Twelve
H arriet,’ said Peg Leg Joe. ‘You want me to tell you about Harriet.’
‘You promised,’ insisted Tommy.
Peg Leg Joe took another roasted corncob and swiftly ground it up in his great teeth.
They were camped on the bank of a stream, in an isolated place away from prying eyes. The sun shone bright, the air was fresh and clean, centuries-old oak trees marked out the line of the horizon. The sound was that of insects buzzing and birds singing.
They had rested and cleaned themselves up. They had washed their threadbare clothes, beating them for a long time against the flat, smooth stones of the shore. In the abandoned field around what had once been a farm, its roof fallen in and walls covered in ivy and creepers, they had found corncobs and apples which had not gone completely wild,
