'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 cl.u.s.tered 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.

Chapter Six.

'SHADES OF THE PRISON-HOUSE'

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 doc.u.ment 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 bra.s.s 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 doc.u.ment, 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 k.n.o.b 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.

He strutted down the street, past Monterose Post Office and the church, the graveyard and the Board School. Through the cattle market and down the next street which had houses one side and tall elm trees on the other. At the end of it, Levi saw the roof of his new property coming into view, and it felt like the sun rising. Leaning on the garden wall he savoured the strength of the stones, sun-warmed and inlaid with intricate lichens, yellow stonecrop and toadflax. Inside the wall on the sunny side was a ma.s.s of pink and white valerian covered in b.u.t.terflies. It was a long time since Levi had even glanced at flowers and b.u.t.terflies, but now he gazed, his soul hungry for beauty. This was his garden. His paradise garden. Annie would love it.

His eyes moved down the overgrown path to the door next to the shop window and looked up at the dilapidated sign. A new one was needed. Barcussy's Bakery. It sounded grand. Freddie would help him paint the big letters. Annie would be inside that big window in an ap.r.o.n as white as a goose, welcoming people into the shop, while he and Freddie made the loaves and rolls, the currant buns and the lardy cake. Levi could smell it cooking as he stood there. Freddie would have the st.u.r.dy bicycle with the delivery basket on the front and he'd go out, cleanly dressed and confident with his cargo of fresh bread.

Levi got over the wall and walked across the overgrown lawn. He stood looking at the rest of the terrace which consisted of two cottages, each with a garden. Suddenly he could smell the musty interiors, feel the heavy sag of the red tiled roofs, the collapsed chimney at one end and the bulging crop of ivy which housed a colony of sparrows. He peered through one of the dark window panes and saw a room lit by a hole in the roof. On the floor were big puddles, and in the fireplace a group of rats sat up with stiff whiskers looking at him knowingly, as rats do. This is our place. Not yours. It belongs to us rats, and the jackdaws in the chimney watching with their blue eyes, and the ivy tearing the stones apart with sinuous creepers. It belongs to the rain and the wind and the mould and the frost. Don't think you can change it, human.

Levi's exuberance was totally eclipsed.

'What have I done?' he said to himself. 'How am I going to cope with all of this? And my money's all gone. All of it.'

Freddie had a plan for his life.

First he had to endure school until he was fourteen. He did his work diligently in beautiful copperplate writing that he was proud of, he did his arithmetic accurately and with relish, and read the books he was told to read. None of it challenged him now. Sitting in a cla.s.s whose ages ranged from five to thirteen, he'd heard the same history and geography lessons over and over; he'd sung the same old songs and heard the same old Bible stories. He developed strategies to deal with his boredom, and dreaming was top of the list. He felt useless and imprisoned, except on the rare occasions when Harry Price asked him to help the 'little ones' or mark the register or clean the blackboard.

He longed to be fourteen. On his birthday he would leave school forever and learn to be a mechanic. Then when he was sixteen, old enough to drive, he planned to buy a lorry and start a haulage business. And he'd save every penny to buy tools and paints for the art he wanted to do. In his mind he had a queue of pictures waiting to be painted and sculptures waiting to be carved. He grew increasingly resentful of his wasted time in school. At home he had no time to himself at all, always out on errands or helping with the endless tasks that needed to be done. Sometimes he stayed up late in his bedroom making models by candlelight, as quietly as he could. His latest was a model of a queen wasp which he'd found hibernating in a fold of the curtains. He'd caught her under a gla.s.s jar and studied every detail of her stripy body, then he'd made a model using an acorn and a hazelnut sh.e.l.l. The face was a tiny triangular piece of wood cut from a clothes peg and drawn in ink, the legs and antenna from bits of wire found in the hedge. The yellow paint he'd begged from the sign-maker's workshop in the village, a precious spoonful in a tobacco tin, and the brush he made from a chicken feather. The wings were two of Annie's hairpins.

Annie was thrilled with the model. She made Freddie take it to school, but Harry Price wasn't interested.

'So that's what you waste your time on is it?' he mocked. 'Making silly models of wasps.'

Freddie thought carefully about what he was going to say in reply. He tucked the anger away in a corner of his mind, looked Harry Price in the eye, and spoke slowly.

