The Mind's Eye by K.C. Finn Read Free Book Online

complaining that all of her stockings were laddered.
Idrys watched the whole fiasco with amusement for about the first
twenty minutes, until he realised that the family would actually be
late for chapel if he didn’t do something soon.
At that point
he disappeared with Ness and reappeared about five minutes later
with her properly dressed, then wheeled me out in front of the door
and set the little girl on my knee where she was quite happy to sit
and discuss dolls. He then marched back into the house and let his
booming voice loose on the remaining populous; promising them that
if they didn’t assemble outside in five minutes flat, the preacher
would condemn them all to Hell. The first time Idrys said it
Leighton came running out of the huge door like a greyhound,
standing next to me in his little powder blue waistcoat.
    “ I bet you don’t remember what church is like, do you?” I
asked, “You didn’t even come with us last Easter.”
    “ Of course I do,” Leigh answered with a look of protest, “It’s
a bunch of old people and boring stories and all the singing’s out
of tune.”
He was right
on two counts out of the three, but I did rather enjoy the hymns
for a change. Most of them were in Welsh, which I think made God
and faith sound a little more uplifting, but that might have been
because I didn’t understand the words. The actual service itself
was a dull one, but being in the little chapel did give me a chance
to see the collected mass that was the rest of the village. Judging
by the sizeable crowd, it seemed that Bryn Eira Bach was the kind
of place where absolutely everybody went to chapel, so I was glad
to be part of the experience.
That was
until we were outside the chapel gate afterwards, when the familiar
frame of Doctor Bickerstaff started approaching us. I was stood
with Mam as she adjusted her hat against the bright autumn sun, so
I saw him coming first. He caught my eye with a familiar look of
disdain, his gaze extending to my elbows, at which I immediately
crossed my arms. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing the
badly-disguised bruises his contraptions had caused.
    “ Good morning Mrs Price,” he said as he stopped before
her.
    “ Bore da, Doctor,” Mam replied happily, “Lovely service today
wasn’t it?”
    “ Hmm,” Bickerstaff answered thoughtfully, “the preacher speaks
well on the progress of man indeed. I actually came to check on
some progress of my own.” His round blue eyes settled on me. “How
are you doing with the new treatment, Catherine?”
Thankfully
Mam’s exuberance spared me from having to answer him.
    “ Well we’ve had the splints on every night and not a word of
complaint,” Mam began, “and she’s had time every day to practice
moving herself around.”
Bickerstaff
didn’t look impressed in the least. “In that case I look forward to
seeing your progress on Friday,” he said.
    “ Friday?” I repeated.
    “ Your next appointment,” the doctor replied.
In her
attempts to make me sound good to the doctor, Mam had dropped me
smack bang in the centre of an awkward situation. The mornings I
should have spent trying to strengthen my arms to move the chair
had been reserved for stepping in and out of Mum’s head in London
and Leighton’s at the village schoolhouse. I was surprised that Mam
hadn’t noticed I was in exactly the same place where she’d put me
every time she came back to the room. Or perhaps she had and she
was just more sympathetic than the suited cretin now judging me at
the chapel gate.
    “ Same time as before, isit?” Mam asked.
Bickerstaff
nodded, which meant I had exactly 120 hours to learn how to move
more than half an inch across the floor without having a heart
attack. It was a much more daunting feat than learning to
infiltrate war-torn Europe with my mind, that was for sure, but I
would have to make a serious go of it now before the doctor caught
me out.
    “ Are we going then or what?” said a balshy voice