Published: 19 Oct 2017

xv

Robert woke early – just before dawn.

Silently pulling on his britches and shirt and slipping bare feet into well worn shoes, he crept from the billet and crunched the chalk path with subtle smouk steps. He found cause for pause at the the old woman’s house; at the window ledge above hollyhock and larkspur: a pale light from within where Miss Black sat by the Captain’s Davenport, with eye’s that could be fixed by the hour, regarding the marble bust of the Blessed Virgin. He thought he could be forgiven for tarrying – as during this time of meditation he believed he could see her not as the kindly old woman that he had come to know; but as the cervine young beauty that ruminated beneath. For want of time and an ill eith feeling; aware he were intruding on some private moment; he ducked low beneath the windowsill and picked up his step – passing on and out to the meadows that unfolded into the horizon.

He took off his shoes and tied their laces together, balled up his socks and buried them inside, rolled up the legs of his trousers and welcomed a dewy path beneath his bare feet – where he scrunched his toes in damp grass with every step.

The rock on the mound was what he wanted – for love of rough stalked meadow, smooth stone and some quiet place: a silent spot with a flat surface and a view of the gently flowing river; of the lonely waesome willow; and the skirt of the Barra Tye wood.

Of the little time time spent alone this was his favourite: this ethereal ambrosial hour – that auspicious pre-dawn; unreal and tempered with half-light. The lost blue hour some thin and timely place for grey-of-hares.

He sat upon stone with knees up under his chin and fingers clasped over his shins – needing wait only a short moment – for he had come to time it perfectly: the first glisk of sunlight penetrating through the darkened targe of cloud – for aprication and contemplation: a sight that set his heart alight for the day.

xvi

Three boys lay down under the sombre shade of the weeping willow, Bill Robert and Tom, in birthday suits and daisy chains by Tom’s squirrel sleekit fingers. If Adam had had brothers in place of his sister wife he would have been so blessed, Robert – admiring his friends.
Tom pulled Bill toward him and pressed his body close – warm skin sticky with dried sweat – hard little peter poking against hip. Bill pushed the younger boy aside and sat up on his haunches: “So a Bodach’s like a devil?”

“Like a devil… but maybe more like an imp the way Connall tells it. Tricksy questions you’ve no hope of answering. And if you answer a simple one like a name or how your day is going then you have to keep answering until he’s got you.”

“You believe it?”

“No.” Then a question: “Do you?”

“My family is Catholic. Belief in outlandish notions is kind of our thing.”

“If a devil tried to steal my pecker he’d have to do so over my dead body!” Tom now sitting – criss-cross applesauce; wriggling his toes – stiff peter in hand – sprucing the fit of his foreskin.

“Yours’ll fall off before he can get to it with all the fiddling you do!” Bill pushing Tom’s shoulder with a broad handsome smile.

“Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods and devils by the dozens!” Robert with eyes to the shadows between the pines, oaks and elms of the Barra Tye wood.

“Who said that?” Bill squinting at his friend.

“Michel de Montaigne.” Robert scrunched his nose, “of a sort. I changed it a little.”

“You read too much!” Tom not looking up from his peter as he stretched his foreskin.

“You don’t read enough!”

Bill laughed as Robert spun on his bare backside in the grass and lunged at a giggling Tom, pulling the eager younger boy under him. Warm skin sticky with dried sweat.

xvii

Robert – hypnotized by the space between Bill’s thighs – his silhouette shimmering against amber sunset.

xviii

Bill, Robert and Tom – all three dressed and out of the billet before dawn; all three bare feet dew-beaters among grass and clover.

With creak-of-first-light came a mackerel sky – rippled pink cloud set aflame by an as yet unseen sun.

By the coppice at the lip of the Barra Tye; mist swam heavy above their heads and the boys found the call of Rook on the wing an eerie morning alarm that stirred them from a walking slumber. The three stopped, smiled and crouched to watch a skulk of fox – tod in front and cautious vixen behind, three kits who played at bouncing through the glistening goosegrass and over stumps and new shoots of pine.

