The Giant Under the Snow by John Gordon

Author:John Gordon [John Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-18T23:00:00+00:00

TEN

NIGHT FLYING

The night creaked. It was bitterly cold. Jonk lay in bed staring at the ceiling. If she kept her light on she would be certain to stay awake. Her bed was warm and the sheets were up to her mouth where she liked them. It was difficult to keep her eyes open. She pushed the sheet under her chin. With it like that she dared close her eyes. Her breath came softly and the sheet crept back to her mouth.

Suddenly she jerked her eyes open. There was somebody in her room.

‘It’s only me,’ said her mother. ‘Did I give you a fright?’

‘You did,’ said Jonk.

‘Did you know you went to sleep with your light on?’

Asleep? Jonk glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was only half past eleven. She lay back with a sigh. There was time for the house to settle before she need move.

‘I don’t know what’s got into you just lately,’ said her mother. She looked worried.

‘I’m all right, Mum. Tired, that’s all.’ She forced a yawn although now she was wide awake.

Her mother put out the light and left. In the darkness Jonk listened until both her mother and father were in bed, and then she got out and dressed, shivering. She sat by the window with her duvet around her, ready for a long wait.

Bill had the most difficult task of them all. He shared a room with his brothers. When they were asleep he sat up in bed, put on his shirt and pullover and buttoned his pyjama jacket on top. Then he pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and sat looking out of the window at the roof of Arf’s house opposite. He knew he might sleep, but when his parents came in before going to bed he was bound to wake up.

The cold crept around the back of his neck. As he dozed off the coldness reached down his back. He was too uncomfortable to sleep properly and he heard his parents long before the door opened. He slid down and pretended to be asleep until they had gone. Then he sat up and rearranged himself, but now every part of the bed was cold.

It was after midnight before he heard his father snoring. It was a relief to get out of bed, but he had to move carefully. He dressed, humped the bedclothes to make it appear he was still in bed and, inch by inch, he opened the door and crept along the landing. He spent a long time in the black well of the stairs, feeling his way down backwards, on all fours, and he crouched over the last embers of the living-room fire until it was time to go.

Arf, with an alarm clock under his pillow, slept until a quarter to one.

By that time Jonk was working at the bolt of her front door. It was stiff. She had been growing her fingernails long and one of them broke, painfully. She jumped as Bill, who

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