The Boy with No Boots Read online

  Yet Freddie knew about her phobia, though she hadn’t told him. She depended on Freddie, on his inner light, his depth and compassion. He’s only a child, she thought now, a frail child. He might die.

  ‘Why does he get hit so often at school?’

  ‘He daydreams, Doctor.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all, as far as I know.’

  ‘I’ll go and see his teacher. That’s a nasty bruise, too near his eye. Keep him warm and quiet, and let him sleep for as long as he wants. No school tomorrow. And . . .’ Doctor Stewart frowned at Annie, ‘Pull yourself together, Annie.’

  She rocked harder. I’m not that kind of woman, she wanted to scream, not a wartime woman, cheerful and heroic. I’m a lump. A frightened housebound lump.

  ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  Annie sat with Freddie through the pink of evening watching the changing sky from the square of window. On the deep stone sill were all of Freddie’s possessions. Two books, his collection of stones, conkers and cones, his precious wooden spinning top, three green marbles, and a sepia photograph of his Gran in a tiny silver frame. She thought about how she could make him some shoes by sewing leather onto socks, and the possibilities of making cakes without eggs so he could have a boiled egg for his breakfast. She longed for her girls, Betty and Alice, who were all living in lodgings and working at the glove factory in Yeovil. Only George, her eldest, came to see them on his motorbike. He worked at Petter Engines making shells for the war. Occasionally on a Sunday he brought one of his sisters home in the sidecar.

  Levi worked long hours in the corn mill, coming home grumpy and stinking, capable of nothing but sitting by the fire in the rocking chair. He wouldn’t read. He wouldn’t chop firewood. He just sat, staring endlessly into the bright flames.

  ‘Freddie’s took sick,’ Annie said tonight as he hung his stinking coat on the back of the door.

  ‘Oh ah, what’s up with him?’

  ‘The doctor says it’s exhaustion. And he’s undernourished.’

  ‘Ah.’ Levi stuffed tealeaves into his pipe and gazed into the fire for long minutes before his eyes sparked into life.

  ‘You had the DOCTOR?’

  ‘Sally from down the farm sent her son to fetch him. Freddie’s been hit again, a nasty bruise near his eye. For daydreaming.’

  ‘Ah.’ Another lengthy pause while guilt, anger and helplessness sorted each other in Levi’s mind. ‘He’ll have to learn to pay attention then, won’t he? Or end up useless like me.’

  ‘You aren’t useless, Levi. Don’t talk like that. Just because they turned you down for the war. It’s not your fault you’ve got arthritis.’

  Freddie woke slowly after a long sleep. Bees hummed and fussed outside his window and the smell of cooked apple drifted up the stairs and through his open door. The cottage was strangely silent and Freddie sensed a new emptiness about it. The clock chimes were icy cold in the apple-flavoured air. He counted ten. Ten o’clock! He ought to be in school!

  Freddie got up quickly and ran barefoot down the stone stairs where he found his clothes hanging, stiff and crusty by the stove.

  ‘My beechnuts!’

  To his relief she had emptied them into a dish and put it on the table. Next to it was his plate with a slab of yellow cornbread thickly spread with dripping and the unexpected white gleam of an egg, boiled and shelled. A piece of firewood was next to it with ‘Freddie’s breakfast’ written on it in black charcoal. And the broken treacle jar had been pieced together with some kind of glue. Freddie smoothed his fingers over it, doubting that it would hold together for all the journeys it had to make. He climbed into his clothes and sat at the table to eat breakfast hungrily, finishing every single crumb. Then he found his tin mug and filled it with hot water, lifting the heavy kettle with two hands clutching the string-wrapped handle. ‘Mother?’

  With his hands around the tin mug, Freddie walked into the scullery, pausing to sip the steaming drink. She wasn’t there. Still barefooted, he padded into the garden. ‘Mother?’

  The garden flickered with late butterflies, Red Admirals and Tortoiseshells sunning themselves on the cottage walls or feeding on the Michaelmas daisies. Freddie listened. There was hammering from far away, a robin singing, but no one was talking. Where was his mother? Annie had gone out when she shouldn’t go out. Only Freddie knew that.

