The Boy With No Boots Part 19

'Oh yes. I'll tell him.' Annie thawed just a little when she saw the sadness in Kate's eyes.

'I did so want to see him,' she said, and her eyes glistened with some secret she wasn't sharing. 'But I've got a long journey home, and I must get back to my parents. Daddy is so ill, and they're grieving, we all are. My sister Ethie was drowned in the River Severn.' Kate's voice went down and down, to a whisper, and Annie stood in silence, a battle going on inside her mind as the angry bitter thoughts collided with an incoming rush of maternal understanding. Kate was a human being, a young girl who had lost her home, and her sister. Annie opened her heart like she opened the front door, just a crack, and began to let her in.

'I'm sorry about your sister,' she said.

'Thank you.' Kate looked into Annie's eyes, which were so like Freddie's, cobalt blue with flecks of violet, and full of wordless insight. Freddie's eyes were calm but Annie's had tinges of anxiety, similar to Ethie's, Kate thought. Anxiety masquerading as anger. 'Is Freddie all right?' she asked.

'He is now,' Annie replied proudly. 'And . . .' She hesitated. 'I should ask you in for a cup of tea. He'd want me to.'

'That would be lovely,' said Kate warmly, 'but I've a train to catch so I must go.'

Annie nodded. 'I've got some more customers coming up the road. But there's something you should see, Kate, before you go.' She opened the door to the garden. 'You take a look out there and you'll see what my Freddie's been doing. Go on, it won't take you a minute.'

Kate stepped out into the garden and her mouth fell open in astonishment.

'Night and day he've worked,' said Annie, 'and that one there, that's St Peter and it was commissioned by the church. 'Tis not quite finished yet.'

'This is unbelievable.' Kate stood looking around at the display of stone carvings. There was an owl, a squirrel, a collection of stone faces, and a tiny singing bird. She looked closely at the statue of St Peter, marvelling at the way Freddie had carved the peaceful face, the drape of his robe, the bunch of keys hanging from his belt. 'It's marvellous. I can't believe Freddie has done all this. How exciting! I'm thrilled to bits. How wonderful. You must be so proud, Mrs Barcussy.'

Annie beamed, enjoying Kate's enthusiasm.

'And what's under that cloth?' Kate asked in a stage whisper, her eyes very bright as she walked round something on a pedestal, completely covered in a dark blue embroidered cloth. Her fingers itched to unveil it.

'Ah I'm not to show you that,' said Annie secretively. 'Freddie said he wants it to stay under that cloth that his Granny embroidered until until . . .' She couldn't bring herself to say the words, not while she still held some of the anger and suspicion in her heart. 'You'll have to wait to find that out.'

'Ooh I do LOVE mysteries!' Kate smiled at Annie, then glanced at the time again. 'This is Daddy's watch! Oh dear, I've got to dash. Excuse me, won't you? It's been lovely meeting you. Thank you for showing me this I know we're going to be good friends, aren't we?'

To Annie's surprise, Kate leaned over impulsively and gave her a warm sweet kiss on the cheek. Then she whirled out of the shop and went running down the hill to the station, her red shoes clopping and her hair bouncing as she ran. Annie was left at the shop door, staring after her, a lump in her throat, her cheek glowing. No one had given her a sweet kiss for years and years, she thought, not since her girls were little.

She couldn't wait for Freddie to come home.

'Guess who came here?' she'd say tantalisingly, and when he asked 'Who?' she wouldn't say 'that Loxley girl' she'd say, 'Kate' as nicely as she could manage.

'That's a good 'un,' said Herbie, smoothing the chunk of freshly quarried alabaster Freddie had loaded onto the back of the lorry. 'Got plenty of pink in it. That's what you want, that deep rose pink, 'tis hard to find in a stone. Want a f.a.g?'

'No thanks.' Freddie took off his cap, rolled up his s.h.i.+rtsleeves and plunged his face into the stone trough of clear spring water that welled up from the hillside. He cupped his hands and drank, then splashed it over his hair. 'Beautiful water this,' he said. ''Tis a mystery where it comes from.'

'An underground lake,' said Herbie, lighting up his f.a.g and sitting up on the back of the lorry. 'Look at yer s.h.i.+rt soaking wet. My missus'd be after me if I did that!'

Freddie didn't care. It was steaming hot in the alabaster quarry, a suntrap deep in the hills where the rare translucent stone was being hacked out by teams of men, and hauled away down the wooded lanes, covering the trees in dust. At the end of the day the workers were stacking their picks in the long shed, and leaving on an a.s.sortment of bicycles or hitching rides on the stone carts drawn by heavy s.h.i.+re horses.

'You're steaming like a pudding now,' laughed Herbie as Freddie sat beside him on the lorry.

'I gotta get back,' said Freddie.

