Toby.â
âBut why didnât the lamb come of its own accord?â
âJust look at him! Heâs a big fellow, with a big head. Heâll be all right now, though.â He looked down at Vicky. âBut you wonât be all right if you sit there in the rain much longer. And youâll catch a cold with your hair so wet.â He stooped and picked up the bucket, then held out his other hand to Vicky. âCome along now.â
She put her hand into his and he pulled her to her feet. They stood smiling into each otherâs faces.
He said, âItâs good weâre talking.â
âYes,â said Vicky. âIâm sorry.â
âJust as much my fault.â
Vicky looked shy. She smiled again, ruefully, the smile turning down the corners of her mouth. âDonât letâs quarrel again, Tom.â
âMy grandfather used to say lifeâs too short for quarrels.â
âI havenât said how sorry I am ⦠about him ⦠weâre all at a loss. I donât know how to say it properly.â
âI know,â said Tom. âSome things donât have to be said. Come along now.â
They seemed to have forgotten about Toby. They walked away from him, up the field, with Tomâs arm around Vicky, and Vickyâs wet head on his shoulder.
He watched them, and felt satisfied. Mr. Sawcombe would have been pleased. He would have been pleased about Daisyâs twins, as well. The second lamb was indeed a handsome fellow, not simply a whopper as Tom had described him, but with beautiful even markings and a pair of horns, like buds, already visible, bedded in soft, curly wool. He wondered what Mrs. Sawcombe would call this lamb. Perhaps she would call him Bill. He stayed until it grew too wet and cold to stand any longer, so he turned his back on the sheep and started to walk home.
His mother returned from her visit to Mrs. Sawcombe and gave him a splendid tea of fish fingers and chips and beans and plum cake and chocolate biscuits and cocoa. While he ploughed his way through this, he told her of the great adventure with Daisy. â⦠and Tom and Vicky are friends again,â he told her.
âI know.â His mother smiled. âHeâs taken her off in the Land-Rover. Vickyâs having her supper at the Sawcombesâ.â
After tea Tobyâs father came home from the office, and they watched football together on television, and then Toby went upstairs to have a bath. He lay in the hot, steaming water that smelt of pine essence on account of he had stolen some out of Vickyâs bottle, and decided that, after all, it hadnât been too bad a day. And then he decided to go and pay a call on his Granny, whom he had not seen all day.
He got out of the bath, put on his pyjamas and dressing gown, and went down the passage that led to her flat. He knocked at the door and she called âCome in,â and it was like going into another world, because her furniture and curtains and things were so different to those in the rest of the house. No other person had so many photographs and ornaments, and there was always a little coal fire burning in the grate, and by this, in her wide-lapped chair, he found his Granny, knitting. As well, she had a book on her knee. She had television but she didnât enjoy it too much. She preferred to read, and Toby always thought of her deep in some book or other. But whenever he interrupted her, she would place a leather bookmark between the pages, close the book, and lay it aside so as to give him her undivided attention.
âHello, Toby.â
She was terribly old. (Other boysâ grandmothers were often quite young, but Tobyâs was very old because, like Toby, his father, too, had been an after-thought.) She was thin, as well. So thin that she looked as if she might snap in two, and her hands were almost transparent, with big knuckles over which she could not get her rings,