‘Oh, ’tis Freddie.’ George opened the door fully. He looked rough and unshaven, his clothes smelled fusty, and he wore battered leather slippers with a hole through which a calloused and grubby toe protruded. ‘You better come in,’ he said, and led the way over bare floorboards into a room with mould up the walls and stacks of yellowing newspapers. One was spread on the floor with some oily black bits of an engine on it.
‘That your lorry?’ George pointed to the dirty window where the bulk of the Scammell lorry glowed red.
‘Yes,’ said Freddie shortly.
‘Bet you haven’t paid for it.’
Freddie ignored the jibe and sat down on a rickety kitchen chair.
‘I’ve come to see you about Mother,’ he said.
‘What about her?’ George sat back and folded his arms across his chest in a defensive stance.
Freddie was silent. He tried to get eye contact but George wouldn’t look at him, and everything Freddie had planned to say was suddenly useless. So he stayed quiet and waited, thinking he had to approach George from a different angle.
‘So what about Mother, then? Not ill, is she?’ George asked, and Freddie could see that his silence was unnerving. He maintained it until George’s questions started to disintegrate into stumbling attempts to reconstruct the armour he’d always worn in front of his brother.
‘We’re brothers, George,’ said Freddie very quietly, ‘and I’d like us to be friends.’
‘Ah.’ Finally George met the steady blue gaze of Freddie’s eyes. They were full of light and a deep mysterious peacefulness that George didn’t have. He didn’t feel good about the way he’d treated Freddie. Right from the start he’d either ignored or teased him, jealous of the way his mother had been so besotted by the waiflike blond child who had grown into this quiet, confident young man who was offering him friendship. George crumbled. His big hands shook and his eyes glistened. He took a fag from a squashed packet and lit it, offering one to Freddie.
‘No thanks.’
‘’Tis hard,’ said George. ‘I miss the old man. And ’tis lonely here, see? I do care about Mother. It’s just – well, ’tis hard, a hard life I got. I’ll tell ’e, Freddie . . .’
Freddie kept quiet and listened attentively. George was talking to him for the first time, telling him about his job at Petter Engines, sharing his dream of having his own garage, the pains in his legs and shoulders, and how he hated living alone. And right at the end of the tale he said sadly, ‘I were all right, see, ’til she went off.’
‘She?’
‘Freda. My lady love. Oh, I loved her. Lovely girl, lovely she was. A singer and a pianist. Play anything she could – make that piano dance, she did. I give her everything, Freddie, everything, and she just upped and left me for some fancy boy from London. Nothing I could do. Nothing. You wait ’til you’re in love, Freddie. Then you’ll know.’
His voice broke into fragments, and Freddie went on listening as George talked about his pain. His aura was clearing as if the talking was a polluted liquid draining from a barrel, and all the time Freddie could see Levi standing next to him, radiant and shining as he’d never been in life. He had his arm around George’s shoulders, and he looked just once at Freddie, put his finger to his lips and shook his head.
Freddie nodded. Keep quiet, Levi was telling him.
George heaved himself out of the low leather chair, his knees cracking. ‘I better make you a cuppa tea,’ he said, ‘or I got cocoa. Do ’e want that?’
‘Tea please,’ Freddie smiled, thinking it was the first time in his life that George had offered him anything. They stood looking at each other and he could feel the change, the melting of the barriers, the new friendship floating through in wisps. He’d come to talk about Annie, but instead he’d been silent and it had worked.
‘Want a ride in my lorry?’ he suggested. ‘It’s a Scammell.’
‘Could do,’ said George with the ghost of a twinkle. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting a go on my motorbike.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
Chapter Sixteen
LITTLE BLUE LETTERS
‘Cor, that’s a beauty.’ The postman leaned over his bicycle to admire the salmon in Ethie’s bucket, its tail flopped over the edge. ‘Ten pounder that ’un, I reckon.’
Ethie put the bucket down, rubbing her arm which was aching from lugging the heavy fish up the lane to Asan Farm. Collecting salmon from the putchers at low tide was her favourite job. She’d had to persuade her father that she was responsible enough to do it, and Uncle Don had taught her well how to read the tides and how to tread carefully over the shifting sands of the estuary. It gave her time alone close to the power of the river she loved. Going home with a huge fish gave her a new feeling in her life, a sense of being welcome. She almost felt grateful to the rainbow-skinned fish which had lost its life so that she, Ethie, could feel wanted and successful.
‘Shall I take the letters?’ she asked. ‘It’ll save you going down the lane.’
The postman rummaged in the box on the front of his bicycle. ‘There’s two for Mr D. Loxley, one for Mr B. Loxley – and this little blue one, for Oriole Kate Loxley. Lovely handwriting that. Real copperplate. Beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t put ’em in the bucket with the fish,’ teased the postman, but Ethie didn’t smile at him. ‘Where’s your young sister today then?’
‘She’s working,’ said Ethie shortly. ‘At the Tillerman’s racing stables.’
‘Lovely girl, your sister. Lovely girl. Always got a smile.’
The darkness crept back over Ethie’s morning. The way the postman looked her up and down, the way he expected a smile, annoyed Ethie intensely. Then he had followed it with the usual warm accolades for Kate, and the remark had sucked the glory out of Ethie’s journey home with the salmon.
‘Good morning.’ With a curt nod she picked up the bucket and walked on briskly, the letters in her jacket pocket. The postman shrugged and pedalled off on his bicycle, whistling a rebellious refrain.
When he had gone into the distance, Ethie stopped and took out the little blue letter with the copperplate writing. She knew it was from Freddie. Every Tuesday it came, and Kate’s eyes would light up as she sat there reading it and smiling, her dark eyes full of joy.
Ethie stood in the middle of the lane considering her options. Tear the letter into hundreds of pieces and sprinkle them into the hedge? Bury it under a cowpat? Burn it? Or should she open it first? The letter felt velvet-smooth in her hands and it had a feel of Freddie’s peacefulness which Ethie secretly admired. Spoiling the beautiful writing would only compound her crime. Ethie smiled to herself and tucked Freddie’s letter into her inner pocket. She planned to take it home and hide it in a place where Kate would never find it.
Jubilant, she walked on, carrying the bucket with the fish iridescent in the sunshine. From now on, she resolved, she would meet the postman every Tuesday.
The stone angel was slowly emerging from the block of Hilbegut stone. Freddie had chipped away at it in the mellow September evenings, sometimes working on into the twilight. He’d shaped the curving wings and the head of the angel in between. Now he was chiselling out the deep clefts between the wings and the body, so absorbed in the task that he didn’t notice anything around him, even the comings and goings of birds. So he was surprised to look up and see Annie standing there watching him in her flowery apron, her head on one side and a puzzled frown over her eyes.
‘How much longer are you going to be out here?’ she asked.
‘As long as I can.’ Freddie brushed the dust from the carving.
‘What about the bread?’
‘I’ll do that when it’s dark. I’ve got to do this in daylight.’