Shelter from the Storm Read Online Free Page A

been told many times — that it was the reflection of evil. Parents in the village drummed into their daughters that they were never under any circumstances to go anywhere near him, but Dryden knew as well as anybody that the Devil always cast himself in irresistible forms and several of the girls in the village had proved that to be true. It was as though they were drawn by the silence, the very wickedness.
    That morning Dryden was well aware that his half-brother Tom Cameron had come into the pub just after him. Tom had lots of friends and they came in with him, talking and laughing and shouting at the landlord, who was shouting back at them. Tom was about to get married. Dryden knew this because he worked alongside Tom and was often in the same pub and he heard the talk and the jokes. Tom was to be married to Vinia Brown on Easter Saturday. That was only a week away.
    Vinia Brown lived in a little house by herself in Irish Back Street. Dryden could not understand why Tom was marrying her. He could have her as often as he wanted, so why bother? She worked in Miss Applegate’s shop at the top of the Store bank,just up from the Store’s drapery department, and she was one of the few girls in the village who really, really disliked him. Dryden didn’t understand that; he hadn’t done anything to her. He knew when people were deliberately ignoring him. Some of the better-off lasses did that and it was all right, but Vinia looked straight through him, like the nasty cold wind off the fell which wouldn’t go around and cut your face. And then he realised why it was. It was because she was going to marry Tom.
    Dryden stood by the bar and drank his beer and didn’t bother anybody, and Tom and his friends at the far end of the bar became very drunk and the drunker they became the more they took up of the bar until everybody else moved away, because they understood what it was like when you were only a week away from being shackled. The laughter got louder, the beer was drunk and they occupied all the bar except the corner where Dryden was standing. He was just about to move well out of their way when Wesley Mathers backed into him and turned around, glaring.
    ‘Come out the bloody road, you!’ he said.
    Dryden was bigger than him; he was bigger than most of the young men in the village except Tom. Tom was a giant. Dryden didn’t say anything. It wasn’t cowardice, it was common sense. There were at least ten of them. They would have no compunction at all in kicking him senseless. He would have moved except that Wes was very drunk and didn’t let him, knocking into him again on purpose and waiting for his reaction. Dryden did nothing. Wes called him ‘a gypo bastard’ and then picked up Dryden’s beer and poured it over him. Dryden lost his temper and went for him. And then for the first time ever he was suddenly very close to his brother. Tom got in between them pulling Wes away, and then with his back to Dryden he was saying into Wes’s face, ‘Nay, nay, lad.’
    ‘He thinks he can drink in here with other people. Black bastard!’
    In all of Dryden’s eighteen years nobody had ever defended him against anything and he could not believe it was happening.
    ‘I promised her. No fights,’ Tom said.
    ‘You shouldn’t let him in here, George!’ Wes shouted at the landlord.
    Dryden was feeling better, in spite of the fact that he was soaked. Tom turned around.
    ‘Do you want another drink?’ he asked.
    ‘No thanks,’ Dryden said, and he levered himself away from the bar and walked out.
    After that he felt worse. It had taken Tom eighteen years to speak to him. They worked together, they lived five minutes’ walk away, but neither Tom nor their mother, Mary, had ever acknowledged him in any way, and he did not see why things should be different now. It was not right that Tom should make him feel anything positive. He was glad of the anger. He went out and walked a long way across the moors. The wind dried his