Published: 2 Nov 2017
xlvii
As a sprinkle of stars shone in the silent gloaming above, The Minister walked his bicycle beside Robert along a path of chalk that saw few rambling feet – circumnavigating the green canopy of the Barra Tye. Robert held back the questions that played on his lips and instead waited for the Minister to talk.
“How did you find George?” the Minister finally asking.
“He found me. A week or so ago in the wood.”
“He’s a very special man is our George. But he’s not too fond of company. I was surprised to see you there.”
“I’ll say.”
“I would… If you wouldn’t mind too much… like you to keep him to yourself.”
Robert turned to the Minister with questioning eyes.
“He likes his own company and I feel that the less people to know of him living in the woods the better.”
“The Bodach of the Barra Tye? Why does he live alone? Away from everybody else?”
“That really isn’t for me to say Robert. If George wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”
Less than a mile down the path, on the other side of the river, the light from Miss Black’s study window glowed pale yellow.
“You know that people think he’s a Bodach?”
“Oh I’ve heard the stories.” The Minister smiling. “Over the years that I’ve been here and long before, the people in Kinharrald and Merrimuir have talked about the Devil in the Barra Tye Wood. But that’s all they are Robert. Stories. George is just a man. In all not very different to any other.”
“A bit different to be fair…”
The Minister laughed: “OK… Yes… a bit different. But he causes no harm and he looks after the Woods.” The Minister thought for a moment while listening to the crackle of chalk under foot and wheel. “Do you know what Dustsceawung is?”
Robert shook his head as they reached the stone bridge that crossed the river at its narrowest point.
“It’s an old English word. Literally meaning ‘The consideration of dust’. George’s life is spent in a state of Dustsceawung. The contemplation of what has been lost to time and tide and the transience of all things.”
“Like Heraclitus?”
A raised eyebrow and a tilted head: “Of a sort!” The Minister smiling.
“We both step and do not step into the same rivers twice. We are and we are not.“ Robert’s eyes on the long dead stars.
The minister stopped walking and stared at Robert with a full heart.
Robert stopped when he realised the Minister no longer walked at his side. “It’s from Cratylus. Plato quoting Heraclitus.”
“I find myself constantly impressed by you Robert. You’ve had an education, that few young men will ever receive and you still have a lifetime of knowledge to consume.”
“That’s all my father’s work Minister.”
“In part perhaps.” The Minister and Robert continuing their walk. “Your father has given you the tools and showed you how to use them but it is you who puts them to their best application.”
“I sometimes wish I was more like the others.” Robert caught himself – wondering again that night why he felt so compelled to be talking so honest.
“You mean like William and Thomas?”
Robert nodded as the billet came into view.
“Don’t waste your life wishing for an existence that is less than what you have. And I don’t mean that to speak ill of your friends. If you’re concerned about the way that others react to you you have no need to be. Both William and Thomas think the world of you. Anyone can see that.”
“It’s less that… more that I know I’m different from the others… not special. I don’t meant that. …just different. And I’d rather not be.”
As the two approached the billet, The Minister and Robert, they caught movement in the dark of the window before the door creaked open and Bill and Tom came stepping out with feline caution.
“They don’t care that your different Robert.” Nodding to Bill and Tom “I’d dare say that they love you the more for it. Don’t concern yourself with these worries.” A hand on Robert’s shoulder as he turned to the Minister. “And don’t forget what I asked you about George. I gather that Laurel and Hardy already know anyway…”
“They met him last week. He told us to stop romanticizing Greeks and learn our own countries legends first.”
The Minister laughing: “That sound like George right enough.”
Bill and Tom at the billet door, shoulders low; uncertain.
Watching as Robert reached his friends, Tom’s arm finding Roberts waist – Bill’s his shoulder, and was led into the billet, The Minister smiled and thought what wonders boys were: no more noble a love or fierce a friendship. No feelings so deep as for boon companion. You say transient Heraclitus? Yes, in that latter seasons… But not so at the time. Where you can’t see the Summer coming for the Spring blooms. No more honest a period of life…
In the back of his mind George spoke: “Romanticized piffle!” The Minister smiled.
As the door to the billet closed and the boys disappeared, the Minister turned his bike on the chalk path and stopped to look back at the window to Miss Blacks study – the lonely light still burning there.
xlviii
On a morning of sun and scarce Cirrus, where a catch of pollen on the breeze would set Bill’s nose a twitch, three boys sat in soft grass on the river bank by the weeping willow: admiring a near empty azure sky.