In and under the woods proper, the boys followed the river, Bill Robert and Tom, walking one in front of the other.

“Hermes was a trickster.” Robert’s eyes on Bill’s bare feet ahead of him – on the curve of carved calf muscle to ankle. “Homer said of him that he was ‘excellent at all tricks’. He was patron of thieves too.”

“The naked boy with the tin hat and snake stick?” Tom, in back.

“I thought you said he was like the postman?” Bill, in front.

“That’s the one Tom but his staff is a kerykeion. And yeah, he was The Messenger of the Gods too so, kind of like a postman. Most of the Greek Gods took several positions of honour. He was Pan’s father too.”

Tom laughed: “I like what you said about Pan. Horny goat-boy!” He bleated out loud as he could – forcing wings to break the inosculation above their heads.

“Maybe we should pull down your britches and check you for a goat’s tail.” Bill turning and walking backwards with a smile.

“You’ve touched and groped and fondled near every inch of me a hundred times or more. You’d have had it in your mouths by now if I’d’ve had.” Tom stopped, spun, pulled down his britches and flashed his bare bubble backside at the boys in front of him. Bill wolf whistled and grabbed at the plump bulge in the crotch of his trousers. Robert chuckled under his breath.

“Pan was more than just another horny satyr though. Patron to shepherds and wine makers…”

“Sheep shaggers and drunks!” Tom laughed. “I like him even more!”

“You carry the lecherous leer of young Greek shepherd fair enough.” Robert still chuckling.

“The forever bare soles of his feet tucked in daisies and breath tasting of milk and foreskin!” Bill teased.

Tom sprang forward; playing along Bill and Robert ran from him through the wood’s detritus, arms swinging around pine trunks and feet kicking at stone. Bill stopped first – allowing Tom to throw his arms around the older boys waist and drop him to the ground. Amid laughter and grunts and throaty snorts of ‘Pan, Pan the sheep shagging man’ Robert sat himself on a rock and watched the boys tussle.

“Hermes invented wrestling too.” to himself.

xix

In the still of the glade; under a level late afternoon sun – three boys lay primitive, Bill Robert and Tom, in a knot of arms and legs and torsos; soft sighs and played out giggles – the trickle of clear pebbled water singing to their left. Bill rising from between Tom’s thighs: “Your gouch smells like sourdough and ripe red cheddar!” Tom fingers in Bill’s hair – pushing the older boys face back down between his legs.

xx

Somewhere beneath dusk’s mulberry light and the golden glow of the moonbroch Robert watched two boys ahead of him – Bill and Tom clothed but barefoot; walking needling in play through thick meadow grass and hair-cap. He paused at the rust mustard brick of the bygone weatherhouse and cast eyes up to bruised evening.

The low burr of engines and wheel of propellers – a sudden rattling hum: two aeroplanes low overhead.

At the noise: Bill stopped – then Tom. Their vision finding Robert’s and the two large aluminium-copper raptors that cut through the sky.

“Oh WOW!” Tom’s hands gripping Bill’s shoulders as he bounced on his feet. “You see them Bill? Robbie?”

“They’re low.” Bill with a squint.

“What are they Robbie? Can you tell?”

“I don’t know. They’ve four engines though! Look at the size of the wings!” voice raised over the rumble and pointing.

“They’re huge!”

Deep laden sounding engines; spitting, clacking and grinding filled the boy’s ears as the plane’s shadows hung heavy on the meadows.

“You think they’re German?” Bill to Robert – a twitch in his voice.

“Unlikely. Even if they’d managed to capture Norway today… planes that size wouldn’t be able to get this far out and back to base without refuelling somewhere.”

The three boys watched the tails of the monstrous machines pass overhead as they flew further West until eventually becoming black pinpricks in the darkening sky.

