Читать книгу A Heartbeat Away - Eleanor Jones - Страница 9

My feet felt cold in my scuffed red shoes and my hand, in the tight clasp of my mother’s, was gradually going numb, yet still I refused to put one foot in front of the other.

“Lucy!”

My mother’s voice was loud and angry, but I just made my legs very straight when she attempted to drag me forward, frowning up at her with the stubbornness that she said I got from my dad.

“I want to go home.”

I started to cry with great big sobs, just like the ladies in the films that my mom was always watching on TV. All it seemed to do was make her even crosser than she already was, and she began to yank so hard on my arm that it felt as though it was going to come right off.

“Well, I have to go to work, and you, young lady, are going to school whether you like it or not.”

For a second she stopped and gazed down at me. I scowled back with all the selfishness of a six-year-old, not noticing the harsh grooves that ran prematurely down either side of her mouth, or the tired lines that made a delicate network around her faded gray eyes. As far as I was concerned, my mother was as old as Methuselah. Thirty-five on her last birthday. How could she ever remember what it was like to go to school? If only my dad had been here. It would have been different. He would have understood my fears. He would have done something about Mollie Flynn. He would have understood about her. He would have known that I couldn’t go to school because she laughed at me and pinched my arms and stole my books so that I got into trouble with Mrs. Meeks. I hated Mollie Flynn and I wasn’t going to school. But my dad was long gone—“Up to no good as usual,” my mother said. I knew, though, that he would return one day, for wasn’t I the apple of his eye? I was. I know I was. He had told me often enough.

My feet hurt in the scuffed red shoes. They were a bit too tight, but I refused to wear anything else because my dad had bought them for me and I loved them with all my heart. The day he’d brought them home, my mother had gone mad, ranting on and on about having no money, but I thought it was just so special for my father to buy me such beautiful shoes when he had hardly any money at all. Well, at least he had had some that morning. But my mother said it had gone on a horse, so I supposed he must have bought a horse as well as my lovely red shoes. He was such fun, my dad, tall and good-looking, with sparkling blue eyes and a really wide laugh. He was always doing exciting things. But all my mom ever did was to get angry with him, and that made him sad, so it made me sad, too.

He went away that night and I haven’t seen him since, but I know he will come home soon because I am the apple of his eye. I hope his horse is okay.

Two bright spots of red popped up on my mum’s pale cheeks. That was how I knew that she was really mad, because her face did that on the day my dad gave me the red shoes and bought that horse. But I wasn’t frightened; at least, I was, but I was more afraid of Mollie Flynn.

We were nearly at the school gate when a blue car drove up. We didn’t have a car, but I didn’t mind about that anymore because we had a horse now, even though I hadn’t seen it yet.

My mom stopped and looked at me. Her face was all shiny and she wiped her forehead with her hanky, but she didn’t let go of my hand. I would have run away if she had.

I knew the big lady who got out of the car. She always wore nice clothes and her face was smiley. She had a boy who went to our school. He was older than me, but I sometimes saw him in the playground; I think he was in the eight-and-nine-year-old class like Mollie Flynn. I wondered if she nipped his arms. Yet I didn’t think so, because he was taller than her. He was even taller than some of the boys in the top class.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

The lady’s voice was soft and kind, and it made my mom cry. I don’t know why, but she rubbed her eyes and they were wet, so she must have been crying.

“I’m sorry,” my mother said, and her voice was a bit quivery, as well. “Everything seems to have gotten on top of me this morning. Lucy’s playing up and I’ve missed the bus for work.”

I stared at my shoes and pulled the worst face I could, but the lady just patted me on my head.

“Come on now, Lucy McTavish,” she said. “Be a good girl for your poor mother.”

I looked up at her and lifted my chin as high as I could. “My dad has gotten a horse,” I told her, and she didn’t laugh.

“It’s true,” I repeated defiantly. “My mom says all his money has gone on a horse, and she’s mad because he hasn’t got any left, but I’m glad, because I really like horses. And…” My voice sank to a wobbly whisper and I glared at my mother. “And now he won’t come home, and it’s her fault.”

There was a funny silence then. I felt my mom’s hand get even tighter on mine. She gazed at the lady, and did so with such sad eyes that I felt bad inside.

“It’ll be all right soon, though,” I told her, wanting everything to be okay again. “Because he’s gone away to try to get some more.”

The silence deepened and the lady reached for my other hand.

“Don’t you worry,” she said to my mother. “I’ll handle this. You get yourself off to work now.”

“Are you sure?”

My mom was all happy and her eyes were wet again. I wanted to shout at her to stay, but I didn’t dare, so I stared down at my red shoes once more and thought about my dad.

“You be a good girl for Mrs. Brown,” she told me, and then she kissed me on the top of my head and walked away.

