The Crocodile Bird Read Free

a coat of arms of unknown provenance, its broad terrace approached by flights of steps on both sides, its narrow door below and wide, noble door above. This was the garden front, identical to the front that faced the gates in all but that aspect’s gracious portico. All its windows were blanked by this light that lay on them like a skin. The house looked as immovable as the landscape in which it rested, as natural and as serene.
    From nowhere else could you see Shrove as from here. Trees hid it from spectators on the high hills. They knew how to conceal their homes from view, those old builders of great houses, Eve had said. Liza said a silent good-bye to it, ran across the bridge and out onto the road. The place where the bus stopped was a couple of hundred yards up on the left. Whatever Eve might think, she knew it well, she had often walked this way, had seen the bus, a green bus that she had never once been tempted to board.
    What time was it now? A quarter past seven? When would the next bus come if she missed this one? In an hour? Two hours? Insurmountable difficulties once more built themselves up before her. Ramparts of difficulties reared up in her path, impossible to scale. She couldn’t wait for that bus out in the open and risk the police cars passing her.
    For all that, she kept on walking toward the bus stop, shifting the bag onto her other shoulder, now wondering about the train. There might not be another train to London for a long time. The train that had once run along the valley had passed quite seldom, only four times a day in each direction. How would she know if the train she got into was the one for London?
    The sound of a car made her turn, but it wasn’t one of their cars. It was red with a top made of cloth and it rattled. As it passed it left behind a smell she wasn’t used to, metallic, acrid, smoky.
    One other person waited at the stop. An old woman. Liza had no idea who she was or where she came from. There were no houses until the village was reached. She felt vulnerable, exposed, the focus of invisible watching eyes as she came up to the stop. The woman looked at her and quickly looked away as if angry or disgusted.
    It took only one more car to pass for Liza to know she couldn’t wait there, she couldn’t stand on the verge and wait for the bus. What was she to do there? Stand and stare? Think of what? She couldn’t bear her thoughts and her fear was like a mouthful of something too hot to swallow. If she waited here by the old woman with the downcast eyes, she would fall down or scream or cast herself onto the grassy bank and weep.
    An impulse to run came to her and she obeyed it. Without looking to see if anything was coming, she ran across the road and plunged in among the trees on the other side. The old woman stared after her. Liza hung on to the trunk of a tree. She hugged it, laying her face against the cool smooth bark. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? It had come to her suddenly what she must do. If she had thought of this last evening, how happy the night would have been! Except that if she had, she would have left last night, gone when Eve first told her to go, fled in the darkness across the fields.
    A footpath ran close by here and through the pass. You couldn’t really call it a pass, a pass was for mountains, but she had read the word and liked it. First of all she had to scramble up a hundred yards of hillside. The rumble of the bus, whose engine made a different noise from a car’s, made her look down. Somehow she guessed it had arrived exactly on time. The old woman got on it and the bus moved off. Liza went on climbing. She didn’t want to be there still when the cars came by. The footpath signpost found, she climbed the stile and took the path that ran close under the hedge. The sun was up now and feeling warm.
    It was a relief to be far from the road, to know that when they came back they would be down there below her. When the path came to an end she