Free Perfectly Pure and Good by Frances Fyfield

that track. I saw you, I heard. Kids might be robbing the till and off you go.'
    Rick took a deep breath, which hurt to the degree where he knew he would live.
    `Dad, I goes the first time because Mrs Pardoe likes ice-cream, poor old bat. I goes the second time because this bird came in the arcade and asks directions, doesn't she? Said she was working up there. Christ, what a looker. A bit old, but a looker.'
    Dad grunted. Sometimes he knew the truth when he heard it, not always.
    `What do you mean, old?'
    `Thirty. Something like that. Said she was a lawyer. A cracker.'
    His father gave a great shout of laughter, flung his great thick arm round the boy's shoulder. Rick flinched. He might act for now as if there were a reconciliation but he had done it once too often.
    All he wanted was a clean body and sleep. And a dream. Running the arcade all by himself Swimming in the sea with Jo Pardoe. Lying with her in the hot sand .. .
    Òld! Thirty! So you lead some lady lawyer up there in the bloody ice-cream van! Doesn't that beat all!'
    Rick could see him, telling the story in the Globe, the Ark Royal or the Golden Fleece, any of them would have done. The wet and weighty arm descended back to his shoulder and Rick let it rest. He felt for his groin. No soreness this time. His clothes were soaking and stinking, the body beneath weary beyond relief
    What a life. Work hard to keep your body in one piece, let alone the dreams. Not many of those left. Not a body worth a prayer, either. Not a thing to take to Joanna Pardoe.
    The sheep had surprised Sarah. It had wanted to come indoors to this strange little cottage, last in a row of three, standing in grand isolation, thirty yards to the left of the house. I suppose this was once a farm, Joanna had volunteered, chatty and shy, a nice, nervy child. Workers would have lived here, years ago. Dad wanted a farm once; he wanted to do everything once. I'm sorry you haven't got the best one, but we had a fire in it a few weeks ago, still don't know why. Might have been the village ghost, we've got a new one this summer. Good night, sleep tight, sweet dreams.
    The cottage was a shoebox of a house, living room-cum-kitchen, stairs to a bedroom, bathroom and tiny room under the eaves, explored in half a minute. Any sounds were the mere echo of her own activity. In her bedroom she faced a storm-proof window, open for airing, with a breeze moving pretty chintz curtains. Someone had made sporadic efforts, leaving the place less spartan, with an ancient hot-water cistern, older lavatory, clattering pipes, the kind of thin cord carpet which chilled the feet; two hangers in the wardrobe with a loose door, an over-soft bed.
    She was absurdly disappointed that she could not hear the sea, let the lawyer in her take over to quell the disappointment. What did she know about the Pardoes and whatever was she supposed to do for them? She had a glimmer of their personalities, none of their supposed riches.
    Julian, the doctor, sandy-haired blond, churlish, driven and tired; Edward, a young, cunning braggart, self-consciously keeping himself the rebel and the subject of his sister's devotion. The girl, bright with gilded innocence and the friendliness of a puppy, watching her mother as if someone was going to take her away, while Mother herself overplayed to the gallery the loud rituals of her madness, comic and irritating by turns. Find out the dreams, Ernest had said without giving her a single clue. Find out, then work out how to finance them fairly: that's what lawyers should be for. Instead, Sarah thought of Elisabeth Tysall's punctuated dreams, the colour she might choose for a headstone, and the right shrub to plant.
    The air from the window was like a drug, closing her eyes although the bed was cold. Not damp cold, but lonely cold, intensified by the quiet. No distant music, shouting, footsteps, no humming city life where neither silence nor darkness was ever quite complete. There crept into the chilly