“What was he like?” Tom already down to his underwear; clothes bundled in a guddle at his back and bare feet cooling in the water.
“As you’d expect.” Robert thinking as he watched Bill lift his shirt over his head without popping the buttons. “And also not.” He pulled off his own socks and balled them.
“And he said we could all go and see him?”
“Unh-huh.” Robert’s eyes on Bill as he slid his britches over his thighs.
“If he’s not a Bodach why would we want to see him?” Bill standing a gentleman mare in ought but a ratty pair of white briefs – lean powerful thighs tensed. “If he’s just an old man I mean. I’ve seen plenty of old men and they’re all the same.”
“Can we go tomorrow? You think he’d mind? Should we take him something? Like an offering or some-such?”
“An offering?” Bill smiling as he sat beside Tom. “Like a chicken or a goat… or a… goat boy?” Bill bleated and ticked at Tom’s ribs – rewarded with fits of giggles.
“When making offerings to the Gods the Greeks would paint the horns of the animals they were sacrificing.” Robert now wearing as little as the other two.
“I’ve a horn you can paint!” Tom pulled down the front of his briefs and thrust his loins forward – stiff little peter aimed at the sky.
Bill laughed and grabbed at Tom pulling his body close.
Robert’s eyes on his friends pawing at each other with abandon.
The Minister’s Wireless
“Riots took place in several major cities across the country last night shortly after news broke of the Italian declaration of war against Britain and France.
“Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow and Edinburgh all reported major incidents as ice-cream shops, delicatessans and restaurants, with Italian owners, were vandalised and ransacked.
“Earlier today Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced to the country that all resident Italian males between the ages of seventeen and seventy who have been in the United Kingdom for less than twenty years – as well as all those, male and female, on the MI5 suspects list would be subject to internment.
“And our main story once again: After two months of intense fighting Norway today has officially surrendered to German forces. His Royal Majesty King Haakon and the Norwegian government have already decamped to London where they have formed a government in exile…”
l
Fifteen boys in the billet became ten.
li
Robert and Bill at rest in the glade of the Barra Tye: eyes on two boys, Tom and Rabbit, who wrestled near nude in fern and hepatics; hearty high-pitched giggles and shouts that bounced from the trees around them found their way back to the boys ears forcing goofy smiles across their faces.
“Rabbit turned out alright didn’t he?” Bill watching the boy tackle Tom to the ground.
“He did. And despite his reluctance Tom’s taken shine to him.”
The two boys sat noiseless – Robert closing his eyes to the light of the sun.
“You know that I wish I could give you half of what you give me?” Bill from the silence, eyes still focused on the wooer-babs of arms and legs thrown up from the glade’s long grass.
Robert opened his eyes and turned to face Bill: “Where’s this come from?”
“Watching those two.” nodding toward Rabbit and Tom. “I kind of see what you were saying. Envy of easy friends.”
“It’s not through fault of your own. I put too much weight in things. I know that. Over think and wear the worst of it.”
“It’s because you’re smart.”
“It’s because I’m afraid.”
Bill turned back to Robert: “Afraid of what?”
“A thousand and one things. Little that’s tangible.”
“You talk and act so grown-up I guess I forget that you’re the same as me and Tom… And Rabbit.” Bill remembering the addition to their Trip.
“We’re the sum of our parts.”
“You’re long division.” Bill and a wide smile. “Long division with algebra and fractions.”
Robert laughed: “The answer’s the same though.”
“No.” Bill to the sky. “That’s what I’m saying. The answer’s different. I’d care that it were the same… How much easier would things be?” Turned head; slumberous eyes sorrowful. “But it’s not.”
Robert looking at the palms of his hands: “Yeah. I know that really.” Let me be selfish. Let me have this one thing. Even if it’s a mirage. Even if you can’t reciprocate precisely. I’ll take it. I’ll take it and I’ll wear it. I’ll take that I’ll always be the one to care for you more than you for me. I’ll take it and I’ll never ask for more. Just let…
A cry rose up from Tom in the haulm: “Help! Bill? Robbie? Help! Rabbit’s biting my arse!”
