The Boy with No Boots (10 page)

As the clock chimed, Kate appeared at the backdoor with her mother, dressed in her new grey and scarlet uniform. She looked good in it, her hair plaited in two thick braids, each with a red
ribbon, one over each shoulder, the round grey hat just at the right angle over her expectant face. She was chattering as usual, and she and her mother were standing by the cart waiting.

‘I can’t catch this infernal damned pony,’ Ethie roared. ‘How am I supposed to harness her if she won’t be caught? She won’t. She WILL NOT. I’ve
finished with her. I’m not doing it. She’s the most impossible, stupid damned awkward animal in the whole of this farm. It’d be easier to catch a cow than catch THAT.’ Ethie
snarled like a dog and flung the halter over the gate. ‘You catch her if you want to go to the station.’

‘ETHELDRA.’ Her mother’s voice boomed like a foghorn when there was a crisis. Even the chickens froze, and the two farm dogs slunk away and lay shivering against a wall. Sally
only called her oldest daughter by her full name – Etheldra – if she was extremely displeased. ‘Get a hold of yourself,’ she thundered, ‘your father is ILL, and we
have to get Kate to school. Pick up that halter.’

Begrudgingly Ethie did as she was told, her face dark as a Victoria plum.

‘I can catch Polly,’ said Kate.

‘Not in your uniform please,’ objected Sally, her voice back to normal.

‘I won’t get it dirty, Mummy. It’ll be all right.’

Kate took the halter from Ethie’s angry red fist.

‘Don’t worry, Ethie, I’ve caught Polly lots of times,’ she said, picking up a fallen apple from the garden.

When Polly saw Kate coming into the field she turned into a different pony. She trotted over to Kate, making whickering noises in greeting, then she took the apple and stood placidly while Kate
slipped the halter over her head.

‘Oh, well done. That’s my girl,’ said Sally, but Ethie refused to look pleased. Her temper had set in for the day, like a weather front. She glowered and muttered as they led
Polly over to the cart. The three of them harnessed her up between them, buckling straps and organising the cart in silence. Only Kate talked, nonstop, to the pony, and Polly flicked her ears back
to listen. Kate ran her hand down the pony’s sleek forelegs and inspected the neat little hooves.

‘Kate, your UNIFORM,’ protested Sally. ‘It’s already covered in hairs, and you can’t start school smelling like a horse.’

Kate giggled, and Ethie’s frown wavered for a second as she caught her sister’s mischievous eyes.

‘Don’t START,’ said Ethie, rolling her eyes and tutting.

Kate had lifted up Polly’s near foreleg. ‘She’s got a shoe loose.’

‘Oh lor,’ said Sally. ‘How bad is it?’

‘One of the nails is up.’ Kate fiddled with the metal shoe. ‘She ought not to go on it, Mummy.’

‘We can’t bother about it now,’ said Sally, ‘just hope for the best.’ She handed Ethie a watch on a chain. ‘It’s nearly half past nine. You’ll
have to drive hard to get there. But be careful, Ethie, don’t get reckless, especially in Monterose with all those motorcars they’ve got now. And just remember, Polly might be
frightened by the trains. Get there early and move her away before it arrives.’

Kate turned to say goodbye to her mother, looked searchingly into her eyes, and there was a moment when both of them almost cried.

‘Don’t you worry – Daddy will get better,’ said Sally. ‘You just keep your chin up, Kate.’

‘Will you COME ON, Kate.’ Ethie was up in the cart, the reins in her hand, a tall whip propped in its slot beside her. The sun beat down on her face, her pimples itched annoyingly
and her hair stuck to the back of her neck. She felt as if an over-tuned engine was hammering away inside her, and that she, not Polly, was the one being driven.

Impatient to start, Polly set off at a furious trot, the high wheels of the cart bumping over the stony driveway. Kate sat facing backwards, drinking in her last look at Hilbegut Farm, waving as
her mother got smaller and smaller. The two stone lions stared sightlessly after them as they sped into the distance towards Monterose.

Freddie was earning lots of money. He was amazed to see the St Christopher’s girls turning up at the station in their grey and scarlet uniforms, arriving in a variety of
motorcars and horse-drawn carts. He ran to carry their luggage, mostly brown leather suitcases with names on the lid and hard knobs at each corner which bruised his shins mercilessly. The girls
intrigued him. Neat plaits and clean pink faces, so different from the ratty-tatty bunch he saw at school. Their voices were different too. Ringing and confident. Except for a few who looked
apprehensive and timid, and one who was sobbing relentlessly.

