The Haunted Storm by Philip Pullman Read Free Book Online Page B

joining the two. The road directly behind her led through the village, past the village hall and the recreation ground, and out to the villages of Holy Ditton and Eastley. The road that joined it ahead of her was the main road to Silminster, and along it on the left were the church and the rectory, as well as the primary school and another garage. In the centre of the triangle there was a pond, a war memorial, a square of grass, a bus shelter, and a number of shops and houses.
    Elizabeth pictured it all dimly, but it was not enough to make her feel safe. There was more yet that needed to be done, just as a beginning; as for completing the work, that might take a lifetime… now why, oh, why had she run away? Coward that she was! She might have finished it all with one blow. No, no, not kill herself; all that she meant was, release him from his promise; but then she’d have had to surrender herself altogether. Though wasn’t that what she wanted? Coward that she was!
    She heard a number of men leaving the pub near the bus shelter. One or two of them were walking down towards her, talking loudly. She grew afraid they would see her. Before she had time to move they did, and one of them pointed to her. They knew who she was. They spoke to each other, and laughed. They came past the garage staring at her and she recognised one of them. Then they went on down the road and shouted something, calling her names, and they both laughed loudly. It paralysed her.
    She went back into the shadows beside the main garage building, and a lump came to her throat. The long grass wet her legs; nettles stung her. Light from a distant street lamp shone dimly on the corrugated iron, and she thought of lying down, covered with the long grass, so that she would be forgotten. Behind the garage was a field in which a rusty harrow lay abandoned, covered with grass. She wondered if he would know what it meant to lie down on wet grass and wish for oblivion. If only he had forced her to listen to him…
    Two miles away in the darkness the well lay in the wood, with the ivy dragged suddenly from its stone coping by the hands of her father. There was a quality of rape implicit in the very existence of things, and nothing was safe from it, nothing.
     
    Her mother opened the door of the sitting-room and looked out.
    “Oh! It’s you, dear,” she said. “Where on earth have you been? Oh, look at you, you’re soaking wet; come and hang your coat in front of the fire.”
    “It’s all right, mummy; don’t fuss,” said Elizabeth.
    She stood in the hall, looking and feeling a little uncertain. After a second she began to take off her raincoat. She handed it to her mother, but stayed where she was, looking downwards, puzzled.
    “What is it, dear? What’s the matter?” said Mrs. Cole.
    “Come in, come along, there’s a dreadful draught out here. Come and get warm; you’re frozen.”
    She took Elizabeth’s hand and tugged it gently, and Elizabeth followed her into the sitting room. Her mother shut the door behind them.

Chapter 3
    She had not been wrong when she had said to Matthew that she discerned morality in his eyes. Matthew had known immediately what she meant, for it – what she called morality – was the one consistent force in the universe. Instinctively, he referred everything to absolutes; he always had done. It was a nervous reaction to things – a sort of shying away from the crude elementary criss-cross patchwork of motives that governed human life “under the moon” – and when he thought about it, he put it down to the fact of his Spanish ancestry, without, however, taking that idea really seriously. His father was only half Spanish, and his mother entirely English, but to think of himself as a Spaniard in England gave depth and body to his more instinctive sense of being a stranger in the world.
    He was his parents’ second son. They had had a daughter, five years older than Matthew, but she had died when he was four. His elder