Free World's End in Winter by Monica Dickens Page A

raised her voice, Priscilla began to wail again. ’Priskie’s terrified of dogs.’
    ’She likes Charlie,’ Michael said. ’She likes Oliver too.’
    ‘Who’s he?’
    ‘Michael’s pony,’ Carrie said. ’Well, I mean, he doesn’t
own
him. You can’t own an animal, you see, any more than you can
own
a human being, since the days of slavery. An animal may live with you, but - well, it’s like if you call a person “my friend”, it doesn’t mean you own them, because—’
    Mr Agnew, coming in again from the back door, cut short her sermon.
    ‘What are those horses doing in the shed?’
    ‘Well, we were just going to tell you...’
    ‘I won’t have horses here,’ Mrs Agnew said in horror. ’Priskie is terrified of horses.’
    ‘She rode Oliver.’
    ‘You’re mad.’
    ‘She liked it. It did her good.’
    ‘Oh, rubbish,’ Mrs Agnew said impatiently. ’It’s no use.’
    Priskie’s given up,
Victor had said. But it was the mother who had given up, not the child.
    ‘It was an adventure,’ Carrie said. ’She went down the track and saw the ducks in the pond and splashed through a puddle and went up the hill through those pine trees and saw that view on the other side. She couldn’t go there in a wheelchair.’
    ‘She won’t go anywhere in that one,’ Mr Agnew said. ’It’s ruined.’
    I’ll buy you another,’ Michael offered, without hope. ’I ought to make you.’
    ‘Brian.’ His wife grabbed his arm. ’Priskie was in the pool. The little boy saved her life.’
    ‘Did he, by Jove? Well now.’ He rubbed his large chin, which was already beginning to bristle again after a morning shave. ’Well now. That was very fine.’ He put his hand inside his coat and brought out his wallet.
    ‘I don’t want money,’ Michael said, perhaps for the first time since they had come to live at World’s End and never had enough. ’If you’ll just let me come back sometime and play with Bristler.’
    ‘You could knock me down.’ Mr Agnew stared at Michael, then slowly put his wallet back in his pocket. ’You could knock me down with a shuttlecock. I never heard a small boy refuse money before. Good chap, good chap.’ He slapped Michael so hard across the shoulders that he choked, and brought up the last drops of yesterday’s swimming pool water. ’All right then, you may come and play with Priskie.’
    ‘But don’t bring that horse.’ Mrs Agnew had to get in her two pennyworth.
    Michael was just in time to get Miss Cordelia Chattaway to church. Carrie led Oliver home for him, and he puffed into Miss Chattaway’s cottage and found her sitting ready in the old-fashioned Bath chair, with her velvet winter hat and her gloves and her little white boots side by side like sugar mice on the footrest.
    ‘Good morrow, Sir Michael. Hast come to squire thy lady to the tourney?’ She was a bit dotty, but she did love going to church.
    So did Charlie. It was cool on the old stones in there for a dog who was always too hot indoors. He trotted by the chair into the village and down the lane where a straggle of cars and walkers were headed for the church, which was a hundred times too big for the number of people who went there.
    So why shouldn’t Charlie go in and sit with Miss Cordelia and Michael? He was shouldering in, with his shaggy hair bouncing, but the verger stopped him in the porch.
    ‘Out,’ he said.
    ‘But, King—’ Michael stopped the chair to argue in a whisper under the fine swelling surge of the organ.
    ‘Yes, I know. King Charles carried his spaniel to church service, so ever since, they’ve been allowed in. My eyes may not be what they were, but that dog is not a King Charles Spaniel. Out.’
    Charlie lay down to wait by the grave of Martin Arbuckle. Farmer of this Parish.
’As ye sow, so shall ye reap’
    Michael pushed Miss Chattaway to the pew under the pulpit where she could nod and smile at the vicar, even though she couldn’t hear the sermon. She rode happily up the aisle,