The Boy with No Boots (3 page)

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.’

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, watching.

‘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.

‘No you couldn’t,’ Annie replied. She was stripping the grain from the barley sheaf, putting it to soak in a deep bowl.

‘I could, Mother. I could make a sailing ship.’ Freddie collected the white and gold curved fragments of cup, holding them up and turning them thoughtfully. He could see in his mind
the billowing white sails and the idea of making a model ship excited him. The broken curves of Auntie Flo’s jug would make the base of the ship. He planned to get clay from the streambed and
work it into a boat shape. Then he’d set the broken china into it. Or he’d make a bird. An owl with big eyes.

‘No Freddie. You’ll cut your hands,’ warned Annie. ‘You put that china in the bin.’

But Freddie just looked at her. He took the dustpan outside, where he quickly picked out the bits he needed for his sailing ship and his owl and hid them inside a hollow log at the back of the
coal shed. He tipped the remainder into the dustbin. When he went back inside, he saw that Annie was touching the empty dresser, and he planned to make the ship and the owl in secret and stand them
up there to fill the empty space. He wasn’t going to let his parents stop him.

After a tea of thick yellow cornbread spread with dripping followed by baked apples, Levi slumped into his fireside chair, looking apprehensive.

‘We gotta sort this out.’

Annie sat on the other side of the bright fire, darning a grubby grey sock with brown wool, and despite her apparent indifference, Freddie was glad of her solid presence as he faced his father.
He dreaded another outburst, but Levi was calm now, his voice and eyes flat and defeated.

‘Now, Harry Price told me you was clever,’ he began. ‘And I were proud, Freddie. I were proud of you.’ His eyes glistened with disappointment. ‘Then he said you
told lies, Freddie. And it weren’t just one lie. Now what have you got to say about that?’

‘I don’t tell lies,’ insisted Freddie. He squared his shoulders and directed his candid gaze into Levi’s confused eyes.

‘But Harry Price says you do.’ Levi wagged a crusty old finger and put his face closer. ‘He says you told him you saw his wife standing there, and you described her, and
she’s dead, Freddie. Dead. So how can you see her? Eh?’

‘But I did see her. I can see people who are dead,’ said Freddie.

Annie gasped and her darning needle paused in mid-air, the long brown strand of wool slowly slipped out of the metal eye and trailed over her lap. Freddie turned and looked at her.

‘Can’t I, Mother?’

Levi looked flummoxed, the colour spreading again from his collar and over his neck.

Annie leaned forward, the darning needle still in her hand. Her bust heaved with the dilemma she now faced. Pacify Levi, or protect Freddie, or tell the truth? She took a deep breath.

‘Levi,’ she said. ‘He’s got the gift.’

Levi sank back into a confused silence.

‘It’s in my family,’ Annie said. ‘My mother had it, and my Nan. Whether you like it or not, Freddie’s got it. He can see people who’ve passed on. It’s a
gift, Levi. A gift.’

‘Tis wrong,’ shouted Levi. ‘I’m telling ’e. Wrong. Bad, that’s what. And I don’t want no son of mine doing it. I don’t want no fortune-telling or
mumbo jumbo in this family. D’you hear? I won’t have it. I might be poor, I might work in a corn mill, but I’m honest. I don’t tell no lies.’

‘Tell him, Freddie,’ encouraged Annie. Freddie was edging nearer and nearer to her, backing away from his father, glad of Annie’s warmth and support.

‘I do really see people,’ he said. ‘Not all the time. Just now and again. But why is it wrong to see nice people? They aren’t bad just because they’re dead, Dad,
are they?’

Levi didn’t answer. Instead he took out his pipe, tapped it on the hearth and started stuffing a fruity mix of tobacco into it. He lit a dead match from the fire and disappeared into the
curls of blue smoke. Then he coughed convulsively, growling and retching. Words had abandoned him again, leaving him spluttering like a clogged engine. Exhaustion, frustration, the war, the corn
mill, all of it loomed between him and his longing to be a good father. Levi was fighting his own war, and he wasn’t winning. All he could do was put up barriers of discipline, whether he
agreed with it or not.

‘Now you listen to me,’ he drew Freddie close again, noticing the torn shirt and yesterday’s bruises. ‘I forbid you ever to speak of this again. D’you hear? If you
do see people, as you say, then you are not to speak of it. Not to me, or your mother, your sisters and brother, or Harry Price.’

‘And not Doctor Stewart either,’ added Annie.

‘Or the vicar.’

Freddie studied their frowning faces in the firelight. From now on his life would be ring-fenced. Secret. A secret life. That’s what he would have. He’d say yes and no, and go to
school, and stand in the queue for the shop, and carry his dreams in a secret golden box inside his head. But when I’m grown up, he thought, things will be different. No one will tell me what
to do and what not to do.