The Boy with No Boots

by Sheila Jeffries

  ‘Levi!’ Annie screamed. She rushed outside and crumpled beside him. She cradled his dear face in her arms, and sat there rocking for long hopeless minutes. The morning sky darkened while they searched for his pulse and strained to hear him breathing, but Levi’s mighty chest was still, his face frozen in anger.

  ‘’Tis too late. He’s dead,’ said Annie quietly, and she watched the last sparks of his life drift past her and disappear.

  ‘You’ll HAVE to go out now, Mother,’ said Alice firmly.

  ‘You’ll have to get over it,’ agreed Betty.

  Annie sat miserably between her two daughters on the morning of Levi’s funeral. Her heart was full of heat and teardrops, her grey hair a storm of impossible curls, her face swollen with grief. She was silent now, rocking slightly, her hand picking threads out of the black shawl around her shoulders. She’d repeated and repeated her words: ‘I can’t,’ but no one would listen, and there was nothing left to say. Only Freddie understood her fear. She looked at him now, sitting in the window, his long legs folded awkwardly, his eyes staring into the garden. He would take care of her, she was sure. He’d leave school and run the bakery. They’d manage.

  Betty and Alice had always collaborated in forecasting gloom. They’d been away from home for years, and Freddie had hardly seen them in his life. Annie knew he found them intimidating, especially today. Both were dressed in the blackest of black outfits, identical hats with black net veils covering their faces, trendy tight-fitting black skirts and jackets, and grim expressions to match. Annie felt she no longer knew who they were. To her, Betty and Alice were a long ago memory of happy children.

  She looked at her elder son, George, who was hunched on a chair, so like Levi, inarticulate but wise. He’d arrived on a throbbing motorbike, and she could see that Freddie was fascinated by it, more interested in the bike than in his brother who was fifteen years his senior.

  Annie had wanted to blame Freddie for Levi’s sudden death, but she chose to keep quiet. A death was trouble enough. She understood Freddie’s aversion to school. Surely he’d suffered enough, she reasoned, and in the months and years to come she would need him. Without Freddie, Annie saw herself ending up in the asylum. She even felt threatened by her two daughters, Alice the manager and Betty the echo. There was something ominous about the way they wanted to manage her, the cast-iron conviction they had about her agoraphobia. Levi had tolerated it, Freddie understood, but Alice and Betty wanted to deny its existence.

  The slow clop-clopping of the horse-drawn hearse brought a respectful silence to the street. Neighbours stood outside their doors, workmen downed tools and took off their caps, playing children stood silently, their backs against the wall.

  ‘It’s coming,’ said Freddie from his seat by the window.

  Together they filed outside in their black clothes, with Annie wedged firmly between Alice and Betty.

  It was the second funeral Freddie had experienced in his life. At Granny Barcussy’s funeral he had walked, white-faced and distraught beside his father, and Annie had stayed at home, peering out at the sad procession. At the graveside Freddie had broken down and sobbed uncontrollably, and Levi had picked him up and held him like a baby. The smell of his coat and the feel of his big hands patting him had comforted Freddie.

  Now he was nearly a man, and no one would comfort him at his father’s graveside. He would have to stand there, stiff and expressionless like Alice and Betty.

  When he saw the two black horses turn into the street he had a terrible feeling of deep, deep cold. The power of death to suddenly strip the vigour out of the whole street was almost disabling.

  He stood at the door, next to George who towered over him with his face set rigid. Freddie wanted something from the stranger who was his brother, warmth or eye contact or a touch on his arm, but there was none. He wanted to walk backwards in front of Annie, helping her as he had always done, but Alice and Betty had her in an iron grip, their fingers clamped onto her black shawl.

  Loneliness engulfed Freddie, and it was the loneliness of being different. This was his family, but he wasn’t remotely like any of them, nor did he want to be. What he wanted most in that moment was to run away, to arrive at his father’s funeral from a different direction and watch it as a lone observer. He wanted to experience the funeral with the sky and the wind and the twisting flight of gathering swallows. He wanted to sit on the floor of the church and feel the music rumble through stone, and watch the faces of coloured glass and stone, watch and read their expression and feel their empathy. And he wanted to share his father’s journey into the unknown, into the silent land.