“You think that they’re ours?” Bill to Robert as he sidled alongside the two boys with hands on his brow.

“Test flight probably. Planes that size have to be bombers.”

“From here?”

“Maybe they’re being tested out of RAF Kinloss.”

“The size of bombs that those things could carry…” Tom beaming with the possibilities.

“Doesn’t bear thinking about!”

xxi

Rabbit awake; lay eyes wide on three boys, Bill, Robert and Tom, as they quietly slunk from their beds and dressed. Voices barely above a whisper they uttered words the red headed boy couldn’t pick out above the shuffle of shoes and rustle of britches. He watched in the still dark of the billet as they quietly opened the door and slid from view.

xxii

In a glade in the Barra Tye wood, thick with fern and wildflower, sat Robert, Bill and Tom among goosegrass and lambs quarters. Robert sitting cross legged – book in lap and eyes on friends, Bill on his back – up on elbows and smiling taivert, Tom between his legs – Bill’s soft-lobbed peter in one hand and a buttercup beneath it’s sheathed head in the other.

“I think your pecker likes butter!” Tom with bastardin grin.

“I think my pecker just likes being handled.”

Tom dropped Bill’s peter to his thigh and climbed up his naked body, forcing the boys to laugh as the older mock struggled under the younger boys attack. Allowing Tom the victory, Bill let him tilt his head in hand as he held the buttercup beneath Bill’s chin.

“You’re Lysis and Nexus,” decided Robert.

“Who?” Tom dropping to Bill’s side and cocking his head dog-like inquisitive.

“Which would make me Hippothales.” Robert continued without answering – a certain lingering sadness not lost on the other boys.

“You read too much!” Tom sitting up as Bill lifted himself and walked on knee through the glade to sit beside Robert. “And you say things as if I should know what you mean! Which is about as fair as asking me multiplication tables or capital cities or…”

“Anything that you might have to have paid attention to through school.” Bill taking the book from Robert’s lap and laying it aside – gently pushing his friend to the ground and tickling at his ribs with a Brownie smile.

“Like a teacher…” Tom to himself, with a yawn, eyeing butterflies: black orange and gold caressing clover at the glades edge.

xxiii

In the ruckus of the billet where boys shouted and hollered and clambered over bunks like infant chimps – Rabbit kept eyes on Bill, Robert and Tom. Bill on his bunk, those sad sleepy eyes on a letter from home. Robert reading a book on his – cross legged and hunched forward. Tom with a deck of cards and brow knitted a skein – a game of solotaire that he appeared to be losing.

Sliding from his bed Rabbit edged across the linoleum in his socked feet and stood a little wearily over Tom: “I saw you going into the woods this morning.” A shitty smile in Tom’s ear.

“No you didn’t!”

“Un-huh I did. I saw you three wake up and leave the billet and head out before dawn and I followed you and you didn’t see me and…”

“You didn’t see nothing.” Tom standing – stepping nose to nose.

“I didn’t go into the woods after you… but I know what you were doing.” Rabbit stepped back, lips widened to a crocodile grin and whispered: “You three were fuckering weren’t you?”

“You shut your mouth!” Tom, too loud, barged his chest into Rabbit’s – forcing thirteen boys in the billet to turn their heads and watch and wait and pray for a scuffle to break out.

Rabbit – aware of thirteen pairs of eyes on him and Tom – froze: Rabbit… headlights…

He sprang for Tom, arms swinging and fists loose. Better that he lose a fight than lose face.

Thirteen boys stood – eleven chanting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Two looking on with cautious eyes standing on the balls of their feet. It was as the bodies of Tom and Rabbit hit the floor in a muddle of gangly legs and balled up fists that the billet door opened and the Minister’s thick hands wrapped around a skinny arm each – pulling the boys to toe and away from the other with a hidden strength.

Eleven boys ran back to their bunks two stayed standing – watching – all holding their breaths while waiting for the Minister to erupt limnic.

