The Boy with No Boots Read online

  Granny Barcussy saw the shadow steal into Freddie’s eyes.

  ‘Don’t you be afraid. You can tell me anything. Anything you like.’

  But Freddie looked at her as if he was peering out through prison bars, the sparkle gone from his eyes.

  ‘You saw my William,’ she said warmly. ‘He’s often around. William, your grandfather. He’s been dead a long time, before you were born. Oh he’d have loved you, Fred. He liked to make things with his hands like you, clever he was, and a heart of gold. Heart of gold.’

  Freddie was silent. He looked again at the seat next to him, and the man had gone. ‘I’ve got it wrong,’ he thought. ‘Grandfather William wanted to say something to me and I didn’t listen.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with seeing a spirit,’ said Granny Barcussy. ‘I can see Levi’s been hammering you down – and that schoolteacher, he’s a pig. Don’t you let ’em bring you down, Fred. You’re a good ’un. And I’d fight for you, I would.’ She clenched her fist and grinned. Freddie smiled at her gratefully. William would come back, he knew it. If he went to sit under that lime tree again, or if he sat quiet and waited. It was the first time he’d seen a spirit person who belonged to him, and the feeling clung around him like a blanket.

  ‘I like coming here,’ he said. ‘I feel happy.’

  ‘Good. You deserve to be happy.’ Granny Barcussy was still on the music stool, giving him her undivided attention, another luxury he wasn’t used to.

  ‘Mother and Dad don’t think so,’ said Freddie. ‘They think everybody’s got to suffer because of the war.’

  ‘Pah!’ said Granny Barcussy passionately. ‘Never mind the war. Let ’em get on with it. Nothing to do with me. Yes, there’s poverty, but there’s beautiful life all around us.’ And then she said something that Freddie never forgot. She tapped her heart fiercely with one finger, and her eyes were full of fire. ‘I make my happiness inside myself, in here, in my heart, and nothing and nobody can take that away from me.’

  A golden bubble drifted through the silence that followed, and came to rest in Freddie’s soul.

  Then Granny Barcussy jumped up and whirled around, turning the music stool over with a crash. She pointed at Freddie’s feet.

  ‘You still got those blimin’ clogs!’ she cried. ‘How big are your feet? Big, aren’t they, for a seven-year-old? I’ve got some BOOTS for you!’

  She tore upstairs, startling the chickens from the bottom step, pulling herself up energetically with the banister, and Freddie heard her crashing around upstairs. Then he heard a cry.

  ‘Got ’em! The little beauties.’

  She reappeared, clambering downstairs with a pair of black boots in her hand. They looked new, the soles thick and clean, the long laces unfrayed. Freddie eyed them dubiously.

  ‘Are they girls’ boots?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t give you girls’ boots, Fred. These were mine, yes, but they were men’s boots my William got me for working on the farm, and I never did wear them, too tight they were. But I’ve looked after them, kept rubbing in the saddle soap, kept the leather nice and soft. Go on – try them.’

  Her excitement was infectious. Freddie beamed as he slipped his feet inside the boots and stood up. Immediately he felt taller and more important. He gave Granny Barcussy a hug.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Are they too big?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Right – that’s a good thing. You’ll grow into them. And if they’re too big we’ll stuff ’em with sheep’s wool.’

  She produced some of that, too, from a box next to her spinning wheel, and soon Freddie was marching around in the garden, feeling as if his feet were in bed. He felt like a normal person who was worth something. He wanted to stay with Granny Barcussy forever.

  ‘When I’m grown up,’ he said, ‘I want to find a wife just like you. She’ll have long black hair and her name will be Kate.’