  So he walked alone at the back of the black procession on its way to the cemetery, falling further and further behind, and he looked down from a great height and saw himself detaching, step by step, from the silver cords that bound the generations. He was alone. He saw his family drifting away from him on a river of forgetfulness, and he was glad to walk alone, his feet governed by the tolling of the church bell, his eyes gazing at a sparrow hawk hovering in the distance.

  The silence of the funeral seemed to have a shape, an elongated elliptical space that extended ahead of the cortège and for some distance behind, the shape excluding the normal life of the street. Freddie kept within its boundary, close enough, but apart. George didn’t turn to see where he was, and Alice and Betty minced along – almost carrying Annie, the backs of their three heads bobbing in the wake of the hearse as it halted outside Monterose church. A group of people who had known Levi were at the entrance, hats in hand, and the vicar loomed like a heron inspecting an estuary.

  Once, Annie had sent Freddie to Sunday school, and the teacher had refused to have him there again. ‘All he does is walk around and stare at the statues and the windows,’ she’d complained. ‘He won’t sit down with the others.’ Freddie had longed to go in there again but he’d never had time off from school, the bakery, the railway, and Annie’s endless errands.

  He hung back as the coffin was unloaded – to the tolling of the bell, the jingle of the horses’ harness, and the shuffle of footsteps. The way the coffin was carried high on the shoulders of the pallbearers gave him a strange feeling of finality. His father’s body was inside. There was no going back. It was grim, and it was glorious. The majesty of the church was there for Levi, the stained glass and the brass eagle, the tapestries and the music. After all Levi’s work in the corn mill, his arthritis, his uncontrollable tempers, the broken china, the crying, the po-faced storytelling, the years in the bakery. After all that he was paraded into this magnificent building.

  Freddie was last to go into the church, and he noticed that Gladys was there, looking at him with a blend of concern and disapproval. Ignoring her, he lifted his eyes to appraise the wood carvings in the roof, and to gaze at his favourite window which had a saint with a halo underneath a tree of the richest emerald greens, a white curly lamb at his feet, a scarlet cloak and a golden sword at his belt.

  ‘You should sit with your family. Up there,’ Gladys whispered loudly, but no one looked round. Freddie ignored her, and walked to the back of the church where he sat down on the stone step leading into the bell tower. From there he could see the entire church, his father’s coffin and the backs of heads. The vicar’s voice droned, the congregation stood up to sing, but Freddie closed his eyes, touched the stone floor with his hands, and went into a trance.

  Through his sensitive fingers he could feel the earth below the church. It had energy like an arrow of light fired into the rocks, a sound that resonated for miles and miles through the land, through churches and castles and monuments far away. And he could feel water down there, the secret wells and springs winding, branching like arteries of silver through the dark of the earth.

  The drone of the funeral service cushioned his senses like moss. Freddie stayed in his blessed trance, and then he saw something so amazing that he wanted to leap to his feet. Shining in the gloom of the church was an angel of light stretching from fl
oor to ceiling. Its wings were rays of gold fanning out from wall to wall. Its skirt was a cone of radiance covering the whole congregation. The face was so bright that the features were invisible, only a feeling of omnipotent mysterious love emanated through the angel’s resplendent being. Under its brightness, the people sat like dominoes, wooden and unresponsive.

  Freddie held his breath. He longed to shout out in a loud voice, a voice louder than him. But all his young life he’d been told: No. You mustn’t. You shouldn’t. Don’t you dare.

  The shades came down, the angel vanished, and the words of his father’s favourite hymn reclaimed his consciousness:

  ‘Rock of ages cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in thee.’

  Freddie thought about the words: ‘Let me hide myself.’ Wasn’t that what he’d been doing all his life? Hiding himself. Hiding his soul. And why? Because of Harry Price. Because of Levi smashing china over the accusation of his son telling lies. It hadn’t been lies.

  As the hymn progressed into the final verse, Freddie felt rebellious. Sad as he was to lose his father, Levi’s death had liberated him. He was nearly a man now, his voice was deepening and he longed to use it, to feel its new full rumbling power in the echoing church. He hadn’t joined in the singing, but now he stood up and waited for the silence that would follow the hymn.