And two scowled at the other while The Minister watched and waited with ruddy cheeks eyeing the boys in the billet.

“What is going on here?” The Minister – as calm a voice as he could muster.

Glunch eyed Tom: “He started it!” chest heaving.

“Did not!” Rabbit defiant.

“I think perhaps that we should talk.” Releasing the boy’s arms, The Minister looked toward the door. “Outside! Both of you please. We’ll discuss this in Miss Black’s study.”

Rabbit and Tom – standing, glowering in the billets warm light.

“Now please boys.” The Minister’s voice slightly raised.

Reluctantly yielding, Rabbit and Tom stepped to the door – shoulders barging and grunting under their breath.

Hand passing through receding hair The Minister removed his spectacles and looked to the two boys still standing: Bill and Robert. “And do you know what this was about? Robert? William?”

“No Sir!” Two voices as one.

The Minister smiled warmly at them and let slip a resigned sigh: “OK. Well to bed now please boy’s.” Eyes over the beds: Fifteen beds, eleven occupied. “Don’t forget your prayers boys. Goodnight.”

The Minister: Iobates/The Boys: Bellerophon

Tom and Rabbit under billet roof on hands and knees – both bore wet cloths in hand and buckets of soapy water by their sides – the long linoleum floor stretching before them like an Ocean.

“And once it’s done you can both do the walls outside too.”

Tom and Rabbit with sneering eyes on the other.

xxv

Bill and Robert, out of reach of sultry sun, lay shaded by a pine in the glade at the Barra Tye – two piles of clothes gathered at the broken bare root and watched by the questioning eyes of a crested tit in it’s nest of horsehair and hollyhock. Bill’s arm over Robert’s waist – his sex between his friend’s tan thighs – lips softly clasping to the tender nutbrown nape of his neck.

“Tell me when you’re close and I’ll tighten up.” Robert, a lulling sotto purr.

Bill’s wet mouth found Robert’s ear – his fingers the bush of damp brown curls.

“You want I should fetch you off while I frot?” Bill’s hand softly palming shaft – sensuous slow studied strokes – thumb pad brushing the amaranth pink headed peter – greeted and agreed by a shudder.

xxvi

Three boys sit, Robert, Tom and Bill, at the dining room table of Miss Black. An honest room – decorated with almost impressionistic watercolours of the surrounding hills and river – and above the sideboard: an oil on canvas of the Mother of God.

Five cups, five saucers, a pot of tea, a bowl of sugar cubes and a jug of milk – laid out on a crisp white table cloth. When Miss Black entered she wore her warmest, most earnest smile: on the cake plate in her hands she carried a Victoria sponge lovingly made for this occasion and set it down between the boys and the Minister. Tom found himself sitting on his hands lest his fingers reach forward before being invited. The Minister smiled – finding himself having to do the same.

“Shall I be mother?” The Minister standing and pouring tea into five waiting patterned china cups.

Tea poured, fat slices of cake cut and placed on plates in front of expectant boys, with wide excited eyes, the Minister sat with hands together on the table before him and spoke: “Now… do you know why Miss Black and I have asked you boys to tea?”
“Because of Tom and Rabbit’s… I mean Tom and Angus’s fight?” Robert the first to speak since they entered the room – his silver cake fork carving out a corner of the soft yellow sponge.

“That is correct… But only in part.” The Minister added milk and a cube of sugar to his cup and stirred the tea anti-clockwise. “I wonder how you three are finding it here? You seem to spend a lot of time separate from the other boys.”

“We do our chores sir!” Bill a little too quickly – crumbs on fingers and moist pink lips.

“And we do them well, no skipping any part of them even though we could or nothing.” Tom realising that he hadn’t spoken yet.

“They do indeed Minister.” Miss Black and the chink of china cup to saucer. “I’d dare say that they are even perhaps the most thorough of all the boys in the execution of their chores. I’ve never once had to speak with the three of them about a poorly performed job.”

