Her Hungry Heart Read Online Free

away from the mirror, perching still on the running board. She looked at Cassandra.
    ‘The cook. I’m going to live with the cook. I’m going to be a scullery maid while I learn. I’m allowed to attend school and play with the princes and be a friend for the princess after all my chores are done. Mr Joe and Mashinka have fixed it for me.’
    ‘Mashinka is your mother. Won’t she miss you?’
    Mimi felt a hint of tears in her eyes, suppressed at once. Just at that moment she was whirled around by the pedlar. He attacked her shoes with a dirty rag, giving them an extra burnish. He pulled on the hem of her dress and smoothed the wrinkles with his hand. Again in Polish, ‘What more can they expect? You’ve been riding in a lorry since before six this morning.’ Then, tossing the damp handkerchief to Cassandra, he told her, ‘You clean up a little, too. Your hands. The cook might offer you something. Maybe comb your hair?’ From the shelf above the seat, reaching under a box heavy with the weight of his extra stock of brown paper bags, he withdrew a clean, well-pressed shirt. He stripped off the sweat-stained one he wore, and passed a comb through his own hair. He turned away from the girls,distancing himself by several steps, to undo the wide, worn leather belt, tucked his shirt neatly in, buckled and re-buttoned his trousers, before turning his attention again to the two FBI men.
    They walked together to the rear of the lorry whence the pedlar snatched a large brown paper bag. Snapping it open, he filled it with peaches, plums and cherries. ‘Be good to her,’ he told the two FBI men. ‘An insurance policy.’ And he waved four large yellow bananas at them before he popped them into the bag.
    ‘Jesus, Joe, that’s great, thanks. But this kid, Joe? What do you think it’ll take to get her to smile? Have you ever seen her smile?’
    ‘Never. Years I know her. And the mother, a drunkard. Never lets the kid out of the house. No school, no nothing. But a good woman. Poor as a church mouse. Crazy she is for Mimi, worships the ground the kid walks on. She comes not twenty miles from where I was born, but like me she’s a long time away from the old country. Not even when Tatayana was alive did she smile. She was a woman, a teacher, who lived with them. A lotta tragedy there. It’s some story. They’re only in America since maybe three, four years. The brother, he was a no-good drunk. Took ’em in, and then died. So they lived off his pension. And now Mashinka hasn’t got long to live. Cancer. Believe me, our children should never go through what Mimi has. But what can you do? That’s life.’
    He handed Ernie the bag. ‘Jesus, Joe, you gave us too much.’
    ‘Never mind. Just be nice to Mimi. She needs friends.’
    ‘It’ll work out, Joe, but that cook will work her hard.’ The three men walked back to the cab where Mimi now stood looking up the avenue of beech trees. Mimi felt her heart racing. Could it be true that this was to be her home?
    ‘OK, Joe, you go on ahead. Jerry’s stationed at the entrance to the back drive. He’ll take you in.’
    The drive from the front gates up the beech avenue to the mansion house was just short of a mile. The grounds, over a hundred acres of them, were not especially well tended and were overgrown: paths wove through high grass where wild flowers mingled in abundance. The beech trees themselves, though neglected, were still impressive. The road boasted as much dirt as patches of gravel. There were ruts and pot holes. Beechtrees’ parkland had about it an air of comfortable wildness. It was a place of nature to which man had applied his hand, cutting a path through it without actually spoiling it. The afternoon sun filtered light through the leaves. Its dappled pattern across the road reminded Mimi of the mountain road. She could imagine how birdsong would be woven into the silence here once the rumbling of the lorry ceased. It would be the sweetest song she had ever