Touched by Joanna Briscoe Read Free Book Online Page A

and movement of his muscles, and willed him to turn. Just as she was about to give up, he did. She felt giddy. She slapped her hand, as though she herself were one of her children. Baby Caroline was crying, and the sound was a mere backdrop.
    The neglect and sprawl of the Pollards’ house was remarkable to the children who visited it. Most of the land had been sold off, but the house the Pollards rented came with a sizeable section of disused farm containing many outbuildings, a row of empty cattle pens, two nettle-run fields, and an old haystack that still sagged in a barn. On Saturday, Bob stayed at home, but the four Crale girls arrived, the perambulator stalling and jiggling over the path to the house, baby Caroline sleeping through it all.
    â€˜Welcome,’ said Pollard. ‘Have a cat,’ he said as a pair of them trotted up to Eva and thumped their bodies against her skirts. ‘Each can have a cat. We got plenty.’
    â€˜Have a cat, Pollard? To keep?’ said Eva. Excitement she barely dared trust bubbled inside her.
    â€˜If your mother and father let you. Each. The baby too. Keep ’em here if you prefer.’
    â€˜Thank
you
,’ breathed Eva.
    â€˜They’re so big,’ Jennifer murmured.
    â€˜Some of them is mated from wild cats, brought from the mountains,’ he said.
    The twins spent the afternoon dipping among the dock leaves in their pastel-checked frocks, one green, one pink, choosing cats to own and keep at the Pollards’ while Eva, who had selected a scruffy white, explored the upstairs of the house and Mrs Pollard took over baby Caroline. The girls ran wild, eating cakes and climbing the haystack, which contained sulphurous abandoned eggs and rat holes to collapse into. There were barn lofts, sheds and caravans, an old farmer’s office, an abandoned grain store and dangerous machinery. A broken tree house could be accessed by a rope. Freddie was stuck up there, Eva claimed. ‘I’ll fetch ’im down,’ said Pollard matter-of-factly.
    Upstairs in the house, room led into room, largely unused. There were rows of beds beneath a dipping ceiling.
    â€˜Whose are these?’ said Eva.
    â€˜Anyone’s who wants. Always a bed for you.’
    â€˜Truly?’ said Eva, her slow husky voice lifting. No adult had ever been so kind to her, ever approved of her so much or treated her like the others. Love for Pollard bubbled up like a thick, warm substance.
    â€˜Course. You can escape that mad school, help with the nippers, bed down here. The missus would be pleased.’
    â€˜Oh,
thank you.
’
    â€˜This is yours,’ said Pollard, gesturing at one of the sagging iron beds covered in candlewick, in dusty eiderdowns and tartan blankets. ‘Or this. Or this. When you want to skip over. I cook up my own breakfast. We’ll have one now.’
    â€˜But Pollard, it’s
after
noon!’
    â€˜No matter,’ he said.
    He fried a pan of eggs and bacon in his shed while whistling along to Radio Luxembourg and offering the girls cigarettes as they waited in a fug of smoke and bacon fat.
    â€˜This is your pew,’ he said to Eva, removing a pile of tabloids from a chair.
    I am his favourite, thought Eva. She felt light-headed, almost dizzy, with astonished excitement.
    â€˜Let me paint the young miss,’ said Pollard, poking a paintbrush behind his ear before he handed out plates with one hand and smoked with the other. And suddenly, Jennifer Crale was standing on a stool by the window playing with her plaits, the afternoon light catching her famed dimple through smeared glass, while Eva stood, frozen, in a corner.
    Finally, it is all better, thought Rowena once the splendid wallpaper was up and sitting flush with the new arch, replacing the disgraceful dated pattern. Her previous fears were the products of her usual overheated imagination, she thought, not able to let them go entirely, but grateful that this was so.
    The