“That is very nice to hear.” The Minister smiled – to Miss Black, to the boys, to himself – sat back and circled his fingers around his plump belly. “But I do wonder if you have settled in as well as the other evacuee children. You haven’t integrated with them as well as I would have hoped.” He took a gentle sip from his cup.

Tom furrowed his brow and opened his mouth but…

“We like each other’s company just fine Sir.” Robert silencing Tom before rash words could slip. “We go on nature walks and we tell each other stories and…”

“Robbie tells us all about the Greeks.” Tom, cake plate empty, a smile gilded with raspberry jam and icing.

The Minister smiled at Robert. “You father taught at the university didn’t he Robert?”

“He lectured the classics Sir.”

“That everyone should have a classical education…” The Minister’s face disappeared for a moment – sent to some place or with some person; long forgotten.

“But he joined up a few days after war was announced and my mother…”

“You have no need to explain why you’re here Robert. All the boys in our care are here for their own safety and we are very happy to provide what help we can in trying times…”

“Whitey says most of the evacuees have gone home now.” Tom, eyeing another slice of cake.

“Most seem to have trickled back to their homes now, yes. And no one is holding you here against your will. If you would like to return we can contact your mothers and arrange transport.” The Minister saw some golden glimmer in the back of Bill’s eyes. “But the threat of an attack to Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow by air is still very real. Particularly now that the German’s have taken Denmark… and Norway seems to be only weeks away from capitulating.”

“I like it here.” Tom smiling and kicking his feet to the chair legs as Miss Black passed another slice of sponge onto his plate. “I like Bill and Robbie and Miss Black and You and…”

“And Angus?”

“Not so much Angus to be proper honest.” fork already breaking the sponge into pieces wider than his mouth would open.

“Would you do me a favour Thomas?” The Minister looking expectantly at the boy with a mouthful of cake and icing in the corner of his lips. “Would you please try to include the other boys? Particularly Angus?”

Tom’s narrowed suspicious eyes.

“I only ask because I think that there is a certain amount of envy that precipitated the argument two nights ago. On Angus’s side of things I mean. He see’s you three as very close friends and perhaps hasn’t found that himself with any of the boys in the billet.”

“You want that we should get cosy with Rabbit?”

“We can certainly try sir.” Robert knocking his knee against Tom’s under the table.

“If you were to just include him in a few of your walks you might find that he’s actually a very amiable sort of lad.”

“Amiable?” questioned Tom.

“He means friendly.” Bill sipping at his tea.

“Not sure how anyone could mistake Rabbit for friendly… but sure… We can try.” Tom, no less suspicious.

The smiling Minister nodded his head and smiled to Miss Black who spoke: “Very good. You still have to serve out the rest of your punishment though. It’s only fair and it sets a good example to the others. But perhaps rather than using that time scowling at one another you could consider showing him a little warmth?” Her eyes on Robert and Bill – rather than Tom.

“Very good. I thank you for this boys. And Angus will thank you for it too.” The Minister looked into his cup and saw it drained. “How about another pot between the five of us? Perhaps Robert can tell us about some of his Greeks.”

xxvii

High Summer sun courting the outstretched fervid leaves of the forest. Under awning two boys daff reckless: “You never wanted to do this with a girl?” Bill sitting high on Roberts ribs, his knees socketed in Roberts armpits – wet cherry red headed pecker; spent slick stiff and still pointing hard up toward his chest.

“Not really… No!” Robert’s voice dreamy… green eyes glassy… fingers at leisure: soft unceasing circles in the light smattering of hairs on Bills leporine thighs. “Do you?”

“Of course!” Bill unthinking. “With you and Tom is fun and everything… real fun. But I’d love to get my peter wet in a girl’s strange.”

Bill rolled off of his friend and lay by his side with a satisfied sigh. Robert’s cheek found Bill’s shoulder – a blade of grass in his fingers running along the light flaxen hairs on his forearm.

