God Is an Englishman by R. F. Delderfield

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    4 0 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N
    to sweep the drive free of snow in exchange for a drink and a bag of crusts.
    Henrietta had pitied him then and so, in her practical way, had Martha Worrell.
    She filled his belly, set him to work, and gave him a place to sleep, two planks laid along the rafters of the gardener’s toolshed. Since then Enoch had been the gardener’s drudge, but the staff called him the Boffin Boy, for the “boffin” was their name for where he slept. From time to time she had seen him at work in the yard and about the flower-beds, washing down setts, grooming the carriage horse, or hoeing and weeding under McEwan’s direction. She had thought of him with compassion but genteel compassion, the kind one felt for blind beggars standing outside the Corn Exchange. Now, by a miracle, or series of miracles, he was her secret agent, helping her to escape from the clammy embraces of Makepeace Goldthorpe, and she warmed towards him, wishing with all her heart that she could afford to reward him with a bright new shilling when he left her to await the train at Lea Green in obedience to Mrs. Worrell’s instructions. But she could not afford such generosity. It would have to be a penny, or perhaps, if a train was due, two pennies.
    About a mile down the track the last of the timber fell away, and they began to cross a wide stretch of open moor. The glare in the sky remained constant on the right, where lay Seddon Moss, and over her shoulder Henrietta could see streaks of crimson in the blue-black fringe of horizon. She could contemplate the devastation without any feelings other than relief. Sam could build another mill. She had but one life and could not afford to share it with Makepeace.
    Then it happened, suddenly and without the slightest warning if one discounted the interval of airlessness and oppressive silence that had endured since they emerged from the trees. A shaft of lightning forked across the whole width of the sky, its tongues leaping down on the glow in the north-east as though eager to join in such a bonus display. And within seconds of the glare thunder rolled from west to east, a long, long caravan of empty barrels trundled across the arch of the sky, pushing other barrels before them and trailing a string of laggards behind.
    She was aware at once of the effect upon Enoch and the pony. Enoch began to honk, just like one of the geese that grazed here abouts, and the pony stopped dead, bracing itself against the shafts so that the trap tilted violently and the basket-trunk, reposing on end against the box-seat, slithered over the edge and thumped down on to the road. Henrietta cried out and Enoch turned on her, mouth open, eyes almost starting out of his head, and then the whole countryside was brilliantly lit by a second flash, far more extensive than the first, and the thunder crashed down on them like a moun tain avalanche, sealing them between GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 40
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    Fugitive in a Crinoline 4 1
    walls of booming, thumping, ear-splitting sound that sent every thought but terror skittering across the moor for sanctuary.
    This time the pony reared, and although she could not hear Enoch’s terrified honks on account of the thunder she knew that he was screaming, for his mouth was wide open and his tongue flickering like a snake’s. He dropped the reins and threw both hands across his face, and as the trap spun in a half-circle Henrietta lost her grip upon the rail and half-rolled over the shafts and down on her hands and knees in the road. The dog Twitch, who had been cowering be side the holdall, leapt after her, and when the third flash lit up the sky the pony was already tearing across the open moor, with Enoch hunched in the driving seat so that he looked like a mound of luggage rather than a boy.
    It had all happened so quickly that Henrietta had no time to gesture or call out to him to stop. Before she rose upright, conscious of a