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And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean rows will I have there, and a hive for the honeybee
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.’
Preoccupied with his recital and his vision, Freddie didn’t hear the very real footsteps coming through the wood. Softly and briskly they came, winding between the ferns, a long black skirt swinging, snagging on brambles, a forked hazel stick hooking them away. A person so small and light inside the black skirt and shawl, she could move over the ground like a whisper, not shaking it. She could pause like a hoverfly over a flower, and listen undiscovered to Freddie’s clear boyish voice under the canopy of the lime tree. With a benevolent swish she sat down on the other side of the tree trunk and waited.
Freddie emerged from his dream very slowly. To be slow was real luxury, and he could only do it when he was quite alone. Even now, A
But now he was on holiday, under a lime tree. A time to stretch and yawn out loud, and open his eyes a slit at a time, allowing the rich colours of mosses and tree roots to come in gently. The backs of his knees were embossed with the patterns of twigs and grass, and he rubbed them back to life, brushing leaves and scraps of bark from his socks. Then his hand touched a different fabric, a fabric that wasn’t his, smooth and cottony, draped over the tree roots. His eyes opened wide, following the swirl of black fabric round the tree.
‘Gra
‘My Fred.’
She never called him Freddie. Too babyish, she declared, for an old soul like her grandson.
‘How are you, Gra
‘Eighty-one, and still dancing, my luvvy.’
Gra
‘I got you a present,’ he said.
‘A present! And it ’tidn’t me birthday, Fred.’
Shoving the dead pigeon aside, Freddie extracted the butter muslin parcel from the carpetbag. His heart began to thud excitedly as he put it into her hands.
‘Ooh. ’Tis a cheese,’ she cried, sniffing it.
‘No,’ said Freddie. ‘Unwrap it. Go on.’
‘’Tis heavy. What can it be?’ She looked at him sideways under her silver eyebrows. ‘What have you been up to?’
Freddie was so excited he felt his stomach trembling as she slowly untied the blue ribbon and he watched her old hands unrolling the muslin parcel in the woodland sunlight. At last it was out, and he saw it again, the owl he had made from the broken china.
Gra
‘Where did this come from, Fred?’
‘I made it. For you.’
Now he’d said it. Freddie had looked forward to this moment all the winter. He’d worked on the owl in secret, digging clay from the streambed, moulding it and rolling it, keeping it wet and pressing the china into it. Some of his blood was in it too; he’d cut his fingers and got into trouble for it, but he wouldn’t be stopped, and he’d kept the owl hidden under a loose floorboard in his bedroom. And each time he took it out he’d imagined how Gra
‘Oh, but ’tis beautiful. Beautiful,’ she murmured, the words surfacing from somewhere deep in her chest. ‘You made this. You clever, clever boy.’
Freddie soaked up the praise. It was something he so rarely had, and he stored the feeling away to sustain him in harder times. He’d made a treasure out of a disaster. But Levi wouldn’t see it like that. It would stir up guilt and shame, and A
‘It’s got some of my blood in it,’ he said cheekily and Gra
‘Then I shall love it all the more,’ she declared, and her eyes looked at him shrewdly. ‘And don’t think I don’t know where this broken china came from. Enough said. Come on now, Fred. I’ve got our di
Gra
‘I’ve only got nine left,’ she said. ‘That old fox had my lovely cockerel; lovely bird he was, used to boss the hens about, rush them inside if the buzzard came over. They don’t lay many eggs now, now he’s gone. Fox had him in broad daylight. Now, mind you don’t sit on an egg, Fred. They lays them in fu
Freddie was quiet. He had found Millie, a glossy black chicken who would sit on his shoulder, or settle on his lap like a cat. He loved the warmth of her on him, the mysterious depth of her plumage, the motherly crooning sounds she made in her throat. And he loved being allowed to just sit there on the sofa and watch the life of the cottage. Sparrows came in and out with the chickens, and high on one of the beams were two corpulent spiders who had been there for years and their webs were old and dust-covered, festooned with the flies they had caught and wrapped in gossamer. Now one of them had a pale orange cocoon attached to the wall. Freddie watched her fussing over it and wondered what it was.
‘That’s her family,’ said Gra
‘How are they born?’ asked Freddie, fascinated.
‘The cocoon explodes, not like a gun, gently over a few hours, and the baby spiders float out the window on long strings of gossamer. ’Tis a miracle, I think.’ Her eyes were alight with the magic of it. ‘Spiders are so organised,’ she continued. ‘We can learn a thing or two from them.’
While she was talking, Freddie was absorbed with stroking Millie and looking at her bright eyes and orange beak. He imagined himself in a cocoon, and Gra
‘Are you real?’ asked Freddie.
‘’Course I’m real. What a fu
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Freddie. ‘I was talking to him.’
‘Who?’
‘The man sitting next to me.’
‘What man?’ Gra
Freddie looked at the man carefully. ‘He’s got brown eyes, and a moustache, and he’s wearing—’ He was going to say ‘a long cream dress’ but as he looked deeper into the shining robe he saw the man’s clothes. ‘He’s got shiny brown boots and breeches with buttons up the side of his knees, and a tweed jacket like the one Dad’s got, and a white shirt, and a waistcoat with one button missing, and he’s got a watch in his pocket on a gold chain. And . . .’