixed by what she had witnessed; something so unexpected, so personal, enlightening.

      It felt like a message just for her–as if scales had fallen from her eyes and she saw all things anew. How small the world below looked from this perch; how magnificent were the hills around them, grey and green. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,’ she sighed.

      There was such a vivid green to the fields, a sharpness to the grey walls, a freshness of the breeze on her cheek as she raced down the slope towards the outline of Cragside. She noticed the white blossom dripping from the hawthorns, their scent wafting up her nostrils. She looked up at the frontage of their ancient farmhouse as if seeing its grandeur for the first time. This is my home, my family, she thought, though Joe might be standing in his midden clothes, still smelling of the farmyard, scratching his head at all he has seen, no doubt thinking his prayers have opened the skies. She saw Jack and Ben strolling among the crowds, eyeing the girls with interest. It was good that those two were becoming friends, but where was Mirren?

      Mirren woke in the hayloft at the sound of cheering, her eyes crusted, and she wondered where she was. Then she felt the pain in her arm and heard voices whispering down below.

      ‘Tom, behave yourself! I’ve got the breakfasts to do!’ giggled Florrie Sowerby. Mirren leaned over to see more. Tom was on his back pulling Florrie into the hay, fooling around, tussling her. What were they doing? He was jumping on her like a tup at a ewe. They were kissing and making silly noises. Wait until she told Jack.

      She was leaning so far out to see more that she rolled off the edge, falling between them with a scream. Uncle Tom lay back at the sight of her, laughing, scratching his head in surprise.

      ‘Look what’s jumped out of the hay.’

      ‘I’ve hurt me arm,’ she sobbed.

      ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Florrie, trying to examine it. ‘I don’t like the look of this, love…It’ll need a looking-at and some of Dr Murray’s bone-setting liniment and plaster of Paris.’

      The two lovebirds straightened down their clothes and made for the door. Jack came tearing across the yard and in through the barn door.

      ‘Did you see it, Mam?’ he said, looking up at them all with a cheeky grin on his face.

      ‘Of course,’ Florrie smiled. ‘It were that grand it made my eyes water. It makes you think…’

      Mirren began to howl again, great rasping sobs that brought all her family running.

      ‘Does it hurt that bad?’ Uncle Tom asked.

      ‘I missed it,’ she sobbed. ‘I missed it all. I were asleep and they never waked me.’ She stared hard at Jack, one of her darkest glowers. It was then that Uncle Wes took a snap of her holding her elbow and scowling with his little box camera.

      Gran gathered her up to comfort her, trying not to touch the sore bit. ‘Don’t fret on it, lass. Happen you’ll be young enough to see it again,’ was all she could offer. ‘I nearly missed it myself and that would have been a great pity, Mirren. There’ll be no second chance for me.’

      If only she’d stayed in her own room and out of mischief but she had to go following Jack Sowerby It was all his fault and she wasn’t ever going to speak to him again; not never.

      ‘Look at the mess!’ shouted Uncle Tom, surveying the litter over the fields. No sooner had the world and his wife departed, and the farmers mopped their brows and counted the cash, than the real price was there to see. There were makeshift camps and fires, broken bottles, tyre marks and ruts and spilled petrol cans.

      ‘The dirty buggers!’

      ‘Thomas! Not in front of the children, please,’ shouted his mother.

      Before the day was over there was news of other farms where lambs were caught and roasted on makeshift spits over fires.

      ‘Never again!’ sighed Tom.

      Mirren had had to have her arm set in plaster down in Scarperton and that meant a trip on the bus and more expense, so she offered her cash and then out it came about Jack’s little scheme. Gran was not impressed.

      ‘I can’t leave you lot, five minutes…Now there’s doctor’s bills to pay and the house to clean out. Those mucky beggars from Bradford left the bedrooms in a tip. They’ve broken crockery, and my fancy towels are missing and the little china horse that belonged to Great-Aunt Susannah. Don’t go asking me to take in lodgers again, not so much as a please and thank you, and them with a car and a chauffeur.’

      ‘Oh, don’t take on so,’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘They’re only things. They can be replaced. Pity the poor devils who’ve to go back to soot and smoke and toil. Town folk don’t know how to behave in the country. They think it’s a big park to play in. They forget it’s our livelihood, but no mind…’

      Mirren emptied her pockets of coins and put the whole lot on the table with a scowl.

      ‘There’s three shillings in coppers and two shilling pieces and sixpence…You can have that, Gran, for my doctor’s bill,’ she sighed. The furry sweets she was keeping back in her pocket. No one was having those.

      ‘We’ll put it in your piggy bank for a rainy day,’ Gran said, siding it all away. ‘I have to admit it was a grand do seeing such wonders in the sky.’

      Mirren scowled again. ‘But I didn’t see any of it, it’s not fair…’ She turned for sympathy but none was coming.

      ‘You can take that look off your face, young lady. Life’s not fair and the sooner you learn that lesson, the better.’

      Adey reckoned there were three miracles delivered on that June morning. The first was the easy one: the opening of the clouds to let them have the only clear view of Totality in the entire country. But the second was much harder to quantify. It was as if that eclipse brought such a change in their household and in herself that even she couldn’t understand. It wasn’t so much as if she got in the habit of cracking smiles more often or bothering a bit more about what she dolled herself up in, it was more as if she were one СКАЧАТЬ