The Boy with No Boots Read Free

all?’
    ‘That’s all, as far as I know.’
    ‘I’ll go and see his teacher. That’s a nasty bruise, too near his eye. Keep him warm and quiet, and let him sleep for as long as he wants. No school tomorrow. And . . .’
Doctor Stewart frowned at Annie, ‘Pull yourself together, Annie.’
    She rocked harder. I’m not that kind of woman, she wanted to scream, not a wartime woman, cheerful and heroic. I’m a lump. A frightened housebound lump.
    ‘I’ll see myself out.’
    ‘Thank you, Doctor.’
    Annie sat with Freddie through the pink of evening watching the changing sky from the square of window. On the deep stone sill were all of Freddie’s possessions. Two books, his collection
of stones, conkers and cones, his precious wooden spinning top, three green marbles, and a sepia photograph of his Gran in a tiny silver frame. She thought about how she could make him some shoes
by sewing leather onto socks, and the possibilities of making cakes without eggs so he could have a boiled egg for his breakfast. She longed for her girls, Betty and Alice, who were all living in
lodgings and working at the glove factory in Yeovil. Only George, her eldest, came to see them on his motorbike. He worked at Petter Engines making shells for the war. Occasionally on a Sunday he
brought one of his sisters home in the sidecar.
    Levi worked long hours in the corn mill, coming home grumpy and stinking, capable of nothing but sitting by the fire in the rocking chair. He wouldn’t read. He wouldn’t chop
firewood. He just sat, staring endlessly into the bright flames.
    ‘Freddie’s took sick,’ Annie said tonight as he hung his stinking coat on the back of the door.
    ‘Oh ah, what’s up with him?’
    ‘The doctor says it’s exhaustion. And he’s undernourished.’
    ‘Ah.’ Levi stuffed tealeaves into his pipe and gazed into the fire for long minutes before his eyes sparked into life.
    ‘You had the DOCTOR?’
    ‘Sally from down the farm sent her son to fetch him. Freddie’s been hit again, a nasty bruise near his eye. For daydreaming.’
    ‘Ah.’ Another lengthy pause while guilt, anger and helplessness sorted each other in Levi’s mind. ‘He’ll have to learn to pay attention then, won’t he? Or end
up useless like me.’
    ‘You aren’t useless, Levi. Don’t talk like that. Just because they turned you down for the war. It’s not your fault you’ve got arthritis.’
    Freddie woke slowly after a long sleep. Bees hummed and fussed outside his window and the smell of cooked apple drifted up the stairs and through his open door. The cottage was
strangely silent and Freddie sensed a new emptiness about it. The clock chimes were icy cold in the apple-flavoured air. He counted ten. Ten o’clock! He ought to be in school!
    Freddie got up quickly and ran barefoot down the stone stairs where he found his clothes hanging, stiff and crusty by the stove.
    ‘My beechnuts!’
    To his relief she had emptied them into a dish and put it on the table. Next to it was his plate with a slab of yellow cornbread thickly spread with dripping and the unexpected white gleam of an
egg, boiled and shelled. A piece of firewood was next to it with ‘Freddie’s breakfast’ written on it in black charcoal. And the broken treacle jar had been pieced together with
some kind of glue. Freddie smoothed his fingers over it, doubting that it would hold together for all the journeys it had to make. He climbed into his clothes and sat at the table to eat breakfast
hungrily, finishing every single crumb. Then he found his tin mug and filled it with hot water, lifting the heavy kettle with two hands clutching the string-wrapped handle.
‘Mother?’
    With his hands around the tin mug, Freddie walked into the scullery, pausing to sip the steaming drink. She wasn’t there. Still barefooted, he padded into the garden.
‘Mother?’
    The garden flickered with late butterflies, Red Admirals and Tortoiseshells sunning themselves on the cottage