The Scarecrow Read Online Free Page B

Prudence had to be in the act. She tried and tried to gather momentum to swing herself up over the beam, but she lacked the confidence and the knack of whipping the back muscles just at the right instant. We demonstrated the technique until I suspected I had strained my bowels. I excused myself and wentand sat crabwise on the stile into the orchard. When I had been there some time, just staring at the back wall of the shed, I felt a compulsion to return. Prudence had stepped out of her skirt and, in tight, black knickers and blouse, was still attempting to swing over the beam. She just about had it mastered. In the end she did it. Prudence’s legs were gorgeous, full, curving, dusky. Because she was my sister I was a real skeleton at the feast, but I began to get the same feeling I experienced sitting naked in the lucerne hay the night before.
    The shed was windowless, twilit, musky. It was an odd feeling to emerge from it and find the noonday sun shining brightly and to realise it was not really late at all, only dinner-time.
    When I reached home I missed Les’s company and I began to feel unhappy and apprehensive again. I only managed to shove down half a pork sausage at dinner-time, whereas I usually wolfed everything they gave me.
    ‘You sick or something, boy?’ said Prudence, spearing with her fork what I left on my plate and getting herself in consequence a dirty look from Uncle Athol. He always looked ten years older on a Sunday, because he skipped shaving and his bristles grew out white. He often left his teeth out on a Sunday too. Herbert had told me on the quiet that he reckoned Uncle Athol had got his teeth from Mr Dabney, the undertaker. Everyone said Mr Dabney was wealthy and sure enough he wore a collar and tie and had a gold watch, but when he got on the scoot he gravitated to characters like Athol C. Cudby and they stayed on the booze together for days. I am not certain whether Herbert had his facts straight, but sure enough it was after one of these jags with Mr Dabney that Uncle Athol appeared with teeth, and started acting in a superior way,putting on the dog a bit like Pop. Pop was a real character at putting on the dog, but it sort of came natural to him. Even when he was buying an old stove or hot-water cylinder, he contrived to act as if he were only looking such junk over to install it in the gatekeeper’s lodge.
    Uncle Athol gave out that he and Pop were partners in the buying and selling business, but Pop introduced him, when he could not get out of it, as ‘Mr Cudby, Mr Athol Cudby, my, hrrmp, contact man.’ I guess that just about sized him up too, always sniffing around on the trail of a yardful of junk somewhere; but, on account of his rupture, he never contacted anything heavy which he would have to heave up on the back of the truck. For the same reason he just stood around when Pop had to change a wheel, which amounted to a lot of standing time, the little old Dennis tip-truck having been known to throw three blowouts in three blocks. One of the standard topics of conversation was five-fifty by twenty-one tyres. If I live to be a hundred years old I am still going to hear voices yak yaking away about five-fifty twenty-ones.
    ‘Great big pile of five-fifty twenty-ones yuh couldn’t jump over. Been past there hundreds of times without dreaming—’
    ‘I tell yuh it’s a five-fifty twenty-one, spanking condition, been there for donkey’s years. They’ll never miss it.’
    ‘Pretty bald in places, but they’re five-fifty twenty-ones awright.’
    ‘Been a minute earlier it ’ud been worth raking outa the fire. Coulda cried. ‘Course it was a five-fifty twenty-one. Think a man doesn’t—’
    And so on.
    In a way, I guess, five-fifty twenty-ones were the symbol ofour sort of people. If the Poindexters ran to a coat of arms there would be a five-fifty twenty-one in one corner and a crank-handle in the other. Any automobile with a hint of streamlining had fat, well treaded, remote