The Boy with No Boots

by Sheila Jeffries

  Kate took a hay net from the cart and tied it to the railings for Polly. ‘Good girl,’ she said, rubbing the pony’s neck just behind her ears. ‘You did bring us here nicely, didn’t you? Now you have a rest and eat up this lovely hay. I’ll get you a drink.’ Polly gave Kate an affectionate push with her head.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Kate, stop fussing. We’ve got to unload,’ complained Ethie.

  ‘There’s plenty of time.’ Kate wouldn’t be hurried. She took Polly’s bucket from the cart, carried it over to the water trough, filled it and brought it back. She put it down, glad to see the thirsty pony plunge her lips into it and drink noisily. ‘Good girl, Polly,’ she said again, and then, to Ethie’s annoyance Kate began to sing.

  ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles

  Pretty bubbles in the air . . .’

  Her lovely voice mingled pleasantly with the shouts of men unloading goods and the whirr of trolley wheels being hauled onto the platform. A man who was whistling took up the tune Kate was singing, doffed his cap and winked as he walked by trundling one of the heavy iron and timber station trolleys with its T-shaped handle and rusting wheels. Kate ran after him, calling out in her bright voice, ‘I say – I say, can we share your trolley, please? There’s none left.’

  The man turned and looked at the beautiful young woman. She wore a red dress with a swingy skirt, made of a heavy cottony fabric with tiny black and pink rosebuds. It had short puff sleeves showing off her rounded sunburnt arms, and the bodice had strips of black lace gathered in ruffles over her bust.

  ‘Do anything for you, darling!’ he leered, dropping the metal handle of the trolley.

  ‘KATE!’ shouted Ethie. She rolled her eyes and marched up to the man. ‘We can manage, thank you. Go on your way, please.’

  ‘Suit yourself, missus.’ He looked Ethie up and down with a very different expression. She cut an intimidating figure in a plain navy dress with big shoulder pads and a droopy black hat casting a shadow over her face. He turned his back and walked off with his trolley, rollicking his hips rebelliously.

  ‘Do you HAVE to flirt with anything in trousers?’ said Ethie, glowering at her younger sister.

  Kate refused to be ruffled. ‘Oh, he’s just a lad,’ she said pleasantly. She thought Ethie was behaving like an old hen, but she didn’t say so. ‘Let’s not spoil this lovely morning.’ She went on singing, and started unpacking boxes of cheese from the cart, her hair falling over her shoulders.

  ‘I’ll go and fetch a trolley,’ said Ethie. ‘We only need one for the big truckle.’

  She stalked off and returned a few minutes later wheeling a hand trolley. ‘This will do,’ she said, ‘and Charlie says the freight train is late. He says the signals are stuck on the other side of the tunnel. It’s going to be half an hour late.’

  ‘Why don’t you do the shopping?’ suggested Kate, taking the willow basket out of the cart. ‘I know you like shopping. I’ll stay here with Polly, and I can unload.’

  ‘What about the big truckle of cheese?’ said Ethie.

  ‘Oh, someone will help me I’m sure. Go on, you go.’

  Kate knew Ethie loved shopping. She handed her the basket, and was glad to see her sister walking away into the town. Still singing, she briskly unpacked the boxes of cheese and stacked them onto the trolley. In the middle of the cart was an enormous truckle of farmhouse cheddar, well matured, and wrapped tightly in a cloth. It had a very special destination, clearly printed on a brown label.

  Confident that someone would come along and help her lift it out, Kate sat on the open back of the cart, swinging her legs and lifting her face to feel the hot May sunshine on her skin. The station yard was full of sparrows, hundreds of them hopping and pecking and having dust baths at the sides of the road. Blackbirds and thrushes were singing and in the distance a cuckoo was cuckooing. Kate watched a big Scammell lorry rumbling down to the station. It had nothing on the back so she assumed it was coming to collect something to be unloaded from the freight train. She watched it drive slowly to the far side of the yard and park.

  As soon as the news circulated about the train being late, people started to gather in small groups, talking and laughing as they waited. Someone produced a harmonica and began to play vigorously and before long a man with a fiddle had joined in, and people were starting to clap and sing. Kate couldn’t resist going over there, and soon her feet were tapping, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘You look as if you’d like to dance.’ The man to whom she’d spoken earlier was there, standing in front of Kate with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Has your mother gone shopping?’