The lady, Mrs. Brown, lifted me to sit on the wall, and then she lifted her boy to sit beside me. I hadn’t seen him until then because he must have been behind me.

“Daniel,” she said in a very serious voice. “This is Lucy McTavish and she needs some help.”

The boy turned to me and I liked his face. It reminded me of Timmy Brocklebank’s puppy—happy and kind, with warm brown eyes—so I smiled at him and he smiled back.

“I don’t like Mollie Flynn,” I told him. “She pinches my arms and she steals my books so that Mrs. Meeks will tell me off.”

Daniel Brown frowned and his eyes went dark and cross.

“Well, I’ll tell her not to,” he said, running his hand through his curly blond hair so that it stuck right up on the top.

“And I’ll tell Mrs. Meeks about it,” promised his mom.

That was the first time I’d spoken to Daniel, the first of lots of times. He was my hero, always there for me, always quick to help me when I had a problem. After he spoke to Mollie Flynn, she didn’t nip me anymore and, sometimes, she even smiled at me when we met in the canteen.

He lived in a rambling farmhouse, just down the lane from our gray-stone, terraced cottage. I used to go there sometimes on the school holidays when my mom was at work.

His house was very old, with lots of corridors and windows that resembled a face if you stood right before the front door on the smooth green lawn. We weren’t allowed to play on Mr. Brown’s lawn, but around the back was a huge overgrown area with bushes and trees and a swing and a slide. Daniel and I spent hours there, tunneling dens and building tree houses that always fell down. Daniel was good at making things.

The farm was called Homewood, and I thought that it was the best place in the whole world. I used to dream that one day we would all live there together, when my dad came home.

It was on the day that I found my mom sitting on the bottom stair in the hallway, a letter in her hand, that my dreams began to fade. Her thin face was all crumpled and tears ran in tiny rivers down the lines at the sides of her mouth.

She waved the letter at me, then threw it across the dark hall. It fluttered onto the floor and her head dropped forward into her hands.

I watched the tears run through her fingers and drip onto the floor, making small pools on the worn carpet, and I knew that something very bad must have happened. Fear washed over me in great big waves and I clasped my arms around myself, moving from foot to foot, wondering if I should go get Mrs. Brown—she always knew what to do. Then suddenly my mom looked up at me and her eyes were all glassy and red.

“Now see what your precious father has done,” she yelled, pointing at the letter.

I just stood and stared at her, my mouth wide-open and a lump inside my chest. She picked the letter up and screwed the paper into a tiny ball, twisting and twisting and twisting her fingers.

“They’re going to take our house away,” she shrieked. “And it’s all your stupid, useless father’s fault.”

“Is he coming home, then?” I cried. “Will we see him?”

“Lucy.”

My mother stood very tall, and her face was so white that it shone in the murky light of the hallway.

“I think it’s time you faced up to the fact that your father is never going to come back. He has deserted us, and now he’s lost our home.”

I felt a tide of disappointment well up inside me and overflow into a flood of emotion that took over my small body, emotion just too great for a six-year-old to bear. So I threw myself on the floor, rolling and screaming and hurling abuse at my poor sad mother, who had all of a sudden gone so quiet. She looked down at me, arms crossed over her chest.

“Well, you’d better get used to it,” she eventually said in a dull, flat voice. “I’ve had to.” Then her arms dropped to her sides, and she turned her back on me and started to leave. I felt a really bad pain deep inside my heart, and I sat up and stretched my hands out toward her.

“Mom,” I called. “Mom.”

She hesitated, and I scrambled to my feet, pleading with her not to go. She glanced at me with sad eyes.

“Mom,” I whispered.

The gloomy hallway felt as though it was closing in all around me. She held out her arms, and suddenly I was being squeezed so tightly that I couldn’t breathe and we were crying together.

We sat like that for ages, my mom and me, on the bottom step in the murky hallway, until I had my good idea.

“I know,” I said, feeling happy and sad at the same time. “My dad can sell his horse and then we’ll have some money.”

My mom sucked in a great gasping breath, and she began to laugh louder than I’d ever heard her before, even when my dad was here and they used to be happy. She laughed so loudly that it started to frighten me because her eyes were wild. When her laughter turned to sobs again and her arms fell away from me, I went out of the front door and began to walk toward Homewood Farm. Daniel would know what to do.

The farm seemed a long way down the lane. I stopped to watch a big fat bumblebee inside a purple flower, buzzing and buzzing so that the flower shook and wobbled. After the bee flew off, I picked the flower and tried to stick it into my hair, but it kept falling out, and in the end I just left it lying on the ground and carried on walking along the hot, dusty lane.

