Read Crow Country for Free Online Page B

incessant noise and bright lights . . .
    And then she was dreaming. She was swept into a place where the night was thick as treacle, a place of fire and song and strange swirling dances. And a black-feathered figure loomed out of the dark, and its sharp beak opened, and its scream rang out.

S adie jolted awake. Her head whirled. She was still sitting by the stove, but her body ached as if she’d travelled a hundred miles and back.
    John must have gone to bed. Mum and Dad were at the table, Dad reading one of his library books while Mum checked through the accounts, pencil in hand. With her dark hair freed from its scarf and her pinny hanging behind the door, she looked young. Of course, she was young, compared to Dad. Dad was old, grey-haired and stiff in the leg where he’d been wounded. He must have seemed like an old man to Mum even when he first came back from the War. She was nineteen then. Not that much older than me , thought Sadie. Why on earth did she decide to marry him?
    But even as she watched, Mum’s hand crept across the tabletop, and Dad’s hand captured it. He kissed her fingertips, and they smiled at each other, tender in the lamplight. Sadie looked away, knowing it was a private moment, but glad, in a peculiar, embarrassed way, that she had seen it.
    There was a tap at the back door.
    Dad pushed back his chair and limped to open it.
    For an instant, Sadie thought that the night itself had come into the kitchen, breathing its chill breath over them all; she blinked and saw the black- feathered bird-figure from her nightmare. And then she relaxed back into her chair and laughed at herself, because it was only Jimmy Raven, the Mortlocks’ stockman, who she’d known all her life. Jimmy was her friend, certainly no one to be frightened of.
    He shook Dad’s hand, nodded to Mum and flicked a half-smile to Sadie where she sat curled in her chair, hidden in the shadows. He saw her, though Mum and Dad seemed to have forgotten she was there. She wasn’t entirely sure herself that she was there; perhaps she was still dreaming.
    Dad pulled out a chair. ‘Care for a beer, Jimmy?’
    Mum laughed. ‘You ought to know by now, Jimmy never touches the stuff. How about a cup of tea?’
    â€˜Just being hospitable, Jean,’ protested Dad, with a wink, and Sadie thought that Jimmy might laugh his deep rolling laugh that echoed halfway across the town. But he just grinned a little and sat down – too big for the frail chair, too big for the small kitchen – and laid his hat on the table.
    In her dreamy, detached state, Sadie was aware of everyone’s thoughts, even though they didn’t speak a word. She saw Mum and Dad exchange a glance and knew they were wondering what Jimmy had come for; he’d never come calling after dark before. And she knew, watching Jimmy as he clasped and unclasped his big, calloused hands, his eyes cast down, that he wanted to talk over something important but didn’t know how to begin.
    Mum asked after Netta and the children, and received polite replies, and Dad fetched out the good teacups, the thinnest china with the ivy pattern round the rim. Sadie knew that there was no one else in town, in the whole district, who would bring out the best china to serve a black stockman a cup of tea, and a strange feeling struggled in her, between pride and shame.
    The three adults sipped their tea and talked about the weather, and at last, long last, Jimmy set down his fragile teacup carefully on its saucer, and said, ‘I want to talk to you, Lofty.’
    A shiver ran down Sadie’s spine. Lofty had been Dad’s nickname in the Army, because he was short. That was how soldiers’ nicknames worked, Dad said. Blue for a bloke with red hair; Slim for a fat man. Jimmy and Dad had fought together in France; Dad said Jimmy had saved his life. They were mates in the War. That was why Dad brought out the best china.
    And that was why Dad