'Then ' he continued. 'The clock struck three one two three chimes, the door opened, and the midwife called me to go up. Oh I went up those stairs three at a time, wiping my hands on-' He paused, waiting for Kate to giggle as she always did at that part of the story. He looked at her bright eyes.

'On the seat of your trousers!' she squealed.

'Yes,' fuelled by her ringing laugh Bertie continued, lowering his voice as he approached the magical part of the story. 'Well, I went in, and there you were, bright as a b.u.t.ton in your mother's arms and she was sitting up in bed with her face round and smiling like a dinner plate.'

'Was I crying?' asked Kate.

'No. You weren't. You were lovely. The midwife wrapped you in a cream shawl and put you in my arms. I carried you over to the window, and there, outside, on a branch of the walnut tree, was a golden bird.' He lowered his voice to a whisper. 'And none of us had ever seen a bird like it before. It was bright orange-yellow, sitting there in the tree, and it stayed there, singing. It stayed in the garden for the rest of the day.'

'What was it?' Kate asked, even though she knew the answer.

'A golden oriole,' said Bertie. 'We asked old Mrs Barcussy and she knew; she looked it up in a book she'd got about birds, and showed us a picture of it. It came over from Europe, she said, and a very rare visitor, it was. So that's why I called you my golden bird.'

'And my name,' said Kate. 'Oriole Kate, that's why.'

'That's why.' Bertie closed his eyes again and the breath rattled in his chest. 'Oriole Kate.'

They rested, each thinking about the golden bird. The effort of talking had drained Bertie, but he was struggling to tell her something else.

'There's a legend,' he said, 'that if a golden bird appears when a baby is born, it . . .'

His voice faded away and he sank deeper into the pillows, his eyes fixed on Kate's eager face. Then the door opened and Ethie came in with a bucket. She looked sourly at her younger sister curled on the bed.

'You shouldn't be in here, Kate,' she said curtly, 'Daddy's too ill to cope with you bouncing around.'

'I'm not bouncing around, I'm cheering him up.'

'That's MY job now,' said Ethie fiercely. 'I'm staying here and you should be packing, shouldn't you?'

Kate felt that Ethie wanted to drag her off the bed, the fierce jealousy in Ethie's eyes made her uncomfortable. She smiled, but the smile only made Ethie look even more draconian. Kate wanted to keep the peace, so she got off the bed and kissed her father on the cheek.

'I'm going to pack right now,' she said, 'and I'm going to enjoy it.'

Chapter Eight.

PLAYING TRUANT.

Monterose was a small Somerset market town, centred around the railway which curved its way through cuttings in the hills and over viaducts and embankments. The town was half on a hill and half in a river valley, the lower part of it flooded for much of the winter. Boats were rowed along the streets and wild swans, ducks and geese swam in and out of gardens and cottages where the occupants lived upstairs from November to March. The top half of the town had a busy market square and a capacious church with the loudest bells in the county.

The railway station was a magnet for Freddie. The thrilling power of the steam engines fired him up as if he had swallowed a furnace. When he wasn't making bread or going to school he ran down the street to the station and hung around watching coal being shovelled, wild-eyed cattle being loaded into trucks, and the spectacular cauliflowers of steam erupting from the saddle-back engine as it shunted to and fro. He was fascinated by the fire inside it and the glimpses of sooty-faced men working in the cab, the white gleam of their eyes as they shovelled and shouted. Freddie spent so much time there that his clothes started to smell of coal, and Annie complained. So did his father, and Freddie was given a brush which was kept outside for him to brush himself down before being allowed back into the bakery.

He soon discovered there was money to be earned at the station by carrying luggage over the cream and brown footbridge. Pa.s.sengers put their hands in their pockets and gave him tuppence, or thruppence. Freddie made friends with the other boys who went racing down the hill after school to earn money at the station. At first he watched and listened, soon figuring out that it wasn't always the pushy boy who got asked to carry luggage. It was the cleanest ones, the strongest-looking and most respectful. Freddie soon learned how to doff his cap and call people 'Sir' and 'Madam', and how to look after his money. He memorised the times of trains and found out which trains would have the wealthiest pa.s.sengers.

Every morning he rose at 5 a.m. to help bake the bread. By then Levi was taking the first batch out of the three c.o.ke ovens and Annie loading the shelves in the shop or cleaning the window. By 7 a.m. the whole street smelled of fresh bread and Freddie stacked the bicycle basket with loaves for the round he had to do before school. Usually he had breakfast, a big chunk of lardy cake and a cup of cocoa before setting off. Once he'd discovered the station, he took his lardy cake with him to eat while he waited for trains. If he did his bread-round quickly, he managed to be there for the eight o'clock and the eight-thirty trains, and still get to school at nine.