The farm was a lot farther than I had thought it would be, and after a while I sat on the grass beside a wooden gate because my legs felt very tired. I wasn’t frightened, though—at least, only for my mom. And then I remembered the wild scary look in her tired eyes—the look that had made her appear like someone else—and I clambered to my feet. I had to get Daniel and Mrs. Brown. My aching muscles brought fat tears to my eyes, but I forced my feet into a jog and set off again along the lane, sobbing quietly in rhythm with my shambling strides, until at last I saw the high gray roofs of Homewood Farm, nestling between two softly rolling green hills.

Relief overwhelmed me, and I stopped to stare at the familiar sign above the gate—as I always did when I visited with my mom. From below an arc of ornate writing, the painted black-and-white cow gazed down at me with big kind eyes. Sometimes the sign swung and creaked so much in the wind that I thought it might make the poor cow feel sick, but today it stayed motionless, as still as the air itself. In fact, the only thing that seemed to be moving anywhere at all today was the red tractor in the field they called the far meadow, just in front of the square stone farmhouse. The tractor was going up and down, up and down, and every time it drove across the field, green grass turned to brown. I watched for a while, just until my legs ceased to ache, and then the red tractor pulled up and Mr. Brown climbed out. I knew it was Mr. Brown because he was the only person with hair so red that it shone like flame in the sunshine, a bit like his tractor.

He strode toward me with a worried smile on his big, kind face.

“Whatever are you doing out on your own, Miss Lucy?” he asked.

I liked the way he always called me Miss Lucy, and I rolled the word around inside my mouth, feeling special.

“Where’s your mom, lass?”

I remembered, and my bottom lip started to tremble.

“She’s…she’s…”

He took my small plump hand in his large, calloused palm and lifted me high into the air.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and find Mother Brown.”

I felt so safe riding high on Mr. Brown’s shoulders that I began to feel better. I clung to his forehead as he marched us across the lane and through the orchard toward the house.

“My mom’s very sad,” I told him, and I felt him nod.

“She said that my dad has des—des…Has lost our house,” I added.

He halted and swung me down onto the ground. “And where is she now?” he asked me in a low voice.

I gazed into his kind face and I thought it was just like Daniel’s—except that his eyes were a pale blue and Daniel’s were brown—so I smiled at him and answered his question.

“She was crying and crying and crying, and I was frightened, so I’ve come to see Daniel.”

A funny expression passed over Mr. Brown’s face then and he put his rough hands around my face and looked me in the eye.

“Well, don’t you be worrying yourself, little miss,” he told me. “Mrs. Brown will go make sure that your mom is alright, and you can stay here and play with Daniel. In fact…” He lifted his head and pretended to sniff the air. “I think I can smell biscuits fresh from the oven, so we’d better hurry before they’re all gone.”

That was the start of some of the best weeks of my life. The Browns didn’t tell me much about my mom except that she was ill and the doctor said she had to go to the hospital for a while to get better. I was sad at first, until Mrs. Brown said that I could stay with them and have my own room and everything. Then I felt as though I had come home.

“Can I stay here forever?” I asked her.

She laughed.

“Just until your mom gets well again, then you’ll have a new house to live in.”

My heart started to beat rapidly and I clutched at her sleeve.

“Will my dad be there?”

A frown darkened her plump, homely features, and when she leaned over to give me a quick hug, I could smell violets on her skin.

“I don’t know, love,” she told me.

That summer passed in a haze. I had to work, as did Daniel, feeding hens, sweeping up, helping Mrs. Brown in the huge, warm, lovely smelling kitchen. At night I fell into bed with aching legs and eyes so tired that they were shut before my head hit the soft feather pillow. But there was still time for play. On occasion Mrs. Brown would stop what she was doing and say, “Off you go now, lass. Find Daniel and get yourselves away to play.” And off we would go to spend hours trying to catch fish in the beck at the bottom of the far meadow, or grooming Daniel’s fat bay pony, Chocolate. We didn’t ride him much because he had something that Mr. Brown said was laminitis and his feet kept getting sore, but Daniel told me what to do and we used to put the saddle on a big log at the bottom of the orchard and pretend to trot and canter. I was determined that one day I really was going to ride.

Now and then I would wake in the night and lie in the darkness, thinking of my merry bright-eyed dad and my poor sad mom, and then a kind of guilt would creep over me as I imagined her, all alone somewhere, trying to get well while I hardly spared her a thought my life was so full. In the morning I would go straightaway to find Mrs. Brown and ask her when my mom was coming home, and deep inside, almost hidden even from myself, a part of me would dread her answer, knowing that it might spell the end of my days at Homewood.

My thoughts on my father were worrying. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss because his larger-than-life personality had ruled my world for so long—had been my world. Yet there was also anger—anger that he had let me down and betrayed my trust. And then the image of his handsome face would flash into my mind, and as the memory of his laughter echoed around the room, I would climb down from my high bed by the window to reach for my scuffed red shoes, remembering the day he gave them to me—the day he went away. And when I awoke in the morning thereafter, my pillow would always be damp beneath my cheek, soaked with the tears I had shed in my sleep.

