The Shell House Read Online Free Page A

it’s OK if Greg troughs with us, yeah?’
    ‘No problem,’ his mum said, not looking up.
    ‘I’ve got my homework still to do,’ Greg said.
    Gizzard grinned. ‘Keep forgetting you’re still a schoolboy. Don’t worry about it—what are Monday mornings for?’
    Next
weekend, Greg thought with the doomed sense of a resolution that would never be kept, he was going to get it out of the way on Saturday before starting at the pool, not leave it till Monday morning. ‘I’ll have to ring Mum, or she’ll cook dinner for me.’
    ‘Fine.’ Gizzard swung his legs round to one side and glanced at his mother to see if she was still listening. ‘There’s this girl in my Media Studies group, right?’ he began, confidingly man-to-man. ‘You ought to see her . . .’
    Only half-listening, Greg lay back on the grass. There always was some girl. Sherry, this one was called, or maybe it was Cherie like Mrs Blair, but he’d given up bothering to remember their names. Supplying enough
mms
and
uhhs
to satisfy Gizzard, he narrowed his eyes against the brightness of sky. Again, Graveney Hall came back to him, filling his mind. He thought of the way the trees opened up suddenly to reveal the glint of water, deep-shadowed on the far side; the stir of rushes as the air sighed through the stalky mass. It was in his mind, more real and vivid than the images stowed safely in his camera. Some of his mental snapshots would be translated into real ones for his art project, if he got the chance. Close-ups, he thought: the ripple of water, the spear-thrust of rush, black-and-white to bring out pattern and light. And the grotto—yes, colour for that, the swirl of blues and whites . . . He might tell Jordan; he was more likely to be interested than Gizzard, who would dismiss the place as a dismal old ruin.
    ‘Sherry’s got this friend, nearly as lush, not quite, but she’ll do for you,’ Gizzard was saying. ‘How about it, then, next Saturday night?’
    ‘Uh-uh. Thanks but no thanks.’ Last time Gizzard had tried to fix him up, it had been a disaster.
    ‘What’s up with you, then? Met someone else at school?’
    Greg shook his head, rolled over to reach for his lager can, put it to his lips and up-ended it, shaking out the last few drops.
    ‘Apart from Jordan the Turbo-charged, I mean,’ Gizzard said, with a sideways look.
    Greg lowered the can and returned an
up yours
sneer.
    ‘Just winding you up, dollop!’ Gizzard gave him a friendly punch. ‘Like getting blood out of a stone, it is, talking to you. Fancy watching the match?’

    ‘I’ve heard that this next push should be decisive,’ Edmund’s father said, at tea. ‘Maybe it won’t be many months more.’
    ‘Something must be done to relieve the pressure on the French. They can’t hold out indefinitely, around Verdun.’ The Reverend Tilley liked to give the impression of being party to the latest news. ‘You’ll be going back at just the right time, Edmund. I wish I were going with you.’
    Why don’t you, then? Edmund thought, irritably. Wasn’t there anything else to talk about, apart from the war?
Someone’s got to stay and keep up morale at
home
, the vicar would say next, with a regretful sigh. This, apparently, meant sermonizing on the evils of German militarism and choosing hymns like
Fight the
good fight with all thy might
. ‘Can it be right to take up arms, to kill another human being?’ Edmund had asked him, at the outbreak of hostilities nearly two years ago. ‘When God wills it so,’ had been the Reverend Tilley’s prompt reply.
    But how did you know what God willed and what He didn’t will? How could you know it wasn’t your own will, disguising itself? Edmund crumbled cake on his plate, thinking that if he hadn’t been prepared to be a soldier, and therefore to kill Germans, he wouldn’t have met Alex. He would have gone off to Cambridge according to plan, as his father had done at his age. He would go there still, after the inconvenient