The Boy with No Boots

by Sheila Jeffries

  ‘Now,’ said Harry Price when the excitement had died down, ‘it’s time for the art lesson. And just this once, only once, mind, you can do any picture you like.’

  Freddie’s heart soared. He took his rectangle of clean white paper and smoothed it on his desk in disbelief.

  ‘And you can use these crayons,’ Harry Price was saying, ‘I’ve been saving these for a long time.’

  A battered tobacco tin appeared on Freddie’s desk with stubs of wax crayons inside.

  ‘Work carefully. And don’t break them. And don’t get the paper sticky. And don’t . . .’

  Freddie heard no more. For the next hour he was completely engrossed in his picture. He did the Shire horse first, starting with its head, and even though Daisy had only been wearing a halter, he drew an elaborate bridle with studs and curly patterns on the leather. He did her eyes black, leaving a tiny crescent of white to make them look shiny. He did a set of horse brasses dangling down her chest, each one different and intricate. He drew her four enormous legs with the long skirts of hair, and her orangey-gold hooves peeping out. He drew the metal shoes with the little triangle at the front, and the seven nails hammered in and bent over each hoof.

  Harry Price strolled around, smoking his pipe and making observations on the children’s drawings.

  ‘I’m surprised,’ he kept saying, ‘surprised what you can do.’ When he came to Freddie he stood for a long time in silence, and Freddie tensed, but he went on drawing confidently, working his way round the Shire horse, making its body rounded and sleek, drawing each crinkly hair of its mane and tail.

  ‘A horse is the hardest thing to draw,’ said Harry Price, and he picked up Freddie’s picture and held it up. ‘Look what Freddie’s done.’

  The whole class gasped, and suddenly Freddie was the centre of attention; children who had teased him were smiling at him admiringly.

  ‘I haven’t finished it yet, Sir,’ he said anxiously, and Harry Price put the picture down and moved on.

  ‘Only quarter of an hour left,’ he said, and the children groaned.

  Freddie got to work again. Could he draw the little girl with the red ribbon in such a short time? His pencil moved swiftly, surely, as if an invisible hand was guiding him. Freddie started to tingle with excitement. His grandfather was there again. He was holding his hand over Freddie’s small one, steering the pencil, drawing the little girl’s vivid face, her long hair flowing in the wind, the curls of it, the red ribbon fluttering. Then her straight back, the ruffles on her pinafore, her leg gripping the horse’s back. Freddie rubbed out part of the back so that she would look real, as if she was really sitting there. He paused to see what he had drawn, and was unexpectedly overwhelmed by it. Had he really drawn it? It was good. He had captured something precious. And he wanted to keep it.

  Harry Price loomed. He always collected the children’s artwork and they never saw it again. Freddie wanted his picture to keep forever, to show Granny Barcussy and his parents. He wanted it on his bedroom wall to look at before he went to sleep. He thought quickly. Waited until Harry Price walked away. Then he picked up his picture, crept past the hot stove, right to the door, opened it stealthily with one hand, and made a run for it.

  It was raining hard. He tucked the picture under his jacket and ran with his heart pounding at his ribs, across the wet playground, splashing through muddy puddles.

  ‘COME BACK HERE, BOY,’ he heard Harry Price roar after him.

  Freddie struggled with the iron latch of the gate, throwing it open with a squeak of hinges. He bounded down the steps and ran hard, feeling the picture crumpling against his body, the rain plastering his hair, the puddles filling his boots.

  And he knew he could never go back.

  Nor could he go home.

  Panting, he paused under the shelter of the lych gate by the cemetery. It had two benches inside and he sat on one, ready for flight if anyone came chasing after him. He was steaming hot and his breath rasped painfully. But he had the picture. He took it out and looked at it, thrilled; it made him smile. Where could he hide it? And how could he keep it dry? Already it was puckered and limp. Reluctantly he folded it into four, then once more, and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

  Harry Price would complain to his dad again, and Levi would go into a fury. He’d make Freddie take the picture back and apologise. The injustice of it stung. The only option was to hide it and pretend he hadn’t got it, and take it out years later when everyone had forgotten about his crime. There was only one person he could trust. Granny Barcussy.

