Black Sheep by Susan Hill Read Free Book Online

reach far, without a breath of wind to carry them. The village and the pit were not visible but the fine veil of black like a swarm of bees in the sky showed where they lay.
    Ted thought that he would like to come here, lie down and sleep on the grass. On a cloudless night there might be less of a pall from the pit obscuring the moon and stars in the sky.
    Twice since the date for starting at the pit had been fixed, he had spoken up about not wanting to go, but if they had listened, John and Evie Howker had not replied, and everything raced on towards his first day, like a train without brakes.
    Rather than wait for a cloudless night, he lay down on the ground now, at the side of the track. The dry grass pricked through his shirt, and when he looked up, he saw that the sky was milky in the heat. No one much came up this far from the village because they felt unsafe in the wideness, without the usual bounds of houses and hill, and because they did not know what to do here or altogether trust it.
    â€˜Now then.’
    A man stood over him, rough-faced and with his boots so close Ted could see the cracks and creases in the old leather. He sat up. But the man only stood looking down at him with a mild expression. ‘Hot.’
    Ted nodded.
    â€˜Job for them to get a drop of juice out of this.’ He nodded his head to four or five sheep clumped together.
    â€˜Are they yours?’
    â€˜They are.’ He nodded again, to where the land dipped down below a cleave in the hill. ‘Crow’s Farm. You know it?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Thought you wouldn’t. All right then.’ He whistled and a sheepdog sprang up as if out of the ground itself and ran low to his side.
    Ted watched them go. The heat haze shimmered round and then absorbed them before they had reached the dip.
    That night he lay with the window wide open, the coal dust lining his nostrils. People coughed through the darkness. He got up at five and went out before the men were changing shifts. The terraces were empty, heat still coming off the house walls. One or two lights were on.
    It was cooler as he climbed up the slope. Winding sheets of mist swaddled the sheep and rested in the hollow. Ted breathed easily and the soft mist damped his skin.
    The sheepdog barked its warning of him while he was a hundred yards away and he saw it scurrying to and fro inside the gate to the farmyard. Smoke coiled out of the chimney.
    â€˜You again.’ It was not a question.
    Ted reached him and the farmer opened the gate a few inches to let him in. The dog nosed him then lay down.
    â€˜My name’s Ted Howker.’
    â€˜William Barnes.’ He did not offer his hand.
    Then Ted asked a question he had not prepared, or so much as sensed was within him to be asked. He heard it spoken as if by another, and was startled.
    â€˜Would you have any work?’
    Plates clattered briefly inside the kitchen but the farmer was silent, looking at him steadily. Ted looked back.
    â€˜What sort of work might that be?’
    â€˜Farm work.’
    â€˜You’ve done that?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜No.’
    After a minute, Ted turned away, feeling ashamed.
    â€˜Say your name again?’
    â€˜Ted Howker.’
    â€˜All right, Ted Howker, come here tomorrow. I can use a hand with the ewes. Don’t know about permanent.’
    He did not go back home for hours, but wandered about the hills and on, further than he had ever been in his life, fretting about whether to tell them at home. He found a stream which had a last dribble of brackish water in the bottom and wet his hands and face though he dared not risk drinking from it. The heat had congealed like oil. When he came near a sheep he looked at it carefully, though the animal always ambled a few yards further off, eyeing him. He did not know which were the ewes.
    But he knew that whatever the work among them was like and whether he had any aptitude for it, everything about it would be better