Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey

Author:Anna Lyndsey [Lyndsey, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-53961-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

An Extraordinary Animal

Pete goes to Cornwall for a few days to take photographs of rocks, cliffs and the sea. He returns with an extraordinary animal as a present for me. It is a sheep made of a white silky hairy material, with hooves of golden plush. Its brown glass eyes bear a wonderfully benign expression. It wears a small patterned bow tie. But its most striking features are its exceptionally long and flexible hind legs, which allow it to do the splits, both front-to-back and sideways, with ease. The sheep is designed to keep out draughts by doing the splits across the bottom of doors. Pete has bought it for me as a light excluder for my dark room, to replace the unattractive sausage of yellow and brown checked fabric that somebody found in an attic, and that I have been using up until now.

When I am given the sheep, I am completely overcome. I can’t stop laughing, but I am also close to tears. Into my horribly limited life Pete has still found a way to bring wit and joy and silliness. The sheep, even in the most undignified and eye-watering positions, retains its air of benevolent serenity. At first this leads us to name it “Stoic,” but the name doesn’t stick. In the end it becomes simply “Long-legged Sheep,” and it lives splayed across the threshold of my dark room, an unobtrusive, conscientious guardian. Its presence gives rise to a strange phrase, possibly unique to these peculiar circumstances, never requiring articulation by any other human tongues. “Always replace the sheep,” I remind my visitors, because it is inevitably shoved out of the way when they come through the door of my room. “No problem,” the visitor says, reaching down into the dark and rearranging the hairy, flexible limbs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.