Rabbit’s giggle up and tickling the blades of grass.
lii
Three boys, Bill Robert and Tom, stood in early evening light at the cracked wooden door to The Bodach’s hut. Tom with eyes looking up to the others – toes and fingers fidgeting with nerves. A young heron on the tarn, with cocked head, took dekko before returning it’s eyes to the empty water.
“Should we knock?” Bill reticent.
“I think so.” Robert looking between his friends and the door.
“What if he’s not home?” Tom now whispering.
“Then we don’t get to see him.”
“For boys still swimming in early Spring and not carrying the shame to wear clothes half the time, you fret worse than rabbits.” from behind them The Bodach, The Old Man, George goaded.
The boys turned and met the tattered man with a start.
“Well done for not just letting yourselves in though. You’ve more consideration than the Minister.”
Bill, Robert and Tom, still and silent. George’s eyes fixed.
“Well?”
“We came to see you.” Robert stepping forward into the old man’s glare.
“And?”
“I… I wanted to introduce you to Bill and Tom. Properly I mean.”
“Clothed and prepared this time I see.”
“I thought we should bring you an offering.” Tom bounding forward. “I wanted to. Like a goat or something. With painted horns like Robbie said.”
Robert elbowed Tom as George shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Eejit boys.” He pushed passed them with head still rolling and opened the door to his hut. A pause while the boys dauted unsure, he called out from inside: “Come in or go away. You can’t do both!”
Post hesitation; warily Bill and Tom followed Robert into the hut to find the Bodach rifling through his hessian sack: tossing twigs and moss to tabletop. He ignored them as he sat down and began separating his collection into piles; while the boys stood as if to attention – Tom and Bill’s eyes on the walls and ceiling looking at each different handcrafted decoration that hung there. Robert eyeing the man at the table – who quickly had seemed to have forgotten that they were there.
“Well then? Get to it!”
“What are you doing?” Tom suddenly feeling like he could speak.
“They’re markers.” The Bodach looked to Tom. “They help me know what parts of the wood contain what. Where I’ve been and where I’ve still to go.”
“We thought they were something mystic.”
“Aye and you also thought I was an immortal devil who would try and trick you out of your pecker.”
Bill snorted.
“Why are you here? I’m not feeding you. The Minister told me that you’re part of Miss Black’s city kids. She’ll feed you well enough.”
“You know Miss Black?” Robert partially idle, partially looking for clues.
“Past tense.” His eyes went back to the wood and moss on the table.
“Can you show me how to make those things?” Tom with fingers reaching to the feathers braided into one of the designs on the wall.
“You have a purpose for them or do you just want one for the art of it? Or are you just short of something to say and finding yourself desperate to fill the silence?”
Tom stayed silent.
The Bodach looked to Bill: “You! You’re quiet. Nothing to say?”
“Not really.” Bill’s eyes on his feet.
“You’d rather not be here huh? You’d find yourself in some sweeter place given half a chance? Well… fate drops like a ripe apple and we’re often in places we’d rather not be throughout our miserable lives.”
Bill silent.
“Where would you rather? Given a choice? Playing buckaroo beneath the linens in the billet with these two I’d wager!”
“On a chair!” Bill spoke quickly. “By an open fire. With a view of sleet gray skies through a frosted window. A book in my lap and my finger twiddled in my bare toes. My Dad reading the paper in his seat. And the smell of roast beef from the kitchen perfuming my Mother’s song.”
Tom and Robert looked to Bill.
“You’ve a cat’s view of life!” He laughed and looked to Robert.
“In a field or a meadow or the woods with my friends. Under every star at the backside of nowhere with grass under my feet and a river to my right.”
“Better!” George’s liquid metal eyes landed on Tom.
Tom stayed silent.
“Tom wanted to be in France fighting the Germans.” Bill talking for his friend. “Now he’s not so sure.”
The Bodach nodded with some hidden greater understanding of the boy than Tom had himself.
“You think we’re wicked?” Bill suddenly asked – while the deadweight sank in Robert’s gut. “That we do wicked things? What you said in the wood…”
“Not wicked. No. You’re ought but randy boys.” He looked to Tom’s suddenly smiling eyes. “Randy boy’s who’d tear down the walls of christendom and build Daoine Sith cities of wet flesh on it’s ruins just to satisfy your own pubescent desires…” Eyes on Robert. “…but you’re hardly wicked.”