  Empowered by his solitary stance and his golden vision, Freddie took a deep breath and felt his voice rise up from the bowels of the earth. He didn’t need to shout. The voice was effortlessly resonant.

  ‘I saw an angel,’ he declared. ‘A golden angel shining over all of you, here in this church.’

  The heads turned, the mouths dropped open, a hundred accusing eyes stared down the church at Freddie. Even Levi’s coffin seemed to tremble, the feathers of the brass eagle bristled, and someone’s hymnbook crashed to the floor like a shot pigeon.

  Once he started, Freddie couldn’t stop.

  ‘I’m not a liar,’ he said quietly.

  The ‘shades of the prison-house’ began to crack around him, letting in chinks of light, bright glimpses of the kind of life that freedom could bring.

  ‘And,’ he added, his voice gathering strength as he let go of his final issue, ‘I am NOT going to be a baker.’

  He’d said it. The shades of the prison-house collapsed into rubble, and through the rising dust, George crossed the church like a leopard, seized Freddie by the collar and frog-marched him outside.

  Out in the sunshine he slammed Freddie against the blue-lias stones of the porch.

  ‘Don’t you bring shame on the Barcussy family.’ The words came spitting and sputtering from between George’s big yellowy teeth, and with each word he shoved Freddie harder into the wall. ‘I am the head of the family now. You’ll do as you’re told – BOY.’

  Shaken, Freddie looked into George’s furious eyes, and saw that Levi was right inside him, looking out.

  Chapter Eleven

  HE WHO DARES

  On the morning of Freddie’s sixteenth birthday, he got up in the dark as usual, climbed into his clothes and lit a candle. He held it up to the window to observe the way it glistened on the fern-like patterns of ice on the inside of the glass. With his fingernail he scraped out a peep hole and peered outside at the moonlight shining on frosted branches and rooftops. His heart was thumping with excitement. Today was the day. He must keep his nerves steady, act as if everything was normal. He’d worked it all out beforehand, choosing a time when George had gone to the pub. First he’d smuggled an empty flour sack upstairs and hidden it.

  George wasn’t good at early starts. He slept heavily, often after a night out drinking, leaving the early morning bread-making to Annie and Freddie. This morning Freddie had made sure he was up first.

  He slid the flour sack from under his mattress, snagging it on the rusted metal springs which groaned and twanged in the silent house. Gingerly he lifted the floor-boards and a musty mouldy smell was released into his room. Reaching inside he withdrew his bundles of coins, all twenty-six of them, tied into old socks, hankies and bits of rag, glad that he’d tied them tightly to stop the coins jingling. Over the years he’d counted and recorded each bundle on a strip of cardboard, and he knew approximately how much he had. Enough for what he was going to do. The only things he’d bought for himself were a pencil, a drawing book and a penknife.

  Freddie paused to listen. Only one lot of snoring, and it was Annie. He didn’t know if George was awake or not, so he waited, the raised floorboard propped in his hand. George was too close, just next door in the back room overlooking the garden. Reassured by the silence Freddie stuffed the bundles of money into the flour sack and gathered the top with a piece of string. He lowered the floorboard back into its slot.

  Heaving the sack with both hands, he struggled down the steep stairs, bumping it on every step. He was breathing hard and the tips of his fingers ached with frost. The candle was left flickering in its metal holder at the top of the stairs.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ George’s voice rumbled out of the dark, and the sofa springs twanged and creaked. Freddie could see the shadow of him rising, throwing his blanket aside. A sour stench of alcohol filled the room, a bottle glinted on the floor.

  Freddie hadn’t expected George to be downstairs on the sofa, and awake. What could he say? Tell George how sick he felt at the way he was spending the bakery’s hard-earned profit on booze? Tell him to mind his own business? He set his mouth in a stubborn line and locked his mind into the power of silence. Moving calmly, as if he had all the time in the world, he fetched the candle down the stairs and put it on the scullery table.

  George was standing at the bottom of the stairs, yawning, and looking at the sack of money.

