Josephine Cox 3-Book Collection 2: The Loner, Born Bad, Three Letters. Josephine Cox
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Название: Josephine Cox 3-Book Collection 2: The Loner, Born Bad, Three Letters
Автор: Josephine Cox
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007544042
isbn:
It was while they were walking back to the car and her parents got waylaid by some old friends, that the girl saw him. ‘Davie!’ She went at a run towards the boy, who was chasing after the slowly-departing hearse.
At first he didn’t hear her, so she went at a fast pace down the hill, and on to where the hearse was just beginning to pick up a dignified speed. ‘DAVIE, WAIT!’ Waving and shouting, she kept after him. And as he leaped onto the running-board of the hearse, he saw her.
‘DAVIE!’ Out of breath and fast losing him, Judy put a spurt on. But there was no chance of her catching up, and Davie made no sign of jumping off the vehicle. He had watched the service from the back of the church and hid while they put his mammy onto the hearse, and now he had to go with her and lay the wild posies he’d collected. Moreover, he needed to know where she lay, so he would never forget.
‘GO BACK!’ Davie’s voice carried on the wind. ‘Don’t forget I love you … and tell my grandad I love him!’
As the distance between them grew wider, Davie let their images soak into his memory; his beloved father and grandfather, and Judy and her family, the kindest people he had ever known. And he wondered how he would manage without them. There was no telling where he might end up or how long he might be gone, and whether he would ever come back to this place, where he had known both contentment and unhappiness in equal measures.
For now though, his future was not something that concerned him, because only an arm’s reach away, his mother lay lifeless, gone from his sight and from his life forever.
His father had been crippled by the burden he had carried for too long, and there was a real possibility that he might never see him again. But the boy wanted to see him. He needed to tell him the way of things, and how neither of them were to blame. At this moment in time, he longed for his father’s presence, more than at any other time in his entire life.
Yet even as he whispered Don’s name, his eyes on Rita’s coffin, the piece of paper that his daddy had given him, with the precious contact name on it, fell out of his trouser pocket and was immediately whisked into a hawthorn hedge by a passing gust of wind. And there it lay wedged, unread, while the elements, seasons, and myriad hedge-dwelling creatures reduced it to a sodden scrap. And father and son were lost to each other, unless a kinder wind might blow them back together.
Judy waved to Davie until her arm ached. And even when he and the hearse were out of sight, she continued to wave at the empty horizon.
When she climbed wearily back up the hill towards the church, her parents were sitting quietly on the wall. The lane was almost deserted, and the church was empty.
‘Come on, sweetheart’ Beth came forward to slide a comforting arm round her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Your dad’s waiting to take us home.’
As Tom drew away from the church car park, Patsy Reynolds climbed into the front passenger seat of a battered and elderly Ford, and lit a cigarette.
‘Stuck-up bunch, them Makepeaces, ain’t they?’ she commented to her husband. ‘Looked a bit shocked when we said about keeping Lenny under our thumb. None of their bleedin’ business, anyhow.’
‘I couldn’t give a sod how shocked they were!’ Ron’s mood had darkened. He wished he hadn’t taken time off from his job as a tram-driver to come here. But if they wanted to butter up old Joseph, they had to play the game.
Patsy dug him in the ribs. ‘Hey, you know what?’
Scowling, he swung round. ‘What?’
‘I were just thinking.’ A sly grin crept over her features.
‘Oh, I see.’ Thinking himself lucky, his passion rose. There was no one around, and it excited him, the thought of taking her here, on so-called sacred ground. ‘Want some, do you?’ he said huskily, and slid his hand under her skirt.
‘Get off, you randy sod!’ She pushed him away, and blew smoke in his face. ‘I were just thinking about them Makepeaces, being shocked at what we said about Lenny.’
‘So what?’ Impatient, he started the car engine.
‘Well, just you think about it.’ She smiled, a look of devilment on her face. ‘If they knew the truth, they’d have something to be shocked about, wouldn’t they, eh?’
‘What are you getting at, you silly moo?’
Nervously glancing about, Patsy lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It’s as well they don’t know the truth – about Lenny, I mean.’
Ron snorted. ‘You’re right. Mind, it would be a real treat to see the look on their faces.’ Glancing at Tom’s car as it travelled slowly along the lower lane, he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘That’s summat you didn’t know, you miserable buggers – the truth about the lad. Oh yes! Put the cat among the pigeons, that would.’
‘Shut your bloody trap!’ Patsy warned him. ‘Just keep it buttoned! If the truth got out, we could end up in jail.’ She punched her husband hard on the shoulder. ‘You’d do well to remember that.’
As they hastily departed for home, the hitherto jovial atmosphere was quickly replaced by a moody silence, punctuated by the wheezings and bouncings of a vehicle that was well past its prime.
‘WHY DO YOU think Annie and her mam didn’t come?’ asked Judy as her dad drove home, relieved to be away from the oppressive atmosphere of the funeral.
Annie Needham and Judy had hit it off right away, from their very first day at Elm Grove Girls’ School. Although no one could take the place of Davie in Judy’s affections, it was grand to have another girl as a friend; someone to talk things through with – things that she would have been too shy to mention to Davie.
‘I’m not sure,’ answered Beth. ‘I think Mrs Needham helped Joseph out when his wife died some years ago – that was before Don and Rita and Davie moved back in with him. We heard she’d done a bit of shopping for him and the like. The Needhams rented a house in Jackson Street then. Oh well. May be she’s just too busy with her own family. She’s got an older boy, apart from Annie, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes – Philip. He’s a butcher’s apprentice and he’s horrible. Gives me the creeps,’ said Judy. ‘Mam, could I go and see Annie, just for a bit? I’ll come straight home on the bus, I promise.’
Annie was a strapping, dark-haired girl, the antithesis of Judy in many ways, being wild and rebellious, sometimes lazy and argumentative, and above all – flirtatious. But underneath all that, Judy had found her to be a caring and loyal friend. And when Annie wanted to fight the world, Judy’s quiet nature and wise observations had a calming influence on the girl. Like the hand and the glove, these two opposites seemed to fit together incredibly well. СКАЧАТЬ