The Bodach looked to the window and then to the boys. “It’s getting dark. You’ve visited long enough. You should be going.”
Tom’s eyes found the single white feather framed above the bed: “That feather’s pretty. Is it special? Was it a gift? Did a bird give it to you?”
“Yes it is. Yes it is. Yes it was. No it didn’t, that’s ridiculous.”
Robert, without thinking, suddenly asked: “Did you fight in the last war?”
“I’ve had my fill of questions.” The Bodach stood with outstretched arms and grime covered fingers splayed pushing the three boys, Bill Robert and Tom, towards the door.
“Can we call you by your name? Can we call you George?” Robert as he was bumped along beyond the threshold.
“If you must!” He slammed the door on the boys.
…
“But where have they gone?” Tom not fully understanding and looking at five of the beds in the billet stripped of blankets.
“Because their father’s were sent to internment camps they asked to go home to their families.” Miss Black explained. “I’d rather that they would have stayed. It’s so much safer here. But I can’t deny their desires to help their mothers. The Minister arranged transport late this morning. It really is so terribly sad what we become during wartime.”
Bill found his bunk and sat on the creaking springs. Robert stood by Tom – eyes on the boys still there who whispered to one another.
liv
Robert in Bill’s bunk; covers pulled over their heads – his fingers prowling the deep carving of Bill’s iliac furrow; Bill turned away – the cold soles of his barefeet on Robert’s shins. Bill dropped the blanket to peer at Tom. He and Rabbit shared his bunk disporting like wolf pups – suppressed whispers and playful giggles hidden within a mound of shifting linens.
Blankets pulled back over their heads. “Rabbit took to buckaroo something brisk!”
“Tom’s had him practicing when we’re not around. I don’t know who was more keen in all.”
“He claims Rabbit makes it last ‘lovely long’.” A snort. “Maybe the long and the short of it is that’s what Rabbit wanted all along.”
“I won’t claim shock and surprise.”
Silent and smiling – Roberts nose in Bill’s hair; still carrying the susurration of sweet meadow flavoured air.
Looking to the empty bunks in the silence Bill asked: “If I weren’t here tomorrow what would you do?”
Robert’s heart swift to respond – Bill felt it thump against his back. “Tomorrow?”
Bill returned under the blankets – turned so that they could face each other – tips of noses touching – his cucumber breath filling Robert’s nostrils: “Not like literally tomorrow. But if I weren’t here. Would you be OK? With Tom and Rabbit I mean?”
Robert didn’t know how to answer.
Bill – taking a notion – inched forward and pressed his lips to Roberts. A first. Robert pulled his friend closer, tighter, held together: for fear of falling – convinced in that moment that Zeus’s lightning bolt had taken Bill from him when, in a thousand lifetimes past, they had lived fused.
When Bill pulled away for breath he saw, in the dim linen loured light, Robert’s wet eyes; and in the time it took his heart to skip a beat he wished again that he could return that depth of feeling – knowing that no other had asked less or would give more.
Bill pulled Robert close – lips, chest, hips and feet.
lv
From the moment his eyes cracked open, at the sound of Miss Black ringing the breakfast bell, Robert kept Bill in full view; carrying the itching megrim that should he lose sight of him for a moment he might withdraw to scant existence. A notion that had burrowed deep and laid an unrivalled fear.
But there he crouched bare-scud – with those sleepy eyes trained on the dragonflies that glinted metallic greens and blues in the reeds on the riverbank.
Robert wished that he himself were more altruistic. That he could let Bill be Bill – out of his sight. If the time comes, he thought, do I beg and plead that he stay or allow him his own advantage? Aristotle wrote in Nicomachean Ethics that a friend is defined as someone who wishes or does good, or at the very least, what appears to be good; on account of the other. He would wish his friend to exist and to live for his own sake… “That a good man is like minded with himself… and that he should grasp at those same things with his entire soul.”
“What?” Rabbit on handstand – carrot-red curls flopping from his forehead – feet against the chaffed bole of weeping willow.
Robert turned and smiled at the boys stick thin nudity: “Just thinking out loud.”
From behind the tree Tom stepped out – bastardin’ grin playing on the corners of his mouth. He grabbed at Rabbit’s ankles forcing the boy’s elbows to bow and giggles to bilk from his lips while Tom wheelbarrowed him around the willow.
