Free Pigeon Summer by Ann Turnbull Page B

made her way down; she was almost there. She shifted her grip on the basket, easing her cramped fingers. The Gaffer was a nuisance, but she couldn’t have left him alone up there in the storm, nor let him loose in it. It was only then, as she thought of the Gaffer trying to fly home, that she remembered Speedwell.
    Speedwell would be flying across southern England now, caught in this storm. There’s going to be a smash, Mary thought. She pictured the pigeons, lost, disorientated, scattered by the weather. She’d lose Speedwell; they’d all lose their birds. The race would be a disaster. And as that thought came to her, the piece of rock she was holding on to came away in her hand.
    Mary fell backwards. She saw the ground only a few feet away, and jumped down, landing off balance on the stony ground. Her right ankle twisted under her and she felt a sharp pain. She dropped the basket and rolled over, clutching her ankle.
    She looked up. The quarry wall towered above her. It was difficult to imagine how she had got down, and impossible to imagine getting up again now.
    High above, the grass at the rim of the quarry glinted as the lightening flashed again, and when the thunder banged, it seemed to shatter the sky and release a torrent of rain.
    Mary looked round for Arnold’s cave. It was nearby – a hollow space under an overhang of rock. She picked up the basket, limped towards it and crawled in.
    The space was just big enough to sit in, and on another day Mary knew she would have enjoyed it: a secret place to sit and watch and think. But now she twisted about, trying to make her injured ankle comfortable. There was nothing to watch but the rain falling, nothing to think about but Speedwell battling home in the storm.
    A summer storm. Unpredictable. Especially from France, nearly three days ago. That was always the risk with the long distance races. They’d have held the birds back, of course, kept them in the baskets, if a storm had been predicted in France on Saturday. But bad weather so near the end of the race… She knew there would be people all over the country now, looking out at the storm, fearing a smash. There had been times when out of a thousand birds caught in a storm, only twenty-odd had come home.
    Mary began to shiver. She crouched back into the hollow and sat with her arms crossed and shoulders hunched. The storm flickered overhead and the rain hissed down, steady, unrelenting. She saw that the sun had set; darkness was gathering in the circle of the quarry. Not just the yellow-purple storm darkness, but the true darkness of night. She was trapped here; she would have to stay here all night.
    Unless they came looking for her. The police, or whoever her mother might have told. But no one knew where she had gone. And, besides, her mother might not have told anyone yet. She’d think Mary had gone to Olive’s or Uncle Charley’s or even to Arnold Revell’s. There was no reason why anyone should be worrying about her. Except Phyl, of course. But Phyl couldn’t do anything.
    I might never get home, Mary thought. I can’t climb out. I’ve got no water and no food. She wondered how long you could live without food. She remembered hearing that you could last a while – but not without
water
. She imagined the police searching for days, eventually finding her bicycle by the stile, climbing down to discover her corpse and bringing it home to her mother. She saw her mother weeping at the graveside, saying, “Poor Mary – if only I’d been kinder to her.” The picture gave Mary a certain satisfaction. But it didn’t warm her, facing the prospect of a night alone in a quarry without a coat and with a sprained ankle.
    Well, not quite alone. She took the Gaffer out of his basket and held him. She loved his sleek neck and his bright brown eyes and darting glance; his tameness. He pecked at a snagged end of wool on her cardigan and unravelled several stitches.
    I could send you with a message, Mary thought.