Breakdown (15 page)

“What’s this?” Chris asked. The envelope had an address scratched out on the front and felt too lumpy to be a letter.

“Your wages.”

“No, you don’t need to—”

“You’ve earned it. You’ve earned more, actually, but that’s what I can afford to pay you.” George reached for a baked potato.

“But I’m paying you back—”

“Oh, rubbish. You paid that debt the first month you were here.”

Chris started to protest some more, but Grace stopped him.

“Take the money, dear. You wouldn’t have worked for free before, would you?”

“I—um, thank you.”

“I signed us up to go into Petersfield day after tomorrow,” Pauline said.

“Good. I’ll do up a list,” Marie said.

“How did Mr. Thorn do with his honey, this year?” Grace asked George, and the conversation went on around Chris, the question of his wages over and done. Chris sat thinking. He had coupons, and he had money now.

“How does one sign up to go into Petersfield?” he asked during a lull.

“There’s a sheet at the post office,” Pauline said. “Mr. Hutchins has a passenger van. He’ll go any day if he has five or six people signed up. It’ll cost you a quid. Our trip is full.”

“You can have my seat if you want to go,” Grace said.

“No, it’s not urgent,” Chris said to Grace. “You go with Pauline. I thought I might take Wes to the market.”

“Have you asked him?” Pauline said, her eyebrows drawn together. “He doesn’t like to. He only goes for his blood tests.”

“I was hoping to find him some clothes that fit.”

“You’d best be sneaky about it, then,” George advised. “He’ll run off if he thinks you’re trying to take care of him.”

“Have you any coupons?” Grace asked. “I’ll contribute to that project, if you can pull it off.”

“I have some, but more would be good, if you can spare them.”

When he went to bed that night, Chris had a good supply of clothing coupons tucked into the envelope with the money George had paid him.

* * *

It turned out all Chris had to do was ask Wes if he wanted to go into Petersfield.

“With you?”

“Yeah.”

Wes narrowed his eyes. “What for?”

“Just to check out the market. Everyone else has gone in today. Shall I sign us up?”

“I don’t have a quid.”

“I have. No worries.”

“Okay.”

Two days later they shared the backseat in the passenger van. Two older couples took the other seats. Pauline had loaned Chris two rucksacks, and Grace sent along two meat pies and a bottle of water. The van passed through a few small towns and some open country. They pulled into Petersfield after less than an hour.

“Stick with me, okay?” Chris said. “It’s my first time here. I don’t know where everything is yet. I had to ask Pauline for directions.” He headed north out of the square with Wes beside him.

“Isn’t the market that way?”

“I need a few things at the Distribution Center first.”

“Then are we going to the market?”

“Yeah, sure.”

The Petersfield Distribution Center was half the size of the one in Portsmouth. Chris led Wes on a roundabout route through the boys’ and teen clothes to get to the men’s section. Wes lagged behind, scrutinizing the racks of jeans and jackets. He stopped in front of a display of shoes. He scowled, shoved his hands in his pockets, and followed Chris.

Wes slouched nearby while Chris made a show of searching the underwear bins. He then picked out several pairs of socks and perused the jumpers until he figured Wes was about at the breaking point.

“Well, I guess I have what I need,” he said. Wes heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief. Chris took him back past the shoe rack. Wes slowed. “Do you need new shoes, Wes?”

Wes put his head down. “I don’t have any coupons.”

“I’ve got some extra.” Chris fished them out of his pocket.

Wes jerked his head up. He shifted his eyes from the envelope to Chris’s face, and back to the envelope.

“Go ahead, pick a pair, if you want.”

“I don’t know what size.”

“Take off one of your shoes.”

The sole of Wes’s shoe was worn down to nearly nothing at the back of the heel and coming loose in the front. Chris showed him where the size was printed on the inside of the tongue, then directed him to the shoes one size bigger. Wes tried on three pairs before he decided. He clutched the shoes to his chest and beamed.

“What else?” Chris asked him.

“Um, jeans?”

Chris whipped out a tape measure he’d borrowed from Marie. “Sure, let’s do it.”