They were arriving early, so Freddie had plenty of opportunities, even a queue waiting for him. Time after time he carried cases over the cream and brown footbridge with girls who smelled of
mothballs and soap, padding beside him in polished shoes. One tiny blonde girl was terrified of walking over the bridge where she could see the gleaming railway below through cracks between the
boards. Her distraught mother was trying to drag her.

‘I’ll take her,’ said Freddie, sensing the child’s genuine terror. Remembering the times he had coaxed Annie a step at a time, he used those tactics now, holding the
child’s icy little hands and making her look at his eyes as he talked her over the bridge. Then he squatted down and looked into her face. ‘When you come back,’ he said,
‘I’ll be here again to help you, you needn’t be afraid. My name’s Freddie. All right?’ The child nodded gratefully, her big eyes shining under the new oversized
hat.

‘You’re a very special young man.’ Her mother, draped in fox furs and an immaculate cream suit, looked at Freddie approvingly. She opened her heavy pigskin handbag, took out a
coin that flashed in the sun, and pressed it into his hand. A florin! Two whole shillings. He’d never had one before.

‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure. And the name is Joan Jarvis.’

The platform was now crowded with children and their parents. The man in the signal box pulled a lever with both hands, and the red and white signal clunked down. A train whistle screeched
through the cutting and from the top of the bridge Freddie could see puffs of steam rising from the hills. Charlie pounded over the bridge, a rolled-up green flag in his hand.

‘Be glad to see this lot off,’ he winked at Freddie. ‘Spoilt little madams, ain’t ’em?’

Freddie leaned on the bridge to wait for the train, while he tied the precious florin into his hanky, which was now so full of money it weighed his pocket down like a stone. He relished the
anticipation of counting it and hiding it under the floorboards.

Then he heard a terrible sound.

The clatter of hooves on the road, the banging of wheels. And screaming. Everyone seemed to be screaming.

‘Look out. Stand back.’

‘Out of the way.’

‘Stop that pony.’

Freddie bounded down the stairs two at a time and out of the station gate, the nerves twanging in his stomach. It was Annie’s story, for real. A horse and cart bolting through a crowded
street, people screaming, barrows overturning.

It was quick, and yet the moments seemed ponderously slow to Freddie. With his hand over his mouth, he watched in horror as a pony came galloping wildly, sweat flying from its flanks, foam and
blood around its mouth. The cart was bouncing and zig-zagging, and driving it was a girl with dripping wet hair and a face contorted with rage. She wasn’t trying to stop the pony, she was
thrashing the reins up and down. Words of fury spouted from her mouth as if she was a gargoyle.

Clinging with both hands to the sides of the cart was a girl in a scarlet and grey uniform, her plaits flying.

‘Stop! Stop!’ people were shouting.

‘Whoa now. Whoa Polly.’ Ethie hauled on the reins and Polly slid to a halt, her flanks heaving. Ethie turned and shouted. ‘Get out. Now. The train’s coming.’

Freddie strode forward to help, and as he did so the train surged noisily into the station. He saw the younger girl trying to stand up from where she’d been clinging. Then the pony saw the
train. Terrified, she wheeled around in a panic, the cart was hurled onto its side and both girls were flung into the air.

Ethie landed on the grass bank and quickly rolled over and sat up. But the girl in the St Christopher’s uniform landed on the road with a sickening crack, and lay still.

A man in a cap moved forward to calm the plunging pony who was trying to drag the twisted wreckage of the cart. The train hissed as it pulled into the station, and a terrible silence descended
over the scene.

Freddie reached the girl in a few strides. He picked up her hat from the road and knelt down beside her. She was motionless, her eyes tightly closed, her face peaceful. He remembered Granny
Barcussy, how she had looked when he’d found her dead, how her shining aura had gone. This beautiful young girl wasn’t dead, he knew that. She was in a cocoon of golden light, and only
Freddie could see it.

But she was badly hurt, and deeply unconscious. Blood was oozing in a dark pool across the road, soaking into the dust around her head. Freddie touched her arm and she felt hot and limp. He was
aware of the people crowding round her, someone shouting and shouting for a doctor. He looked into the shocked eyes of the girl who had been driving the pony, and her skin was deathly white and
blotchy, her lips still with terror.

‘She’s not dead,’ said Freddie.