'Ah you gonna write that letter?' Herbie wagged a finger and looked under his heavy brows at Freddie. 'You do it, lad, or you'll lose her. 'Tis like fis.h.i.+ng always the best ones get away and you end up wis.h.i.+ng you'd hauled 'em in while you got 'em.'

'I don't want to make the same mistake again,' said Freddie.

'Pah! Mistakes,' said Herbie fiercely. 'I made plenty of they. And if I hadn't I wouldn't have learned nothing. You gotta give love a chance, lad. You win some, you lose some. Don't you let mistakes stop you.' He ground his f.a.g end into the dust.

Freddie looked at him gratefully, thinking that Herbie's rather brusque friends.h.i.+p had done more for him than any of his family. He'd helped him discover his gift for stone carving. Every time he needed a push, Herbie seemed to be there, encouraging him, and now he was reinforcing what Freddie knew in his heart. He had to respond to Kate's letter. Forget Ian Tillerman, and give love a chance. But first there was something he needed to do.

At the end of the hot afternoon he stood outside the p.a.w.nbroker's shop looking in the window, searching for something he couldn't see there. He pushed the door open and went in. A woman was in there haggling over the price of a silver teapot she was p.a.w.ning. Freddie padded around, waiting and thinking about Herbie's advice. He hadn't yet replied to Kate's letter. It needed thought, and he was being cautious, holding back his feelings. He didn't want to upset Kate any more, and he didn't want to make the same mistake again. Until he knew about Ian Tillerman, he wasn't going to bare his soul.

He was busy, helping Annie with the bread in the early mornings, then doing as many haulage trips as he could with the lorry, and working far into the night on the stone carving. The statue of St Peter was nearly finished, and then he had to start on Joan's commission, two stone eagles for her gateposts.

Intuition had brought him back to the p.a.w.nbroker's. He watched with empathy as the woman left her silver teapot in the shop and departed with a meagre amount of cash in her hand, her eyes downcast. Back in January he'd stood there, miserable and penniless, and p.a.w.ned the diamond ring he'd bought with such hope and joy.

'Have you still got the ring?' he asked, pus.h.i.+ng the receipt across the counter. The p.a.w.nbroker peered at the receipt and opened a slim drawer in the cabinet.

''Tis that one,' said Freddie, his heart soaring as he spotted the black velvet box, and he felt proud of the way it stood out, brand new amongst the collection of scruffy ring boxes. The p.a.w.nbroker seemed to enjoy creating suspense by pretending to search through the boxes, turning them over to look at numbers.

'Have you got the money?' he asked, finally putting the box on the counter, keeping his hand on it.

'Would you open it, please check the ring is in there,' Freddie asked, and the box was opened. Both men gazed in silence at the sparkling diamond.

'It's a beauty. Got a bluish quality to it,' said the p.a.w.nbroker. 'I hope she's worth it.'

'She is.'

Freddie handed over the money and left, jubilant, with the box safe in his heart pocket again. It had survived his long wet journey, his accident and his illness, and its time in the p.a.w.nbroker's shop. A symbol of hope, he thought, feeling that he could now try to answer Kate's sad letter. And he still had money in his pocket.

'I promise you, you won't die of fright, Annie,' said Joan as the two women stood on the pavement outside the bakery. Annie was clutching a willow basket filled with flowers in one hand and Levi's walking stick in the other. Her eyes were dark with fear and the pulse was racing in her temples.

'I can see how afraid you are,' Joan said kindly. She looked into Annie's eyes. 'The fear isn't going to go away. It's like childbirth, Annie. The only way out of it is through it.'

Annie looked at her gratefully. She hung on to those words like a mantra. 'The only way out of it is through it.'

'Don't fight it,' said Joan, 'let the fear come, you can't stop it. Let it come and let it go. It will take about ten minutes. My husband says these attacks of fear only ever last for ten minutes because the body can't sustain that level of fast breathing and racing heartbeat. The body will calm itself down, Annie, if you let it. And use the stick. If you get that giddiness, push the stick into the ground, and it will anchor you.'

'But what will people think of me? Using a stick like an old woman?'

'Does it matter?' asked Joan. 'Does that really matter MORE than you getting better?'

'I suppose not. No.'

'Every step you take is one step towards your freedom.'

Annie was quaking inside and she could feel the sweat p.r.i.c.kling in her hair, but she started to do what Joan had taught her in the garden. Three steps, breathe in, three steps, breathe out.

'Well done,' cried Joan.

'Shh! I don't want the whole town to know.'

'Keep going,' said Joan in a gentler voice. 'I'm with you but if I hold you it doesn't count. You have to do it on your own.'

Annie kept going doggedly, walking and breathing as Joan minced along beside her.

'I don't want Freddie to know,' she said. 'Not until I'm sure I can do this.'

'That's fine. I won't say anything,' Joan promised. 'Look, we're nearly there, Annie.'

