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'When we were at the hospital today—' she began uneasily.
Ross looked up. 'Hum…? Yes?'
'Robin mentioned Leon Daumaury to Judith and she began to cry. Isn't there anything to be done about that situation? It seems a pity for a family to be split like this.'
'So you do listen to gossip, after all,' he said unpleasantly, standing up abruptly.
'No,' she protested. 'It's just that…'
'Just that like most women you can't help interfering in things that don't concern you! Well, I'll thank you to keep out of my affairs, and that includes my sister's life, too. You're here to look after the children, not play the social worker and solve old problems. You know nothing of the background, you know nothing of the people involved. So mind your own business, Miss Leigh!'
He strode out of the room, snatching his jacket from the hall and banging out of the house.
Emma stared at the fire, her face flushed and full of wrath. Really, he was impossible! How dared he speak to her like that! She had only meant to… She sighed. The road to Hell was supposed to be paved with good intentions, wasn't it? Perhaps she had been rather presumptuous in imagining that she could solve an old family quarrel overnight.
All the same, there was no need for Ross to speak to her in that brutal fashion. He was a beast. I detest him, she told herself. I really detest him.
CHAPTER SIX
Each morning the children walked down to chat to two donkeys, Barnaby and Jessie, and feed them sugar lumps. Jessie was all big-eyed eagerness, gentle and nuzzling. Barnaby was pushy, greedy and determined to get more than his fair share. Emma loved to watch the children with them, seeing how the animals revealed their true nature, seeing how the children reacted instinctively to it.
Mrs Pat often said, 'I don't know why I keep them, eating their heads off…but I haven't the heart to sell them. I won them in a raffle at the village fete a few years back. The donkey farm up along had given the Vicar two donkeys to raffle. I bought a ticket because I never win raffles, but blow me down if I didn't win this one…now in the old days it would have been a pig. We always had a pig at the village fete—bowled for it, we did. Winner got the pig. Useful animals, pigs. You can eat every bit of them.'
'Oh, Mrs Pat,' said Tracy reproachfully. 'How horrid!'
'Horrid, indeed! Who loves a bacon sandwich for her tea?' Mrs Pat teased.
'But that isn't a pig,' Tracy said in a muddled way. 'Not a pig I know, I mean. Not one I've won at bowling. That comes from a shop and I didn't know it.'
They all laughed gently at her. 'I know just what you mean,' Emma agreed. 'When I was five years old I won a chick at a fair. They were giving them away instead of goldfish. I put it in a drawer from my mother's kitchen cabinet. I lined it with straw and put it by the kitchen stove where the chick would be nice and warm. My father said it would die, but it didn't. It grew and grew until it had to move out into the garden with the other hens. But it always was tamer than the others, more friendly. I called it Clara Cluck. But next Christmas my father sold the hens to a butcher in the village, and I cried all night. I knew, of course, that a hen isn't a real pet, not like a dog or a cat, but Clara Cluck was a person to me…I wouldn't eat chicken for months.'
Ross watched her, his expression baffling. 'Just as well your father wasn't a farmer,' he said.
'Talking of fairs,' said Mrs Pat, watching them both with interest, 'there's one at Moscombe Down this week.'
'Oh, can we go?' Tracy flared into white-faced excitement. 'Oh, please, Uncle Ross, Emma…I love fairs. If we go I can have a ride on the roundabout with the horses…I love to ride them and go up and down and round and round.'
'I like fairs!' Donna cried, clapping her small hands and jumping up and down on tiptoes.
Robin looked intensely at his uncle, as if silently begging him to agree.
Ross laughed. 'Why not? I enjoy a good fair myself.'
'When? Tonight?' demanded Robin, always desiring certainties.
Ross shrugged. 'Is it open?'
Mrs Pat nodded.
'Then tonight it shall be,' Ross nodded, smiling at Robin.
The fair was small but noisy. As they approached it in the car they could both see and hear it—the vivid flare of the electric lights over the stalls, the coloured bulbs winking around the rides, the bright painted colours of the horses and ostriches on the merry-go-round—and the loud swirl of the music blaring out from the various mechanical organs.
It was set up in a field at Moscombe Down, just outside the village itself, and many cars were parked in the next field. A farmer's son sat wrapped in an old black duffel coat taking a few pence from each car as it slowly drove into the temporary car park.
They parked and walked back to the fair. Already it was pretty crowded. Vans selling ice-cream, candy floss, hot-dogs and tea stood on the perimeter of the field. Then came an inner circle of stalls—coconut shy, darts, rifle booth, plate smashing, a rather shabby Ghost Train and a Haunted House, and a large amusement arcade tent already thronged with teenage boys busily throwing away their pennies on clanging pinball machines. In the very centre stood the main attractions, the dodgem cars, the big wheel, the Chair-o-Plane, the merry-go-rounds. There was one for small children with cars, buses and stage coaches going round. There was a bigger one with blue and silver horses and bright yellow ostriches going round. There was another one with very up-to-date space rockets circling.
The aisles were crowded, the grass already torn and trampled back to mud. Children scampered along with bright, rosy faces in which the lights of the stall were reflected like fireworks. Emma and Ross firmly restrained the three small children. 'It's easy to get lost in this crowd, so stay close to us, and if you do get separated, go to the dodgem car stand and wait there until one of us comes. Do you understand?'
