Digging to Australia by Lesley Glaister Read Free Book Online Page A

long day ahead. It was only mid-morning and already my stomach growled for food. I paused to read the inscription on another stone. And then I heard whistling. Tuneless, human whistling. I looked all around me. There was no one. The whistling sounded odd. Distant and yet loud as if echoing in a lofty space. The only place it could be coming from was the church. The great arched double doors were fastened with an outsize padlock and chains, but there was a gap between them and I pressed one eye against it and, squinting into the dimness, I saw I didn’t know what. A huge stretching complex structure, struts and joints and spaces which seemed almost to fill the interior of the church.
    At first I couldn’t see the man, but I could hear his whistling, and the sound echoed in the great cavernous space above him. The tune was ‘He Who Would Valiant Be.’ As I watched, the man moved out of the darkness and stood for a moment where I could see him. He was a small man with a sharp face. He held a screwdriver. I noticed that the floor he was standing on was earth, that there was none of the paraphernalia you might expect to find in a church, no altar, no pews, not even a proper floor. The man moved around as if he was at home, stepping over the struts of the construction without a glance. He turned his back to me and bent to do something with his screwdriver. He continued whistling until he’d completed his task, then stood up. He remained motionless for a moment and then turned and looked directly at me, or directly at the gap between the doors. I stood hastily aside.
    â€˜If you wish to come in, come round the side,’ he called. His voice was posh like a newsreader on the radio. I walked quickly towards the hedge, wishing to escape back into the privacy of the playground, but from behind me there was a sharp whistle, of the sort boys do through their fingers. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. He was outside now, watching me.
    â€˜Where are you scuttling off to?’ he asked. ‘And what were you doing spying on me like that? You could give a fellow quite a turn. Are you curious? Curiosity killed the cat, they say, but I won’t do you any harm.’
    I did not want him to watch my secret way into the playground, so I turned towards him. He didn’t sound the dangerous type, and anyway, I felt reckless. The letter in my pocket had opened a chink in my life, offered me a new glimpse of myself. I had the feeling that I had stepped into a new world with different rules. Only I didn’t know the rules. The man was foxy with the rusty shadow of bristles on his sharply angled cheeks. But his eyes were not fox eyes, not narrow and sly. They weren’t any colour I can name and they were blank. Not blindly and not stupidly blank, just open to what they saw, as if he did not see through a fence of judgements. He just saw. He gazed into my eyes, until I looked down, afraid of what he might see.
    â€˜What’s your name?’ he asked.
    â€˜Jacqueline,’ I said without hesitation, surprising myself.
    â€˜A charming name. Are you known as Jacqui?’
    â€˜Always Jacqueline,’ I said.
    â€˜From the French,’ he observed. ‘Were they hoping for a son, your parents?’
    â€˜Oh no, they wanted a girl. She did anyway.’
    â€˜Would you accept a cup of tea?’ he asked. I nodded and followed him into the church through a narrow side door which I had failed to notice before. After the brightness outside, the interior of the church was dark. Shafts of light penetrated the gaps at the tops of the windows and fell in spots on the floor and the walls. It smelled of earth and wood-shavings and the ground was littered with these, like curls of gold where the light caught them.
    â€˜Why don’t you switch the lights on?’ I asked.
    He chuckled. ‘I light a candle or two in the evenings. No electricity, you see.’
    â€˜Are you here in the evenings