'I need to practise making models,' he said calmly, 'because one day I'm going to make aeroplanes for the war and I think that's important, don't you, Sir?'

The mole on Harry Price's right cheek began to twitch, and the pupils of his dispa.s.sionate eyes became small pinheads.

'Well, Frederick and what war are we talking about?' he asked. 'The war ended years ago, or were you too busy making models to notice?'

Again Freddie allowed a silence to hover as the words dropped into his mind like aniseed b.a.l.l.s from a jar.

'When you are an old man,' he said, 'I'll be a young man, and World War Two will come. And I'm not going to fight. I'm going to make aeroplanes. About the nineteen thirties, I would say.'

'Oh, and how do you know this? You can see into the future now, can you?'

'Yes.'

'Yes, what?'

'Sir.' Freddie searched Harry Price's eyes and discovered a sea of fear lurking behind a barrage of anger.

'And stop staring at me like that, boy. Insolent. That's what you are. And arrogant.' Then Harry Price lost his temper, as Freddie had known he would, thumping the desk so hard that a tray of pencils jumped in the air and scattered, some rolling onto the wooden floor.

Freddie wasn't fazed. Quietly he picked up the fallen pencils and put them back.

'Arrogant. That's what you are,' shouted Harry Price. 'Look at me when I'm talking to you, boy.'

'Excuse me Sir but you just told me to stop looking at you,' said Freddie quietly, and he strolled back to his desk, lifted the lid and put the model wasp inside.

'I've got better things to do than talk to a boy who thinks he can see into the future.'

Ignoring Harry Price's bl.u.s.tering and the extravagant curls of smoke that suddenly puffed from his pipe, Freddie opened his copy of Treasure Island and tried to read. He was aware of the other children glancing at him as much as they dared, and he felt a sense of kinship with them. But the words on the page blurred into a mist. All he could see was a vision of a fleet of aeroplanes lined up on a vast airfield in the rain. They weren't like the ones he had seen. These were small, elegant planes with rounded wing tips and rounded noses lifted towards the eastern sky. The clouds rolled back and he heard the roar of the brave little planes, as they took off one by one into the dawn. And he saw himself, a grown man, standing watching on the airfield, wearing dark blue overalls, a spanner in his hand.

The vision made him feel strong.

When he got home from school, Freddie was surprised to see his father there, sitting under the apple tree. Annie was with him and the two of them were talking animatedly.

'Now, you sit yourself down, Fred. I got something to tell you,' said Levi in a rather ominous tone, and Freddie sat down on the gra.s.s, and looked at his father, puzzled by the unusual sparkle in his eyes.

'Now,' said Levi again. 'You take this in, Fred. 'Cause this is what your life is gonna be in a few years when you leave school. I got a job, and a business all lined up for you. What do you think of that?'

Freddie didn't answer. He felt a shadow creeping over his shoulders, the shadow of a great wall which his parents would build to keep him in confinement.

Levi rushed on, antic.i.p.ating a smile on his son's face, a light in his eyes, grat.i.tude.

'I bought a bakery,' he said proudly. 'And it's got all the equipment, the ovens, the recipes, the big bicycle with the basket on front. In town, it is, near the railway. We're going to live there. There's a school just down the road you can go to.'

'And a shop at the front,' said Annie. 'You and Levi's going to be making the bread, and I'll be behind the counter selling it.'

'And I haven't finished,' said Levi. 'It's got a terrace of two cottages. We'll live in one, and let the other just need a lick of paint, they do and that will bring in some money, plenty of money. What with that, and the bakery, you'll have a ready-made job to go to when you leave school, Fred, and one day, when you're old enough, you'll take over the business.'

A bolt of pain shot through Freddie's mind. A baker. They wanted him to be a baker.

'I done it for you, lad, and for your mother,' continued Levi, puzzled by the way Freddie was staring stonily at the sky.

'She can't go out much. Now she won't have to. There's work for all three of us, years of work. I done it for you.'

Annie was frowning at Freddie. 'Say thank you,' she mouthed.

'Thank you.'

''Tis a risk,' said Levi. 'Cost me all my money, it did.'

'Granny Barcussy's money?' Freddie's eyes stung with the threat of tears.