They spent an hour selecting clothes for Wes. Jeans, shirts, underwear, and a nearly new winter jacket with big pockets. Chris was glad he’d collected extra coupons. Wes would smile, then glance at Chris with eyebrows drawn together, as if he simply could not believe his good fortune.

“Haven’t you ever been shopping for clothes before?” Chris asked him.

Wes shook his head. “People just bring stuff. Mostly it doesn’t fit.”

“I’d noticed,” Chris said. “From now on, if you need new clothes, tell someone. Pauline or George or me. Okay?”

Wes nodded.

They bundled most of the clothes into their rucksacks. Wes put on his new shoes and jacket and strutted out the door with a big grin. Chris led him off to try the next part of his plan.

It took a bit of searching, but Chris found the book stall eventually.

“Hang on,” he called out to Wes. The boy turned, saw the stall, and frowned.

“It’s just stupid books,” he said.

“What have you got for someone his age?” Chris asked the proprietor. The man took them around the side and pointed out some boxes on the ground. Chris squatted down and began pulling out books, looking for something Wes might find exciting, pirates or soldiers or the like. Wes stood with his arms crossed, his scowl back.

“This looks good,” Chris said, “and this.” He tried to hand the books to Wes, but the boy took a step away and refused to put his hand out. Chris made Wes wait while he took his time with the books. He picked out one he was pretty sure most boys would find exciting and paid for it. He put it in his own pack while Wes watched. At another booth he bought a spiral notebook and two pencils, one of which had never been sharpened.

“Anything else?” he asked Wes.

Wes eyed him warily and shook his head.

“You hungry?”

Wes kept quiet while Chris got them fish and chips. He sat on a bench next to Chris and ate the food without a word. He licked his fingers and then rubbed them on his trousers.

“Are you gonna make me go to school?” he asked eventually, studying the pavement.

“No, I’m not going to make you, but I really wish you would,” Chris said. “Things are changing, Wes. Someday it’s going to be more like it used to be, and you might not want to be a farmer anymore. You might want a different job. You’ll need to know how to read, how to do math.”

“Can we shop some more?” Wes asked, getting up and shouldering his pack.

Wes led off through the market and apparently knew exactly where he was going. He passed up food stalls and housewares, clothing, baskets, and tools. He paused to pet some puppies in an open-topped cage, but moved on as soon as the woman selling them tried to talk to him. He stopped at a stall full of crates of machine parts and began to search the boxes. Chris stood back and watched.

“Here,” Wes said after a few minutes, holding up a small wheel on an axle. He brought it to Chris. “Harry needs one of these for a cart he’s building. If you buy it for a couple of quid, you can trade it to him.”

“Trade it for what?”

“For beer, of course. At the pub.” Wes spoke as if Chris was being dense.

“How do you know he needs it?”

“The cart’s been sitting in his back garden for months. I was asking him about it just yesterday.”

“Why can’t you just tell him it’s here and he can buy it?”

Wes put one hand on his hip. “You buy it for two, and trade it for a fiver’s worth of beer.”

Amused, Chris took the wheel from Wes and looked it over. “It says it costs four pounds,” he pointed out.

“Bargain for it.”

“All right.” Chris grinned and pulled two pound coins from his pocket. He held them out to Wes. “Do it.” He saw a flash of uncertainty in the boy’s face, but Wes grabbed the wheel and the money and marched up to the proprietor of the stall. Chris ambled close enough to hear.

“I’ll give you a quid,” Wes said to the man, ducking his head and sounding timid.

“Now then, old chap, this ’ere wheel is four.”

“I haven’t got four. I’ll give you one.”

“Nar, can’t take one. I’ll take three.”

“Haven’t got three, neither.” At this point Wes lifted his hand and gazed sadly at the two coins in this palm. “I gots two, is it,” he said, and cocked his head at the man. His back was to Chris, but Chris could imagine the pathetic expression on Wes’s face.

“Give me the two, then, and off with you,” the man said with a frown.

“Thank you, sir,” Wes said. He flashed a grin at Chris and headed out of the stall.

Chris caught up with him two booths down. “That was clever.”

Wes handed him the wheel. “Can I have another quid?”

“Another one? Do you think I’m made of money?”

“I’ll double it for you.”

“Where did you learn this?”