  Kate laughed at him. ‘Oh that’s not my mother. She’s my big sister – Ethie.’

  ‘Bit of a dragon, is she?’

  ‘No,’ said Kate mischievously. ‘I’m the family dragon.’ She laughed again and caught the eye of another girl who was standing there twirling her skirt in time to the music. ‘Come on, let’s dance!’

  The next minute, she and the other girl were dancing wildly in the street, kicking their legs and clapping, their hair whirling around and both of them giggling. The men stood around whooping and whistling. Kate was enjoying herself. She loved to dance, it felt good and right on such a beautiful May morning when the bank opposite the station was covered in wild flowers, moon daisies, corncockle, buttercups and cowslips, with butterflies dancing and fluttering all over them. The whole world seemed full of music and exuberance.

  Freddie got out of the lorry and stretched. A board was propped outside the entrance to the station announcing that the train was late. He was glad. He’d been hard at work since 5 a.m., first in the bakery, then out in his lorry delivering timber to the wheelwrights. He’d come to the station to collect some bales of fabric for the tailor’s shop and six brand new wheelbarrows for the builder’s merchant.

  Glad of the break, he took off his jacket and strode across to his favourite place on the sunny bank facing the station. Bleached by the sun, the hot grass was spangled with flowers, and the glistening wings of honey-bees. Butterflies danced through the shimmering sunlight, and Freddie studied them with pleasure. One pitched on his finger, spread its wings and settled there. It was a peacock. The breeze ruffled the gingery down on its body, and rich patterns of blue and red glowed on its wings. The antenna had tiny grey and white stripes, its slender legs were hunched as it clung to his finger, looking at him with wise black eyes. The contact with its fragile beauty touched some forgotten place in Freddie’s soul. Working long hard hours through the golden summer days gave him fewer and fewer spaces to dream. Engines chugged in his mind; his clothes smelled of oil; his shoulders carried heavy sacks; his drawing book lay untouched in his bedroom.

  Three years had passed since he’d bought the Scammell lorry. His bank account was growing, and so was his confidence. At first he’d practised driving, especially the reversing, until he could manoeuvre the lorry in and out of the tightest spaces, necessary as some of the villages had streets so narrow that the lorry almost touched the walls of cottages as he drove through. He knew the engine like an old friend, listening to it and interpreting its every need and mood. The strength of it was exhilarating to Freddie, and sometimes when it roared up a steep hill with a load of stone he would lean forward, hold his breath, and then laugh out loud when he made it to the top.

  Freddie had never had friends like those he had made now, other men he could talk to, tell yarns and share laughter together. For the first time in his life, he felt respected and welcome. His best friend was Herbie, the stonemason. Herbie often invited Freddie to go to the pub with him, but Freddie always refused. He hated the smell of beer and the clink of glass, and the women with red lipstick who ‘made eyes’ at him.

  The only shadow in Freddie’s life was his mother’s increasing unhappiness, her anxieties and needs which piled into his mind as soon as he got home. Juggling the bakery and the haulage business wasn’t going to work forever, he knew, but he carried on helping with the bread to placate Annie.<
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  He looked at the butterfly still resting on his hand. His skin was cracked and sore, his knuckles red from constant scrubbing, for each night he had to remove every trace of the ingrained engine oil so that he could make bread. He had a rash on the backs of his hands and wrists, and he often hid them away in his pockets when he was talking to people. Yet this butterfly didn’t care how rough his skin was, it had chosen to pitch there and stay with him. And as he gazed at it, he heard singing, a clear, pure, happy voice that was somehow familiar.

  ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles,

  Pretty bubbles in the air,

  They fly so high, nearly touch the sky . . .’

  Freddie turned his head very slowly, so as not to alarm the butterfly, and scanned the busy station yard, peering past the parked motor vehicles to where the horses were tied up along the railings. He saw the girl who was singing. She sat on the back of an open pony cart, in a red dress, swinging her legs.

