On the Summerhouse Steps by Anne Fine

Author:Anne Fine [Fine, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2006-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

I ONE WALKED through the village by her father’s side, still in a daze from the anaesthetic Mr Hooper had given her. She had felt quite ready to set off for home just a few minutes before, when she was sitting resting afterwards, in his hallway. But now her knees had begun to shake, and her eyes kept filling with a strange fuzziness. By the time they reached the short cut through the graveyard, where Ned and Caroline were standing under a yew, kissing hello long and loudly after a whole day’s separation, Ione’s legs were trembling so fiercely that her father made his daughter stop for a moment, and let Mandy off the leading rein.

Ned stopped pulling the pins out of Caroline’s hair and turned to peer in Ione’s face.

‘You look awful,’ he said to her. ‘Lie down. Have a little rest on this nice, dry, comfy grave. Breathe very deeply.’

Ione lay flat on her back, starfish-fashion, on the tomb he had offered her: that of Martha Cuddlethwaite, born August 5th 1721, died December 17th 1801. She closed her eyelids against the harsh, dancing patterns of sunlight that broke through the leaves just above her, onto her face, making her eyes hurt almost as much as her mouth did. The mushy hole in her gum, where the tooth had been only half an hour before, had begun to throb. The pain was clearly seeping through without much trouble now.

She dabbed at the new, sore gap tentatively with her tongue, which felt huge and clumsy, like a predatory slug creeping around in a vast wet cavern. Her brain teemed with violent, swirling colours. The tombstone chilled her spine through her thin cotton shirt; but the rest of her, especially her head, was getting hotter and hotter. She gave the quietest little gasp as her tongue prodded a shade too deeply into her gum, and wondered, for an awful moment, if she were going to disgrace herself and be sick all over the grass.

On the next grave – Thomas Morton, born June 2nd 1790, died September 22nd 1851 – her father lay with his eyes, too, tightly closed. The sunlight didn’t bother Professor Muffet at all. But he had heard her tiny noise and screwed his own eyes up more as a grimace of sympathy than for protection. It was the first time he had ever accompanied anyone who was having a tooth out, and he had found the sheer nastiness of the business quite harrowing. Secretly, he had hoped he would miss it. After all, Ione had said her appointment was for three o’clock, and it was not until nearly four that he and Mandy had arrived to walk her home. First, there had been all that clinking and chinking and gathering together of pointed instruments. Then he had caught himself imagining how Ione must be sitting, in that huge monstrous chair, with her head forced back and her mouth forced open.

There were times when Professor Muffet was glad he missed out on seeing things.

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