Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) by Jill Dawson Page B

squares, with the soil all folded in lines and oily looking where it’s rained. Bobby whispers that they look like chocolate, do you think we could eat some? His eyes are big. His voice is very small.
    Then he says, “Do you think this is what it’s like where Vera is? Are we in heaven?”
    The way he says it, heaven doesn’t sound nice; it sounds empty, and scary. I tell him to shoosh, not wanting Elsie or Bert to hear.
    The road we’re on is straight and strict as a ruler. Beside us is a high bank of green, but I somehow know there is water behind it, some kind of river. My bottom keeps jolting on my seat, bouncing me up and down really hard, and bumping me into Bobby. Suddenly, from behind the bank, a big bird appears like a monster—a bird bigger than anything we’ve ever seen, with hunched wings in the shape of a giant pair of eyebrows and a beak like a knife. Bobby screams and flings himself at me. Elsie turns around and laughs.
    â€œOh, that’s just a heron. You’ve never seen a heron before? He won’t hurt you . . . after a fish, he is, not a skinny little boy . . .”
    Bobby straightens up to try and look like he’s not scared, and watches the bird fly off, its wings making a noise like a man flapping his arms in a wet raincoat. It’s so quiet: the clopping of the horse and the rattle of the wheels and the heron’s wings and then . . . nothing. I’m listening hard. There must be other noises in the country, other things? Where are the people ?
    The journey goes on forever. Bert is smoking his pipe and the only good thing about it is the smell I keep getting, of his tobacco, which smells like my uncle Charlie. We don’t pass a single car or cart or person on the road. The sky turns a peachy pink, but in long, flat stripes like lines in a school exercise book. Bobby’s head bounces against me with every step of the horse’s hooves.
    I think of Bunny, in my bag on the floor at my feet, and a song that Nan used to sing: My bunny lies over the ocean, my bunny lies over the sea. My bunny lies over the ocean, oh let’s have a nice cup of tea.
    I listen and listen, trying hard to hear the country. It’s not what I thought at all: I had no idea anywhere in the world could ever be this quiet. Just the rattle of the cart. Clop, clop of the horse. Just Bobby’s breathing.
    â€œNot scared of horses, are we?” Elsie asks, suddenly, over her shoulder.
    â€œNo,” I say. Then a little more loudly: “Me and him have got a horse at home. We’ve got one in our . . . stables. A white one. She’s called Betty—I mean Betsy. ”
    Elsie doesn’t turn round to look at me. Her neck stiffens. Bobby continues to rest his head against my shoulder, but I know from the way he is holding it that he’s not resting at all, but listening.
    â€œThat can be your job then,” Elsie says, after a snort, and a glance at Bert, and a long pause. “To feed the horse. His name is Highflyer. Highflyer was a famous horse, buried near the pub. Pub’s named after him. And our horse is named after the pub.”
    â€œOr the other horse,” I mutter.
    Elsie’s a bit stupid, surely. Feed a horse? (I know that Bobby wants to whisper to me, to laugh and giggle and tease me, but I pretend not to see; I don’t want him to break the spell.) I can feed a horse named after a pub. My granddad had a horse like that. Easy-peasy. And I have a beautiful white horse, her soft mane that feels just like the tassels on Nan’s bedspread and her soft munching mouth on my hand as I feed her apples in the stables we own behind our house . . . oh, and a pink silk ribbon round her neck. A little wash of sadness, as the details come to me. I miss her so much, I say to myself. I try her name on my tongue. Betsy .
    I sit back in my seat, feeling for Bunny in my bag. Nan will be drawing the curtains at home,