The Boy with No Boots (6 page)

‘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 loneliness. 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.

‘Now,’ said Harry Price when the excitement had died down, ‘it’s time for the art lesson. And just this once, only once, mind, you can do any picture you like.’

Freddie’s heart soared. He took his rectangle of clean white paper and smoothed it on his desk in disbelief.

‘And you can use these crayons,’ Harry Price was saying, ‘I’ve been saving these for a long time.’

A battered tobacco tin appeared on Freddie’s desk with stubs of wax crayons inside.

‘Work carefully. And don’t break them. And don’t get the paper sticky. And don’t . . .’

Freddie heard no more. For the next hour he was completely engrossed in his picture. He did the Shire horse first, starting with its head, and even though Daisy had only been wearing a halter,
he drew an elaborate bridle with studs and curly patterns on the leather. He did her eyes black, leaving a tiny crescent of white to make them look shiny. He did a set of horse brasses dangling
down her chest, each one different and intricate. He drew her four enormous legs with the long skirts of hair, and her orangey-gold hooves peeping out. He drew the metal shoes with the little
triangle at the front, and the seven nails hammered in and bent over each hoof.

Harry Price strolled around, smoking his pipe and making observations on the children’s drawings.

‘I’m surprised,’ he kept saying, ‘surprised what you can do.’ When he came to Freddie he stood for a long time in silence, and Freddie tensed, but he went on
drawing confidently, working his way round the Shire horse, making its body rounded and sleek, drawing each crinkly hair of its mane and tail.

‘A horse is the hardest thing to draw,’ said Harry Price, and he picked up Freddie’s picture and held it up. ‘Look what Freddie’s done.’

The whole class gasped, and suddenly Freddie was the centre of attention; children who had teased him were smiling at him admiringly.

‘I haven’t finished it yet, Sir,’ he said anxiously, and Harry Price put the picture down and moved on.

‘Only quarter of an hour left,’ he said, and the children groaned.

Freddie got to work again. Could he draw the little girl with the red ribbon in such a short time? His pencil moved swiftly, surely, as if an invisible hand was guiding him. Freddie started to
tingle with excitement. His grandfather was there again. He was holding his hand over Freddie’s small one, steering the pencil, drawing the little girl’s vivid face, her long hair
flowing in the wind, the curls of it, the red ribbon fluttering. Then her straight back, the ruffles on her pinafore, her leg gripping the horse’s back. Freddie rubbed out part of the back so
that she would look real, as if she was really sitting there. He paused to see what he had drawn, and was unexpectedly overwhelmed by it. Had he really drawn it? It was good. He had captured
something precious. And he wanted to keep it.

Harry Price loomed. He always collected the children’s artwork and they never saw it again. Freddie wanted his picture to keep forever, to show Granny Barcussy and his parents. He wanted
it on his bedroom wall to look at before he went to sleep. He thought quickly. Waited until Harry Price walked away. Then he picked up his picture, crept past the hot stove, right to the door,
opened it stealthily with one hand, and made a run for it.

It was raining hard. He tucked the picture under his jacket and ran with his heart pounding at his ribs, across the wet playground, splashing through muddy puddles.

‘COME BACK HERE, BOY,’ he heard Harry Price roar after him.

Freddie struggled with the iron latch of the gate, throwing it open with a squeak of hinges. He bounded down the steps and ran hard, feeling the picture crumpling against his body, the rain
plastering his hair, the puddles filling his boots.

And he knew he could never go back.

Nor could he go home.

Panting, he paused under the shelter of the lych gate by the cemetery. It had two benches inside and he sat on one, ready for flight if anyone came chasing after him. He was steaming hot and his
breath rasped painfully. But he had the picture. He took it out and looked at it, thrilled; it made him smile. Where could he hide it? And how could he keep it dry? Already it was puckered and
limp. Reluctantly he folded it into four, then once more, and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

Harry Price would complain to his dad again, and Levi would go into a fury. He’d make Freddie take the picture back and apologise. The injustice of it stung. The only option was to hide it
and pretend he hadn’t got it, and take it out years later when everyone had forgotten about his crime. There was only one person he could trust. Granny Barcussy.

Freddie set off on the two-mile walk in the pouring rain. Mud sucked at his boots, his socks hung round his ankles like sodden sponges, and the water seeped down the back of his neck and
trickled inside his jacket. He kept his hand over the pocket where his picture was, trying to keep it dry as he walked and ran alternately, across the squelching sheep fields and into the wood.
Imagining Granny Barcussy’s face when she saw the picture kept him going. She’d give him soup and dry his clothes and let him tell her what had happened. And she’d hide the
picture for him in a secret drawer she had in her bureau.

Under the lime tree where his grandfather first appeared in his haze of primrose light, Freddie lingered just long enough to remember that summer day and the warmth of Granny Barcussy’s
greeting. Now he was sopping wet, starving and frightened by what he had done. She would be better able to deal with it than his mother.

He trudged on across the carpet of sodden leaves, out of the wood and down towards the river. The water was brown and swirling, washing sticks and foam against the bridge as he ran over. Now he
could see the round terracotta chimney of Granny Barcussy’s place, and it struck him as odd that no smoke was rising from it.