  Freddie set off on the two-mile walk in the pouring rain. Mud sucked at his boots, his socks hung round his ankles like sodden sponges, and the water seeped down the back of his neck and trickled inside his jacket. He kept his hand over the pocket where his picture was, trying to keep it dry as he walked and ran alternately, across the squelching sheep fields and into the wood. Imagining Granny Barcussy’s face when she saw the picture kept him going. She’d give him soup and dry his clothes and let him tell her what had happened. And she’d hide the picture for him in a secret drawer she had in her bureau.

  Under the lime tree where his grandfather first appeared in his haze of primrose light, Freddie lingered just long enough to remember that summer day and the warmth of Granny Barcussy’s greeting. Now he was sopping wet, starving and frightened by what he had done. She would be better able to deal with it than his mother.

  He trudged on across the carpet of sodden leaves, out of the wood and down towards the river. The water was brown and swirling, washing sticks and foam against the bridge as he ran over. Now he could see the round terracotta chimney of Granny Barcussy’s place, and it struck him as odd that no smoke was rising from it.

  A strange feeling hovered around the farmhouse, a thick silence that seemed to reach out towards him, pushing him away. Freddie walked slower and slower, his hand over the picture in his pocket. He wondered if Granny Barcussy knew the war was over. He’d tell her. And he’d give her one of the precious sweets in his pocket, the humbug he thought she’d like. Then he’d chop wood and light a fire for her.

  With those bright thoughts he ran the last stretch to the farmhouse door, undid the latch and pushed it open. It smelled musty and the fireplace was full of ashes, cold and unlit. He touched the empty rocking chair and it creaked, rocking a little on the flagstone floor.

  ‘Where are you, Granny?’

  Leaving wet splodges of footprints Freddie went to the kitchen, surprised to see the door swinging open. He peered inside, and saw the worn soles of Granny Barcussy’s boots facing him on the floor. She lay there, on her side, her white hair, unrolled from its usual bun, spread out across the stone floor. A stain of blood, now old and dark, oozed from under her neck. Her cheeks and lips were blue-white, her eyes closed under eyelids that had the cold sheen of marble.

  The nine chickens were clustered around her, cuddled together along the length of her frail body and in the crook of her arm, roosting there quietly, like guardians.

  Shocked, Freddie touched the black knitted shawl that covered her shoulder. She felt strange, like a log broken from a tree. He touched her blue hand. It was stiff and icy cold.

  Freddie sat down on the floor and stared at her. He stared until he realised he could no longer see the bright aura that had always shone out of her. The light had gone out. And then he knew.

  Granny Barcussy was dead.

  Freddie felt oddly calm. First he took a cream wax candle from the jar, set it in the metal candlestick and lit it with a match. The glow flickered warmly in the rain-darkened room, moving the peachy light up the damp walls, making shadows of the kettle and the pots and pans, lighting the wise eyes of Freddie’s china owl which stood on the dresser.

  Then he fetched the red tartan rug from the back of the sofa and arranged it gently over her, right over her face and hair. The chickens murmured but didn’t move. Then Freddie lay down on part of the rug beside her, cuddled up to her in his wet clothes, and cl
osed his eyes.

  Chapter Six

  ‘SHADES OF THE PRISON-HOUSE’

  Levi stared into the solicitor’s eyes for a long time. They were dark brown and unwavering over the top of a pair of round gold-rimmed spectacles. The lower lids were red and pimply, the skin sagging into half-moons of shadow, giving Arthur Warcombe a look like that of a bloodhound. He didn’t suffer fools, and he wouldn’t wait much longer for Levi’s decision. His black fountain pen gleamed in his hand, a minute bead of Quink on the gold nib, waiting above the document on his desk.

  ‘I’ve never, in my life, taken a risk like this,’ Levi said.

  ‘Well, now is the time, my man. Now. It won’t wait.’

  ‘Ah.’ Levi thought about Annie and Freddie waiting for him at home. ‘’Tis my missus, see. She can’t manage no more. Can’t go out – won’t go out. And my younger lad, Freddie, twelve he is and clever. The village school can’t teach him no more, he’s learned it all, and now he’s bored. Two more years he’s gotta go there, wasting time. I gotta show him how to make a life. That’s what I gotta do. And this – well ’tis an opportunity.’

