The Boy with No Boots

by Sheila Jeffries

  The vision made him feel strong.

  When he got home from school, Freddie was surprised to see his father there, sitting under the apple tree. Annie was with him and the two of them were talking animatedly.

  ‘Now, you sit yourself down, Fred. I got something to tell you,’ said Levi in a rather ominous tone, and Freddie sat down on the grass, and looked at his father, puzzled by the unusual sparkle in his eyes.

  ‘Now,’ said Levi again. ‘You take this in, Fred. ’Cause this is what your life is gonna be in a few years when you leave school. I got a job, and a business all lined up for you. What do you think of that?’

  Freddie didn’t answer. He felt a shadow creeping over his shoulders, the shadow of a great wall which his parents would build to keep him in confinement.

  Levi rushed on, anticipating a smile on his son’s face, a light in his eyes, gratitude.

  ‘I bought a bakery,’ he said proudly. ‘And it’s got all the equipment, the ovens, the recipes, the big bicycle with the basket on front. In town, it is, near the railway. We’re going to live there. There’s a school just down the road you can go to.’

  ‘And a shop at the front,’ said Annie. ‘You and Levi’s going to be making the bread, and I’ll be behind the counter selling it.’

  ‘And – I haven’t finished,’ said Levi. ‘It’s got a terrace of two cottages. We’ll live in one, and let the other – just need a lick of paint, they do – and that will bring in some money, plenty of money. What with that, and the bakery, you’ll have a ready-made job to go to when you leave school, Fred, and one day, when you’re old enough, you’ll take over the business.’

  A bolt of pain shot through Freddie’s mind. A baker. They wanted him to be a baker.

  ‘I done it for you, lad, and for your mother,’ continued Levi, puzzled by the way Freddie was staring stonily at the sky.

  ‘She can’t go out much. Now she won’t have to. There’s work for all three of us, years of work. I done it for you.’

  Annie was frowning at Freddie. ‘Say thank you,’ she mouthed.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘’Tis a risk,’ said Levi. ‘Cost me all my money, it did.’

  ‘Granny Barcussy’s money?’ Freddie’s eyes stung with the threat of tears.

  ‘Ah. Granny Barcussy’s money.’

  Freddie stood up. Even the soles of his feet burned with anger. But I won’t be like Dad, he thought. I won’t lose my temper. I won’t. I will not. His face went hard with the effort, hard as glass, and his fists ached in his pockets. He looked at Levi who was sitting with his back against the apple tree, his hands idly collecting petals from the fallen blossom, scooping them into his palm and blowing them playfully at Annie.

  He’s got no idea what I want, Freddie thought. I’ll have to tell him, somehow.

  And then he saw her. Granny Barcussy. Floating like steam, and radiant as sunlight, in the air next to Levi. She wore a robe that glistened with the colours she’d loved, he could smell the honeysuckle and lavender she had grown, and sense the warmth of her. She didn’t look haggard and old now, her skin was smooth and her eyes full of life and compassion. She looked directly at Freddie and her smile melted his anger. It was the same mischievous smile she’d always had, and now she held a finger to her lips and shook her head. He heard her voice.

  ‘Don’t tell him,’ she said. ‘Not now. You keep the peace.’

  She disappeared gently, like salt dissolving in water, and Freddie became aware that Annie was looking at him with an alarmed expression on her face. He wasn’t allowed to tell her, but she knew, Freddie was sure. The hours of eye contact he’d had with his mother on those long difficult walks, the way their souls had been linked by her panic, as if he was her anchor forever chained to her, and she was his lifeboat, safe, but blotting out the light.

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said to Levi. ‘He just needs time to think about it.’

  ‘Aye. ’Tis a big thing. For a lad,’ Levi nodded, struggled to his feet and brushed the apple blossom from his trousers. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  Freddie sat down again, close to his mother’s bottle-green dress and the white apron she wore so proudly. They were better dressed since the war had ended. He had a new shirt and shorts, socks without darns and new brown boots, a warm jacket and a cap.

