Winter's End Read Free

shining in the light of the street lamps. A few cars were driving around, silent at this distance and looking like big, pot-bellied beetles.
    “It’s lovely,” sighed Helen. “I would like the town if it wasn’t for —” She stopped, jerking her head at the huge building they had just left: the girls’ boarding school on the other side of the bridge.
    “And if we could go there now and then.” Milena finished her sentence, pointing to the otherbuilding: the boys’ boarding school a couple of hundred yards from the girls’ school.
    They had just set out again along the trodden earth road when a couple of figures came around a bend higher up. The two boys were striding downhill fast. They disappeared from view for a moment and then came into sight again, closer now, where the road began to run straight. The first boy was tall and thin. Helen noticed the way he looked straight ahead in a challenging way, his firm chin jutting out. The second, who was rounder in the face and shorter, followed close behind him. She saw the curly hair under his cap and his laughing eyes.
    “Hi!” said all four of them at almost the same time, and they stopped face-to-face in the road.
    “You’re going up?” asked the boy with the cap, rather stupidly.
    “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Helen. Then she was annoyed with herself for sounding sarcastic, and to apologize added, “And you’re going down again.”
    “That’s right,” said the boy.
    “Who was whose companion?” Helen ventured. “If it’s OK to ask?”
    The boy said nothing for a couple of seconds, looking undecided, and finally made up his mind and pointed to his taller friend. “He’s my companion.”
    Helen got the impression that he was blushing as he made this confession. She liked that. Not wanting to embarrass him, she pointed to Milena and said, “And she’s mine.” Which meant,
I’m going to see my consoler too — it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
    The boy was obviously grateful. He smiled and said, “What are your names?”
    “I’m Helen,” said Helen, “and this is Milena.”
    “I’m Milos,” said the boy. “He’s Bartolomeo. We’re in the fourth year. What about you — which year are you in?”
    “We’re both in the fourth year too,” said Helen.
    The little coincidence amused them. Then they didn’t know what to say next, so they said nothing, feeling rather awkward. The two boys couldn’t bring themselves to go on down the hill or the girls to go on up it. There were very few opportunities for the students in the two schools to meet like this; it would have been stupid to part so quickly. Helen noticed that Milena and Bartolomeo couldn’t take their eyes off each other and thought her friend seemed unafraid. Looking from one to the other, she wondered desperately what to say next. But it was Milena who spoke first.
    “We could exchange messages through the Skunk, couldn’t we?”
    Helen felt the blood rise to her face. She had always thought that messages delivered by the Skunk were only for the fifth- and sixth-year students. Milena’s suggestion seemed incredibly daring. It was as if she had suddenly crossed a forbidden frontier without warning.
    The Skunk was a wizened little old man who hobbled across the school yard and back late in the morning on Fridays, laboriously hauling his handcart after him. It contained, first, a load ofclean sheets and, on the way back, a pile of dirty sheets, which he was taking to the laundry in town. As the only person who could pass freely between both schools, he was someone of considerable importance: he could deliver messages and bring the replies back next week or the week after. All you had to do was leave your letter tucked in the laundry along with payment — a banknote in an envelope or, even better, a bottle of spirits if possible. The Skunk suffered from some kind of gastric disorder that gave him appallingly bad breath. A disgusting smell of rotten cabbage hit you ten feet