“I watch people. No one ever let me have any money before. Pauline and Marie and Mrs. Anderson all grumble about the prices, but they never try to bargain. I see other people bargaining. Even George won’t bargain. Other people do. Why not me? Why not you?”

Chris handed him another pound and held the wheel for him.

This time Wes went into a housewares booth. He rummaged among some utensils and came up with a rotating beater. Next he found a rolling pin, then a long wooden spoon. He added a few other things to his armful that Chris couldn’t see. Then he went to the counter and piled it there.

The woman poked among the things. “That’s an odd lot for a little chap like yourself,” she said.

“For me mum and auntie,” Wes said.

Chris pretended to examine a set of glass bowls.

“Two pound fifty,” the woman said.

“Huh,” Wes said, his voice full of disappointment.

“What have you got, love?”

“Just a quid.”

“Oh, dearie, I can’t let you have all that for a quid.”

“Please?”

“No, no. I just can’t.”

“Um, what if I took out these?” Wes selected some of the items and pushed them aside.

“The beater, the roller, and the spoon, then? They’re worth more than a quid.”

“It’s all I have,” Wes said.

At this point Chris put the bowls down and left the booth before he started to laugh.

Wes joined him soon after. He held up the three items. Chris shook his head at him and couldn’t help smiling.

“I’ll go to school if you promise to let me shop sometimes,” Wes said with a straight face. “And we split the profits.”

Chris put out his hand. “Deal.”

Wes had to juggle his utensils to shake on it.

“So who are those for?” Chris asked him as they walked back to where Mr. Hutchins had parked the van.

“Mrs. James broke her rolling pin last week. Mr. Weeks was sanding off the broken handle of a spoon while Mrs. Weeks was complaining that it wasn’t long enough anymore. And Marie was telling one of her friends that she’d make meringue pie for George, except that it took so long to whip the egg whites with a whisk and she wished she had a beater.”

“What about that other stuff you didn’t get?”

“Oh, I never wanted those. They were just so I had some stuff to take out of the pile.”

Chris snorted. “You should consider a future other than farming.”

Wes looked at him and grinned.

They ate the meat pies on the ride back to Breton.

CHAPTER 13

G
race decreed it had got too cold for baths in the upstairs bathroom, let alone the little shower shed tacked onto the side of the house that George and Chris usually used. George brought a big galvanized washtub from the garage and set it next to the stove. Pauline strung a curtain, and Marie sent George and Chris off to the pub for the evening while the women had their baths.

“Twice a week for the rest of the winter,” George said as they headed down the hill. “Mind you, they won’t clear out when the men want to bathe. We’ll just have to trust they stay in the sitting room.”

“I’m used to a cold washhouse,” Chris replied. “One place I stayed for a while, there was never enough hot water. They had a boiler, but you had to get up in the middle of the night to be sure of anything but ice-cold well water. Wasn’t so bad in the summer. But sometimes you’d rather go a couple of weeks without a shower than use that water.” Chris gave an exaggerated shiver at the memory of the showers down the hill from the men’s dormitory at Saint Crispin’s.

“Ah, for the days when you had hot water from the tap whenever you had the urge to be clean.”

At the pub, George got them both pints, and they wandered into the darts room. Chris had never been any good at darts, so he stood back against the wall while George joined a game. He’d been to the pub several times with Pauline and a few times with George, but still hadn’t got over the feeling that he was being sized up by the residents of Breton.

A few games later, Chris saw a young woman heading across the room toward him. He tried to remember her name, but came up blank. He took a swig of his beer and adjusted his attitude.
Civil, just be civil.

“Can I have a word?” she said.

“Sure, what word would you like?”

She smiled. “I’m Freddie. I’m Wes’s teacher.”

“Ah.” Chris took another look at her: dark shoulder-length hair, big eyes with long lashes, classic lips. A bulky jumper hid her figure. “The formidable Ms. Barnes.” He tried to make it sound lighthearted.

She grimaced. “Am I formidable?”

“Wes thinks so.”

“I have to know what you’ve said to him,” she went on. “He’s like a different boy. He comes to school, he’s usually on time, and he actually applies himself to his studies. It’s wonderful.”

“Glad to hear it. I didn’t want to push too hard, but we made a deal.”