Ellen Blake Destined To Return

15 - Cart ride

Osbaldwick village, 5th August 1941

'Seriously?' Ellen said, incredulously.

Keith, whom Ellen was questioning, looked at her, disregarded the comment and walked off to talk with a man in a grey overall standing nearby.

Realising she was not going to get any more out of Keith, she turned to Marianne.

'He is joking, isn't he?'

Marianne wasn't really paying attention to Ellen's little outburst as she was still beaming at the thought of having this girl from the future standing next to her, whom she had dressed and re-modelled. She felt it was half like having a life size dress-up doll and half like having the next best thing to a sister her own age. Living with two boys left very little "girly time" in her life.

Picking up on Marianne's delay to answer, Billy obliged.

'Oh did I miss it? What was Keith's joke?'

'She didn't mean there was a joke,' explained Aaron. 'She was just a bit surprised with that ... well so am I to be honest.'

Following the direction Aaron was casually pointing, Billy spoke again.

'The butcher's cart ... what's funny about that?'

They were standing in the back yard of the village butcher's. Before them, in the middle of the yard, was a rather robust burgundy coloured wooden cart, with the business name, Clithero and Son, on the side and handsomely harnessed to the front stood one rather large Shire horse, with his nose in a hessian bag full of fodder.

Ellen was pleasantly surprised to find that the cart wasn't as old-fashioned as she imagined. She wouldn't have been surprised, to find a cart like those from mediaeval times, with large wooden wheels. This was much more up-to-date and looked more like a modern day lorry without the driver's cab and without a roof. It had large steel wheels with pneumatic tyres and fastening brackets around the sides to attach a large canopy to protect any cargo in bad weather.

'Remind me again....' said Aaron.

He was talking to Marianne yet surveying the cart like he was assessing it before buying it.

'Why can't your Mum just drive us to the station?'

Before Marianne could say anything Billy snorted and with a chuckle replied for her.

'Mum? She hasn't got a horse 'n' cart. She hasn't even got a pony and trap.'

'I didn't mean in a cart, I meant in her car,' Aaron retorted, shooting Billy a glare, whilst still squatting from looking at the cart's axle.

Billy snorted again, this time so loudly that he surprised himself.

'We haven't got a motorcar and Mum wouldn't know how to drive one if we had. What on earth makes you think we'd have one of those?'

'Well, if you don't have a car then how do you get about? How do you get into York?' said Ellen.

Worried that Billy would snort for a third time and louder, Marianne replied.

'We don't go into York that often. Well, Keith does because he works on the railway, but generally we stay local in Osbaldwick. If we do go, we walk, we cycle or we find someone from the village to give us a lift, like now.'

'You walk or cycle? All the way from here to York? That must be ... I don't know, five miles or so,' said Aaron, surprised. 'It normally takes fifteen minutes in the car.'