Free Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud Page B

it grips against itself, spinning and twisting as I feed it slow and easy with my hands.
    ‘Helloo there.’ A high voice pipes up from among the reeds, and turning, I see the sharp freckled face of Betty walking along the path. ‘What are you doing?’ She is laughing. ‘Walking backwards across a field?’ And I’m surrounded, for both girls are here, squeezing against me, peering at the strick around my waist. I’m about to explain when there’s a whistle, and a sharp tug along the rope, and I look down and see that even in that moment the twine has bunched and twisted into kinks. ‘I can’t stop,’ I say, taking a quick step as I speak, and the girls press themselves against the hedgerow, laughing while I pass. For a while they stand and watch me, as if I’m some rare animal or bird, and then they wrap their arms around each other and carry on. I stare after them as I back away. The tall strong sister and the sliver of herself, both with scarves about their hair, and shawls across their shoulders, heads together, chattering as they rush along beside my newly twisted yarn. They’ve forgotten me already, I think, as they dip out of sight over the rise of the small hill, but just then Betty leans over and flicks at the rope and I feel it travel, the touch of her finger, right down until it twangs against my gut.
    I’m nearly at the start of the marsh when the hemp runs dry and the rope, still twisting, flies out of my hands. ‘I’m finished!’ I shout, lungeing for it, and I hear my voice sailing over the fields into the Allards’ garden and down into the crook between the two arms of the building where the turning machine stops. For a moment I stand still. I stare up at the sky, the swirl of clouds, white shreds against the blue, and I gather up the rope, holding tight to its loose ends, as I stumble back along the lane.
    ‘Good lad,’ George Allard tells me when I come through the gate, and there’s a soft look in his eyes I’ve not seen before.

Chapter 22
    Mac isn’t in his shed. The door is shut and locked, and Bob Thorogood, when I ask, tells me he doesn’t know anything about where he might be. I walk down the lane to the Lea House, the package tucked under one arm, using it to bat away a swarm of midges that hang in the warm dip of the road. The gate is latched, the grass of the long garden singed with sun. ‘I’m not here for you,’ I tell the rabbits as they freeze, but I’ve not finished speaking before they are gone.
    There’s a window of glass set into the side door and I can see along the hall and through into the main room. There’s a vase of honesty on a table, each disc rubbed free of its husk. I knock again, but no one comes. ‘Mr Mackintosh,’ I call through the slit for letters, but this parcel is too large to drop it through, and so I turn the handle and go in. The house is not so very different from before. But its emptiness feels purposeful. The white walls as if they’re meant to be bare. There are plates, with fluted edges and a stark black flowered stem, arranged against a shelf, and below, to hide the pots and pans, is a length of cotton, printed with roses in an overlapping pattern of pink and black and white. I walk through to the next room. There are books on the table in two neat piles. And the stack of pamphlets I arranged against the wall. I pick a new one up and open it. I do it quickly, before I can warn myself off, but as I flick through for pictures I hear a noise – the twang of bedsprings as someone sits up, and a small, dry ladylike cough. I set down the package, and my heart leaping, I slip the pamphlet inside my shirt, the cool side of it against my skin, and I’m away out through the door.
    The midges are waiting to get me as I race into the lane, and with my eyes half closed against them, my nose and mouth too, I run out over the marshes, and up through the fields to the line of trees that leads into the Hoist. There’s no one else here. No lovers