The Ministers Wireless
“In France today ten-thousand British troops are believed captured or killed by the advancing German Army.
“Fighting flared in and around the town of St Valery, south of Dunkirk, where the 51st Highlanders were put under the command of the French Military in the hopes of forestalling a French surrender.
“Between June fourth and twelfth, as much of the remaining British Expeditionary Force was evacuated, the Highlanders were charged with recapturing Abbeville bridgehead on the Somme, a site that had come to be of significant strategic importance to allied forces.
“The Scot’s division which was made up of the 2nd Seaforths, 1st Gordons, 4th Camerons, 4th Seaforths, 5th Gordons, 1st Black Watch, the Lothians, Norfolks and the 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers had fought bravely against a fierce German counter-attack. The troops however were forced to retreat into St Valery where they shored a perimeter, in the hope that the Royal Navy could help them escape.
“For several days of intense fighting, the Highland Division held out but their commander, Major General Victor Fortune, failed to contact the navy who were unable to provide rescue due to heavy fog.
“While a counter-attack was considered, the men, who were said to be short of ammunition and exhausted from the four days of constant conflict with a reinforced enemy, were forced to surrender.”
lvii
An open letter on a kitchen table; a phantomry of ill tiding.
lviii
While the mid-afternoon sun hung lazy in the lift; Robert watched three boys, Bill, Rabbit and Tom, run vulpine between the rows of elms ahead the skirt of the Barra Tye. Bill’s horselaugh exploding as he allowed the smaller boys to tackle him to the grass amid their giggles and yelps. Resentful of himself for feeling contemptuous of the clear day; Robert was wholly conscious of the yen that prickled under his skin; of the deadweight radiating from the pit of his gut – some lummert irk that wouldn’t shake.
He considered that he had given away too much. That he had let slip some part of himself that was bound to be broken by the surf. Robert could wish for better… for this time and the weeks before it to last forever. But change is the only infinite regress. Months ago he had considered these defeatist deliberations noctivagant by nature; creeping concerns that would only find him on nights where sleep rollicked evasive on transverse waves… but both happiness and an oncoming storm can raise such sunken studies to rain bruised surface.
Bill under the two boys – legs kicking and arms waving. Shouts of surrender and hearty laugh. Unkempt, unclothed, unconcerned.
lix
Robert, woken with start by a hand on his shoulder, kicked at the board at the foot of his bunk. The Minister’s troubled face, patchy bristles on his usually smooth chin and cheeks and the stink of whisky on his breath.
“Robert. I need you to get up and come to the house please?”
“Huh?” Eyes cracking from some difficult unremembered dream. “What time…”
“It’s a little after four.” The Minister stood in the dark as Robert threw aside his linen and kicked his feet over the side of the bed – hunched and head drooping. He’d begun to pop the buttons of his pyjama top when the Minister spoke: “Stay as you are. Your dressing gown and a pair of shoes will be fine.”
He stood, he looked over to Bill’s bed beside his – crumpled linens and dented pillow – empty of all but a wavering dread.
“Where’s Bill?” Struck by an unseen arrow to his chest he raised his voice in rasped panic: “Where’s Bill?”
“Robert!” The Minister’s hand found his shoulder as boys stirred in the other beds. “He’s in the house. Don’t worry. He’s in the house.”
The Minister’s Wireless
“We solemnly report this evening that German troops marched through the streets of Paris in the early hours of yesterday morning. French and allied forces have retreated.
“No resistance was proffered as French military Governor General Hering declared the French Capital an open town.
“All shops and businesses in Paris have been closed and shuttered and there are unconfirmed reports the French government has now left Tours, in central France, and moved further south to Bordeaux.
“As the German War Machine marched on Paris, the French premier Paul Reynaud made a public broadcast, appealing for ‘all free men to come to the aid of France’.
“British troops arrived just south of the Capital City this afternoon and immediately began fighting with their demoralised French allies to stem the advance of the Germans. In a coordinated attack His Majesties Royal Air Force has spent the past few days bombing German convoys, supply columns, mechanised units and lines of communications. All bridges behind enemy lines have been destroyed by the RAF in an effort to prevent the enemy from forwarding reserves.”
lxi
Bill sat unmoving at the kitchen table. A cup and saucer of untouched sweet milky tea. Staring at his folded hands, he didn’t look up when Miss Black placed a glass of cold water next to him. He didn’t look up when her hand found his shoulder. He didn’t look up when the kitchen door opened or when the Minister and Robert stepped through out of the black night.
