The Boy with No Boots (15 page)

There was a silence between them. Freddie thought his mother might have said, ‘Well done’ or something like that, but such platitudes were not in Annie’s mind-set.

She frowned. ‘But Freddie – what about the bakery?’

‘I was coming to that,’ he said, ‘and don’t worry, I’ll help you in the mornings for as long as I can, Mother – but . . .’

‘But what?’

Freddie breathed in slowly through his nose. Then, looking directly into Annie’s anxious eyes he said the words he’d waited so long to utter. ‘I do appreciate what you and Dad
did for me, but I don’t want to spend my life in the bakery.’

Annie nodded bleakly, ‘I know.’

‘I don’t want you to feel hurt,’ said Freddie.

‘Doesn’t look as if I’ve got much choice does it?’

Annie lapsed into a bitter silence.

‘I’ll help you out, for now,’ promised Freddie, ‘but not forever, Mother. I’ve got plans.’

‘Plans?’ She looked at him sharply and he could feel the atmosphere between them changing. ‘What plans?’

The way he hesitated to answer threw Annie into one of her panics.

‘No. You can’t leave me,’ she cried and her whole body began to shake violently. ‘Please. Please don’t leave me. I can’t go out. How will I manage?
They’ll take me to the asylum, they’ll say I’m a mad woman.’

Freddie felt the weight of her need. He’d wanted to assert himself, but Annie’s nerves seemed to overpower both of them. In the silence of his soul, he vowed that he’d find a
way to break free, no matter what.

Polly was used to trains by now. She stood placidly as Kate tied her to the station railings alongside a row of other horses and carts which had brought goods to be loaded onto
the freight train. There were baskets of racing pigeons stacked in fours, the birds peeping out and muttering in their iridescent throats; sacks of early potatoes; cartons of ripe strawberries;
bundles of willow baskets and boxes of terracotta flowerpots; stacks of fencing posts and rolls of wire. Several lorries were parked there, one unloading bundles of leather shoes, boots and
sandals.

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.

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.

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.

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?’