Freddie pulled on his scratchy socks and the heavy clogs. Where would she be? Was it his fault for breaking the treacle jar?

Levi hesitated outside the schoolroom door. He could smell smoke from the stove, and the only sound was the occasional cough from a child or a creak from the floor-boards. Had he been inside the schoolroom, he would have heard the steady squeak of thin chalk sticks on little black slates as fourteen children aged from five to twelve years old worked silently at their arithmetic.

Once again Levi mentally rehearsed what he intended to say, and how he wasn’t going to be intimidated by the likes of Harry Price. He knocked on the heavily varnished door and pushed it open, the dented brass knob cold in his hand. Fourteen heads turned to look at him. The children smelled of damp socks and rice pudding. Harry Price sat on a small platform at one end, stuffing tobacco into a curly pipe.

‘Work,’ he barked, and the children’s heads snapped back into position. Levi took off his cap respectfully.

‘I’d want a word.’

Harry Price took a used match from a St Bruno tin on his desk and carried it to the stove, opened the door to a cloud of smoke and lit it from the roaring flames inside. He sucked and puffed at the pipe, almost disappearing into curling smoke while Levi stood awkwardly. ‘Outside.’ Harry Price wagged a grizzled finger at his class. ‘If anyone moves or speaks, I shall know.’

The two men stood in the brown corridor outside, looking squarely at each other’s eyes.

‘I’ve took time off work for this,’ Levi said. ‘It’s about my boy.’

‘Frederick?’

‘Ah, Frederick.’ Levi thought about the bruise he’d seen on the sleeping face of his small son, and the words jostled in his throat. ‘He ain’t strong. And I want to know why he’s being punished so often. Is he a dunce?’

‘A dunce! No. On the contrary he’s clever, very clever.’ Harry Price’s eyes looked uncomfortable. Doctor Stewart had already admonished him for his treatment of Freddie and he’d disagreed, of course. Boys had to be kept in line. How would Doctor Stewart cope, shut in a room all day with fifteen village kids? No matter how well they behaved, Harry Price could sense their frustrations and their simmering energy waiting to engulf him if he once slackened his defences. Worse, he sensed their hatred of him, the way they stormed out at home time like a basket of pigeons released into furious flight. And that Frederick always looking right through him with those eyes, as if he could see right into the secret rooms of his head.

Once Freddie had said something that had deeply disturbed Harry Price.

‘Sir, who is that lovely lady standing next to you?’

‘What do you mean, boy? There’s nobody here!’

‘Oh but there is, Sir,’ and Freddie had described his late wife, who he’d never seen, with breathtaking accuracy.

‘Don’t you dare tell me such lies, Frederick. Sit down and get on with your work or you’ll feel my cane. Shame on you boy!’

But no amount of shouting and blustering would erase from Harry Price’s mind the clear and startling picture of his late wife. From that day he feared and hated Freddie.

‘So what does he do?’ persisted Levi. ‘If it’s just daydreaming, does that warrant such punishment?’

‘He does daydream. But . . .’ Harry Price raised his bushy eyebrows at Levi. They were stained yellow from the pipe smoke. ‘I’m sorry to say he tells lies.’

There was silence while Levi’s blood pressure soared and his expression changed from concern to anger.

‘LIES,’ he shouted. ‘My boy tells LIES.’

‘Oh yes, daily.’

Levi could have sworn that Harry Price looked pleased with this information, as if it were a trump card.

‘What kind of lies?’ he thundered.

Freddie hurried along the lane to the village, checking inside every gateway. He paused by a stile, which marked a footpath leading to the woods, thinking his mother might have gone looking for mushrooms or hazelnuts. He checked the stubble fields in case she was gleaning for any remaining grain, a hopeless task as the sparrows and finches had probably scoffed it all. A few uncut heads of barley nodded in the hedge, and that was treasure. Freddie picked them happily, tearing off the stalks and cramming the bristly heads into both his pockets. Annie would add them to the soup, boiling them until they were glutinous and soaked with the taste of beef broth.

Freddie ran towards the distant church, his clogs in his hand, his head aching again. He found Annie sitting inside the lych gate, gripping the blackened timber. She was gasping for breath and whimpering like a puppy.

‘Come on, Mother, I’ll take you home.’ Freddie unfastened her fat red fingers one by one from the gate until he had all of her hand in his. ‘Come on.’

Annie looked at her small son in the deepest gratitude. She didn’t think she could possibly get home, but she stood up, rigid and shaking. ‘You’re hurting me,’ said Freddie, and she loosened her grip just a little. Her eyes searched for something to hold.

‘Touch the wall, Mother. Hold the wall.’

Annie set her mouth in a purple line that turned down at the ends. She wasn’t going to tell Freddie how the solid wall seemed to be swaying, and the flagstone pavement turning like a roundabout.

‘Come on, take a step,’ he encouraged. ‘One small step. That’s it. And another. Just keep moving.’

Freddie spoke gently, walking backwards in front of her so that they had eye contact. Annie held him so tightly by the hand, he had to keep reminding her not to pull him over. Step by step they progressed along the wall and the iron railings bordering the churchyard. The lane was more difficult, with nothing to hold but brambles. Freddie needed all his strength to support his mother’s shuffling steps. He understood that fear had a strange power over her body and he thought she might die of fright.

‘Just keep moving. I won’t let you fall.’

Still walking backwards, holding her with both his hands, Freddie noticed a man in a cap coming up the lane, his head bobbing above the hedges, marching with loud boots as if he was angry. Annie stiffened and pulled herself up proudly.

‘It’s Dad!’ cried Freddie. ‘Where has he been? He looks grim.’

Chapter Three

BROKEN CHINA

Levi fumbled with the brass buckle of his leather belt as he strode towards the cottage. The boy deserved a good strapping. He’d never tell such lies again; Levi would beat it out of him. The Barcussy family didn’t tell lies. Now Freddie had brought shame on the family. Levi had always known his last son was different, and clever, Harry Price had said. Levi had swelled with pride, momentarily, then the lies had come scorching in, spoiling it, burning it black like a slice of good bread accidentally dropped from a toasting fork into glowing coals.

He was close to the cottage now, his throat hot with rage. He could see Annie’s face watching him over the hedge like a rising harvest moon half hidden under the navy blue hat that loomed on her head. Wait until she heard what Harry Price had said about her precious son.

The rage festered in his boots as he covered the last strides to the cottage gate. His swollen feet wanted to stamp and punish the whole earth until his bones rang with the pain. The sight of Freddie’s pale quiff of hair and luminous eyes stopped Levi in his tracks as the boy darted towards him, smiling with a radiance so disempowering that Levi could only stand locked into his fury.

‘Hello, Dad. I’m better. And look what we found.’ Under Freddie’s small arm was a bristling sheaf of golden barley.

‘He’s a good lad,’ crowed Annie, looking down at him fondly. ‘He’s helped me all the way home. I had a – a turn. Proper bad I was. Shaking. And he got me home, bless his little heart.’