  Chapter Five

  A RED RIBBON

  Freddie had always given horses a wide berth. He didn’t dislike them, he was just wary. Annie often told him the story of how her brother had been killed in a horse-and-cart accident. The horse had bolted through the market, scattering pedestrians and overturning traders’ stalls. Annie had been there and she relished the telling of the story, each time adding a detail and exaggerating more. The horse went faster each time, the screams were louder, pots and pans and boots and shoes from the overturned stalls were strewn far and wide, the fruit barrow toppled and hordes of apples rolled wildly down the street. When the cart finally crashed, her brother was thrown even higher into the air and was even more dead when he landed. Freddie always listened, wide-eyed, fascinated not so much by the story but by the effect it had on Annie’s normally dour appearance. Telling a story brought her to life, her eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed redder and redder as she galloped through the story. There were pauses too, crisp silences where Freddie held his breath, his eyes fixed on Annie’s face.

  The storytelling became a ritual. Round the fire on a rainswept evening, or under the apple tree on a balmy afternoon. Despite his difficulty with communication, Levi had stories too, and when he started in his gravelly voice, Freddie was transfixed. Most of Levi’s tales were funny, but Levi never smiled or laughed. He would tell the story, po-faced, and his silences were longer than Annie’s. Being part of one of Levi’s silences was like pole-vaulting over the river, that moment of uncertainty in the air when you didn’t know which way you were going to fall. Then Annie and Freddie would scream with laughter while Levi remained po-faced, only the occasional spark of pleasure straying into his eyes. Finally he would add, ‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at. ’Twere true as I’m sitting here.’

  Some of Levi’s stories involved horses, usually casting them in a negative role, and Freddie’s wariness of horses evolved from the storytelling rather than from actual experience.

  So when he found himself facing a massive Shire horse in a narrow lane, Freddie’s heart almost stopped.

  Annie had sent him to the village of Hilbegut, a two-mile walk, with a cracked white basin in his hand and some pennies tied in the corner of his hanky. The faggot man was coming to the village. He had a barrow piled high with pork faggots which disappeared rapidly as soon as he started selling.

  ‘Get three, if you can. And don’t drop them,’ Annie had said. Now that he had boots, Freddie was sent on longer and longer errands to neighbouring villages. He was eleven now, and still wearing Granny Barcussy’s boots which were now too tight. There were holes in both the leather soles, letting in the water and the stones, and his feet were again sore and blistered. It was November now, nearly time for Christmas. He was hoping for a present, just one, and what he wanted most was a penknife, his own knife so that he could whittle sticks and carve owls and monkey faces out of the wood he’d collected.

  ‘If I run, I’ll drop the basin,’ thought Freddie, so he stood still, facing up to the Shire horse. It appeared to be loose in the lane with only a leather halter on its head. Freddie looked at the horse’s knees, which were the size of two dinner plates. Its coat was a lustrous black, with four creamy white skirts of long hair around its hooves and a white stripe down its face. Its mane was so thick that he could hardly see the eyes, but he knew the horse was looking at him. He considered flinging the basin in the ditch and making a run for it.

  The horse tossed its head and gave a reverberating sneeze, and a few drops of spray reached Freddie’s face. He had three options: jump over the wide ditch which was full of water, reverse into the prickly hawthorn hedge on the other side, or sneak past the horse with his basin, past its tree-trunk legs and massive rump. What if it kicked him? One kick and he’d be dead.

  Freddie was scraping up his courage to try the sneaking past option, when he heard a strong bright voice from behind the hedge.

  ‘You stay still, Daisy. I’m just shutting the gate.’

  Daisy? What a name for a giant with dinner-plate knees. Freddie
backed into a prickly hawthorn tree and peered through its berry-laden twigs, his mouth open in astonishment as a little girl emerged from a gateway and marched up to the horse with a confident swagger, her long dark hair swinging. She wore a red dress with a white ruffled pinafore over it, tightly laced boots and a rather tatty red ribbon in her hair. But what Freddie noticed was the glow in her dark eyes and the way she skipped happily up to the big Shire horse and picked up the trailing reins. The horse bent its huge head and blew softly out of velvet nostrils. Obviously it loved and trusted the tiny girl who was so absorbed with it that she didn’t notice Freddie standing against the hedge.

