We Are Family by Emlyn Rees

Author:Emlyn Rees [Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIV

Stepmouth, June 1953

‘Bastard,’ Arthur said.

Pete sniggered and Tony glanced across. Arthur was addressing a willow tree behind them. He’d got his fishing line snagged in among its leaves on his last cast and was now trying to yank it free.

Ferret-faced and skinny, stocky and chiselled, Pete and Arthur couldn’t have looked less similar. Standing here side by side in their shiny rainproof jackets and wellington boots, they looked like a vaudeville act in search of a stage. Not that Tony was in any kind of mood to laugh.

It was Sunday afternoon and the three of them were out for a day’s fishing, loaded up with bottles of beer and sandwiches to take them through till teatime.

Summerglade Hill rose up behind them to where the murky sky stirred and shifted like a great grey soup coming to the boil. They’d seen lightning a few minutes before and had counted three seconds till the thunder had rumbled across the valley. The storm was three miles away then, but hopefully it might still pass them by.

Tony glanced up. It had grown darker since then. That’s when he saw them, two white shapes, fast as bullets, darting across the sky.

‘What the hell –’ he said, pointing them out.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Arthur gasped. ‘They look like bloody space rockets . . .’

Pete laughed. ‘You read too many comic books, you great lump. They’re jet planes, from over at the airbase.’

The planes disappeared, leaving Tony wondering what it would be like, flying up there, speeding away from the town, watching it disappear behind you like a speck of dust. He whipped the tip of his grandad’s brown cane fishing rod over his shoulder and sent the line hissing out like a snake across the swollen River Step.

‘Nice cast,’ Pete commented, as Tony started to wind the slick dripping line steadily back in, monitoring its tension with his fingertips, patiently waiting for the tremble, or sudden jerk, that would indicate a fish biting down and starting its run.

‘Thanks.’

Tony’s answer came out as a kind of bark, the same as his comments had done all day. Because he didn’t want to be talking to Pete. He wanted to be talking to Rachel instead. Only he couldn’t. Because she was under strict curfew, busy revising for her summer-term exams which started in less than two weeks’ time.

Tony hadn’t spoken to her for two days now, not since they’d grabbed five precious minutes together after she’d run an errand for Bill to the Sea Catch Café. A delivery which had been accompanied by a sealed letter to Emily from Bill, Tony had noted. One which had made his boss blush as she’d read it.

‘Dating,’ Emily had described the situation with uncharacteristic brevity when he’d asked her about it. ‘We’re just having some fun . . .’

Which was what Tony wanted, too. But instead he had to subsist on stolen moments. And, of course, the weekly letters which Rachel had been leaving in the vase in the churchyard for him, every Sunday of the two months they’d been going out.

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