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.Eventually, in a pause, Mary said: “Ma, yer dress got pink flowers on it—where did ya get it?”Una looked startled—maybe she had never heard her youngest daughter speak before.She looked down at herself as if wondering what she wore.“I got this dress before I come here.I worked two summers in the dairy at Rogers's farm—it were a nice place to work, warm and pleasant.”She rubbed the worn cloth between her thick fingers.“We used to sing to the cows when we milked them.”Mary gazed in astonishment at her mother, who was looking off into the distance and smiling.Think of wearing a pretty dress and singing to cows! “What did you sing, Ma?” Tessa asked.Never once had they heard their mother sing—not even to John Luke.The girls took turns then asking questions, pleading for details.What had the farm been like? Who were the other maids who sang and milked cows? Were they friends? Did they too have flowered dresses? And, most mystifying of all, why had their mother left such a place?But she would tell them no more.When they realized Una had gone into one of her trances, Tessa laid the baby on the pile of rabbit skins and both girls jumped down from the cart to run ahead, giggling together at the thought of their mother singing to cows.It was well past mid-day by the time they got to Coltsford.The houses were so close together the girls felt penned-in.There were people and dogs and horses everywhere, and, because it was market day, sheep and geese being herded through the streets.The noise and confusion frightened the children, John Luke bawled and the girls became quiet and climbed back up beside their mother.When they reached the market some people were already packing things away to go home.A large man, in a bright blue greatcoat that must have made him very hot, shouted that they had to pay him if they wanted to stop.Una fixed her eye on him, fingering the tooth she wore on a cord around her neck, and stared him down.Before Una's stare the man got smaller and smaller and then turned away.“We traded the rabbits and eggs for flour and tea,” Mary tells her great-granddaughter.“But no one wanted turnip so we had to take 'em back.I remembers gnawing on one going home in the dark.I allow the trip killed the horse, leastways I don't remember him after that.I knows he wasn't there next winter when things got so bad—we would have et him.”John Luke died.One morning Mary awoke knowing there was something different about the hut.She lay curled down against Tessa in the mound of dirty fur and wondered what it could be.She looked around at the rough walls, covered in white rime, at the shuttered hole where pale light seeped down around the edges of rabbit skin, at the small pile of brush near the firehole, at the iron pot, carefully balanced to protect a tiny flame that had smouldered all night.The room looked the same, dark and smoke blackened.As always, it smelled of oil and dirt, of sweat, boiled turnip and of the earth floor—a smell that was so much a part of her world that she did not notice it.That morning, though, something cold and strange was waiting in the room.Then she realized that the strange thing was silence—there was no whimper, no mewing sound from John Luke.Mary neither looked nor moved, she lay curved spoon-like into Tessa waiting for something to happen.Eventually Una stirred, woke, sat up and leaned over her son.She uncovered the miserable, yellow little body and cried.But only for a minute.Mary watched through half-closed eyes as her mother turned away from John Luke, stood up and started pacing around the room.She began picking things up, making a pile on the rough plank table, a mug, two knives, a small tin box she had pulled out from under a rock in the corner, the two remaining turnips and the flint.She put the last of the tea into the kettle, carefully shaking every grain out of the bag, poured boiling water into the pot and left it steeping on the hot ashes.Mary noticed that her mother was moving very slowly and that her hands shook as she poured the water.“Get up,” she told Mary and Tessa, who were still huddled next to their dead brother [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]