  What she did next took his breath away. First she kissed the horse’s soft muzzle. Talking all the time in a voice like a chirruping robin, the little girl persuaded the horse to turn around, its metal shoes scrunching on the gravel. She led it back and coaxed it round until it was standing alongside the gate. Then she climbed energetically up the bars, stood on the top bar, and leaped expertly onto the horse’s bare back, opening her legs wide to stretch across the broad withers. She had sunburnt little knees as if she was used to hitching up her long dress and racing about in the sun. She looked relaxed and at home on the horse’s back.

  High in the air, she rode past Freddie, her eyes alight, her plume of hair blowing in the breeze. She didn’t notice him at all. Freddie thought she was beautiful. And he saw how carefully the big horse plodded away down the lane with its precious cargo. He watched the little girl’s straight back and the horse’s shining rump disappearing with the slow clop-clop of its hooves, and he wished he had spoken to her. He could have asked her name.

  Quickly he put the basin down and climbed a nearby ash tree to watch where she went. He thought she might be a Romany gipsy. She had the same bold manner and vibrant eyes of the gipsy children he had seen. But no, she was heading down a farm track between post and rail fencing, the Shire horse still moving placidly. She lived on a farm. A proper farm. Round golden haystacks, barns with red roofs and a farmhouse with several groups of cream-coloured chimneys. The horse and the little girl disappeared through the entrance gate which had two tall stone pillars with carvings on the top. The sun was shining on them and Freddie could just make out what they were. Animals with curly manes and fierce faces. Were they dogs? Or lions? Freddie had never seen a lion for real, only a picture of one, and he’d read about them in Rudyard Kipling. He knew that lions represented power. What kind of girl would live in a house with two stone lions guarding it? A rich girl, he thought.

  Beyond the farm, half hidden behind a blaze of copper beeches, he could see another intriguing building with turrets and minarets. Hilbegut Court, he thought, awed. He had heard of Hilbegut Court and the squire who lived there like the king of the village. A flock of jackdaws evidently lived there too, he noticed as they flew up, chack-chacking, and a flight of white doves circled glittering against the sky twisting and turning in formation.

  The little girl probably lived at Hilbegut Farm, he concluded.

  The sound of voices wafted over the fields, he could hear her robin-like voice, and the laughter of the children playing. He longed to go nearer and peep, and, more than anything he wanted a closer look at the stone lions. It excited him to think of them sitting up there staring into the sunlight, glaring into the night, shrugging off the rain and the wind, appearing on winter mornings with icicles hanging from their jaws and hoar frost capping their manes.

  There were so many things Freddie wanted to do. He wanted to go fishing, he wanted to carve wood with a penknife he didn’t have, he wanted to go to the cemetery and spend time studying the stone carvings there, the sweet faces of angels and the ornate letterings, the exciting gargoyles round the edge of the church roof who snarled down at him and made him shiver. He wanted to go pole-vaulting over the river like the boys he’d watched one day as he’d crossed the bridge on one of his endless errands. They were boys from his school, big boys, and they laughed at him and called him ‘snowball’ because of his white blond hair.

  Now he wanted to go to Hilbegut Farm and feel the burning gaze of the stone lions. He wanted to sit in the sweet meadow hay and smell the summer, hide and keep watch to see that girl with the red ribbon. He tucked her away in his mind, putting her top of all the treasures he’d stored in there, to think about on his long cold walks. He’d paint a picture of her, riding the majestic Shire horse with her hair blowing in the breeze, if only he could have a piece of paper. At school they were allowed one piece each per week, for the art lesson, and Harry Price usually arranged a few bottles and an apple on his table.

  ‘Draw that,’ he’d bark, and stalk around the classroom criticising their efforts. They were never allowed to do a picture of their own. So strong was Freddie’s need to do the picture in his head that he actually considered stealing a piece of paper. Today it was November the 11th. Christmas wasn’t far away. He might hope for a drawing book instead of a penknife.

  Still sitting in the ash tree, he heard shouting and three boys came running round the corner. They were yelling and jumping, pushing each other and throwing their caps in the air. Freddie climbed down quickly to grab the white basin which he’d left in the grass. He expected the boys to stop and ask his name and what he was doing there, but they clattered past in their rough boots, and one of them waved and winked at Freddie.

  ‘Come on!’ he cried, and ran on.