Robert stood staring at his friend. Bill’s eyes wet and wide. Robert’s hands trembling and knees a quaver. In the time that he had known him, he didn’t believe he had seen him so still.
“Bill…”
The Minister’s hand found Robert’s back; urged him forward: “Miss Black and I will be in the drawing room.”
Robert pulled a chair – screeching along the tiles – from under the table and sat himself down next to his friend.
“Bill?”
Bill drowning in thought. Anchored in the unreachable depths of some immense black sea – sinking heartsick into silt and sand. Bill unaware of the world around him; staring at his folded hands – fingers laced.
“Bill? What’s happened?”
When Robert’s fingers found Bill’s forearm the boy blinked and ascended to the water’s surface. He found movement in slow deliberate motions. Eyes on his hands on the table in front of him. Eyes on Roberts grip above his wrist. Eyes on Robert’s face and the worry wrought there.
“Bill?”
Then the rain came; the torrent of tears that tore Bill’s cheeks as his arms found Robert’s shoulders, his wet face the nook at Robert’s neck.
Miss Black and The Minister in the doorway.
The Minister’s Wireless
“…as Soviet troops, allied to Nazi Germany, marched into Lithuania while President Smetona has fled the country.”
“Once again: With official French surrender predicted to only be days away Operation Ariel will see the mass evacuation of the last of the free allied troops from the continent as the German advance continues seemingly unstoppable.
“With the Battle of France now all but over, in Europe, Britain stands alone…”
lxiii
Two boys at play in the river’s crystal warm water, Rabbit and Tom, while a third, Robert, watched from his wonted seat beneath the Willow. He looked to his right, imagining that he might find Bill there – hair aflame – kindly enkindled golden; sanctified sincere in the sun.
But there was no Bill. He had stayed with him through two tense days in the spare room in Miss Black’s house. Had waited with him for better news. Sat in the silence and held him through the tears. But the only thing that came was the call to return; his mother waiting near broken in the Granite City.
I could lay here. I could mourn as Cyparissus. Take root beneath this willow and let tears fall until the bones of mankind’s mothers are thrown behind us. Let us be stone next. Golems without heart.
A splash as Tom burst from the water boisterous onto the riverbank. Rabbit on his heels giggling behind him. Robert forced smile as the two approached.
Nude and golden and dripping, Tom pushed between the drooping dolorous limbs of the Willow and dropped seat beside Robert. Rabbit running, peter in hand, and relieving himself in the reeds at the water’s edge.
“You should come and play with us.” Tom slapping water from his hair to the grass under him. “Bill wouldn’t want you acting so gloomy.”
“I don’t feel like playing Tom.”
“Have you had any mail from him? A letter or such?”
“No.”
“He will write.”
“I know he will.”
“He might even come back!”
“No… He won’t come back.”
Tom toilworn.
“Maybe we should go home. Like Bill had said. There are fewer and fewer in the billet. The fright that the Germans might attack Scotland seems be less and less…”
Roberts eyes on Rabbit as the boy hooted while falling about himself – attempting cartwheels back to the Willow – limbs akimbo and smile drawn wild. Flat on his back with arms raised toward the lift he caught the sun in his hands and welcomed it as easy as an old friend.
“Maybe we should.”
Lxiv (or the wolf and the deer)
At the still tarn, by the hut, Robert sat with bare feet dangling in cool water; warm sun caressing his bare chest and shoulders. Buried amongst the deep greens of three-leaved rush, puddled blooms of purple saxifrage, lemon tint gorse and bell heather; he watched Butterflies flutter by – stopping to kiss each flowering corolla as they passed.
“Dealan-dè,” The old man behind him. “Butterfly in Gaelic.”
Robert sat up and twisted his trunk to see George standing behind him – straw hat in hand and wiping his brow with his sleeve.
“Literally: God’s Lightning.”
“It’s beautiful.” Robert standing and wiping his hands down his seat and the backs of his thighs.
“Aye. We may not have as much as your Greeks but what we do have is fair special.” George stared at the boy a moment – aware of the weight he wore around his shoulders. “You can come in if you want.” He nodded to the hut and stepped toward it. Robert followed.