“I think the problem is that I don’t really know the art of it.” Robert to a quiet still Bill. “Like Hippothales I’ll sing eulogies because I know of no other way than to put my feelings into words. Well I don’t sing… but the stories I tell… Plato has Socrates say I should make you humble: “draw in your sails” and all that, but all I can do is “swell your ego and spoil you with words”. And why wouldn’t I? If it’s all I have to offer?”

“I don’t understand… Where’s this coming from?” Bill eyeing the crown of Robert’s head.

Robert’s cheeks scam red – eyes pointing anywhere but to Bill.

The unkent saw-whetting call of a capercaillie in the woods.

“You know I’ve a care for you Robbie.”

“Same as for Tom!”

“Is that not enough?”

The capercaillie unanswered.

xxviii

Tom and Rabbit on hands and knees in upturned soil. Grubby fingernails and dust on their cheeks and peeling sun browned noses.

“This seems awful harsh punishment for a skiddlie of a scuffle where no harm came to no one.” Rabbit’s eyes on the weeds in the upturned soil of the unused ground behind the church.

“Well maybe if you’d not have been picking fights…”

“I didn’t pick no fight!”

“Must be imagination that threw fists first!”

“You barged me!”

“You spoke clash about me Bill and Robbie.” Tom standing from knee with clenched fists.

“It’s true isn’t it? Everybody knows even if nobody says nothing!”

A cough carried on the air and both boys turned their heads to the kirkyard where the Minister stood watching; glasses on the end of his nose – gardening gloves, green apron, straw sunhat, shears in hand

Tom cast eyes down and dropped back to his knees while Rabbit returned his fingers to the soil.

“Even if it is and even if it isn’t there’s not a need to be querying it all the time,” almost under his breath.

Rabbit with eyes on fingers then eyes on Tom who stared doleful at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

Looking up, Tom forced an obliging grin remembering a soft promise made over cake: “It’s OK.”

Beginning in silence; each tossed ruderal growthe to a pile – a punishment that became a game of who could create the highest collection of weeds by chores end. Chores end coming with a smile shared on both their suddle ridden faces.

xxix

Whitey sat cross legged on his bunk, a wide cheshire grin and a bag of barley sugar twists between his legs. Rabbit across from him sharing in the bounty.

Tom eyed them both – mouth salivating at the sight of the sweets.

The Minister’s Wireless

“…after four days at siege, the city of Calais surrendered to the German army yesterday, putting Hitler within twenty one miles of British soil. Despite heavy losses to the German tank division, unparalleled support from the Luftwaffe had made breaking the siege veritably impossible.

“At two p.m. The German forces issued an ultimatum to hand over the port city or ‘witness it levelled’ by bomb attacks from the air. The ‘Everyman for himself’ order was issued by French Commander Raymond Le Tellier at four p.m. It is estimated that over three and half thousand British troops have been captured along with sixteen thousand French and Belgian.

“The British Expeditionary Force, The French Army and Dutch and Belgian Free Troops have been forced to retreat to Dunkirk with the intention of bringing as many men as possible back to the United Kingdom…”

xxxi

Tom woke in the night to whimpering drawn from the dark. Sitting upright he pushed the balls of his hands to grind the sleep from his eyes and let his sight adjust in the billet’s dim gray light. Three bunks over, rocking with hands clasped over mouth, Rabbit sat with clenched wet eyes.

Tom lay back and tried near damndest to force drift. But the sound of the red-headed boy’s whining snivel kept slumber some vain memory.

Rabbit hadn’t noticed the boy standing over him until he heard the whisper: “What’s wrong?”

He removed his hands from his mouth long enough to say: “Tooth. Gums.” Tears in his dull blue eyes.

Serves you right for not sharing your sweets. Thought Tom. Hesitant then resigned with an aggrieved sigh, he tapped Rabbits shoulder. “Get your toothbrush. Come on.”