It was about a hundred yards to the church, and Annie was surprised to find herself standing in the porch.

'There!' said Joan triumphantly. 'Do you want to sit down?'

'No.' Annie smiled and her soft eyes twinkled. 'I want to dance!'

She put some flowers on Levi's grave, and then the two women spent a happy hour inside the church arranging the tall spikes of larkspur, lilies and marigolds from Annie's garden. Joan had brought a bunch of antirrhinums and some foliage.

'That looks beautiful, doesn't it?' she enthused when they had finished. 'You've done that pedestal very cleverly, Annie, I'd never have thought of doing it like that.'

'I wanted to be a florist,' Annie said, gathering up the stray leaves and stems from the floor. 'I enjoyed doing that.'

Joan gave one of her shrieks, 'Look at the clock! I can't believe it's ten past three. I promised to drive Susan to an interview for a job. I'll have to dash. You go home on your own, Annie. You can do it. I'll see you tomorrow.'

She ran down the church path, leaving Annie standing at the door, a look of horror on her face. Joan had abandoned her. Or was it deliberate? She'd never trusted that Joan Jarvis in the first place. Annie sat down on the porch, hoping the vicar wouldn't turn up and find her there, hoping Freddie might come past in his lorry and see her. Then she remembered he wouldn't be home until late. She couldn't sit there for hours.

Trembling with anger and nervousness, Annie took her basket and Levi's stick and set off down the path, counting her steps and chanting the mantra in her mind.

But when she went through the gate into the street, her throat closed up, her heart raced like galloping hoof-beats, and the whole street rocked and swayed, the buildings toppling, the pavement gyrating around her.

Annie was terrified.

'I'm going to die, here on the street,' she thought. But Joan's words rang in her head. 'The only way out is through it.'

'Are you all right, Mrs Barcussy?'

Annie looked up and saw the vicar looking down at her like an inquisitive heron. She stood up straight and puffed herself up proudly. 'I'm very well, thank you. Just on my way home. Good afternoon.' And she walked on, her head held high. One, two, three, breathe in. Four, five, six, breathe out.

She arrived home in a state of utter exhaustion and despair. She collapsed into the old rocking chair where she rocked and cried and rocked and cried until she fell into a deep sleep with one thought blazing in her mind.

'I'm never, EVER going out again.'

Chapter Twenty-One.

TRUSTING THE DREAM.

On 19 June 1930 Freddie was standing in the church porch helping to set up his statue of St Peter. With the twenty pounds stashed in his wallet, he felt satisfied as he viewed the statue from all angles, turning it to catch the light. A beam of sunlight was filtering through the tall pines and poplars that grew along the wall of the churchyard.

'Like that?' he said to the vicar who was earnestly inspecting the statue. 'It needs a bit of sunlight.'

'Yes, yes. You're right,' the vicar agreed. Then he looked at Freddie the same way as he'd looked at the statue. 'You really are a very talented young man. You've carved the face so beautifully and the bunch of keys that can't have been easy in stone.'

'It wasn't.'

'Those are the keys to the kingdom. Did you know that?'

'Yes. Through gates of pearl,' quoted Freddie, thinking about Levi standing by the archway in the wall. Through that archway he'd seen a golden web of light. He wanted to tell the vicar, but he felt ill at ease with him, so he asked him a question instead. 'Do you believe in life after death?'

'Of course I do. Jesus came to teach us that.'

Freddie frowned. 'Then why is it wrong to talk about it?'

'What exactly do you mean?'

'Well I'll give you an example. You knew my father, didn't you? You did his funeral. So do you believe he's still alive?'

'He's with G.o.d.'

'But do you believe that my father is alive?'

'Yes, of course I do.'

'So why is it wrong for me to tell you if I see him?'

'Do you see him?' The vicar's eyes hardened and he looked intently at Freddie.

'I'm not saying I do. I said IF I see him, why is that wrong?' persisted Freddie.

The vicar looked flummoxed.

'I've known you a long time, Freddie,' he said, 'ever since you were a rebellious young boy at your father's funeral. You're obviously a deep thinker aren't you?'

'You still haven't answered my question.'

'Do you need an answer?'

Freddie didn't want to fall out with the 'Holy man' who had just paid him twenty pounds and a lot of compliments. So he said pleasantly, 'Not today. We'll talk another time. I've gotta be on my way now.'

The vicar looked relieved. He disappeared into the church and Freddie strode down the path thinking about his next haulage job: collecting sacks of grain from a farm and delivering them to the mill. The stationmaster had caught him yesterday as he was driving out of the yard. 'Two parcels arriving for you on the mid-morning train, Freddie. Can you be here?'

'What are they?' he'd asked.

'I don't know but they're from Lynesend. I would guess a truckle of cheese or a salmon maybe?' Charlie had winked at Freddie and rubbed his hands together. 'Something that nice young lady has sent you, I would guess.'