Fireweed Read Online Free Page A

Bala,’ said Mrs Williams.
    â€˜He would have to go on the bus every morning, and come back at night,’ said the billeting officer.
    â€˜Who would be paying for that, now?’ asked Mrs Williams, ‘And with books, and uniform too.’
    He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. ‘How about his family, do you think?’
    â€˜It is not like Mrs Jones’s boy, who gets pocket money from home every week, as I hear. There has not been twopence for him yet. And he has no good boots, and no thick socks with him either, and his things only in a paper bag, too. I don’t think it likely.’
    And there they let it rest.
    I swallowed my pride, and wrote a letter to my aunt. I told her about the school over the mountain, and asked her to tell my father. I asked her to let me have my father’s address, and some money for stamps. Mrs Williams said I must wait till market day for a penny-halfpenny from her to post this letter; most days of the week she had no money with her. I daresay that was true, though at the time I thought she was being purposely cruel. Evan took pity on me, and gave it to me out of a box he kept on the chimneypiece, but he made me earn it by sweeping out the yard, and carrying wattle for a sheep-pen up to him on the hillside.
    I took my letter down to the post office at the back of the village shop, and waited for an answer. And none came. Day after day went by, and no letter. I didn’t even see the postman. In the valley bottom, along by the stream, the trees turned pale gold, and thinned so that chinks of sky showed through their branches. Evan and David and Hugh went up on the mountain every day, with the dogs, and brought down the sheep, and put them in the fields below the farm, where they bleated all day. I liked watching the dogs working, running round the sheep. But every day was spoiled at the start on which no letter came. I thought my aunt was still keeping up that silly quarrel we had had, and punishing me for calling her names. I hated her bitterly, worse every day.
    Then one afternoon Mrs Williams hung up her apron behind the kitchen door, and put on a black hat, and a black coat with a fur collar, and went down to the village for a meeting, something to do with the chapel. She was gone all afternoon. I thought she looked at me a bit oddly when she came back. After supper she got a bowl of hot water, and a bar of black soap, and a funny fine comb, and set them one end of the kitchen table. I thought she was going to wash the dog. I took no notice.
    â€˜Come here, boy,’ she said to me.
    â€˜What do you want?’ I said, looking with suspicion at her broad aproned chest, and rolled-up sleeves.
    â€˜Come here, boy. I am just going to look at your head.’
    â€˜Look at my head? What the hell do you mean!’
    â€˜No need to fly off at me. Mrs Jones, and Mrs Evans both say their evacuees had lice. Now I am just going to clean you up, see?’
    I backed away from her. ‘You’re not going to touch me!’ I said.
    â€˜I will not have lice in my house,’ she declared, ‘no matter who it is they are on.’
    â€˜There aren’t any lice in your house!’ I said, swaying between outrage and laughter. Watching us from his rocking chair by the fire, Mr Williams grinned broadly. I collected myself, and said in a normal tone, ‘There are no lice in my hair, Mrs Williams, I have never had lice.’
    â€˜You just come here, boy, and let me see,’ she said, marching towards me, comb in one hand, soap in the other. I tipped up a chair in front of her, and backed out through the door to the yard.
    Evan and David were out there, with a lantern in the dusk, rolling a three-gallon drum back to the shed. She came to the door, and called out to them to stop me, or I suppose that’s what she was calling, for they ran after me. I jumped over the wall into the field, and ran across the grass. Sheep lumbered away from me,