  The butterfly flitted away, and Freddie stood up as if in a dream. He brushed the grass from his clothes and walked over there in long deliberate strides, his jacket slung over one shoulder. The blood in his veins ran hot and fast, like mulled wine, and a haze of sweat glistened on his brow. He didn’t know what he was going to say, only that he had to go to her. The walk felt strange as if a golden string was pulling him towards her, winding a loop of gold around the two of them.

  As soon as he recognised Polly, and saw the flaked old lettering on the cart, he knew his dream was coming true. She was watching him walking towards her, and as he came into her presence, Freddie couldn’t help staring. The little girl whose face he had carried in his mind for years had blossomed into a vibrant young woman with plump, firm breasts, a curvy waist and shapely legs swinging in a carefree way. Her beautiful face with its shell-like nostrils and rose-petal skin was the one he had memorised, but when he saw the life that flashed from her eyes he almost gasped. Tight-lipped, he stood in front of her, and he couldn’t think of anything acceptable to say.

  But Kate made it easy for him.

  ‘Hello,’ she said warmly, and beamed as if she’d been waiting for him. ‘Have you come to help me? How kind of you.’

  Freddie looked deep into her eyes and saw that they were not dark as he’d thought but a warm bright amber. There was no fear, no suspicion and no anger in there, only a breath-taking sense of purity and love, and it filled him with the sudden glory of new life, open and trusting like the butterfly.

  ‘So – what do you need help with?’ he asked awkwardly.

  Kate jumped down from the cart with a flounce of red skirts and lace. She was shorter than him, about up to his shoulder, and now she smiled at his concerned face. ‘I need to unload this truckle of cheese,’ she said, ‘and take it onto the platform with the rest of the stuff.’

  ‘I can lift that,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Oh, can you? That’s marvellous,’ she cried. ‘It’s terribly heavy.’

  Freddie leaned into the cart and slid the truckle of cheese towards him. He couldn’t help noticing the label.

  ‘That’s a long journey for a piece of cheese,’ he remarked.

  Kate laughed. ‘Oh, it’s going to my uncle’s farm in Gloucestershire,’ she said. ‘He’s got a thousand-acre farm on the banks of the Severn Estuary. It’s lovely. I’ve been there for a holiday, and you have to go in a BOAT.’ She announced the word boat in a dramatic whisper, her eyes widening as if a boat was the most exciting thing on earth.

  ‘A boat?’

  ‘Yes, a ferry boat. It goes from Aust Ferry, over the wide brown river. People take motorbikes on it. They wheel them on over a big ramp and then they pull the ramp up and the boat goes chugging out into the swirling river. Oh, it’s so exciting. And the wind blows up the river and gives you roses in your cheeks, and you can smell the SEA. Ooh, I love the salty sea, don’t you?’

  ‘Well – I’ve never seen the sea,’ said Freddie, captivated by the way Kate talked with such fluency.

  ‘Haven’t you? Oh I expect you will one day – and you’ll love it. It SPARKLES like DIAMONDS.’

  ‘Sparkles like diamonds!’ repeated Freddie, and he found himself smiling at the thought. ‘I’d like to see that.’

  He lifted the truckle of cheese onto his shoulder, and crooked his arm around it.

  ‘You are strong,’ said Kate. She took the trolley and walked beside him, talking all the time in her chirruping voice. ‘Perhaps you can help me unload something from the train as well. If you wouldn’t mind. It’s a huge salmon and it’s in a box filled with ice.’

  ‘A salmon!’

  ‘Yes. My Uncle Don has got a set of putchers on the River Severn. It’s tidal, you see. And the fish swim up with the tide and they get stuck in the putchers which are like long pointed baskets and when the tide goes down you can paddle out there and get them. Every year my mother makes a massive cheese and we swap it for a salmon. We send the cheese up on the train and they send the salmon down in a box. Have you ever tasted salmon? It’s PINK inside and it’s delicious with a pat of butter and a sprinkle of fresh parsley.’

  Freddie carried the truckle of cheese to the far end of the platform with Kate bustling beside him, talking non-stop. The train was now due in ten minutes. Ten blissful minutes, he thought, to sit in the May sunshine with the girl he secretly loved. Why hide it? Why not tell her? he thought impulsively, and immediately a word shone large and bright in his head. ‘WAIT.’

