Turf or Stone Read Online Free Page A

all. No loss,’ he shouted.
    Mary was aghast at his brutality. He had been a peculiar unsatisfied lover. He bid fair to make a terrifying husband. She stared through the windows of the bus, and women leaning over their heaped-up baskets stared back openly.
    The bus moved on. Mary stood absolutely still until it had gone. Then she followed. She walked to Salus by the river. Before the frost had set in there had been floods, and they had left the low water meadows gritty and littered with rotten sticks. Bundles of brushwood like untidy nests were tangled in the withy branches, draggling in the red swift river, whose turbid water poured with solid volume through the arches of the bridge. The path through the meadows was solitary; beneath the rusty wishing-gates which squeaked and creaked on their bent hinges, were puddles of ice; the grass, the empty iron seats, all were the same dismal brownish hue. A few ponies with their long, youthful manes flowing, hung their faces mournfully over a gate into the high road.
    * * *
    The carter, having concluded his business, stood with his arm on the rough counter of the canteen in the cattle market, his hand on an empty pint measure which he was pushing across to the man on the other side. The man, huge, a tower of fat and irritability, was a bit of a bruiser. You had to be careful what you said to him! He grabbed the measure and attended to other men.
    The carter’s eyes swept over the market square. A little boy was running the length of the pig pens, switching every pig in reach with a thin, supple stick; a cow was bellowing; across on the greensward two cheapjacks were trying to shout each other down. Their hoarse blaring voices cut across the general din. A crowd had assembled about them, throwing in words now and then, jeering orfacetious, but seldom buying. Pink and grey pigeons waddled between the marketers’ feet, pecking at wisps of straw from the cheapjacks’ crates, and sidling in a deliberate heavy fashion away from the traffic. Close to him three or four men in leggings and heavy boots inclined their heads towards a drover who was binding his hand with a green handkerchief. The carter saw big blood stains forming. The man must have a bad cut….
    He did not want another drink yet. He strolled out of the market up the steep hill, into the Town. Salus was busy – thronged with women in groups on the pavements, an outer circle of parcels and baskets projecting so far from their backs that it was impossible to get by without stepping into the road. The market hall swarmed. It was too early in the year for the colourful flower stalls… the bartering was for carcasses and butter and eggs.
    The women held all the centre of the town. In the high street before The George, men spread right across the road. The glass doors opened and shut; it was barely twelve o’clock and custom was waxing.
    Neither nature nor necessity hurried the carter: leisurely in movement, as in disposition, he made his way to The George and drank another pint. Emerging, he saw Mary on the opposite side of the street, by the saddler’s. She was walking away from him fast; before he could get clear of the crowd she was a long way ahead, work as he would with his powerful, thrusting shoulders, in spite of the unexpected sinuousness he displayed in gliding through narrow apertures, where rough and ready shoving would have been the only means employed by smaller and more avid persons. He attained the opposite pavement in time tosee her turn into a teashop which had been newly established in the Ticestor Road. He followed her, feeling conspicuous and ashamed. He stayed several minutes outside the shop before he could make up his mind to go in, gazing through the glass window at the people inside… he saw an expectant-looking waitress in a green linen dress standing with her eyes fixed on the door, and another very young girl who, with her slender arm stretched out, hung intent over the tray of cakes in the