“It’ll be your busy season, I should imagine.” It had a benevolent face, if you discounted a bright orange sticker across its forehead, which referred to the Wineglass Offer. Maria stared at the face of the petrol pump. A woman got out of the car, saying loudly, “Now just shut up for a moment, the lot of you.” A boy of about Maria’s age looked at her for a moment through the window, his expression irritable and bored. It was full of children, most of them small and several of them wailing. On the far side of the petrol pump another car drew up. His shirts for ordinary life were never striped. She could tell it was a holiday shirt because it had red and blue stripes. He was wearing a special, new, holiday shirt. She watched her father get out of the car and start to fill it with petrol from the pump. Maria said she was quite all right and she wasn’t feeling sick. They both turned round now to look at Maria, with kindly smiles. “Just short of three hours,” said Mr Foster. “QUAD GREEN SHIELD STAMPS!” screamed the garage, “WINEGLASS OFFER! JIGSAWS! GREAT PAINTING OF THE WORLD!” The car slowed down and turned into the forecourt of a garage. As far as I know everybody in the world does. You have blown-up rubber animals and iced lollies and there is sand in your bed at night. You go down to the beach every day and run about and shout and build sandcastles and all that. We have come to spend our summer holiday beside it, because that is what people do. That is the English Channel, said Maria, inside her head, to the ashtray on the back of the car seat, the sea. From time to time, on the left, snatches of a milky green sea bordered with a ribbon of golden sand or shingle. The backs of their heads rode smoothly forward between the landscapes that unrolled at either side of the car hedges, trees, fields, houses that came and went before there was time to examine them. “Not much longer now,” said Maria’s mother.
“ALL RIGHT, BACK there?” said Maria’s father. A Small Black Dog and One Final Piece of Blue Lias The Day that was Almost Entirely Differentġ1.
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