Snow White and the Giants Read Free

knows it isn't on business. I

took the car from the firm's car park and drove out past the Grammar

School . . .

. . . And stopped. A hundred or so boys between thirteen and fourteen,

all wearing blue shorts, filled the road.

The Grammar School was four hundred years old. The school field was a

hundred yards along the road, on the other side of it, and there was no

changing accommodation. So the kids changed at the school, crossed the

road to the field, and came back after sports.

The arrangement, or lack of same, was typical of Shuteley.

After all the boys had crossed, I drove past the castle across the Old

Bridge and turned into the track which led to our Queen Anne house about

a quarter of a mile beyond the town boundary. The track also served a

few farms farther on.

Sheila, in a paint-speckled sweater and jeans powdered with plaster,

had evidently been tidying up after the electrician. She was a slim

twenty-four-year-old blonde, and I had not married her because she was

the ugliest girl in Shuteley.

"All right," she said grimly. "You shift her."

"You didn't . . . say anything, honey, did you?" I asked tentatively.

She knew what I meant. "I told her the electrician had to work in her

room, that's all. And she talked about fairies."

I sighed. Dina just couldn't see why I wanted Sheila around, and never

would. What did I want with another girl when I had her? And Sheila,

though she had no deficiency of understanding, was driven quietly

desperate by the way Dina, the moment my back was turned, became as

mulishly, deliberately obstinate as ouly a grown-up child could be.

I didn't see Mr. Jerome, who had found a job to do elsewhere in the

house. I went up to Dina's room, Sheila at my heels, and tapped on

the door.

"Dina, honey," I said.

"Val?" came Dina's voice, surprised and slightly, but only slightly,

apprehensive. "What are you doing home at this time?"

"You have to come out, honey," I said patiently.

"No. I'm scared of the fairies."

"Fairies don't do you any harm."

"How do you know?"

"Dina, you didn't really see anything at all, did you?"

"I saw the fairy ring. In the wood. Didn't Sheila tell you? I'd have

told you this morning, only you were gone before I got up. I thought

Sheila would have told you."

No one could be as innocent as Dina when she was trying to make trouble

for Sheila.

"Anyway," I said, "you've got to come out."

A brief pause, then: "I can't. I'm not dressed."

"Then get dressed."

Triumphantly: "Sheila took all my clothes away."

Sheila's eyes met mine. She didn't have to tell me that any clothes

she'd taken were to be washed.

"Come out, Dina," I said more sternly.

There was silence.

Sheila held my gaze steadily. "This is what I have to put up with all

day and every day," she was saying, without uttering a word. I didn't

say anything either. She knew what I was thinking too. What could a

man do? There wasn't anywhere else Dina could go. Our father was dead,

and our mother . . . well, to give Sheila her due, even in our bitterest

rows she never brought up the subject of Mary, who was in an institution,

who was the reason why Dina was the way she was, who was the reason why

Sheila and I had no children and never would have.

At last the door clicked and Dina came out. Exactly five feet,

dark-haired, she had the unsophisticated beauty that sometimes occurs

in the feeble-minded. She also had a highly provocative body that would

create a lot of problem soon, though they hadn't caused trouble yet. Not

all men could he expected to keep their hands off such an attractive

creature simply because there was a short-circuit in her head.

She wore a faded cotton dress far too small for her, split down the

front and unfastened at the back, because there was no possibility of

getting the buttons to close. Her feet were bare.

"Now listen," I said more harshly than usual, "I have to get back to

work. Will you promise, Dina, word of honor, to go to the