Free Opposite the Cross Keys by S. T. Haymon Page B

my bare legs.
    It was a lovely way to go to the lav.
    The privies stood in a row at the bottom of the garden, looking like bathing huts on a shore from which the sea had long since retreated. The one between the Fenners’ and the Leaches’, like the cottage of which it was a dependency, tottered in a state of dereliction, the roof stripped of its pantiles, the door hanging by a single hinge. Under the sagging lintel crowded several little clay cups of house martins’ nests; and it was clear that a further colony of the birds was housed within, for the air was busy with the non-stop twitter of nestlings, and the tireless comings and goings of the parent birds.
    When Mrs Fenner opened the door into our own kingdom I was delighted to discover that one pair, preferring privacy, it may be, or simply finding standing room only next door, had taken up residence in an angle of the Fenner lav. As we entered – all of us together! What new experience was in store? – a flash of black and white shot ahead of us like an arrow, and, in an instant, was on its way out again, back to the insect-rich outdoors.
    The privy doors were not privy at all, beginning some eighteen inches above the ground, and ending at least as much below the lintel; in addition to which, each had an unglazed porthole, the shape of a playing-card club, gouged out of the centre. You could see that someone was in the Leaches’ lav, which was the only one which was painted; spick and span like the polished black shoes and the grey socks with fancy clox which showed under the door.
    â€˜Mr Leach,’ said Mrs Fenner, making no effort to keep her voice down. ‘Known him to be there of a Sunday from dinner till tea.’ The black shoes scuffed each other self-consciously. ‘You got to hand it to him, poor bugger. He do keep trying.’
    New smells. Horrible new smells, but with such compensations they might have been flower fragrances. Not only a nest of real live birds to watch while you were doing your business, but company! Suddenly the whole boring business of evacuation was transformed: a social event, a lav party, as it might be a Christmas or a birthday one, for which you might send out invitations, with spaces to fill in the date and the times, and RSVP at the end. No stupid games like My Friend’s Chair and Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Just you and two best friends – there were never more than two people you really wanted to invite, the rest were just make-weights, there to make up the numbers – sitting at peace with the world.
    There were three holes in the wooden seat at Opposite the Cross Keys, three holes of different sizes – one for Daddy Bear, one for Mummy Bear, and one for Baby Bear. Marvellous! Though I couldn’t help being glad that Baby Bear’s – my – hole was at the other end of the seat from the birds’ nest, where the wood was distinctly splodgy.
    â€˜Mucky little bastards,’ Mrs Fenner observed affectionately. She brushed some segments of regurgitated bluebottle on to the earth floor before pulling down her bloomers and getting on with it.
    We didn’t talk much. There was no need. The sense of companionship was all. I felt quite sorry for poor constipated Mr Leach in his grey socks and polished shoes stuck there two doors away, all on his own.
    The porthole in the door was too high up for me, seated, to see anything but the sky. I sat happy and mindless until Mrs Fenner said, at exactly the right moment, ‘All good things have to come to an end. Pass us a bit o’ paper, Sylvie, there’s a good gal.’

Chapter Six
    Maud said it was time for my walk. I didn’t know how this intelligence was revealed to her and did not dare to ask. Mrs Fenner, looking as if the very idea of a walk in St Awdry’s was something novel, not to say barmy, demanded, ‘Walk? What bloody for?’
    â€˜Sylvie needs the exercise. We can go round by the Swan,