Empowered by his solitary stance and his golden vision, Freddie took a deep breath and felt his voice rise up from the bowels of the earth. He didn’t need to shout. The voice was effortlessly resonant.
‘I saw an angel,’ he declared. ‘A golden angel shining over all of you, here in this church.’
The heads turned, the mouths dropped open, a hundred accusing eyes stared down the church at Freddie. Even Levi’s coffin seemed to tremble, the feathers of the brass eagle bristled, and someone’s hymnbook crashed to the floor like a shot pigeon.
Once he started, Freddie couldn’t stop.
‘I’m not a liar,’ he said quietly.
The ‘shades of the prison-house’ began to crack around him, letting in chinks of light, bright glimpses of the kind of life that freedom could bring.
‘And,’ he added, his voice gathering strength as he let go of his final issue, ‘I am NOT going to be a baker.’
He’d said it. The shades of the prison-house collapsed into rubble, and through the rising dust, George crossed the church like a leopard, seized Freddie by the collar and frog-marched him outside.
Out in the sunshine he slammed Freddie against the blue-lias stones of the porch.
‘Don’t you bring shame on the Barcussy family.’ The words came spitting and sputtering from between George’s big yellowy teeth, and with each word he shoved Freddie harder into the wall. ‘I am the head of the family now. You’ll do as you’re told – BOY.’
Shaken, Freddie looked into George’s furious eyes, and saw that Levi was right inside him, looking out.
Chapter Eleven
HE WHO DARES
On the morning of Freddie’s sixteenth birthday, he got up in the dark as usual, climbed into his clothes and lit a candle. He held it up to the window to observe the way it glistened on the fern-like patterns of ice on the inside of the glass. With his fingernail he scraped out a peep hole and peered outside at the moonlight shining on frosted branches and rooftops. His heart was thumping with excitement. Today was the day. He must keep his nerves steady, act as if everything was normal. He’d worked it all out beforehand, choosing a time when George had gone to the pub. First he’d smuggled an empty flour sack upstairs and hidden it.
George wasn’t good at early starts. He slept heavily, often after a night out drinking, leaving the early morning bread-making to Annie and Freddie. This morning Freddie had made sure he was up first.
He slid the flour sack from under his mattress, snagging it on the rusted metal springs which groaned and twanged in the silent house. Gingerly he lifted the floor-boards and a musty mouldy smell was released into his room. Reaching inside he withdrew his bundles of coins, all twenty-six of them, tied into old socks, hankies and bits of rag, glad that he’d tied them tightly to stop the coins jingling. Over the years he’d counted and recorded each bundle on a strip of cardboard, and he knew approximately how much he had. Enough for what he was going to do. The only things he’d bought for himself were a pencil, a drawing book and a penknife.
Freddie paused to listen. Only one lot of snoring, and it was Annie. He didn’t know if George was awake or not, so he waited, the raised floorboard propped in his hand. George was too close, just next door in the back room overlooking the garden. Reassured by the silence Freddie stuffed the bundles of money into the flour sack and gathered the top with a piece of string. He lowered the floorboard back into its slot.
Heaving the sack with both hands, he struggled down the steep stairs, bumping it on every step. He was breathing hard and the tips of his fingers ached with frost. The candle was left flickering in its metal holder at the top of the stairs.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ George’s voice rumbled out of the dark, and the sofa springs twanged and creaked. Freddie could see the shadow of him rising, throwing his blanket aside. A sour stench of alcohol filled the room, a bottle glinted on the floor.
Freddie hadn’t expected George to be downstairs on the sofa, and awake. What could he say? Tell George how sick he felt at the way he was spending the bakery’s hard-earned profit on booze? Tell him to mind his own business? He set his mouth in a stubborn line and locked his mind into the power of silence. Moving calmly, as if he had all the time in the world, he fetched the candle down the stairs and put it on the scullery table.
George was standing at the bottom of the stairs, yawning, and looking at the sack of money.
‘What you got in there, baby brother?’ He gave the sack a kick with his toe and Freddie noted he didn’t have his boots on. That gave him a chance. He thought quickly, unravelling his carefully laid plans. His intentions had been to put the money sack into the front box of the bicycle, camouflage it with loaves of bread and appear to set off on his rounds as normal. That wouldn’t work now.
‘I said – what’s in that sack?’ hissed George putting his beer-soaked face close to Freddie’s cheeks. His breath steamed in the candlelight. ‘Answer me, baby brother.’
He pushed Freddie against the wall and a picture fell down with a crash. It was a sepia photograph of Levi which Annie was proud of, and now the whites of his eyes gleamed up at them through cracked glass. Freddie ignored George and calmly picked up the picture, propping it on the scullery table. He could feel the anger in George’s clenched fists, and he just looked at him steadily. George had tried many times to get him to fight, but Freddie wouldn’t. He’d stand there, silent and still, and something in his gaze always stopped George in his tracks, a becalming blend of obstinacy and peace, something George didn’t have. Freddie knew it confused him, and that he would cover the confusion with a volley of verbal abuse.
George bent down and fumbled with the neck of the sack. He had clumsy hands like Levi, and in the ice-cold air his fingers were too stiff to untie the string, so he patted the Hessian sides. It jingled a little, and a puff of flour dust rose into the candlelight.
‘Ah!’ George’s eyes sparked with suspicion. ‘That’d feel like money. You got a sack of money, baby brother? Where d’you get that from? Been stealing it, have you? Stealing the takings. Pilfering. What you gonna do with it, baby brother? Run away to London?’
‘I earned it,’ said Freddie quietly. ‘Every penny. Carrying luggage at the station. I’ve saved it up for three years. It’s mine. And I’m doing what I like with it, George.’
He looked George squarely in the eyes. Creaking, shuffling sounds of Annie getting up came from the stairs. Both men looked up at the faint strip of light under her door.
‘Now,’ thought Freddie. ‘Do it now.’ With his freezing hands he grabbed the sack and heaved it into the bicycle, seized his coat and flung it on top. Puffing and wheezing from the effort, he shoved the back door open, and grappled the heavy bike outside.
‘Good riddance,’ shouted George, standing on the mat in his socks.
Freddie mounted the bike and pedalled into the darkness, the handlebars swinging awkwardly with the weight of his sack of money. With no lights front or back, he was glad of the moon’s brilliance which cast a lattice of shadows across the street. Everything looked black or silver, the frozen puddles on the rough road had yellowish curls and flaked white edges to their mirror-like surface. The church clock struck five, its chimes slicing through the sub-zero air. It was a Monday in February, Freddie’s sixteenth birthday, and his plan had gone badly wrong. Instead of working in the warm bakery, he was out in the hoar frost. It wouldn’t be light for two hours, and he’d got nowhere to go.