He sat next to Kate’s mother in the back, but they didn’t talk. Sally clutched her hat with one hand and the back of Joan’s seat with the other, sitting straight and alert as if she was driving herself. When they swept to a halt outside Monterose Hospital, Sally turned and looked at him.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for bringing Polly home. I don’t know who you are – but I’m very grateful.’
Aware that he was playing truant from school, Freddie chose not to tell her he was Freddie Barcussy from the bakery. He just said, ‘Kate is going to get better, I know it.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I just do.’ Freddie looked directly into Sally’s surprised eyes and said no more. He thanked Joan for the ride, allowed himself one glance at the hospital where Kate was, and sprinted home through the wide streets of Monterose, reaching the bakery at his usual time of ten past four.
Sad that he couldn’t tell his parents about this secret day, he’d gone to bed with his mind on fire.
The sound of the Model T Ford had set up home in his mind, a sound that was both satisfying and disturbing, like a new voice on earth.
The wooden clock in his bedroom seemed to tick faster and faster, and at two o’clock in the morning he got up, lit a candle and counted the clump of money tied in his hanky. It included the precious florin Joan had given him and he spent some time examining it in the candlelight. There were a few sixpences too, and in total he had earned ten shillings and ninepence. Breathing hard with excitement he prised open the floorboard under his bed and added the money to his hoard which was tied in a grey woollen sock, now so heavy that it had to be picked up with both hands.
Nothing had happened for years, and then so much had been packed into one day. His first experience of leading a pony, his nostalgic walk back to Hilbegut, the stone lions, the motorcar. All these events were stacked precariously in his mind and right in the middle was a window of honey-coloured light where he kept the memory of Kate.
Freddie sat on his bed in the candlelight and thought about her. The more he stared at the flame, the brighter it shone, growing tall with an edge of sapphire blue. Deep in its orange heart was an inviting archway. In his imagination he stepped through it, the flame was behind him, and he stood alone in a world of dazzling light. It was unlike any place he knew and yet he felt instantly at home there. The light energised and refreshed him, and in the bright core of the blaze was the face of an angel. He tried to see the wings, but the shifting patterns of iridescence were too swift. The eyes of the angel were all the colours of water, their expression imbued with wisdom and patience.
A voice called to him out of the light, its resonance infusing every shimmering strand like the wind blowing through wheat fields. He listened, and let the voice echo through him, through his hair, his skin, and the tips of his fingers.
‘Many years will pass. Be patient. Be true to yourself. And, when the golden bird returns, you will meet her again.’
Drawing a breath from the night air, he returned with a jolt to his candlelit bedroom.
The words soaked into him, but Freddie had no idea what they meant. A golden bird? What golden bird? Mentally he ticked the ones he knew – a yellow hammer, a goldfinch, a canary. None of them fitted. He reached for Granny Barcussy’s nature book which he kept by the bed. It was navy blue with the title embossed in gold letters, and inside was a cornucopia of painted illustrations and descriptions. Now he could feel her next to him, eagerly turning the pages in the dim candlelight, turning them faster and faster until a golden bird was there on the page, eating rowan berries from a branch. A golden oriole! He had it. Oriole Kate. She was named after a golden bird, and according to the text it was a rare visitor, and that described Kate perfectly, he thought, satisfied.
He’d never seen Kate properly, never looked into her eyes. He wanted to go down to the hospital with a bunch of roses. Red roses he’d give her. He drifted to sleep, threading the angel’s words into the fabric of his life.
In the morning he awoke disturbed by a sense of foreboding. Mechanically he got up and helped Levi with the bread. They worked silently together putting batch after batch of risen loaves into the ovens, cottage loaves and tin loaves, French bread and the heavy lardy cake. He looked just once into his father’s eyes as he packed the bicycle basket.
‘You do your best at school today,’ said Levi.
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Don’t go telling no lies.’
‘No, Dad.’
‘You know what I mean, Freddie. If you can’t tell the truth, then keep quiet.’
Levi’s drooping eyes looked at Freddie for a long moment, a moment he was to remember for the rest of his life.
‘And look after your mother.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
Freddie cycled off on the cumbersome bicycle into the misty morning. He didn’t feel like going to school after yesterday’s excitement. School seemed totally irrelevant. He didn’t want to go, ever again.
Everyone in Monterose was gossiping about the accident at the station, and people came to look at the broken cart which was still lying there next morning with ‘Gilbert Loxley, Farmers, Hilbegut Farm’ painted proudly on the side of the cart.
‘A disgrace, that’s what it is.’
‘It was the older daughter. Etheldra Loxley. She drove that poor pony like a mad woman. And her little sister in the back. Shame on her.’
‘Could have killed someone.’
The gossip went on circulating until it reached the bakery.
Annie was coping happily with the queue. She loved being in the shop with the warm fragrance of freshly baked loaves. She enjoyed taking them down from the shelf and wrapping them in clean paper, then taking the money and chatting pleasantly. It was her ideal life. She didn’t have to go out. Levi was there, and he was proud of what he had achieved, the bakery business was thriving. Freddie was nearly fourteen. Once he left school the business would do even better. Annie was satisfied that her son’s life was mapped out for him.
Until it all changed.
‘I saw your Freddie was there yesterday, at the station,’ said a woman in a brown and white gingham dress.
Annie frowned at her. ‘What do you mean, Gladys? Freddie is at school that time of the morning.’
‘He wasn’t yesterday.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ Gladys had a piercing voice that filled the shop. ‘Your Freddie was there. I saw him myself. And he was a good lad too.’
‘What time was this?’ Annie asked, and the sudden sharpness in her voice brought Levi out from the bakery, brushing the flour from his hands.
‘Half past ten.’
‘Half past TEN?’ said Annie in astonishment. ‘Freddie should have been in school.’
‘Oh – well.’ Gladys winked. She stood there with her hand on the loaf she had chosen, the rest of the queue listening. ‘You know what these lads are. Boys will be boys, won’t ’em?’
‘And what was he doing? Are you sure it was Freddie?’
‘’Course it were. I know Freddie, he brings the bread round,’ said Gladys, relishing the story. ‘Well, I looked after the older girl, she was in a proper state, and Freddie was with the little ’un who got hurt so bad. And then he offered to lead the pony home, all the way to Hilbegut. Good of him.’
‘WHAT?’
‘And I’ll bet he enjoyed his lift back in Joan Jarvis’s posh new motorcar!’
Levi spoke then and the whole shop fell silent.
‘Are you telling me that our Freddie was down there? And that he took some pony out to Hilbegut?’
‘That’s right, Sir.’ Gladys looked staunchly at him over her brown and white gingham bust.
Levi’s face went purple.
‘Right.’ With his big hands trembling he took off his baker’s apron and hat and turned to Annie. ‘You mind the shop. I’m going up the school, right now.’