He liked the teacher, Miss Francis, but despite being in the top cla.s.s there seemed to be very little for him to learn. He was far ahead of the rest of the cla.s.s in reading, writing and maths and there were no workbooks to take him further. Sitting at the back of the cla.s.s, Freddie spent a lot of time daydreaming, drawing, and reading his way through a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica and the works of d.i.c.kens and Robert Louis Stevenson. Miss Francis told his father Freddie should go to university, but the thought of more study filled him with horror. He wanted to get out there and do real work with engines. He didn't want to be a baker, and he didn't want to waste his life sitting in school.

One September morning he decided not to go. He'd be there for the ten-thirty train to Weymouth. It wasn't a decision he'd taken by himself. Granny Barcussy had appeared to him in a dream, and she was unfolding a piece of drawing paper, holding it up to show him, and it was his picture of the little girl on the Shire horse. Annie had extracted it from Freddie's wet jacket, ironed it under a cloth and put it in an old picture frame on top of a photo she didn't like. It hung on the wall halfway up the stairs, and even though Freddie protested that he could now draw much better than that, Annie insisted on keeping it there, as if she wanted to cling to a relic of the child he had been.

In the dream, Granny Barcussy had shown him Monterose station and pointed at the clock. It was ten thirty. She wanted him to be there. So he went, pretending he was going to school as normal, then running round the back of the bakery, through an alleyway and down the hill to the station, his breakfast wrapped in a cloth under his arm. He prayed he wouldn't be found out. Deceiving his parents wasn't something he enjoyed, but lately it had become an essential part of his life.

Annie never went out, and Levi spent most of his time working in the bakery. Freddie felt oddly calm about what he was doing. He thought about Miss Francis calling the register at school, questioning why he was absent, but he didn't care.

He was a tall boy now, taller than anyone in his cla.s.s, and he felt awkward at school. Living in Monterose had been his education. At weekends and holidays, when he escaped from the bakery, Freddie had hung around watching men at work. He watched the wheelwrights and was allowed to help occasionally, and he learned everything he could about motorcars. If he saw one with the bonnet open, he would go and ask questions, finding people were usually proud to explain the workings of the engine to him. Freddie's favourite place was the stonemason's yard where he sat wistfully on the wall looking at the statues and tombstones being made.

In long strides he headed for the station, thinking there were two other trains due, and he'd have no compet.i.tion. He felt jaunty and independent, a new feeling in his life, one that he wanted to cultivate.

With one and fourpence safely in his pocket from the two early trains, Freddie climbed up the gra.s.sy embankment and sat there to eat his lardy cake peacefully in the morning sun.

'Shouldn't you be in school, lad?' the stationmaster, Charlie, paused to shout up to him.

Freddie shrugged.

'Playing truant, eh?' asked Charlie with a wink.

'I'm too big for school,' said Freddie. 'And I need to earn a bit of cash.'

'What you gonna spend it on then? Eh?'

'A lorry.'

Charlie laughed loudly. 'Ah, you'll be buying a whole load of trouble. I don't like those petrol lorries. Stinking things. I suppose you'll be meeting the ten-thirty Weymouth train today? They'll be plenty of wealthy folk putting the precious daughters on there, sending 'em off to that posh boarding school.'

Ethie had always been savagely jealous of Kate. From the moment Kate had been born, Ethie had felt unwanted and her sadness had curdled into a thundercloud lurking over her life. Sally had tried to treat her two girls exactly the same, but the contrast between Kate's exuberance and Ethie's negativity made such an ideal impossible.

Today Ethie felt smug that she, not Kate, had been asked to stay at home and run the farm while her father was ill. She hoped Kate would have a hard time, as she had done, starting at boarding school on her own. Ethie felt creepily adult as she headed off to catch the pony and harness her into the cart, proud that her parents trusted her to take Kate to the train.

The bay pony, Polly, was known to be 'cussed'. Once caught and harnessed she behaved beautifully, trotting with her neck arched and her toes pointed like a dancer. Loose in the field, Polly was reluctant to relinquish her freedom. She didn't much like Ethie, so that morning Polly chose to be awkward. Round and round the field she trotted, snorting, her nose in the air. She came close and s.n.a.t.c.hed the square of bread Ethie held out to her, then spun around and galloped off.

Ethie got more and more exasperated.

'WILL you come here?' she called. 'You wretched PIG of a horse.'