A strange feeling hovered around the farmhouse, a thick silence that seemed to reach out towards him, pushing him away. Freddie walked slower and slower, his hand over the picture in his pocket.
He wondered if Granny Barcussy knew the war was over. He’d tell her. And he’d give her one of the precious sweets in his pocket, the humbug he thought she’d like. Then he’d
chop wood and light a fire for her.

With those bright thoughts he ran the last stretch to the farmhouse door, undid the latch and pushed it open. It smelled musty and the fireplace was full of ashes, cold and unlit. He touched the
empty rocking chair and it creaked, rocking a little on the flagstone floor.

‘Where are you, Granny?’

Leaving wet splodges of footprints Freddie went to the kitchen, surprised to see the door swinging open. He peered inside, and saw the worn soles of Granny Barcussy’s boots facing him on
the floor. She lay there, on her side, her white hair, unrolled from its usual bun, spread out across the stone floor. A stain of blood, now old and dark, oozed from under her neck. Her cheeks and
lips were blue-white, her eyes closed under eyelids that had the cold sheen of marble.

The nine chickens were clustered around her, cuddled together along the length of her frail body and in the crook of her arm, roosting there quietly, like guardians.

Shocked, Freddie touched the black knitted shawl that covered her shoulder. She felt strange, like a log broken from a tree. He touched her blue hand. It was stiff and icy cold.

Freddie sat down on the floor and stared at her. He stared until he realised he could no longer see the bright aura that had always shone out of her. The light had gone out. And then he
knew.

Granny Barcussy was dead.

Freddie felt oddly calm. First he took a cream wax candle from the jar, set it in the metal candlestick and lit it with a match. The glow flickered warmly in the rain-darkened room, moving the
peachy light up the damp walls, making shadows of the kettle and the pots and pans, lighting the wise eyes of Freddie’s china owl which stood on the dresser.

Then he fetched the red tartan rug from the back of the sofa and arranged it gently over her, right over her face and hair. The chickens murmured but didn’t move. Then Freddie lay down on
part of the rug beside her, cuddled up to her in his wet clothes, and closed his eyes.

Levi stared into the solicitor’s eyes for a long time. They were dark brown and unwavering over the top of a pair of round gold-rimmed spectacles. The lower lids were red
and pimply, the skin sagging into half-moons of shadow, giving Arthur Warcombe a look like that of a bloodhound. He didn’t suffer fools, and he wouldn’t wait much longer for
Levi’s decision. His black fountain pen gleamed in his hand, a minute bead of Quink on the gold nib, waiting above the document on his desk.

‘I’ve never, in my life, taken a risk like this,’ Levi said.

‘Well, now is the time, my man. Now. It won’t wait.’

‘Ah.’ Levi thought about Annie and Freddie waiting for him at home. ‘’Tis my missus, see. She can’t manage no more. Can’t go out – won’t go out.
And my younger lad, Freddie, twelve he is and clever. The village school can’t teach him no more, he’s learned it all, and now he’s bored. Two more years he’s gotta go
there, wasting time. I gotta show him how to make a life. That’s what I gotta do. And this – well ’tis an opportunity.’

‘He’d be better off in school here – it’s just down the road, a good school from what I hear.’

‘Ah,’ said Levi again, his mind moving several squares ahead, seeing Freddie as a young man leaving school at fourteen, and Annie, hiding indoors. He loved their cottage, but it
would be better for all of them to live in town.

‘I’ve known you a long time, Levi, and your father before you,’ said Arthur. ‘And I wouldn’t give you this advice if I didn’t think you could handle
it.’

Levi thrummed his fingers on the desk, looking out of the window at a cherry tree in full blossom, its white petals drifting down the street like snowflakes. People were walking past the window
along the pavement. To Levi they looked energetic and smart, not downtrodden and defensive like Annie. He saw a boy pedalling past on a bike with shiny handlebars; the boy looked purposeful and in
charge of his life. Levi wanted Freddie to be like that, not forever white-faced and exhausted as he carried buckets from the well and chopped wood for the fire.

‘Well then – now – I’ll do it,’ said Levi, and Arthur handed him the fountain pen.

‘Good man. No, don’t sign yet. We need a witness.’

He rang a brass bell on his desk and his secretary appeared, standing stiffly at the door in her stone-grey suit and shiny black shoes. She watched importantly while Levi signed the
cream-coloured document, wrote his name and address and the date. Arthur lit a match and took a stick of red sealing wax from the tray on his desk, melted it over the flame and dropped a neat round
blob onto the paper. He pressed a seal into it before it dried.

‘There. Congratulations, Mr Barcussy. You are now a baker, and a landlord. Good luck.’

Levi shook his hand, the rare spark of a smile in his eyes. A baker, and a landlord. He began to shake, deep inside his stomach, uncontrollably, and, feeling it spreading down to his painful
knees, he stood up and left the office, leaning on the polished knob of his walking stick as he hobbled down the steep stairs. Outside in the street he put his cap on, then took it off again, threw
it up in the air, and allowed a smile to unlock his face which had been tightly closed for years under a florid mask of resignation.