'Ah. Granny Barcussy's money.'

Freddie stood up. Even the soles of his feet burned with anger. But I won't be like Dad, he thought. I won't lose my temper. I won't. I will not. His face went hard with the effort, hard as gla.s.s, and his fists ached in his pockets. He looked at Levi who was sitting with his back against the apple tree, his hands idly collecting petals from the fallen blossom, scooping them into his palm and blowing them playfully at Annie.

He's got no idea what I want, Freddie thought. I'll have to tell him, somehow.

And then he saw her. Granny Barcussy. Floating like steam, and radiant as sunlight, in the air next to Levi. She wore a robe that glistened with the colours she'd loved, he could smell the honeysuckle and lavender she had grown, and sense the warmth of her. She didn't look haggard and old now, her skin was smooth and her eyes full of life and compa.s.sion. She looked directly at Freddie and her smile melted his anger. It was the same mischievous smile she'd always had, and now she held a finger to her lips and shook her head. He heard her voice.

'Don't tell him,' she said. 'Not now. You keep the peace.'

She disappeared gently, like salt dissolving in water, and Freddie became aware that Annie was looking at him with an alarmed expression on her face. He wasn't allowed to tell her, but she knew, Freddie was sure. The hours of eye contact he'd had with his mother on those long difficult walks, the way their souls had been linked by her panic, as if he was her anchor forever chained to her, and she was his lifeboat, safe, but blotting out the light.

'I'll talk to him,' she said to Levi. 'He just needs time to think about it.'

'Aye. 'Tis a big thing. For a lad,' Levi nodded, struggled to his feet and brushed the apple blossom from his trousers. 'I'll leave you to it.'

Freddie sat down again, close to his mother's bottle-green dress and the white ap.r.o.n she wore so proudly. They were better dressed since the war had ended. He had a new shirt and shorts, socks without darns and new brown boots, a warm jacket and a cap.

'Did Harry Price like the queen wasp?' asked Annie.

'No.'

'More fool him,' said Annie. 'The old misery. Well, now you can wave him goodbye. You can go to a new school in town. They've got four teachers there, and one of them is a lady. A Miss Francis. She takes the top cla.s.s, and they say she's very nice, and clever.'

'But Mother I don't want to be a baker. I want to make aeroplanes.'

'I know.' Annie put her arm round Freddie. He was twelve now, tall for his age, his white blond hair had darkened a little. She looked at his long fingers. 'You've got hands like your dad. Do you know what he wanted to do when he was young?'

'What?'

'He wanted to be a jeweller.'

'A jeweller?' Freddie stared at her in surprise. 'Why wasn't he, then? What stopped him?'

'His hands were too big. He couldn't do the delicate work, so he had to give up his dream. Just as I had to give up my dream.'

'Your dream? You had a dream? What was it?'

'I wanted to be florist to grow flowers and make them up into bouquets and wreaths. I was good at it. But then the family came along, needed me to do the washing and the baking and the scrubbing and the nursing, and then the war came. We've all had to make do, and do things we don't want, Freddie. And you will too. This bakery idea, it's perfect for your father. He won't have to go out in the cold and the wet with his arthritis, he can work at home in a warm dry bakery. It's perfect. We've gotta help him, Freddie. Give it a chance.'

Freddie sighed.

'But all my life I've been doing things I don't want to do.'

'I know,' said Annie kindly. 'But your turn will come. You'll see.'

'It hasn't so far.'

Freddie looked gloomily at his mother. Her grey curly hair was scattered with apple blossom petals, her red cheeks shining with excitement. The hope in her dark blue eyes was underlaid with layers and layers of old fear and old pain going deep into the distances of her soul, and right at the far end was a little child full of love who only wanted to pick flowers. He felt sorry for her.

'You've had a hard life,' he said.

She nodded slowly. 'But the hardest thing,' she said, 'is my fear, Freddie. Night and day it's with me. I'm a strong woman, got to be, but that fear is stronger than me. It's like an illness, but it's invisible. No one knows, Freddie, only you. No one knows what I go through.'

'Isn't there a medicine for it?' Freddie asked.

Annie shook her head vigorously. 'Even if there was, I daren't tell the doctor, daren't ask for it.'