Remembrance Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

exercise. He’d never cope.
    Mother would have him home-tutored in a flash if she thought there was any danger.
    Guy stared up at the turrets of the stone building. He loved his Alma Mater, with its warren of study rooms, corridors, fine chapel and acres of playing fields.
    Angus wasn’t academic. He’d loathe being deskbound or cosseted. He needed open spaces, hunting over the fields to release all his spare energy. He bounded everywhere like an over excited Labrador puppy.
    Guy found a hidey-hole under a huge black poplar and whipped out his forbidden pipe. Had Angus’s jump from the Foss left permanent damage. Had it ruined his chance of an army career? Would he be an invalid? Guy couldn’t bear to see him unhappy and frustrated.
    Take a hold of yourself, he thought. Don’t get so windy! One fit doesn’t mean life in a basket chair. It was just a warning sign, that was all. If his brother calmed down and took enough rest and some pills, he’d be his old self again. Guy said a silent prayer to the Almighty to put everything back to normal.
    Reluctantly he lifted himself out of his funk hole and made for the school. He’d face a barrage of questions fromhis house chums on his return. It was none of their business but news would have already gone round the school like wild fire. Cantrell Junior had had a fit. The question was, would he have another?

3
    Selma stared into the window of Bow’s Emporium on Market Square in Sowerthwaite. The window was lit up like a magic lantern with fairy figures in silhouette against a glowing sky. She couldn’t wait for Christmas to come and the first carollers to sing at the door for a slice of spiced loaf and hot elderberry cordial. It was cold and her breath was steaming up the window. Mam was doing her secret shopping on market day but it was already darkening fast and the sky was full of snow feathers. Selma’s feet were freezing on the stone pavement.
    She wandered past the toy shop, glad she was grown up enough now not to be disappointed by the lack of the Christmas dolls and games her other friends bragged about. This year there might be a new knitted cardigan with matching beret and scarf, a parcel of clothes from Aunty Ruth when she called in on Boxing Day, some of which might fit her, if she was lucky.
    Selma’d grown inches since the summer, and filled out. Her breasts were like two rubber balls sticking out of her thick vest, and with them came the curse one morning and all that messy business that Mam explained was a step on the way to being a proper young lady. But fourteen was notquite old enough to roll her hair over in pads like Marigold Plimmer did, the other pupil teacher and the bane of Selma’s life.
    Marigold was older by a year, pretty enough, clever too, but had a way of setting Selma’s teeth on edge. The Plimmers ran the Hart’s Head Inn on Elm Tree Square at the other end of Prospect Row, but not far enough from the teetotal Bartley forge for comfort on a noisy Saturday night. The pub had once been a house, with two fine bow windows and a large stable for horses at the back with benches for draymen to idle away their lunch times.
    Marigold and her mother, Betty, were also on the horse-drawn bus to Sowerthwaite alongside the Bartleys, boasting about how big a turkey they were going to carve and how Marie was getting a new tartan dress with a crocheted collar for the Sunday school Christmas concert.
    It was Marie who had pointed out that Selma and her brothers were heathens, since none of them had been baptised, and they would all go to Hell. Selma knew the Chapel didn’t do infant christenings but preferred them to make a profession of faith when they were teenagers, but it had still worried her for days afterwards.
    ‘What happens to my baby brothers and sisters who died before baptism?’ she had cried to Mam in distress one night. ‘Will they be saved?’
    ‘Of course. The Lord only lent them to us for a season. They are angels now in Glory,