Free Black Harvest by Ann Pilling Page B

ponchos with tasselled hoods. They must be terribly hot.
    But their feet were bare. Prill hadn’t worn shoes since they’d arrived, neither had Colin. It was only Oliver who’d insisted on putting socks and sneakers on every single morning but it hadn’t seemed so hot to him. She only wore sandals now because of the metalled road. They were standing on the grass where it was cooler.
    As she went past the boy plucked at her arm. “Please, could you spare something?” His voice was only a whisper and seemed to come from deep inside a creaking chest. In the quietness she could hear his breath rattling. The girl saidnothing but she too thrust her hand out, a tiny withered hand, more like a claw.
    Prill had a five-pound note for the shopping and some coins of her own wrapped in a scrap of paper with Dr Moynihan’s Dublin phone number on it. She daren’t part with those. She might need them all for the phone box, to speak to her father. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I haven’t got anything.”
    “ Please ,” the boy said again, and his fingers dug into her arm. A faint croak came from the girl; she was opening her mouth and shaping words but only a peculiar animal noise came out. As she leaned forwards to grab at Prill her face emerged from the brown hood. It was white and pinched, the skin semi-transparent like muslin cloth, covered all over with fine down. Both faces looked misshapen and shrunk, more like monkeys than children.
    The fingernails were biting into her flesh. She was getting frightened and tried to pull her arm away. “Let me go, both of you, please. I’ve told you, I haven’t got any money.”
    “ Please ,” the boy said again. The girl just opened and shut her mouth, like a fish. Prill screamed and gave a violent tug but the two children held on strongly. In the end she pushed at them ferociously and kicked hard at their bare legs. The small girl yelped like a puppy and fell back on the grass. Prill broke free and found herself running along the hard, yellow road with red spattering her T-shirt. The nails had made four bloody half-moons on her left arm.
    Finally a stitch forced her to slow down but she stillwalked rapidly. At last the first houses of Ballimagliesh appeared in a green dip below her. As she dropped down off the hill she glanced backwards fearfully. The children had disappeared. Seconds later a blue van rattled past with three people inside. “Reagan: Plumbing Contractors” was painted on the side. She hoped desperately she wouldn’t see them again, but Ballimagliesh was only a tiny place.
    A broad, brown field, already striped by the plough, swept down to the road behind the first cottages. As Prill walked past she saw somebody moving very slowly along the furrows, with a bundle in its arms. The shape was dark, almost lost against the brown-black of the soil, but there was something about the way it jerked and stumbled down towards the road that plunged her into nightmare.
    “Pull yourself together and stop imagining things,” she told herself angrily, and stood quite still for a minute, right in the middle of the village street. Then she put her hand against her forehead. She definitely felt feverish, her temperature must be over a hundred. It must be this fluey feeling that Colin had complained about. If they sold aspirins at Mooneys’ Stores she’d better buy some.
    The plumber’s van was parked a few houses down and a man in overalls was lolling against it, chatting to an old woman in a doorway. There was no sign of the two children and the ploughed field was empty, so was the muddy lane that joined it to the pavement.
    Prill spotted a telephone box at the far end of the street and began to walk towards it. Next door she found Mooneys’Stores with dustbins and mops displayed outside. It was the kind of shop that sold everything. A comforting baking smell wafted through the door. She hesitated, then went inside.
    The shop was gloomy and full of people waiting. Prill edged