  ‘He’d be better off in school here – it’s just down the road, a good school from what I hear.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Levi again, his mind moving several squares ahead, seeing Freddie as a young man leaving school at fourteen, and Annie, hiding indoors. He loved their cottage, but it would be better for all of them to live in town.

  ‘I’ve known you a long time, Levi, and your father before you,’ said Arthur. ‘And I wouldn’t give you this advice if I didn’t think you could handle it.’

  Levi thrummed his fingers on the desk, looking out of the window at a cherry tree in full blossom, its white petals drifting down the street like snowflakes. People were walking past the window along the pavement. To Levi they looked energetic and smart, not downtrodden and defensive like Annie. He saw a boy pedalling past on a bike with shiny handlebars; the boy looked purposeful and in charge of his life. Levi wanted Freddie to be like that, not forever white-faced and exhausted as he carried buckets from the well and chopped wood for the fire.

  ‘Well then – now – I’ll do it,’ said Levi, and Arthur handed him the fountain pen.

  ‘Good man. No, don’t sign yet. We need a witness.’

  He rang a brass bell on his desk and his secretary appeared, standing stiffly at the door in her stone-grey suit and shiny black shoes. She watched importantly while Levi signed the cream-coloured document, wrote his name and address and the date. Arthur lit a match and took a stick of red sealing wax from the tray on his desk, melted it over the flame and dropped a neat round blob onto the paper. He pressed a seal into it before it dried.

  ‘There. Congratulations, Mr Barcussy. You are now a baker, and a landlord. Good luck.’

  Levi shook his hand, the rare spark of a smile in his eyes. A baker, and a landlord. He began to shake, deep inside his stomach, uncontrollably, and, feeling it spreading down to his painful knees, he stood up and left the office, leaning on the polished knob of his walking stick as he hobbled down the steep stairs. Outside in the street he put his cap on, then took it off again, threw it up in the air, and allowed a smile to unlock his face which had been tightly closed for years under a florid mask of resignation.

  He strutted down the street, past Monterose Post Office and the church, the graveyard and the Board School. Through the cattle market and down the next street which had houses one side and tall elm trees on the other. At the end of it, Levi saw the roof of his new property coming into view, and it felt like the sun rising. Leaning on the garden wall he savoured the strength of the stones, sun-warmed and inlaid with intricate lichens, yellow stonecrop and toadflax. Inside the wall on the sunny side was a mass of pink and white valerian covered in butterflies. It was a long time since Levi had even glanced at flowers and butterflies, but now he gazed, his soul hungry for beauty. This was his garden. His paradise garden. Annie would love it.

  His eyes moved down the overgrown path to the door next to the shop window and looked up at the dilapidated sign. A new one was needed. Barcussy’s Bakery. It sounded grand. Freddie would help him paint the big letters. Annie would be inside that big window in an apron as white as a goose, welcoming people into the shop, while he and Freddie made the loaves and rolls, the currant buns and the lardy cake. Levi could smell it cooking as he stood there. Freddie would have the sturdy bicycle with the delivery basket on the front and he’d go out, cleanly dressed and confident with his cargo of fresh bread.

  Levi got over the wall and walked across the overgrown lawn. He stood looking at the rest of the terrace which consisted of two cottages, each with a garden. Suddenly he could smell the musty interiors, feel the heavy sag of the red tiled roofs, the collapsed chimney at one end and the bulging crop of ivy which housed a colony of sparrows. He peered through one of the dark window panes and saw a room lit by a hole in the roof. On the floor were big puddles, and in the fireplace a group of rats sat up with stiff whiskers looking at him knowingly, as rats do. This is our place. Not yours. It belongs to us rats, and the jackdaws in the chimney watching with their blue eyes, and the ivy tearing the stones apart with sinuous creepers. It belongs to the rain and the wind and the mould and the frost. Don’t think you can change it, human.

  Levi’s exuberance was totally eclipsed.

  ‘What have I done?’ he said to himself. ‘How am I going to cope with all of this? And my money’s all gone. All of it.’

  Freddie had a plan for his life.