“I’m going.” Robert once under roof.
“I guessed you might be. The Minister told me what happened to your friends father. I’m sorry for it.” George sat on the creaking springs of his bed and tossed his hat to the chair by his desk.
“Tomorrow afternoon a few of us are getting the bus to the train station. I’ll be back home by ten.”
“Your little friend too? The gawky one?”
“Tom?” Robert and a sad smile. “He’s going to stay at Miss Blacks with Rabbit a while longer.”
George’s top lip gave over to involuntary curl.
“Don’t worry. He’ll not be paying you visits.” Robert’s smile breaking through. “He’s lost interest now he sees it confirmed that you’re just a man.”
“Small mercies become heaven-sent.”
They stayed silent. Neither sure what was left to say. When George eventually asked: “Your father? Is he..?”
“He’s fine. RAF Boscombe. Clerking. He’s not really… strong.”
George nodded.
“You think that we’ll see an end to this one? The war I mean.”
“Aye. There’s always an end. They’ve still to have a crack at this Island first.”
“It’s not impregnable. No matter how much barbedwire they put around the beaches.”
“We’ve not had foreign boots march on home soil since the Norman’s invaded. What other country on earth can say that?” George snickered to himself under his red whiskers. “It’s why the English kept fighting us all those years.”
“Can I ask you something?” Robert watching George’s face for signs of discomfort. “Before I go I mean.”
“What’s that?”
“What happened?”
George’s eyes tight. Brow a cat’s cradle.
“I can do the maths.” Robert nodding to the framed white feather on the wall above George’s bed. “Connal told me about Miss Black. Her fiance who wouldn’t fight in the Great War.”
“What’s to know?”
“Why do you stay here? Why so close? Why not just go and live in a different town or a different city?”
“We’ll torture ourselves you and I. We’ll make sport of the past and welcome the loursome misery of it. It’s what we do because it’s in our nature.”
“That’s not me.”
“Is it not now?” corners of his mouth upturned and brows inquisitive. “Your laddie… the strapping loun that left. If he had been owed better fortune would you still be fleeing home tomorrow? Or would you be staying and wearing the last of Summer with him? If you’ve not the rumgumption to see yourself then you’ll be wedded to a lonely hereafter.”
“So speaks the voice of experience.” Robert; a bitter taste in his mouth.
“Aye! So speaks the voice of experience!”
George, the old man, the Bodach – all three faces wearing the same abject antediluvian ire in the creases in his skin.
Robert could see himself. If he’d allow it to pass.
“You should go.” George, the old man, the Bodach. “Get yourself packed and bid a proper farewell to your friends.”
“Will you speak with Miss Black? When I’m gone?”
“She knows where I am.”
lxv
Tom and Rabbit on a bench in Kinharrald. Clear skies above their heads and a warm breeze about their legs. They watch with keen eyes as Miss Black hugs each boy boarding the bus and hands them a lunch of cheese and tomato sandwiches wrapped in brown paper and a small bag of fudge from Mr and Mrs. Aitkens shop. Her basket packed with more sandwiches than needed the two boys, Tom and Rabbit, expectantly wait to pick off the leftovers.
As Robert took his seat by the window, Tom stood and waved and let slip a sad smile that Robert mirrored behind the glass. His fingers of the wave heavy with the weight of goodbye.
“I’m sorry to see him go.” Rabbit unreserved.
“Yeah…” Tom biting his lip. “Me too.”
“I guess I don’t understand why he is going.”
“I don’t really understand a lot of things about Robbie. But this I get.”
The Ministers Wireless
“We do not yet know what will happen in France or whether the French resistance will be prolonged… both in France and in the French Empire overseas. The French Government will be throwing away great opportunities and casting adrift their future if they do not continue the war in accordance with their Treaty obligations, from which we have not felt able to release them. The House will have read the historic declaration in which, at the desire of many Frenchmen-and of our own hearts-we have proclaimed our willingness at the darkest hour in French history to conclude a union of common citizenship in this struggle. However matters may go in France or with the French Government, or other French Governments, we in this Island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon to endure what they have been suffering, we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gains, aye, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands; not one jot or tittle do we recede. Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians… they have joined their causes to our own. All these shall be restored.
“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may yet be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour”6.”
End
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6. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s address to the House of Commons on the fall of France June 18 1941