Mrs. Brown never made a comment, but when I would go back to my room the following evening, my pillow would always have been changed for a clean dry one, and sometimes she would look at me with a worried expression in her deep brown eyes.

Summer was over on the morning that she inquired about a visit to my mom. The apples in Mr. Brown’s orchard had all been picked, the trees had turned from green to golden-brown and Chocolate’s coat had thickened so much in readiness for winter that I needed all my strength to brush out the mud when he came in from the paddock. His feet were much better, so Mr. Brown said we could ride him, and Daniel gave me lessons in the orchard. Around and around and around we would go, up and down, up and down in the trot until my legs began to ache. Then Daniel would get on, and suddenly Chocolate could do all the things he wouldn’t do for me, and I would groan and laugh and try again.

Mrs. Brown was leaning over the breakfast table, pouring tea from the big brown pot, and she asked it almost casually.

“Would you like to go to see your mother today, Lucy?”

The almost hidden feeling of dread began to churn inside my stomach, and I stared hard at the clear amber liquid gushing from the spout in a perfect arc to fall noisily into Mr. Brown’s flowered cup.

“To see your mother,” she repeated in a matter-of-fact voice. “She’s so much better now, and she’d love to see you.”

The teapot clunked back down onto the table with a thud that reverberated around the sunny kitchen and she looked at me pointedly.

“Can Daniel come?” I asked.

For just a moment her neat white teeth took hold of her bottom lip, and a frown flitted across her face, then her usual soft smile slipped back into place.

“I don’t think that is a good idea this time,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be nice for it to be, you know, just you and your mom?”

I nodded halfheartedly, and the almost hidden feeling of dread spread from my stomach to my heart.

“But you’ll be there?”

Mrs. Brown exchanged a glance with her husband and he gave a slight nod.

“Of course,” she answered quickly. “We’ll set off after lunch, shall we?”

I wanted to say no—I wanted to shout no—I wanted to scream no. But I nodded politely and tried to remember my mother’s sad gray face.

Daniel was sitting on the other side of the table from me, and I glanced across at him, knowing that he would understand, for he didn’t want me to leave Homewood any more than I wanted to go.

He was staring into his bowl of coco pops, stirring the chocolate-colored milk so fast that it spilled onto the brightly checkered tablecloth.

“Daniel!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown.

He put down his spoon and gazed at me. I could see my own fears reflected in his deep-brown eyes, fears that our idyllic summer was about to end. The same disappointment that clouded my thoughts was mirrored on his face. He eyed at me fiercely for a moment, then he jumped up and walked out the back door into the crisp autumn air, leaving his jacket on the peg.

“Daniel!” called Mrs. Brown again. but her husband took hold of her arm and shook his head.

“Let him be,” he told her. “He’ll be back when he’s cold enough.”

And in that moment I closed my eyes and wished with all my heart that Mr. Brown could be my dad. The guilt that washed over me at the disloyal thought made me feel really bad, though, so when I went to get ready to go visit my mom, I pulled the red shoes from underneath my high, wooden-legged bed and looked at them. They didn’t fit me at all anymore, but I knew that I would keep them forever, or at least until my dad returned.

My mom arrived home just after my seventh birthday, and my birthday was about the last day I spent at Homewood. Mr. and Mrs. Brown bought me a lovely red bike, so that I could visit them often, they said, which made me feel just a tiny bit better. Then Daniel handed me a card with a pony on the front. Inside it, he had written, “Happy Birthday and I promise to give you 100 riding lessons on Chocolate.” That was my best present of all because it meant that I could come to Homewood Farm a hundred times more and maybe even learn to ride as well as he did, or almost as well.

On my very last night, Mrs. Brown came to my room to tuck me in. She hugged me and made loud sniffing noises into her hanky.

“Everything will be all right, lovey, you’ll see,” she told me. I hugged her back and breathed in the scent of violets as hard as I could, right down into my lungs so that her fragrance would become a part of me forever.

When her gentle footsteps faded down the stairs, I curled up into a tight little ball, wrapping my arms around my pillow and trying to remember about my mom and my dad, and how things used to be before he went away. But I couldn’t get past the memory of my mom’s wild eyes, blazing like coals amid the dead pallor of her face. All I could recall were the bad times, and I quaked in fear of the tomorrows. And then I heard a knock, just the gentlest tap, and a shadow fell across the beam of light from the half-open doorway, Daniel’s shadow.

“You okay?” he whispered. I uncurled myself and smiled through my tears.

“I am now,” I told him.

For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, then he tiptoed over and perched on the side of my bed, saying nothing, not needing words. And when I awoke next morning, he was gone. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that he had been there, and always would be there when I needed him. It made me feel safe again, I suppose.