‘What’s the matter with you?’ Annie stared at him, her eyes suddenly dark with alarm. ‘Lost your job or something?’
‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ Freddie hovered in front of him and Levi glowered into the child’s eyes. He took hold of Freddie’s shoulder and steered him into the cottage with Annie bustling behind. She took the rustling barley sheaf from Freddie’s arms and stashed it against the kitchen wall.
‘Your hand is shaking, Dad,’ said Freddie, and Annie swung round, pausing in the middle of taking her hat off. A strand of grey hair fell across her cheek.
‘Levi,’ she said in a warning tone. ‘You haven’t been drinking, have you?’
Levi sat down heavily at the scrubbed wooden table, his head in his hands. Still the words refused to assemble. He raised a knobbly fist and banged it down on the table with such force that the nearby dresser shuddered and the china tinkled. Two willow pattern plates rolled along the shelf and perched precariously. Annie moved towards them, and the sight of her arm reaching out, and the disapproving frown on her face unlocked Levi’s anger.
At first the words came slowly, like shingle tumbling.
‘You. Boy. Stand up straight and look at me.’
Freddie responded eagerly, his back straight, questions shimmering in his eyes.
‘I’ve been to see Harry Price,’ rasped Levi. He fingered the buckle of his belt again. ‘Look at me, boy.’
‘I am,’ said Freddie, shivering now as he saw the colour of rage seeping up his father’s stubbly throat, over his chin and up his cheeks until, when it reached his eyes, it was crimson.
‘I’ve never laid a finger on any of my children,’ whispered Levi. His eyes bulged with pain. ‘But you’ve been telling LIES.’
Freddie stared hotly back at him.
‘I have not.’
Levi lunged forward and caught Freddie’s threadbare shirt by the sleeve, his angry fingers tore a strip out of the material. Annie gave a cry, and Freddie’s bottom lip started to quiver.
Levi’s other hand was on his belt, undoing the buckle, the wide leather strap trailing to the floor.
‘So help me, God, I’ll thrash you, boy. Any more lies. Do you hear? Do you?’
‘No, Levi!’ screamed Annie. ‘He’s not strong, Levi. You’ll kill him.’
Freddie stood motionless. His calm eyes inspected Levi’s tortured soul with sadness and understanding. A shell of light seemed to be protecting the boy, and Levi couldn’t touch him. He raised the belt high and hit the table with it, again, and again. He worked himself into a frenzy, his lips curling and spitting, the smell of the corn mill and the stench of sweat emanating from him into the room. Freddie backed away and climbed onto the deep window seat, his favourite corner, shuffling himself back behind the brown folds of curtain. Annie just stood, her hat in one hand, her face like a stone lion.
Levi heaved the table over with a crash, kicking it and roaring in wordless fury. The tinkle of china from the dresser, the chink of anxiety in Annie’s eyes, and the sight of Freddie hunched in the corner with his torn shirt and bony knees and eyes that refused to look shocked, enraged him further. One by one he seized every plate, every china cup, every jug and teapot from the dresser and smashed them on the stone floor. When he had finished, he collapsed into his fireside chair and cried. The rage was spent, purged into a mosaic of winking china across the flagstone floor. Now the last dregs of it sobbed out of him like ripples, further and further apart until finally Levi was still.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry,’ and he began to weep again until his eyes were red and his rough cheeks soaking wet. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked across at Freddie, surprised to see him sitting calmly, watching.
‘Don’t you ever,’ Levi said. ‘Freddie, don’t you ever be like me.’
‘I won’t,’ said Freddie. Throughout his father’s display of rage, Freddie had sat quietly, looking across the room at his mother’s frozen eyes. It wasn’t the first time in his young life that Freddie had witnessed Levi’s uncontrollable temper, watched him smash things then cry with shame, as he was doing now, stooping to pick up the two halves of a cream and brown teapot, holding them tenderly in his hands.
‘I can mend this. I’m sorry, Annie. I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you.’
Annie moved then, picking her way through the fragments of china. Her mother’s willow pattern. Auntie Flo’s jug. The gold-rimmed bone china cups which were her pride and joy. She went to Levi and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. She said nothing but her silence was powerful. It healed Levi’s battered psyche like nothing else. She looked at Freddie, and he crept out to be part of the silence, both of them nursing Levi as if he were a hurt animal.
Levi glanced up at the fragile radiance of his small son.
‘I’m sorry, lad. I’m so sorry,’ he said again, in a grating voice, and his red-rimmed eyes checked the pale moon of the clockface over the hearth. Right on cue it breathed in and started to chime its Westminster chimes, and each melodious note seemed to vibrate through the smithereens of china.
‘I gotta go to work,’ said Levi. ‘I took time off to . . . to . . .’
‘All right dear,’ said Annie, steering him away from the subject of Harry Price and Freddie’s lies.
‘My arthritis. ’Tis bad.’ Levi stood up unsteadily. ‘But—’ He looked at Freddie. ‘We gotta talk about this.’
‘After tea,’ declared Annie. ‘We’ll sit round the table and sort it out. Now – help me pick up this table before you go – and Freddie, you get the brush and sweep up.’
Freddie swept the shattered china into a rusty dustpan.
‘I could make something with this,’ he said.
‘No you couldn’t,’ Annie replied. She was stripping the grain from the barley sheaf, putting it to soak in a deep bowl.
‘I could, Mother. I could make a sailing ship.’ Freddie collected the white and gold curved fragments of cup, holding them up and turning them thoughtfully. He could see in his mind the billowing white sails and the idea of making a model ship excited him. The broken curves of Auntie Flo’s jug would make the base of the ship. He planned to get clay from the streambed and work it into a boat shape. Then he’d set the broken china into it. Or he’d make a bird. An owl with big eyes.
‘No Freddie. You’ll cut your hands,’ warned Annie. ‘You put that china in the bin.’
But Freddie just looked at her. He took the dustpan outside, where he quickly picked out the bits he needed for his sailing ship and his owl and hid them inside a hollow log at the back of the coal shed. He tipped the remainder into the dustbin. When he went back inside, he saw that Annie was touching the empty dresser, and he planned to make the ship and the owl in secret and stand them up there to fill the empty space. He wasn’t going to let his parents stop him.
After a tea of thick yellow cornbread spread with dripping followed by baked apples, Levi slumped into his fireside chair, looking apprehensive.
‘We gotta sort this out.’
Annie sat on the other side of the bright fire, darning a grubby grey sock with brown wool, and despite her apparent indifference, Freddie was glad of her solid presence as he faced his father. He dreaded another outburst, but Levi was calm now, his voice and eyes flat and defeated.
‘Now, Harry Price told me you was clever,’ he began. ‘And I were proud, Freddie. I were proud of you.’ His eyes glistened with disappointment. ‘Then he said you told lies, Freddie. And it weren’t just one lie. Now what have you got to say about that?’
‘I don’t tell lies,’ insisted Freddie. He squared his shoulders and directed his candid gaze into Levi’s confused eyes.
‘But Harry Price says you do.’ Levi wagged a crusty old finger and put his face closer. ‘He says you told him you saw his wife standing there, and you described her, and she’s dead, Freddie. Dead. So how can you see her? Eh?’