Read Rocking Horse Road for Free Online

to
the ground. Although she was normally pale, at Lucy's
funeral her skin seemed to be actually bloodless.
Unless you knew better you would swear Mrs Asher
had never in her life left the family dairy, had never
before exposed her face to the sun.
    In contrast to his pale wife, Mr Asher was tanned
a deep brown. While Mrs Asher ran the dairy, he
supplemented the family's income with building
work — renovations and repairs mostly — much of it
done outside. He was a tall, quiet man whose forehead
was habitually furrowed. On the rare occasion when
we had seen him smile, a slow transformation, like
a retreating tide, took place. The high expanse of
skin above his eyebrows flattened out and we saw
pale lines where the sun had not reached. That day,
standing beside his wife, he raised a large hand to
shield his eyes from the glare.
    As the coffin forged slowly on, Mr and Mrs Asher
followed down the steps. They walked between the
walls of silent people. Mrs Asher kept staring at the
ground, her hands still held up to her face. Mr Asher
frowned even deeper than usual. He kept looking
above the heads of the crowd as though he had seen
something of interest on the horizon; a flock of agitated
gulls, or an unusually shaped cloud. Some people in
the crowd even turned their heads to follow his gaze.
If anything, Mr Asher appeared to be embarrassed by
the situation he found himself in.
    It was, however, Carolyn Asher who interested
us the most. Our eyes were drawn to her. She was
certainly never going to be as pretty as Lucy. Later we
all agreed on that. Carolyn was pale like her mother,
but with large freckles that sat across the bridge of her
nose. Looking at her we could tell that Carolyn and the
sun didn't get along. She was tall (which she got from
her father), too tall really for a girl, if she was going
to be considered attractive by boys. Carolyn was flat-chested,
with long, skinny legs. 'Lanky' was a word
people often used to describe Lucy's little sister.
    But as she walked through the crowd that day,
following along behind her dead sister and her
parents, we couldn't help noticing Carolyn. It was as
though we were seeing her for the first time. For one
thing she had chosen to wear a black dress too short
for mourning. Her thighs were barely larger than her
calves but they were clearly visible. She moved like
a newborn giraffe coming to terms with height. But
mainly we noticed the way she held her chin high
and looked boldly at the people around her. It took
us a while to realise that she was singling out men
for special scrutiny. Men of all ages met her gaze and
quickly looked away. Everywhere she looked there
was a similar response; it moved from man to man
like a ripple through the crowd.
    As she passed us, Carolyn met Jim Turner's eyes.
Maybe because he was big, she thought he was older
than fifteen. Jim managed to hold her gaze for a second
and then he too shuffled his feet and looked down.
When he looked back, Carolyn's eyes had moved on.
    Jim told us, immediately after the funeral, that the
look Carolyn had given him had scared him.
    'In what way?' we demanded to know.
    'It was like electric,' he said, 'like reaching out and
grabbing an electric fence.' He paused, sensing our
scepticism, and then tried a different tack. 'Or at the
zoo, looking at a wild animal, a lion or something in a
cage.' He shook his head, aware that as an explanation
it was unsatisfying.
    'Electric' or not, one thing we all understood
about watching Carolyn Asher walking behind her
sister's coffin, with her head high and her long pale
legs showing beneath her dress, was that it was
compelling.
    Lucy's coffin was carried to the hearse. The back
doors were already open. The three remaining Ashers
stood back and watched as the pallbearers placed
one end of the coffin gently on to the rollers. There
was only the scream of a lone gull circling nearby
for accompaniment. The crowd was totally silent.
With her uncles and cousins pushing, Lucy's coffin
slid