Free Under the Hawthorn Tree by Ai Mi, Anna Holmwood Page A

shoes he tied them together with his laces and hung them around his neck. Next he fastened his bags around his neck in a similar fashion. He knelt down in front of her so she could climb on, but she refused. ‘I’ll go myself.’
    â€˜Don’t be embarrassed. Come on, it’s not good for girls to walk in cold water. It’s dark, no one can see. Jump up.’
    She climbed on to his back reluctantly, and clasped his shoulders, trying hard to make sure her breasts didn’t touch his back. ‘Lean over, and put your arms around my neck otherwise it won’t be my fault if you fall in the water.’ At that moment he seemed to slip, tilting sharply to one side, so she threw herself forward and flung her arms around his neck, her breasts pressing against his back. It was strangely comfortable. He, however, was shivering all over.
    â€˜Am I too heavy?’
    He didn’t reply, trembled for a while, and then settled. Carrying her, he slowly waded across the river. Midway, he said, ‘We have a saying where I’m from, “an old man needs to be married, an old woman needs to be carried”. I’ll carry you whether you’re old or not. How does that sound?’
    She blushed, and blurted out, ‘How can you say something like that? Say it again and I’ll jump into the water.’
    Old Third didn’t respond to this but nodded downstream. ‘Your brother Lin’s standing over there.’
    Jingqiu saw Lin sitting by the river with a water bucket to either side of him. Old Third climbed on to the bank, released Jingqiu, and while putting on his shoes and socks said, ‘You wait here, and I’ll go talk to him.’ In a low voice he spoke a few words to Lin and then returned to Jingqiu. ‘You go home with him, I’ll go back to camp from here.’ With that, he slipped out into the night.
    Lin collected water in the two buckets, swung them on to his shoulders, and walked back to the house without uttering a word. Jingqiu followed behind, terror-stricken. Is he going to tell everyone about this, tell my association? I’m finished. She wanted to use the time before they got home to speak with Lin: ‘Lin, don’t be mistaken, he only accompanied me. We . . .’
    â€˜He said.’
    â€˜Don’t tell anyone else, people won’t understand.’
    â€˜He said.’
    Everyone was surprised that she had arrived so late. Auntie asked repeatedly, ‘Did you come back on your own? Over the mountain? Oh, you’re so brave; I don’t even dare walk that way on my own during the day.’

Chapter Seven
    Jingqiu was so apprehensive that Lin would tell other people what he had seen at the river that she took a long time to get to sleep. He hadn’t told anyone yet, but wasn’t that because she was there? Once my back is turned, he’s going to tell Auntie, isn’t he? If he really was waiting by the river for her return then he’d be sure to blab, because she knew he couldn’t stand seeing her with Old Third. The worst scenario would be for Lin to tell people about her and Old Third, and for this information to find its way to the ears of her association, and through it to her school. What would happen if the school found out?
    Her bad class status worried her for although her mother had been ‘liberated’ and was now serving as a teacher to the masses, her father was still a landowner. Of the five bad elements – landowner, rich peasant, counter-revolutionary, corrupt cadre, rightist – landowner was the stinkiest enemy to the working class of all of them. Her school would certainly seize upon any ‘bad behaviour’ and use it as a stick to beat a landowner’s daughter like her. And they’d be sure to pull in the rest of her family too.
    Her father’s class label was extremely unfair. Not only had he left home at an early age to study, but his family had not taken rent from