The Nickum Read Online Free PDF Page B

old Becky, looking smug, ‘so four would be ten shillings, an’ two would be five, so six would be fifteen shillings.’
    She looked hopefully at her father, who said, ‘Na, na, lass, I canna afford to gi’e you as muckle as that.’
    The following morning, however, told a different story. Becky wasn’t wanting to gather potatoes with her back aching in every bone, and Willie felt every bit as sore. Furthermore, his bright red skin was burning up under the old shirt, but he didn’t want to admit to such a weakness. Emily could tell by his gait, however, that he was not as fit as he was making out, and felt a touch sorry for him. She waited until the boy went out to the privy, then said to her husband, ‘He’s only five, Jake. He’s not fit to be picking tatties.’
    ‘He’s fine. He’ll need to learn to put up wi’ a lot harder work than that if he wants to be cottared.’
    ‘He mebbe doesna want to be a farm servant,’ she snapped.
    ‘He’s ower young to ken what he wants to be, and you havena aye been so worried for him.’
    Their son’s return stopped their bickering before it became a full-blown quarrel, but Emily was hurt that her husband would argue with her like that. Where was the old gentle Jake, the man who had come back from the war quieter even than when he left, and had never been able to speak about his experiences, not even after all this time, and not even to her?
    That week was the longest week Willie had ever lived through, or, as he said to Poopie-Cecil, ‘I’m sure this tattie howkin’ll tak’ a year aff’n my life.’
    ‘Mair like a year aff for every day,’ nodded his friend.

Chapter Five
    The trouble had begun long before this, of course, but had developed as time went on. He’d never had anything to do with girls before, and it seemed to him that they were fair game for tormenting. He would pick his victim, find a decent place of concealment, then jump out on her with a ‘lion’s roar’. The resulting flood of tears pleased him, but he discovered that it also led to a reprimnd from Miss Cowe, and that several reprimands led to a smack over the fingers. This didn’t hurt so much as the ignominy of being punished in front of the whole class. The other boys, however, didn’t laugh at him as he had feared, but treated him with some respect, thus prompting him to find various other ways of annoying the poor little girls.
    The next few terms followed much the same pattern as Willie’s first – gradually including fights with the bigger boys who targeted Cecil as a prime recipient for all their bullying, but learning fairly soon that he had a protector who could give as good as, if not better than he got. Eventually, they gave up altogether and Willie turned his energy in other directions. Most of the girls wore their hair long, some being fortunate enough to sport lovely dark curls, or fair tresses, and one even had lustrous auburn hair. Each female head was also adorned with a ribbon, tied with various sizes of bows which were like red rags to Willie’s bullish humour. In the playground at playtimes, he would manoeuvre himself into such positions that he could, with one little quick tug, undo the bows and send the owner’s hair cascading down around her shoulders and sometimes, hopefully, over her eyes.
    He always ran off laughing, which encouraged the other small boys to point their finger at the victim and laugh their heads off. This carried on for some weeks, with Miss Cowe threatening to report him to the dominie, but never carrying out her threat. Willie was becoming a bit of a hero to the boys in his class, a composite of five, six and seven-year-olds, but a wicked being to be avoided by the poor girls.
    Willie himself took pride in fuelling his reputation as fearless, and relished watching the apprehension in the girls’ eyes when he went near them. It wasn’t until he caught Lizzie Cordiner breaking her heart in a corner of the bike shed that he gave any thought