  ‘What you got in there, baby brother?’ He gave the sack a kick with his toe and Freddie noted he didn’t have his boots on. That gave him a chance. He thought quickly, unravelling his carefully laid plans. His intentions had been to put the money sack into the front box of the bicycle, camouflage it with loaves of bread and appear to set off on his rounds as normal. That wouldn’t work now.

  ‘I said – what’s in that sack?’ hissed George putting his beer-soaked face close to Freddie’s cheeks. His breath steamed in the candlelight. ‘Answer me, baby brother.’

  He pushed Freddie against the wall and a picture fell down with a crash. It was a sepia photograph of Levi which Annie was proud of, and now the whites of his eyes gleamed up at them through cracked glass. Freddie ignored George and calmly picked up the picture, propping it on the scullery table. He could feel the anger in George’s clenched fists, and he just looked at him steadily. George had tried many times to get him to fight, but Freddie wouldn’t. He’d stand there, silent and still, and something in his gaze always stopped George in his tracks, a becalming blend of obstinacy and peace, something George didn’t have. Freddie knew it confused him, and that he would cover the confusion with a volley of verbal abuse.

  George bent down and fumbled with the neck of the sack. He had clumsy hands like Levi, and in the ice-cold air his fingers were too stiff to untie the string, so he patted the Hessian sides. It jingled a little, and a puff of flour dust rose into the candlelight.

  ‘Ah!’ George’s eyes sparked with suspicion. ‘That’d feel like money. You got a sack of money, baby brother? Where d’you get that from? Been stealing it, have you? Stealing the takings. Pilfering. What you gonna do with it, baby brother? Run away to London?’

  ‘I earned it,’ said Freddie quietly. ‘Every penny. Carrying luggage at the station. I’ve saved it up for three years. It’s mine. And I’m doing what I like with it, George.’

  He looked George squarely in the eyes. Creaking, shuffling sounds of Annie getting up came from the stairs. Both men looked up at the faint strip of light under her door.

  ‘Now,’ thought Freddie. ‘Do it now.’ With his freezing hands he grabbed the sack and heaved it into the bicycle, seized his coat and flung it on top. P
uffing and wheezing from the effort, he shoved the back door open, and grappled the heavy bike outside.

  ‘Good riddance,’ shouted George, standing on the mat in his socks.

  Freddie mounted the bike and pedalled into the darkness, the handlebars swinging awkwardly with the weight of his sack of money. With no lights front or back, he was glad of the moon’s brilliance which cast a lattice of shadows across the street. Everything looked black or silver, the frozen puddles on the rough road had yellowish curls and flaked white edges to their mirror-like surface. The church clock struck five, its chimes slicing through the sub-zero air. It was a Monday in February, Freddie’s sixteenth birthday, and his plan had gone badly wrong. Instead of working in the warm bakery, he was out in the hoar frost. It wouldn’t be light for two hours, and he’d got nowhere to go.

  The frost burned his ears and crystallised under his collar, between the buttons of his jacket and up his sleeves, which were too short for him. It grazed the back of his throat and etched its sharpness deep into his lungs. He paused in the market square to blow on his hands, which were now completely numb and locked onto the handlebars. Obviously he couldn’t stay out there for two hours. He had to find a warm refuge for himself, his bike and his bag of money.

  No lights shone from any of the houses or shops, and the square which was so busy during the day was deserted except for a bunch of rats scuttling along the base of the church wall. Freddie inspected the church porch. It was clammy and unfriendly. He thought about the station waiting-room which usually had a welcoming fire, and decided to go there.

  The old bread bike had no brakes and with the heavy bag of money in the front it careered down the station hill like a toboggan. Freddie stuck his long legs out straight, his hobnailed boots striking sparks along the road, making a lot of noise, and he arrived breathless at the station railings. He felt like laughing out loud. No one was around as he wheeled the bike onto the platform, and the moonlight gleamed on the rails. He turned the brass knob of the waiting-room door and, to his great joy, it was unlocked. The smell of coal and leather lingered in the air and it felt warm as he pushed the bike inside and stood there in heavy darkness. A faint red glow came from the embers of the fireplace.