Furious, she ran after Polly, hoping to head her off and get her in a corner, but time after time the pony kinked her tail and cantered off to the opposite corner, where she stood tossing her mane and looking triumphant. Ethie got hotter and hotter, dressed in her farming gear, heavy breeches, boots and jacket. The sound of the Hilbegut Court clock chiming nine was the last straw. They'd agreed to leave at nine, allowing plenty of time for the pony and cart to reach Monterose station. Polly should have been caught, groomed and harnessed by now.

Ethie could have cried with rage, but she wasn't good at crying. She'd seen girls at school who cried daintily into lace hankies with hardly a sniff. But if Ethie cried, it was ugly. Loud and snorty and convulsive, so embarra.s.sing that people pushed her away instead of comforting her. So Ethie had turned her tears into anger, stamping about for hours with her face set rigid like a cardboard mask.

As the clock chimed, Kate appeared at the backdoor with her mother, dressed in her new grey and scarlet uniform. She looked good in it, her hair plaited in two thick braids, each with a red ribbon, one over each shoulder, the round grey hat just at the right angle over her expectant face. She was chattering as usual, and she and her mother were standing by the cart waiting.

'I can't catch this infernal d.a.m.ned pony,' Ethie roared. 'How am I supposed to harness her if she won't be caught? She won't. She WILL NOT. I've finished with her. I'm not doing it. She's the most impossible, stupid d.a.m.ned awkward animal in the whole of this farm. It'd be easier to catch a cow than catch THAT.' Ethie snarled like a dog and flung the halter over the gate. 'You catch her if you want to go to the station.'

'ETHELDRA.' Her mother's voice boomed like a foghorn when there was a crisis. Even the chickens froze, and the two farm dogs slunk away and lay shivering against a wall. Sally only called her oldest daughter by her full name Etheldra if she was extremely displeased. 'Get a hold of yourself,' she thundered, 'your father is ILL, and we have to get Kate to school. Pick up that halter.'

Begrudgingly Ethie did as she was told, her face dark as a Victoria plum.

'I can catch Polly,' said Kate.

'Not in your uniform please,' objected Sally, her voice back to normal.

'I won't get it dirty, Mummy. It'll be all right.'

Kate took the halter from Ethie's angry red fist.

'Don't worry, Ethie, I've caught Polly lots of times,' she said, picking up a fallen apple from the garden.

When Polly saw Kate coming into the field she turned into a different pony. She trotted over to Kate, making whickering noises in greeting, then she took the apple and stood placidly while Kate slipped the halter over her head.

'Oh, well done. That's my girl,' said Sally, but Ethie refused to look pleased. Her temper had set in for the day, like a weather front. She glowered and muttered as they led Polly over to the cart. The three of them harnessed her up between them, buckling straps and organising the cart in silence. Only Kate talked, nonstop, to the pony, and Polly flicked her ears back to listen. Kate ran her hand down the pony's sleek forelegs and inspected the neat little hooves.

'Kate, your UNIFORM,' protested Sally. 'It's already covered in hairs, and you can't start school smelling like a horse.'

Kate giggled, and Ethie's frown wavered for a second as she caught her sister's mischievous eyes.

'Don't START,' said Ethie, rolling her eyes and tutting.

Kate had lifted up Polly's near foreleg. 'She's got a shoe loose.'

'Oh lor,' said Sally. 'How bad is it?'

'One of the nails is up.' Kate fiddled with the metal shoe. 'She ought not to go on it, Mummy.'

'We can't bother about it now,' said Sally, 'just hope for the best.' She handed Ethie a watch on a chain. 'It's nearly half past nine. You'll have to drive hard to get there. But be careful, Ethie, don't get reckless, especially in Monterose with all those motorcars they've got now. And just remember, Polly might be frightened by the trains. Get there early and move her away before it arrives.'

Kate turned to say goodbye to her mother, looked searchingly into her eyes, and there was a moment when both of them almost cried.

'Don't you worry Daddy will get better,' said Sally. 'You just keep your chin up, Kate.'

'Will you COME ON, Kate.' Ethie was up in the cart, the reins in her hand, a tall whip propped in its slot beside her. The sun beat down on her face, her pimples itched annoyingly and her hair stuck to the back of her neck. She felt as if an over-tuned engine was hammering away inside her, and that she, not Polly, was the one being driven.

Impatient to start, Polly set off at a furious trot, the high wheels of the cart b.u.mping over the stony driveway. Kate sat facing backwards, drinking in her last look at Hilbegut Farm, waving as her mother got smaller and smaller. The two stone lions stared sightlessly after them as they sped into the distance towards Monterose.

Freddie was earning lots of money. He was amazed to see the St Christopher's girls turning up at the station in their grey and scarlet uniforms, arriving in a variety of motorcars and horse-drawn carts. He ran to carry their luggage, mostly brown leather suitcases with names on the lid and hard k.n.o.bs at each corner which bruised his shins mercilessly. The girls intrigued him. Neat plaits and clean pink faces, so different from the ratty-tatty bunch he saw at school. Their voices were different too. Ringing and confident. Except for a few who looked apprehensive and timid, and one who was sobbing relentlessly.