He glanced at the girl’s suitcase lying nearby, and read the name embossed in white letters on the lid.

MISS ORIOLE KATE LOXLEY

HILBEGUT FARM

Hilbegut Farm! The stone lions. The girl on the Shire horse. It was her. Oriole Kate Loxley.

The ten-thirty train steamed out of Monterose station with its precious cargo of children leaning out of the windows, waving to their parents. The atmosphere simmered with
emotion, as parents craned on the edge of the platform to catch a last glimpse of the departing train. Hearing a shout, they turned to see Charlie thundering down the steps.

‘Is there a doctor here? Or a Red Cross nurse?’ he shouted. ‘There’s been a terrible accident – a little girl. Is there anyone who can help?’

The lady with the fox furs stepped forward.

‘I’m Joan Jarvis and I was a Red Cross nurse,’ she said. ‘And I have a motorcar here if she needs to go to hospital.’

‘Come quickly, then. Quickly.’

A crowd had gathered around Kate, and Freddie was in the middle of it. In the moments before help arrived, he knelt close to Kate, hoping that somehow his presence might comfort her. He
didn’t know many prayers, so he made one up, saying it over and over in his mind. And he memorised every detail of Kate’s face. To him she looked like a beautiful rose petal that had
fallen there, her skin translucent, her lips a peachy pink, her eyelashes dark curling silks. She had high cheekbones, a softly rounded chin, and her nose, Freddie thought, was aristocratic, her
nostrils like two perfect little shells. On her left temple was a small mole, and on her neck a tiny pink scar like a crescent moon.

Freddie had never been that close to a beautiful girl. Oblivious to everyone around him he committed her face to memory so that he could keep her image with him forever. It seemed like the
longest and most fruitful moment of his life.

Clasping her hand between his two rough palms, he sensed the subtle vibration that was uniquely hers, singing to him like the harmonics from a bell, those rhythmic sound waves that rippled out
and out until they were gone but not lost. He hoped his own hands were transferring a stream of his energy and strength into her. This mysterious healing force was something Freddie had experienced
himself, from his mother’s hand touching him when he was ill or hurt.

Watching Kate, through those eternal moments, he felt he was floating beside her, in a place of shining light, a sanctuary where there was no pain, no fear but only peace.

The noise of voices and running feet brought Freddie out of his trance unpleasantly like gravel spattering into his mind. Still holding Kate’s hand, he kept his gaze focused on her face,
watching her skin becoming paler and paler, the stillness deepening. He felt he was watching an angel, an angel slowly turning to stone.

‘Move aside. Move back. Give her some air.’ Charlie’s voice was loud and rasp-like. ‘This lady’s a Red Cross nurse. Come on. Move back PLEASE.’

Freddie looked up then, into the coal-dark eyes of Ethie who was kneeling on the other side of Kate, and he saw straight into her frightened soul where guilt, frustration and terror were huddled
together.

‘Now then. I’m Joan. Let’s have a look at the poor girl.’

The fox-fur lady was puffing and blowing from her run across the footbridge. She took off her hat, and the fox furs fell to the ground in a slinky russet-coloured heap.

‘Here, kneel on this, madam.’ Charlie took off his coat and put it on the ground for her.

‘Joan,’ she said firmly. ‘And put the coat over her, she’s getting cold. Let go of her hands now, please.’ She turned to Freddie. ‘Ah – you again
– you stay here, will you? I might need your help.’

‘I’m Kate’s sister,’ said Ethie loudly. ‘That boy’s nothing to do with her,’ and she narrowed her eyes at Freddie.

‘Are you, dear? Now don’t you worry. It always looks worse than it is,’ said Joan. She smiled kindly at Ethie and gave her a little pat on the shoulder, a gesture which became
a potent spark of love, igniting Ethie into an explosion of sobbing.

‘Can someone look after her, please?’ Joan appealed, and a buxom woman in a brown and white gingham dress stepped forward and led the sobbing Ethie away. She sat her down on the
grassy bank and let her cry, holding her in both arms.

Ethie’s sobs were peripheral to what was happening to Kate. Joan had checked her pulse and breathing, and was gently stroking her face.

‘What’s her name?’ she asked Freddie.

‘Miss Oriole Kate Loxley,’ he said. ‘From Hilbegut Farm – but I think they call her Kate, her sister did.’

‘Come on, Kate.’ Joan was gently tapping the child’s cheek which was now ivory pale. ‘She’s deeply unconscious.’