  He put the huge cheese down on a brown bench, and made an attempt at a joke. ‘The mice will be after me now,’ he said brushing his shoulder, ‘I smell of cheese.’

  ‘So do I!’ said Kate and went off into a volley of laughter, her eyes gleaming. It was such a bubbly, inviting laugh that Freddie found himself laughing too.

  ‘You’re like my granny,’ he said.

  ‘Well, thanks very much. There’s a nice compliment!’ Kate went into another peal of laughter that rang all over the station.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Freddie, but the word didn’t feel right. Kate was so full of joy and confidence that an abject apology slunk past her and escaped into the gutter.

  A small silence followed, like an undiscovered jewel, both of them looking attentively at each other’s faces.

  ‘I should have asked your name,’ said Kate warmly.

  ‘Freddie Barcussy, and I know your name,’ he said. ‘Oriole Kate Loxley.’

  She looked surprised. ‘How did you know? Not many people know my first name.’

  ‘I saw it once, on your suitcase,’ said Freddie, ‘when you were a little girl. I was there when you had the accident, and I stayed with you when you were lying unconscious in the road.’

  Kate gasped. For the first time she looked serious, and he saw her eyes settle into stillness, like a rippling pool becoming a tranquil mirror.

  ‘It was you!’ she said. ‘Fancy you remembering that.’

  ‘You had plaits, with red ribbons,’ said Freddie.

  Kate looked at him searchingly.

  ‘I remember – I dreamed you were an angel,’ she said.

  ‘Angels don’t smell of cheese,’ said Freddie, and was rewarded with another peal of laughter.

  ‘The train’s coming.’ Shouts and movement stirred all along the platform as the freight train came puffing slowly in, and squealed to a halt. Immediately, two of the station workers in dark blue sooty clothes jumped down onto the rails and walked along tapping the metal wheels, a routine inspection. The ramps were lowered onto the platform and the unloading and loading began.

  ‘Big box here for Loxley, Hilbegut Farm,’ shouted Charlie.

  ‘I’ll help you, Kate,’ said Freddie. ‘I can collect my load in a minute.’

  He took the cold wooden box in both hands.

  ‘You mustn’t tip it over,’ laughed Kate. ‘You’ll bruise its nose.’

  ‘What’s in there then, Kate?’ asked Charlie who obviously knew her.

  ‘A SALMON!’ she whispered dramatically.

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sp; ‘Cor. Can I come to dinner then?’ he joked.

  ‘I’ll ask my mother,’ said Kate mischievously. ‘And if she says no, I’ll bring you down a slice – with a knife and fork.’

  Freddie was fascinated by the camaraderie she seemed to have with everyone on the station. He felt proud to be carrying the salmon in its box, proud to be walking beside her down the platform. She swanned along beside him, pausing once to make a fuss of a collie dog that ran to her squirming and wagging its tail.

  ‘No, you can’t have that,’ she said as it sniffed hopefully at the salmon. ‘That’s not for dogs.’

  ‘So now I smell of fish as well,’ said Freddie, smiling at her. She smiled back and his heart almost stopped when her eyes looked up at him. He pointed at his Scammell lorry. ‘That’s my lorry over there. I’ve got a haulage business.’

  ‘What – your own?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Freddie.

  ‘It’s a beauty!’ She paused to admire the lorry. ‘I’ll tell everyone, if you like, and get some business for you, Freddie. Where are you based?’

  ‘Barcussy’s Bakery – top of the hill. My mother runs it, and I help her, since Dad died. I saved up for years to buy the lorry, and the day I was sixteen I took it all to the bank, and bought the lorry.’

  ‘Well, good for you, and good luck!’ said Kate brightly, and Polly raised her head from the hay net and whinnied at the sound of her voice. ‘Here we are, this is our cart.’

  Freddie slid the box into the back and went to stroke the pony’s head.

  ‘Hello, Polly. Remember me?’

  ‘She likes you,’ said Kate, seeing Polly give Freddie a push with her soft nose.

  ‘I like her. I took her home, that day,’ said Freddie, ‘and it was the first time I’d ever led a pony. She’s lovely.’

  ‘Ethie’s coming,’ said Kate, and her expression changed a little. ‘She’s my sister. So we’d better say goodbye now, Freddie.’