  First he had to endure school until he was fourteen. He did his work diligently in beautiful copperplate writing that he was proud of, he did his arithmetic accurately and with relish, and read the books he was told to read. None of it challenged him now. Sitting in a class whose ages ranged from five to thirteen, he’d heard the same history and geography lessons over and over; he’d sung the same old songs and heard the same old Bible stories. He developed strategies to deal with his boredom, and dreaming was top of the list. He felt useless and imprisoned, except on the rare occasions when Harry Price asked him to help the ‘little ones’ or mark the register or clean the blackboard.

  He longed to be fourteen. On his birthday he would leave school forever and learn to be a mechanic. Then when he was sixteen, old enough to drive, he planned to buy a lorry and start a haulage business. And he’d save every penny to buy tools and paints for the art he wanted to do. In his mind he had a queue of pictures waiting to be painted and sculptures waiting to be carved. He grew increasingly resentful of his wasted time in school. At home he had no time to himself at all, always out on errands or helping with the endless tasks that needed to be done. Sometimes he stayed up late in his bedroom making models by candlelight, as quietly as he could. His latest was a model of a queen wasp which he’d found hibernating in a fold of the curtains. He’d caught her under a glass jar and studied every detail of her stripy body, then he’d made a model using an acorn and a hazelnut shell. The face was a tiny triangular piece of wood cut from a clothes peg and drawn in ink, the legs and antenna from bits of wire found in the hedge. The yellow paint he’d begged from the sign-maker’s workshop in the village, a precious spoonful in a tobacco tin, and the brush he made from a chicken feather. The wings were two of Annie’s hairpins.

  Annie was thrilled with the model. She made Freddie take it to school, but Harry Price wasn’t interested.

  ‘So that’s what you waste your time on is it?’ he mocked. ‘Making silly models of wasps.’

  Freddie thought carefully about what he was going to say in reply. He tucked the anger away in a corner of his mind, looked Harry Price in the eye, and spoke slowly.

  ‘I need to practise making models,’ he said calmly, ‘because one day I’m going to make aeroplanes for the war and I think that’s important, don’t you, Sir?’

  The mole on Harry Price’s right cheek began to twitch, and the pupils of his dispassionate eyes became small pinheads.

  ‘Well, Fr
ederick – and what war are we talking about?’ he asked. ‘The war ended years ago, or were you too busy making models to notice?’

  Again Freddie allowed a silence to hover as the words dropped into his mind like aniseed balls from a jar.

  ‘When you are an old man,’ he said, ‘I’ll be a young man, and World War Two will come. And I’m not going to fight. I’m going to make aeroplanes. About the nineteen thirties, I would say.’

  ‘Oh, and how do you know this? You can see into the future now, can you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Sir.’ Freddie searched Harry Price’s eyes and discovered a sea of fear lurking behind a barrage of anger.

  ‘And stop staring at me like that, boy. Insolent. That’s what you are. And arrogant.’ Then Harry Price lost his temper, as Freddie had known he would, thumping the desk so hard that a tray of pencils jumped in the air and scattered, some rolling onto the wooden floor.

  Freddie wasn’t fazed. Quietly he picked up the fallen pencils and put them back.

  ‘Arrogant. That’s what you are,’ shouted Harry Price. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.’

  ‘Excuse me – Sir –but you just told me to stop looking at you,’ said Freddie quietly, and he strolled back to his desk, lifted the lid and put the model wasp inside.

  ‘I’ve got better things to do than talk to a boy who thinks he can see into the future.’

  Ignoring Harry Price’s blustering and the extravagant curls of smoke that suddenly puffed from his pipe, Freddie opened his copy of Treasure Island and tried to read. He was aware of the other children glancing at him as much as they dared, and he felt a sense of kinship with them. But the words on the page blurred into a mist. All he could see was a vision of a fleet of aeroplanes lined up on a vast airfield in the rain. They weren’t like the ones he had seen. These were small, elegant planes with rounded wing tips and rounded noses lifted towards the eastern sky. The clouds rolled back and he heard the roar of the brave little planes, as they took off one by one into the dawn. And he saw himself, a grown man, standing watching on the airfield, wearing dark blue overalls, a spanner in his hand.