Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke Read Free Page B

into a manic grin. It would have confused the cat, so I didn’t take it home, but the thought was there, a dry thought that walked with the weather and sun.
    The days boiled, and at night the heat thickened and dripped. People lay naked under single sheets, windows open, curtains open. Sleep came in fits, and the dreams that followed the fits were filled with water and cool winds. Mr Evans’s caravan, my caravan, was hotter than a threat, and when I went to bed sweat crawled over my skin. It dribbled and gnashed and left its marks in my creases, and whispered fumes in my ear. The walls and roof of the van squeaked and groaned, exhausted flies buzzed and banged against the windows, mosquitoes whined and bit.
    When Spike and I left the pub, we stood in the heat of the evening and wondered if the weather would ever change. I said that I thought it had stuck and we were stuck with it, and there was nothing we could do. Spike said I was talking bollocks. I told him that my bollocks was no more bollocks than his bollocks, and we arranged to meet at half-nine in the lay-by under Heniton Hill.
    I rode up to see Mum and Dad, taking the right at Appley school and into the wooded valley at Tracebridge. In the old days, a witch used to live in a wattle hut by the river bridge at Tracebridge and demand payment from passing travellers. She’d curse and rave and shake her clawed fists, and if they didn’t give her a coin they’d never get up the hill. Their legs would seize and their eyes would tear, or their horses would stop and refuse to go any further, or a wheel would fall off their cart, roll over the bridge and fall into the river. When she was bored and there were no passing travellers, she’d turn herself into a weasel and steal chickens from farms. Old and cruel and vindictive, she’d eat the chicken raw and hang its sucked bones around her neck. The witch is dead now, and her hut was burnt to the ground by relieved carters, but there’s the sense of something by the bridge, a waiting malevolence in the air that stops dogs and freezes rabbits. I rode by with my head down, didn’t glance in the direction of the place where the hut used to stand, accelerated for the long drag up the hill to Ashbrittle, and sat back on the bike when I reached the top.
    Mum was ironing shirts and Dad was dribbling washing-up water onto the lettuce in the garden. I stood at the front-room window and looked out. A hippy was standing on the green, her head tipped back, staring at the sky. She was wearing a spotted scarf on her head, baggy shorts, a tiny T-shirt and sandals. The hippies lived in the Pump Court cottages by the bakery. I call them hippies because everyone else does, but that’s the only reason. They could have been called something else, but they weren’t. I suppose it helps to give people names and put them in groups; it means you can feel safe and know where you and they stand. Sometimes Spike and I would go up and stand behind the hedge and watch them, but we never saw them do anything very interesting. They never took all their clothes off and rolled in mud. They never sat in circles and played guitars. They never walked out in the middle of the night and sang to the stars, and they never had crazed parties that lasted all night. They were quiet people and although we wished they would do shocking things they never did, so Spike and I would go and find something else to watch or do. Not that there’s a lot of something else to do in Ashbrittle. A vicar closed all the pubs down years ago, there’s no shop and no bus stop. There is a phone box, and anyone can spend half an hour in there, or you can read the notices for things on the noticeboard outside the village hall. These things are usually to do with coffee mornings or jumble sales or the mobile library, and although the village is famous for a few things, you never see them mentioned on the noticeboard.
    One thing Ashbrittle is famous for is the yew in the churchyard.