  ‘Did Harry Price like the queen wasp?’ asked Annie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘More fool him,’ said Annie. ‘The old misery. Well, now you can wave him goodbye. You can go to a new school in town. They’ve got four teachers there, and one of them is a lady. A Miss Francis. She takes the top class, and they say she’s very nice, and clever.’

  ‘But Mother – I don’t want to be a baker. I want to make aeroplanes.’

  ‘I know.’ Annie put her arm round Freddie. He was twelve now, tall for his age, his white blond hair had darkened a little. She looked at his long fingers. ‘You’ve got hands like your dad. Do you know what he wanted to do when he was young?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He wanted to be a jeweller.’

  ‘A jeweller?’ Freddie stared at her in surprise. ‘Why wasn’t he, then? What stopped him?’

  ‘His hands were too big. He couldn’t do the delicate work, so he had to give up his dream. Just as I had to give up my dream.’

  ‘Your dream? You had a dream? What was it?’

  ‘I wanted to be florist – to grow flowers and make them up into bouquets and wreaths. I was good at it. But then the family came along, needed me to do the washing and the baking and the scrubbing and the nursing, and then the war came. We’ve all had to make do, and do things we don’t want, Freddie. And you will too. This bakery idea, it’s perfect for your father. He won’t have to go out in the cold and the wet with his arthritis, he can work at home in a warm dry bakery. It’s perfect. We’ve gotta help him, Freddie. Give it a chance.’

  Freddie sighed.

  ‘But all my life I’ve been doing things I don’t want to do.’

  ‘I know,’ said Annie kindly. ‘But your turn will come. You’ll see.’

  ‘It hasn’t so far.’

  Freddie looked gloomily at his mother. Her grey curly hair was scattered with apple blossom petals, her red cheeks shining with excitement. The hope in her dark blue eyes was underlaid with layers and layers of old fear and old pain going deep into the distances of her soul, and right at the far end was a little child full of love who only wanted to pick flowers. He felt sorry for her.

  ‘You’ve had a hard life,’ he said.

  She nodded slowly. ‘But the hardest thing,’ she said, ‘is my fear, Freddie. Night and day it’s with me. I’m a strong woman, got to be, but that fear is stronger than me. It’s like an illness, but it’s invisible. No one knows, Freddie, only you. No one knows what I go through.’

  ‘Isn’t there a medicine for it?’ Freddie asked.

  Annie shook her head vigorously. ‘Even if there was, I daren’t tell the doctor, daren’t ask for it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because – he’ll think I’m mad, and they lock you up, in these terrible places. Asylums, they call them. I’m not going to one of those, ever. I’d rather be dead,’ she said fiercely, wagging her finger at Freddie. ‘And don’t you let them take me.’

  ‘’Course I won’t. I’ll take care of you,’ said Freddie, now feeling the weight of the shadow that hung over his shoulders, darker and denser as he thought about what was to come. A shadow over his dreams. Instead of making aeroplanes he was expected to be a baker and he couldn’t bear the thought of standing there making bread, shut away from the world. Instead of marrying a brave bright girl, like the girl on the horse, he’d have to be his mother’s guardian. For how long?

  People kept telling him the war had been fought, and all those soldiers had given their lives, so that he, Frederick Barcussy, could be free. But he wasn’t free. He wondered if God had got it wrong.

  He undid his school satchel and took out a piece of paper whi
ch he unrolled and showed to his mother.

  ‘We had to copy this poem,’ he said. ‘It’s a long poem but we’ve got to learn this verse of it by heart and say it to Mr Price. Shall I read it to you?’

  ‘Yes please. You know I like poetry.’

  Annie sat back to listen. She loved to hear Freddie read.

  ‘This is another William,’ he said. ‘William Wordsworth.’

  ‘Oh – Daffodils?’

  ‘No. This is different. Listen.’

  Freddie spread the paper out and began to read, the words falling like the apple blossom petals into Annie’s troubled mind. But as he read on, he got tense and emotional, hardly able to read at all.

  ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

  The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star

  Hath had elsewhere its setting

  And cometh from afar;

  Not in entire forge fulness

  And not in utter nakedness

  But trailing clouds of glory do we come

  From God, who is our home:

  Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

  Shades of the prison-house begin to close

  Upon the growing boy . . .’

  Freddie stopped, unable to continue.

  ‘That’s it then. Isn’t it? Shades of the prison-house – that’s my life – and yours.’

  Chapter Seven

  THE GOLDEN BIRD

  The young girl with the red ribbon in her hair carried the billycan of fresh milk out through the gates where the two stone lions watched her pass below in the September sunlight. She crossed the road and walked up the village street until she came to another stone gateway, two pillars with a coat of arms carved on each and painted in blue, black and gold. Inside the gates a magnificent avenue of copper beeches led to Hilbegut Court, residence of the Squire of Hilbegut.

  Built from Bath stone, with turrets and minarets between the tall golden chimneys, it was an ornate and imposing place. Although fully occupied by the Squire and his servants, it still seemed to belong to the hordes of jackdaws who nested in the complex chimneys and cubbyholes of the roof. At dusk, the blue-eyed birds performed a spectacular ritual of formation flying, swooping to roost and covering the entire roof with their fluttering black bodies. Today they knew, by the arrival of the girl with the billycan, that it was nine o’clock in the morning, and just before the clock tower reverberated with its nine chimes, they flew down and strutted around the lawns.

  The young girl bustled up the steps to the oak door which stood in its own archway of golden stone. She pulled the white porcelain knob of the doorbell and waited, listening to the bell jangling deep inside the house, and the tap-tap of footsteps. A flustered-looking maid opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Miss Kate. The Squire’s waiting for you.’

  ‘Hello, Millie.’

  With her back very straight and her long hair swinging, Kate stepped through the porch and into the great hall of Hilbegut Court. At the far end the Squire of Hilbegut sat at his breakfast table, his legs in brown riding boots stretched wide, his pipe in his hand. His expression was gloomy, but when he saw Kate his eyes lit up and he gave his moustache a tweak. Captivated by her radiance and her confidence, he watched her coming down the hall towards him. She was only a child from the farm, the daughter of his tenant, bringing his milk, but she walked like a princess and smiled like a nurse. He could have had the milk delivered straight to the kitchen, but he wanted to see the child. Sometimes her mother came, or her sister, and then he was disappointed. It was Kate he wanted to see. He loved the way she tried so hard to behave but her eyes had a wicked, expectant sparkle.

  ‘I’ve brought your milk, Sir.’

  ‘Is it fresh?’ he asked, not because he wanted to know, but because he wanted her to talk to him. She always had some bright tale to tell him.

  ‘Oh yes, Sir,’ said Kate. ‘It’s Jenny Lu’s milk. She’s a Jersey cow, and I milked her myself. Ethie helped me. We sat one each side on two three-legged stools and we got the giggles.’

  ‘The giggles?’ The Squire raised his ginger eyebrows, pretending he didn’t know what the giggles were, just to engage Kate in more conversation.

  He was rewarded with the radiant smile which brought such warmth and cheeriness into his neglected heart. The child trusted him like no one else did.

  ‘The giggles,’ she announced, putting the billycan on the table, ‘is when you can’t stop laughing.’

  Since he rarely laughed, that sounded like a song from a party to which he hadn’t been invited. Taking the lid off the billycan he poured the fresh milk into a waiting tumbler, and took a long drink.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘More of that tomorrow, please.’

  Kate’s eyes had turned solemn.

  ‘Well – this is the last time I can come,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow my mum will bring it for you.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘I’m going away. To boarding school with Ethie. I’m eleven now,’ said Kate, and for the first time the Squire thought he saw a cloud pass through her sunny eyes.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, hiding his disappointment. ‘So you’re growing up now, are you? And how do you feel about boarding school? Won’t you miss your mum?’

  The cloud rushed through her eyes again, but Kate seemed to have an internal light switch. She lifted her chin and gave him a smile that made him feel the whole world was all right, God was in his heaven and all would be well.

  ‘I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. Especially –’ Kate leaned forward and whispered dramatically, ‘the midnight feasts.’