  Freddie pulled on his scratchy socks and the heavy clogs. Where would she be? Was it his fault for breaking the treacle jar?

  Levi hesitated outside the schoolroom door. He could smell smoke from the stove, and the only sound was the occasional cough from a child or a creak from the floor-boards. Had he been inside the schoolroom, he would have heard the steady squeak of thin chalk sticks on little black slates as fourteen children aged from five to twelve years old worked silently at their arithmetic.

  Once again Levi mentally rehearsed what he intended to say, and how he wasn’t going to be intimidated by the likes of Harry Price. He knocked on the heavily varnished door and pushed it open, the dented brass knob cold in his hand. Fourteen heads turned to look at him. The children smelled of damp socks and rice pudding. Harry Price sat on a small platform at one end, stuffing tobacco into a curly pipe.

  ‘Work,’ he barked, and the children’s heads snapped back into position. Levi took off his cap respectfully.

  ‘I’d want a word.’

  Harry Price took a used match from a St Bruno tin on his desk and carried it to the stove, opened the door to a cloud of smoke and lit it from the roaring flames inside. He sucked and puffed at the pipe, almost disappearing into curling smoke while Levi stood awkwardly. ‘Outside.’ Harry Price wagged a grizzled finger at his class. ‘If anyone moves or speaks, I shall know.’

  The two men stood in the brown corridor outside, looking squarely at each other’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve took time off work for this,’ Levi said. ‘It’s about my boy.’

  ‘Frederick?’

  ‘Ah, Frederick.’ Levi thought about the bruise he’d seen on the sleeping face of his small son, and the words jostled in his throat. ‘He ain’t strong. And I want to know why he’s being punished so often. Is he a dunce?’

  ‘A dunce! No. On the contrary he’s clever, very clever.’ Harry Price’s eyes looked uncomfortable. Doctor Stewart had already admonished him for his treatment of Freddie and he’d disagreed, of course. Boys had to be kept in line. How would Doctor Stewart cope, shut in a room all day with fifteen village kids? No matter how well they behaved, Harry Price could sense their frustrations and their simmering energy waiting to engulf him if he once slackened his defences. Worse, he sensed their hatred of him, the way they stormed out at home time like a basket of pigeons released into furious flight. And that Frederick always looking right through him with those eyes, as if he could see right into the secret rooms of his head.

  Once Freddie had said something that had deeply disturbed Harry Price.

  ‘Sir, who is that lovely lady standing next to you?’

  ‘What do you mean, boy? There’s nobody here!’

  ‘Oh but there is, Sir,’ and Freddie had described his late wife, who he’d never seen, with breathtaking accuracy.

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me such lies, Frederick. Sit down and get on with your work or you’ll feel my cane. Shame on you boy!’

  But no amount of shouting and blustering would erase from Harry Price’s mind the clear and startling picture of his late wife. From that day he feared and hated Freddie.

  ‘So what does he do?’ persisted Levi. ‘If it’s just daydreaming, does that warrant such punishment?’

  ‘He does daydream. But . . .’ Harry Price raised his bushy eyebrows at Levi. They were stained yellow from the pipe smoke. ‘I’m sorry to say he tells lies.’

  There was silence while Levi’s blood pressure soared and his expression changed from concern to anger.

  ‘LIES,’ he shouted. ‘My boy tells LIES.’


  ‘Oh yes, daily.’

  Levi could have sworn that Harry Price looked pleased with this information, as if it were a trump card.

  ‘What kind of lies?’ he thundered.

  Freddie hurried along the lane to the village, checking inside every gateway. He paused by a stile, which marked a footpath leading to the woods, thinking his mother might have gone looking for mushrooms or hazelnuts. He checked the stubble fields in case she was gleaning for any remaining grain, a hopeless task as the sparrows and finches had probably scoffed it all. A few uncut heads of barley nodded in the hedge, and that was treasure. Freddie picked them happily, tearing off the stalks and cramming the bristly heads into both his pockets. Annie would add them to the soup, boiling them until they were glutinous and soaked with the taste of beef broth.

  Freddie ran towards the distant church, his clogs in his hand, his head aching again. He found Annie sitting inside the lych gate, gripping the blackened timber. She was gasping for breath and whimpering like a puppy.