  Puzzled by the exuberance, Freddie followed at a distance, the basin under his arm. It was an awkward, slippery, heavy thing to be carrying in his small fingers.

  Approaching the village where the faggot man traded, he noticed the church and people milling around it. Something was happening. Instead of standing in a miserable queue, men and women were dancing and shouting, waving strips of cloth and throwing their hats in the air. Freddie stood against a wall, watching, half afraid of the unfamiliar riotous scene. He was used to misery. Now the whole village seemed to be going mad.

  Suddenly a forgotten sound jangled across the countryside. The bells. The church bells. Ringing and ringing. Freddie could feel the stone walls trembling under his hands and down the backs of his legs. The clangour of the bells lifted his mind into mysterious halls of wonder, a place where everything was spun from gold. He’d never been to a party, and now a party had come to him, filling the sky with music.

  The whole landscape seemed to shiver with the unaccustomed revelry. Flocks of finches and yellow hammers bobbed along the hedges with extra bounce, and the trees threw down the last of their leaves in swirls of gold. The cows started to gallop, bucking and twisting, with their ridiculous tails in the air, their hooves squelching. In the next-door field the sheep clumped together and stampeded. And all the dogs of Hilbegut village and beyond were barking like the symphony of a thousand dogs.

  Some children scuttled past him, rolling hoops of rusty metal. Freddie grabbed at a boy’s coat.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

  The boy gave Freddie a wild toothy grin.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ he said. ‘The war is over.’ He clenched his fists and shouted at the sky, ‘The war is OVER.’

  Freddie absorbed this information in silence. He didn’t know how to dance and celebrate and throw his hat in the air like the boy was doing.

  ‘Do you know where the faggot man is?’ he asked.

  ‘The faggot man? I dunno. Ask me mum,’ said the boy, and his eyes lit up. ‘We ain’t gonna need no faggot man now. No more queuing, see? They’ll be shops, proper shops with things in ’em. Want a go with my hoop?’

  Freddie shook his head, looking at the metal hoop the boy held out to him. He’d never played with a hoop. In fact he’d never played at all, except with Granny Barcussy. He’d never even had a friend.

  ‘Come on, Jack!’ yelled another boy further along the road.

  ‘Gotta go.’ With another toothy smile, the boy ran off to join his friends.

  The war was over.

  And suddenly it hit Freddie. The lone
liness. The overwhelming loneliness. The hard work, the hunger, the long cold walks to school, the worrying about his mother. What difference did it make to him that the war was over?

  Freddie slid to the ground, wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his face from the world. An old and merciless sensation was erupting from the middle of his chest into his throat like boiling water. He hadn’t cried since he was very little, and Annie had reprimanded him for it. ‘Stop that noise,’ she’d barked, and he’d learned how to swallow the sobs deep into his being. But they were still in there. All that crying he hadn’t done, and now he couldn’t stop. It was massive. Stone after stone, shaking his thin body like a bombardment. The autumn sun was warm on his hair, he could hear the bells and the cheering, but all he wanted to do was cry. He cried and cried until his body felt boneless like a fungus clinging there against the wall.

  ‘What’s the matter with me? I’m useless,’ he said aloud, and then Levi’s words came marching into his mind. ‘Don’t you EVER be like me’ and he’d said, ‘I won’t be.’ But was he?

  The following Wednesday at school, Freddie realised the effect the end of the war was having on everyone. Even Harry Price. A stiff smile had cracked his leather face, and he had a cardboard box on his desk with sweets in it.

  ‘The war is over!’ Harry Price had bellowed, and he’d seized a handful of sweets and flung them at the children.

  ‘Well go on. Eat them,’ he’d laughed as the children sat in stunned silence, not daring to touch the sweets that twinkled tantalisingly. ‘If you don’t want them I’ll take them back.’ Harry Price took a step forward, his eyes mischievous, and the children moved, scrabbling for the sweets. Freddie had three of them, a boiled raspberry, a striped humbug, and a toffee. He didn’t dare eat them but stuffed them quickly into his pocket to look at later.