Rabbit’s eyes questioned his intentions but Tom’s were serious – sympathetic. He reached into the bag under his bunk with one hand – still covering his mouth with the other – and retrieved the three row nylon bristled brush and a tin of dentifrice.

Tom shook his head: “Leave the powder. Just the brush.”

The two quietly exited the Billet of sleeping boys and padded barefoot through dew damp grass to Miss Blacks house.

It was Tom who turned the handle to the back door and quietly entered the kitchen first. He flipped on the light at the switch by the door and directed Rabbit to sit at the table; his finger to his lips – reminding the boy to remain quiet. Rabbit nodded unsure but the pain in his two front teeth kept his mouth covered.

Tom pulled a chair from out the table, with a screech of wood against the tiled floor, and set it against the kitchen counter. Standing on the cushioned seat he opened a cabinet and pulled out a box of sea salt and a grinder of peppercorn. He scoured cupboards high and low until he found the marble mortar and pestle and sprinkled two pinches of the salt in the small heavy bowl before adding as much pepper from the grinder.

While he crushed the mix, with tongue between his lips, he looked to Rabbit and the tears beginning to slide down his cheeks.

Once satisfied that the the salt and pepper were little more than powder he took a teaspoon from a drawer and held it under the cold tap at the sink, letting the water drip drip drip until the spoon was half full. Tom emptied the water into the bowl and resumed grinding until the mixture was no more than a fine paste.

He took Rabbit by the shoulders and stood him by the sink. He took the boy’s tooth brush and dipped it into the mortar – making sure to circle the bowl and cover the splayed bristles. He took Rabbit’s hand from his mouth and held the gray paste covered brush to the boys lips.

Rabbit: unsure.

“Open your mouth and clench your teeth together! Gently.”

Rabbit still unsure.

“OK! I’ll do it. And I’ll go gentle but I warn you it’s gonna sting at first!”

Rabbit nodded and parted his pink lips. With one hand Tom cupped Rabbit’s cheek while with the other he ran the brush gently over his teeth and gums: “I need to do this for about a minute, so don’t go hollering or nothing or we’ll both end up in trouble.”

Rabbit nodded with his eyes.

Tom locked eyes with Rabbit – his chin in one hand, the brush in Rabbit’s mouth in the other. The minute up, Tom removed the brush and had Rabbit close his lips: “Now you gotta hold it in there for another couple of minutes. It’s gonna feel weird and your mouth is gonna water something rotten but don’t spit out ‘til I say OK?”

The boy nodded – the inside already filling with saliva.

While Tom counted in a whisper: “One-hippopotamus, two-hippopotamus, three-hippopotamus,” – he looked for a glass and with a smile found a small chipped tumbler in a cupboard under the counter. He rinsed it out under the tap and half filled it with cold water, holding it in front of Rabbit while he counted: “eighty-nine-hippopotamus , ninety-hippopotamus. OK, you can spit it out in the sink!”

Rabbit spun to face the sink before spitting out more saliva than he believed his mouth could hold. Little flecks of black pepper and glistening grains of salt in the milky grey phlegm. Tom held out the glass and Rabbit took it with both hands.

“Don’t drink it!” Tom’s hand on the boys elbow before he could swallow. “Rinse and spit. Rinse and spit. Twice!”

Rabbit followed instruction and swirled the water around his mouth before spitting it into the sink.

“Now turn three times clockwise with your eyes clenched tight and say Tooth ache, Tooth ache Please go away, I’ll deal with you some other day!”

Rabbit, again, unsure.

Tom grabbed the boy by his waist and began twisting his hips until he was turning circles while Rabbit whispered the rhyme.

Rabbit stood still in front of a Tom – a little dizzy – mouth still salivating.

“And?” Tom expectant.

The boy pushed the tip of his tongue against the back of his two front teeth and gently slid it over the front. His eyes widened with surprise as he realised the sharp agonizing pain was nothing but a whisper of it’s former self.