They were arriving early, so Freddie had plenty of opportunities, even a queue waiting for him. Time after time he carried cases over the cream and brown footbridge with girls who smelled of mothb.a.l.l.s and soap, padding beside him in polished shoes. One tiny blonde girl was terrified of walking over the bridge where she could see the gleaming railway below through cracks between the boards. Her distraught mother was trying to drag her.

'I'll take her,' said Freddie, sensing the child's genuine terror. Remembering the times he had coaxed Annie a step at a time, he used those tactics now, holding the child's icy little hands and making her look at his eyes as he talked her over the bridge. Then he squatted down and looked into her face. 'When you come back,' he said, 'I'll be here again to help you, you needn't be afraid. My name's Freddie. All right?' The child nodded gratefully, her big eyes shining under the new oversized hat.

'You're a very special young man.' Her mother, draped in fox furs and an immaculate cream suit, looked at Freddie approvingly. She opened her heavy pigskin handbag, took out a coin that flashed in the sun, and pressed it into his hand. A florin! Two whole shillings. He'd never had one before.

'Thank you.'

'My pleasure. And the name is Joan Jarvis.'

The platform was now crowded with children and their parents. The man in the signal box pulled a lever with both hands, and the red and white signal clunked down. A train whistle screeched through the cutting and from the top of the bridge Freddie could see puffs of steam rising from the hills. Charlie pounded over the bridge, a rolled-up green flag in his hand.

'Be glad to see this lot off,' he winked at Freddie. 'Spoilt little madams, ain't 'em?'

Freddie leaned on the bridge to wait for the train, while he tied the precious florin into his hanky, which was now so full of money it weighed his pocket down like a stone. He relished the antic.i.p.ation of counting it and hiding it under the floorboards.

Then he heard a terrible sound.

The clatter of hooves on the road, the banging of wheels. And screaming. Everyone seemed to be screaming.

'Look out. Stand back.'

'Out of the way.'

'Stop that pony.'

Freddie bounded down the stairs two at a time and out of the station gate, the nerves tw.a.n.ging in his stomach. It was Annie's story, for real. A horse and cart bolting through a crowded street, people screaming, barrows overturning.

It was quick, and yet the moments seemed ponderously slow to Freddie. With his hand over his mouth, he watched in horror as a pony came galloping wildly, sweat flying from its flanks, foam and blood around its mouth. The cart was bouncing and zig-zagging, and driving it was a girl with dripping wet hair and a face contorted with rage. She wasn't trying to stop the pony, she was thrashing the reins up and down. Words of fury spouted from her mouth as if she was a gargoyle.

Clinging with both hands to the sides of the cart was a girl in a scarlet and grey uniform, her plaits flying.

'Stop! Stop!' people were shouting.

'Whoa now. Whoa Polly.' Ethie hauled on the reins and Polly slid to a halt, her flanks heaving. Ethie turned and shouted. 'Get out. Now. The train's coming.'

Freddie strode forward to help, and as he did so the train surged noisily into the station. He saw the younger girl trying to stand up from where she'd been clinging. Then the pony saw the train. Terrified, she wheeled around in a panic, the cart was hurled onto its side and both girls were flung into the air.

Ethie landed on the gra.s.s bank and quickly rolled over and sat up. But the girl in the St Christopher's uniform landed on the road with a sickening crack, and lay still.

A man in a cap moved forward to calm the plunging pony who was trying to drag the twisted wreckage of the cart. The train hissed as it pulled into the station, and a terrible silence descended over the scene.

Freddie reached the girl in a few strides. He picked up her hat from the road and knelt down beside her. She was motionless, her eyes tightly closed, her face peaceful. He remembered Granny Barcussy, how she had looked when he'd found her dead, how her shining aura had gone. This beautiful young girl wasn't dead, he knew that. She was in a coc.o.o.n of golden light, and only Freddie could see it.

But she was badly hurt, and deeply unconscious. Blood was oozing in a dark pool across the road, soaking into the dust around her head. Freddie touched her arm and she felt hot and limp. He was aware of the people crowding round her, someone shouting and shouting for a doctor. He looked into the shocked eyes of the girl who had been driving the pony, and her skin was deathly white and blotchy, her lips still with terror.

'She's not dead,' said Freddie.

He glanced at the girl's suitcase lying nearby, and read the name embossed in white letters on the lid.

MISS ORIOLE KATE LOXLEY.

HILBEGUT FARM.