  The Squire put his hand into the pocket of his clean tweed jacket, and fumbled with the coins in there. He took out a silver half-crown and pressed it into Kate’s small hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ she gasped. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘You get some chocolate. For your midnight feasts. And I want to hear all about it when you come home.’ He managed a smile, or what he hoped was a smile. ‘Goodbye now.’

  Kate knew she was supposed to walk out of Hilbegut Court in a lady-like manner, but the half-crown was so exciting that she tucked it in her pinafore pocket, lifted the skirt of her red dress and skipped away down the hall, turning once to wave at the sad old Squire who was staring after her. She would have liked to tickle him under his arm and round his ribs and make him laugh out loud like she did with her father, but she knew her mother wouldn’t approve.

  She danced all the way home, in and out of the copper beeches, the leaves crackling like cornflakes under her laced boots. Scooping armfuls of leaves from the hollows around the tree roots, she flung them into the air, whirling and laughing as they fluttered down into her hair. At the end of the avenue she paused and took a last look at the turrets and chimneys of Hilbegut Court, and the jackdaws flew up, chack-chacking as if saying goodbye.

  It was to be a day of last looks for Kate, and her older sister Ethie, but Ethie was used to it. Ethie was thirteen and bored with it all, and she spent a lot of energy trying to be responsible. This morning she’d said scathingly, ‘You don’t have to say goodbye to each individual chicken, Kate.’

  But Kate loved every animal on the farm, even the massive Hereford bull steaming and stamping in his well-barricaded corner of the barn. She wanted to touch the bristly backs of the pigs and watch their ears twitch as she told them her news; she wanted to look into the velvety faces of the sheep, and smooth the coat of every cow. And Daisy, the Shire horse, she’d already said goodbye to about six times, her arms wrapped around the horse’s kindly face.

  Kate didn’t want to grow up. She didn’t want to get cross and busty like Ethie. She wanted to stay eleven for the rest of her life.

  As she skipped through the gate between the stone lions, it began to rain in a silver downpour. Kate ran for the swing which was set in the barn door on two scratchy ropes. She loved to swing backwards into the high dusty interior and sail out into the glistening rain, and sing: ‘Out in the r
ain and in again, out in the rain and in again.’ The squeak of the ropes, the rush of air on her face, the extravagant rhythm, created a time to sort out her thoughts, chuck out the bad ones and keep the good.

  Tomorrow morning the half past ten train would carry her away, like a log on a swollen river. Her father would turn the pony and cart round and drive home at a brisk trot, without her.

  But it didn’t work out quite as expected.

  Kate got down from the swing and ran into the kitchen where her mother was making butter at the kitchen table. Her cheeks were tense and pale, and instead of greeting her daughter in her usual peaceful way, she said, ‘We’ll have to change our plans for tomorrow morning, Kate. Your father’s not well, and I’m afraid he’s too poorly to drive to the station. I’ll have to do it, or Ethie will.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Daddy?’ asked Kate, watching her mother’s eyes.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said her mother shortly.

  Kate sat down at the oak table and rested her chin on her two hands, studying her mother’s face. Sally Loxley was giving nothing away. She went on beating and beating the milk in a round white basin; she wouldn’t stop until it turned to butter and then she would separate the whey, and work the butter between two wooden butter pats, over and over, working the beads of moisture out of it. She’d won prizes for her butter-and cheese-making and the certificates were displayed inside a glass cabinet, along with several silver cups. The largest of these was inscribed with ‘Best all round Farm’, awarded to her husband Gilbert Loxley, Bertie.

  Sally was a sturdy woman, energetic and calm. She’d raised four children, two boys who had both married and emigrated to Canada, then after a ten-year gap, Ethie had come along, and finally Kate. The two girls had grown up at Hilbegut Farm among the cider orchards and peat-cutting areas of the Somerset Levels. Bertie ran his own tenant farm as well as overseeing the farms and cottages owned by the Squire. The good wages and abundant crops had continued even through the war, and now the family had sufficient wealth to send Ethie and Kate to boarding school on the Dorset coast.