  ‘Come on, Mother, I’ll take you home.’ Freddie unfastened her fat red fingers one by one from the gate until he had all of her hand in his. ‘Come on.’

  Annie looked at her small son in the deepest gratitude. She didn’t think she could possibly get home, but she stood up, rigid and shaking. ‘You’re hurting me,’ said Freddie, and she loosened her grip just a little. Her eyes searched for something to hold.

  ‘Touch the wall, Mother. Hold the wall.’

  Annie set her mouth in a purple line that turned down at the ends. She wasn’t going to tell Freddie how the solid wall seemed to be swaying, and the flagstone pavement turning like a roundabout.

  ‘Come on, take a step,’ he encouraged. ‘One small step. That’s it. And another. Just keep moving.’

  Freddie spoke gently, walking backwards in front of her so that they had eye contact. Annie held him so tightly by the hand, he had to keep reminding her not to pull him over. Step by step they progressed along the wall and the iron railings bordering the churchyard. The lane was more difficult, with nothing to hold but brambles. Freddie needed all his strength to support his mother’s shuffling steps. He understood that fear had a strange power over her body and he thought she might die of fright.

  ‘Just keep moving. I won’t let you fall.’

  Still walking backwards, holding her with both his hands, Freddie noticed a man in a cap coming up the lane, his head bobbing above the hedges, marching with loud boots as if he was angry. Annie stiffened and pulled herself up proudly.

  ‘It’s Dad!’ cried Freddie. ‘Where has he been? He looks grim.’

  Chapter Three

  BROKEN CHINA

  Levi fumbled with the brass buckle of his leather belt as he strode towards the cottage. The boy deserved a good strapping. He’d never tell such lies again; Levi would beat it out of him. The Barcussy family didn’t tell lies. Now Freddie had brought shame on the family. Levi had always known his last son was different, and clever, Harry Price had said. Levi had swelled with pride, momentarily, then the lies had come scorching in, spoiling it, burning it black like a slice of good bread accidentally dropped from a toasting fork into glowing coals.

  He was close to the cottage now, his throat hot with rage. He could see Annie’s face watching him over the hedge like a rising harvest moon half hidden under the navy blue hat that loomed on her head. Wait until she heard what Harry Price had said about her precious son.

  The rage festered in his boots as he covered the last strides to the cottage gate. His swollen feet wanted to stamp and punish the whole earth until his bones rang with the pain. The sight of Freddie’s pale quiff of hair and luminous eyes stopped Levi in his tracks as the boy darted towards him, smiling with a radiance so disempowering that Levi could only stand locked into his fury.

  ‘Hello, Dad. I’m better. And look what we found.’ Under Freddie’s small arm was a bristling sheaf of golden barley.

  ‘He’s a good lad,’ crowed Annie, looking down at him fondly. ‘He’s helped me all the way home. I had a – a turn. Proper bad I was. Shaking. And he got me home, bless his little heart.’

  Levi stood, powerless, hands clenched at his sides as he felt his limited supply of language escaping, the words swirling away from him like tealeaves down a plughole.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Annie stared at him, her eyes suddenly dark with alarm. ‘Lost your job or something?’

  ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ Freddie hovered in front of him and Levi glowered into the child’s eyes. He took hold of Freddie’s shoulder and steered him into the cottage with Annie bustling behind. She took the rustling barley sheaf from Freddie’s arms and stashed it against the kitchen wall.

  ‘Your hand is shaking, Dad,’ said Freddie, and Annie swung round, pausing in the middle of taking her hat off. A strand of grey hair fell across her cheek.

  ‘Levi,’ she said in a warning tone. ‘You haven’t been drinking, have you?’

  Levi sat down heavily at the scrubbed wooden table, his head in his hands. Still the words refused to assemble. He raised a knobbly fist and banged it down on the table with such force that the nearby dresser shuddered and the china tinkled. Two willow pattern plates rolled along the shelf and perched precariously. Annie moved towards them, and the sight of her arm reaching out, and the disapproving frown on her face unlocked Levi’s anger.

  At first the words came slowly, like shingle tumbling.

  ‘You. Boy. Stand up straight and look at me.’