“Good right?” Tom triumphant.

“That was very clever of you Thomas.” Neither boy had noticed Miss Black standing in the doorway that led from kitchen to hall – slippers and an olive green ankle-length housecoat. “My mother would do the same for us when my sister and I were younger. Less the hogwash of turning circles at the end though.”

The boys straightened their backs at being caught in the house in dead of night.

“I’m sorry Miss Black!”

“Don’t be silly Thomas.” She stepped to Rabbit and put her hand on his shoulder. “How are you feeling Angus?”

“I can’t believe it worked!”

“It’s a simple solution and should allow you get some sleep now. If your teeth hurt in the morning though we’ll need to visit the dentist in Merrimuir.”

Tom shuddered at the thought.

“You boys go back to your beds. I’ll clean up in here.”

xxxii

In sticky late afternoon heat; two boys in the glade in the Barra Tye, Bill and Robert, sat quietly; some small, but bare insignificant, distance apart.

“You think the Minister is right?” Bill watching his toes scrunch in the grass.

“What about?” Robert wishing Bill would sit closer.

“About Rabbit. That he’s jealous of the friendship that we have?”

“Maybe jealous is too hard a word…” Bill thought before speaking again: “Envious perhaps.”

“You make it sound as though there’s difference.”

“You don’t think that there is?” Robert wondering if he prescribed too many intricacies to language and his own use of it. “Envy, I think, is quieter than jealousy. If envy comes from something that we wish we could have, then maybe jealousy is the will to do something about it. Perhaps it’s the more violent shadow of those same feelings. Rabbit only attacked Tom because he thought the boys in the billet would mock him for letting Tom push him around. Not because he wanted to take away from Tom something that he had.

“I mean, both are covetous but… envy, I think, is turned inward. An envious person perhaps acts out of jealousy when he fears losing something.”

“What you were saying the other day…” Bill struggling to find the words. “Are you envious or jealous.”

“Of you and Tom? A little envious perhaps if truth be told.” Robert looking up through the break in the crown shyness and seeing clouds of gunship gray blanket the sky. “I hope it rains. The heat is too close.” He looked to Bill whose eyes still waited: “It’s stupid I know… to be envious of you and Tom when I have you both… but I never had friends like you two back in Edinburgh.”

“Me neither. In Aberdeen I mean.”

“For you two, play comes so easy. I watch you and Tom and there’s no worry or consideration for rules when you make your own games. You think of new speil on the spot, always new ways to play. You’ve more in common with each other than either has with me… I’m envious of that. When I see how uncomplicated… how natural the friendship that you share is…”

“You’re overthinking things. When we play by the river you don’t…”

“Boys are to rivers as Trow are to holloways.” As Robert is to envy.

“I don’t get what you mean.” Bill watching Robert’s eyes change brown to hazel to benthic green.

“Just a thought.” Robert sat while Bill stood and dropped down across from him. Closer. “I’d rather have you both though than lose one because of something so shallow as a little envy.” He looked to the boy a few inches away and kicked out his feet to meet Bills. “What are you envious of?”

“In what way?” Bill folding his legs under him as Roberts toes reaching out to touch Bill’s.

“Tom is envious of the soldiers fighting on the front. I’m envious of Tom and how you two are such easy friends. Rabbit is envious of all three of us…”

“I don’t know that I am.” The gray clouds above them seemed, to Bill, heavy sturtsome things. “The kids that have gone home maybe.”

“You want to go home that bad?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes, not so much. I miss my mother and my brothers, even if two of them have followed my dad to the front. And out here I feel like I’m missing the whole war… Like some great adventure is being missed.”

And our adventure? wondered Robert.

We should go home.” Bill’s eyes following Robert’s. “To the Billet I mean.” He stood, walked to Robert and rested his hand on his shoulder – removing it when Robert brushed it with his cheek.

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