A Postillion Struck by Lightning Read Online Free

the swifts swung and screamed, swooping in and out of the flags and banners. The Downs were hard and blue against a copper sky, big clouds crept up, like smoke from a great fire miles away, and a little cool breeze came whiffling along, making all the lights swing and dangle, and sending paper bags and chocolate wrappings scampering and eddying about the trodden grass. People ran past laughing, with red happy faces; girls with bows in their hair and braying boys wearing paper hats. The roundabout clonked up and down and round and round, the brass angels in the middle banging their cymbals together every few moments and turning their heads slowly from left to right with wide brass eyes gleaming at no-one, while the white and yellow horses, the pink pigs, and the racing, startled ostriches swung round and round petrified in enamel. Around the canopy went the words “BROWNRIGGS PLEASURE RIDE FOR FAMILIES” blurring into a ribbon of red and gold and yellow, and I went over to the stall where you threw balls into glass jars, had three go’s and won a stick of rock with Ilfracombe written through it.
    Down by the dodgem cars there was a rather nasty girl with red hair and glasses. Her name was Alice McWhirter and she was new to the village. Her father was some sort of artist, and they had taken old Mrs Maiden’s house up at Elder Lane, and, as far as we were concerned, they were foreigners. She had come and talked to my sister and me when we were fishing once, and, although we were as rude as possible, she wouldn’t go, so we’d brought her home for tea, given her a jam sandwich, made her walk along the top of a wall by the pigsty, pushed her in the nettles and sent her home alone. But she still came back for more. Lally said she was lonely and “an only child” and that her father was an artist and what could you expect with no mother, and we were to be better behaved to her because we had each other, our father was a journalist and we had a mother. She was awfully soft at times. And so we sort of got to know her a bit, and once she asked us to her house which was very small and untidy, and smelled of linseed oil and cooking. Her father was very tall, had a red beard and bare feet and swore at us, which was the only time he ever spoke while we were there. After we’d looked at their privy,her collection of moths, all lumped up together, dead in a jam jar, and a photograph of her mother, fat and laughing with glasses, and a pom-pom hat, who was also dead, she asked us if we’d like some orangeade. We said “yes” and followed her up a rather rickety stairway to the bedrooms. Although it was about tea-time the beds were still unmade, and there were clothes and old shoes all over the place. One room was very small, where she slept, and the other quite large and full of paintings and leather suitcases and a dreadful old camp bed in a corner covered in dirty sheets where her father slept. On a marble-topped table there was a big white china mug which she brought over to us very carefully. “Here you are,” she said, “Kia Ora.” And handed me the mug. It was full and heavy. And orange. I was just about to take a sip when she suddenly threw her skirts over her head and screamed, “Don’t! It’s not Kia Ora at all, it’s pee!” and fell on the camp bed laughing and laughing, with her legs going all sorts of ways.
    I put down the heavy white mug, and we just stood there staring at her for a bit. Suddenly my sister said, “I’m going home” and started off down the rickety stairs with me behind her and the awful girl still laughing on her father’s bed.
    After that we kept out of her way and never spoke to her again, but she made friends with Reg Fluke and we sometimes met them birdnesting or down in the meadow looking for slowworms.
    I stood looking at the dodgem cars clonking and bumping into each other, and the people screaming and