  Freddie responded eagerly, his back straight, questions shimmering in his eyes.

  ‘I’ve been to see Harry Price,’ rasped Levi. He fingered the buckle of his belt again. ‘Look at me, boy.’

  ‘I am,’ said Freddie, shivering now as he saw the colour of rage seeping up his father’s stubbly throat, over his chin and up his cheeks until, when it reached his eyes, it was crimson.

  ‘I’ve never laid a finger on any of my children,’ whispered Levi. His eyes bulged with pain. ‘But you’ve been telling LIES.’

  Freddie stared hotly back at him.

  ‘I have not.’

  Levi lunged forward and caught Freddie’s threadbare shirt by the sleeve, his angry fingers tore a strip out of the material. Annie gave a cry, and Freddie’s bottom lip started to quiver.

  Levi’s other hand was on his belt, undoing the buckle, the wide leather strap trailing to the floor.

  ‘So help me, God, I’ll thrash you, boy. Any more lies. Do you hear? Do you?’

  ‘No, Levi!’ screamed Annie. ‘He’s not strong, Levi. You’ll kill him.’

  Freddie stood motionless. His calm eyes inspected Levi’s tortured soul with sadness and understanding. A shell of light seemed to be protecting the boy, and Levi couldn’t touch him. He raised the belt high and hit the table with it, again, and again. He worked himself into a frenzy, his lips curling and spitting, the smell of the corn mill and the stench of sweat emanating from him into the room. Freddie backed away and climbed onto the deep window seat, his favourite corner, shuffling himself back behind the brown folds of curtain. Annie just stood, her hat in one hand, her face like a stone lion.

  Levi heaved the table over with a crash, kicking it and roaring in wordless fury. The tinkle of china from the dresser, the chink of anxiety in Annie’s eyes, and the sight of Freddie hunched in the corner with his torn shirt and bony knees and eyes that refused to look shocked, enraged him further. One by one he seized every plate, every china cup, every jug and teapot from the dresser and smashed them on the stone floor. When he had finished, he collapsed into his fireside chair and cried. The rage was spent, purged into a mosaic of winking china across the flagstone floor. Now the last dregs of it sobbed out of him like ripples, further and further apart until finally Levi was still.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry,’ and he began to weep again until his eyes were red and his rough cheeks soaking wet. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked across at Freddie, surprised to see him sitting calmly, wa
tching.

  ‘Don’t you ever,’ Levi said. ‘Freddie, don’t you ever be like me.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Freddie. Throughout his father’s display of rage, Freddie had sat quietly, looking across the room at his mother’s frozen eyes. It wasn’t the first time in his young life that Freddie had witnessed Levi’s uncontrollable temper, watched him smash things then cry with shame, as he was doing now, stooping to pick up the two halves of a cream and brown teapot, holding them tenderly in his hands.

  ‘I can mend this. I’m sorry, Annie. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you.’

  Annie moved then, picking her way through the fragments of china. Her mother’s willow pattern. Auntie Flo’s jug. The gold-rimmed bone china cups which were her pride and joy. She went to Levi and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. She said nothing but her silence was powerful. It healed Levi’s battered psyche like nothing else. She looked at Freddie, and he crept out to be part of the silence, both of them nursing Levi as if he were a hurt animal.

  Levi glanced up at the fragile radiance of his small son.

  ‘I’m sorry, lad. I’m so sorry,’ he said again, in a grating voice, and his red-rimmed eyes checked the pale moon of the clockface over the hearth. Right on cue it breathed in and started to chime its Westminster chimes, and each melodious note seemed to vibrate through the smithereens of china.

  ‘I gotta go to work,’ said Levi. ‘I took time off to . . . to . . .’

  ‘All right dear,’ said Annie, steering him away from the subject of Harry Price and Freddie’s lies.

  ‘My arthritis. ’Tis bad.’ Levi stood up unsteadily. ‘But—’ He looked at Freddie. ‘We gotta talk about this.’

  ‘After tea,’ declared Annie. ‘We’ll sit round the table and sort it out. Now – help me pick up this table before you go – and Freddie, you get the brush and sweep up.’

  Freddie swept the shattered china into a rusty dustpan.

  ‘I could make something with this,’ he said.