My Dearest Enemy by Connie Brockway

Author:Connie Brockway
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance Fiction, Historical, London (England), General, Romance, Historical Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780440223757
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1998-07-06T07:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Fifteen

"Jump in!" Avery shouted. "It's six or seven feet deep here, not shallow like the north end."

"All right." Bernard dropped his boots and stood up to drop his trousers.

Avery experienced a moment of intense deja vu. He might have been looking at a photograph of himself taken over a decade earlier.

Bernard's broad, bony shoulders spread beneath his linen shirt like a clothes hanger. From under his shirt-tails stuck long white stick-like legs ending in feet that looked like some monstrous duck's paddles. With a body like that, Avery thought, Bernard should swim like a selkie.

"Come on!"

"I said, 'all right!' " Bernard shouted back irritably. Avery's grin spread.

His young jaw tensing with determination, Bernard took a step back and then launched himself off the embankment. Limbs gyrating madly, he sailed through the air, landed in the water and promptly sank. A second later he burst from beneath the surface, sputtering fiercely and noisily gulping air. Avery swam closer, concern supplanting his amusement.

"Don't swim much, do you?" He kept his tone light, remembering how important it had been to him to mask his physical infirmity. Listening carefully for the telltale wheezing but hearing nothing besides loud clear gasps, he turned over on his back and floated nearer, ready to give aid if necessary.

"I learned to swim in this pond," he commented conversationally.

The boy's breathing was settling back to normal now. He began paddling around inexpertly. "Oh? Who taught you?"

"No one," Avery said. "I fell in while I was fishing. It was a matter of swim or drown. I decided to swim. Who taught you?"

"Miss Bede."

The boy's reply caught Avery off-guard. Bernard, correctly interpreting his expression, laughed.

"I didn't realize you'd spent so much time with her," he said.

"I don't," Bernard said. "Not at all. Mother likes me to stay near when I'm home." His brows v'd over the bridge of his nose. "Mother worries. Fact of the matter is that when she found out that Miss Bede had taught me to swim Mother was so distressed that Miss Bede promised not to do anything like it again."

From the boy's sigh Avery deduced that further escapades with Lily hadn't been forthcoming.

"It's hell, isn't it?" he said.

Bernard didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Yes!" he exclaimed. "I hate it! The way the deans look at you every time you cough, all frightened and resentful, and how the other lads snicker behind your back, and wondering if you'll ever be well enough to do anything."

Avery nodded. The usually reticent lad had found his voice. He knew how cathartic that could be.

"And how it feels when your chest is all collapsed-feeling, like some invisible monster is sitting atop you, and you're sure you won't be able to draw enough air to live?"

Avery nodded. He knew.

"Sometimes"—Bernard's head bowed but then he looked up defiantly—"a few years ago, I used to think that it wouldn't be so awful if I didn't."

"Bernard—"

The boy looked up, his face angry. "I know. It was cowardly. But I got so tired of worrying Mother and Miss Bede, of being afraid myself.

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