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.‘Go on, open it,’ he said, ‘I think I know what’s in it, but I want to see your face,’ he went on, grinning at him.Sam’s large fingers caught at the sealed envelope, managed to tear off a small corner and finally ripped it apart.As he pulled out a large, white banknote, a small card fell from the envelope and dropped on the threadbare carpet at his feet.He picked it up and looked at John Sleator in amazement.‘Is it a fiver?’Sam nodded and stared at the flowing italic script on the banknote and the fine silver line running through it.Then he focussed his attention on the business card.There was something written on the back.‘If you change your mind in the next year, let me know.Thank you for the drive.’ There was a squiggle by way of signature, but the author’s full name, rank and addresses were clearly laid out on the other side.‘It seems I might have lost you,’ John Sleator began.‘He told me he made you an offer.Do you not think it was a good chance?’‘Oh yes, it was a great offer,’ Sam replied, his face lighting up.‘He has a Bentley forby the new Lagonda.’‘But you said no?’‘I did,’ Sam said, nodding.‘If I’d been here a couple of years, or if you hadn’t given me time off I wasn’t entitled to, I might have said yes.’‘I appreciate that, Sam.I know from Harry it’s not been a good time for you, but you’ve kept up your work and never let your workmates down on the job.The General was right.He told me I was lucky to have you,’ he said firmly.‘Now what are you going to do with your fiver? Something for the bike or something for yourself?’Sam smiled and shook his head.‘No, I think what I’ll do is take my colleagues out for a meal and maybe the pictures.A night out for the boys and Peggy and the two young lads.Sure I mightn’t have another fiver dropping into my lap for many a long day.’CHAPTER EIGHTAlong with all the other young shop assistants in Armagh, Ellie looked forward to the extra day’s holiday July always brought.On Tuesday, the Twelfth, she would spend the day with Daisy going to the demonstration field just outside Armagh to hear the bands and watch the annual Orange procession.But apart from this brief day’s respite from the Great Summer Sale, there was little to recommend the month of July.As she admitted to Daisy, while drying their hair one morning before work after cycling through a cloud-burst, it was her least favourite in the whole year.To begin with, Freeburns itself was hot and airless.The extra bales of cloth and piled up garments for the sale made the narrow aisles even narrower and closed up completely any unused space.Even with the front and back doors propped open and all the upstairs windows thrown wide in the hope of creating a through draught, it was stuffy as well as claustrophobic.The assorted fabrics gave off a strange musty odour, not exactly unpleasant, but pervasive.At times Ellie felt desperate for fresh air, but even when she managed to get away from the shop in her short lunch break, she found the air so warm and humid outdoors there was no freshness to be had.Half a dozen times in the course of the month, setting out from home under an overcast sky, she’d watched the heavy clouds darken as she cycled along.Large, sixpenny-sized spots of warm rain would drop on her shoulders so suddenly, she’d have barely a minute to find shelter before the clouds opened and cast their burden in dancing spires on the road in front of her.More than once she’d been caught in just that part of her daily journey where there were neither trees in the hedgerow nor a neighbour’s house near enough for her to drop her bicycle by the front gate and run for the shelter of the porch.On the third Monday of the month, standing under a large chestnut in the line of dark-canopied trees that overhung the footpath on the edge of the Asylum grounds, she watched the sudden downpour blank out the small houses in Mill Row and the tall, brick mass of Drumcairn Mill beyond [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]