Free Bird of Passage by Catherine Czerkawska Page B

the different voices.’
    ‘Which bit did he read?’
    ‘He got through half of it before our proper teacher came back. He told us that we shouldn’t laugh out loud though. Brother Michael heard us laughing once and came in to find out what was happening and there was hell to pay.
    ‘Is that why you don’t laugh much, Finn?’
     ‘I do so laugh. Sometimes.’
    ‘Well, not much.’
    ‘They don’t like us laughing. We’re not supposed to make too much noise in the school.  The one that read to us, he never hit us. I think he couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to see it happening and him not able to do anything about it, so he took himself off.  He was a bit like Brother Patrick. He never hits us either.’
    ‘Do they really beat you?’ she asked, distracted by the repetition of something he had told her earlier. ‘I mean really ?’
    He pulled a face. ‘All the time. Don’t they beat the children here?’
    ‘Well. The boys sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘The teacher keeps a tawse in her desk. She calls it her Lochgelly. That’s the name of the place where they make them. I hate it. It’s this brown belt with a split at the end, so it hurts more.’
    ‘That’s nothing at all. Brother Michael uses a piece of a car tyre with the metal still in it.’
     ‘He doesn’t!’
    ‘He does. Haven’t you never caught it, Kirsty?’
    ‘Not me. My grandad won’t have it. He said if our teacher ever belted me, he would go straight down there and give her a good smack with her own Lochgelly. See how she liked it! But a car tyre, Finn? A car tyre!’
    ‘Would he do that?’ asked Finn, in wonder. ‘Give her a smack?’
    ‘I think he might. I behave myself anyway, so it doesn’t matter. But they don’t hit the wee ones do they, Finn?’
    He frowned. ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘The wee ones in the primary? They don’t ever belt the wee ones here.’
    He gazed at her in silence for a moment. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said, at last.
    ‘What do you mean, you don’t remember? You must remember whether they hit the wee ones?’
    ‘I tell you I don’t remember! Jesus, Kirsty, you’re enough to try the patience of a saint.’
    He stood up and began to walk back up the hill towards the farm, hauling the bag of mackerel with him.
    She ran after him, trying to keep up. ‘So what did you like best about the Wind in the Willows?’
    Finn hesitated. ‘I liked that whole… that whole thing. The picnics. I always wanted to be rowing home in the sunshine like that.’
    ‘Well now you can be.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Rowing home in the sunshine like that,’ she told him, triumphantly, ‘And you can be doing it with me.’ Kirsty always liked to live her literature.
    Just as they got back to the farmyard, carrying the bag of mackerel between them, a big car pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Malcolm Laurence leapt out and slammed the door behind him, the sound of it echoing round the old buildings, causing the swallows to rise into the air in alarm. Isabel came running out of the front door.
    ‘Malcolm!’ she said, her face breaking into the kind of smile that Finn had never seen there before. ‘What brings you here?’
     ‘Issie, I’m glad you’re here. There’s been a bit of an incident in the village.  One of your workers got himself into a spot of bother. I thought I’d better bring the lad back. See for yourself.’
    He opened the back door of the car, like a taxi driver, and Francis slid out, staggering, a white handkerchief splattered with crimson, clutched to his nose.
    ‘Oh dear God!’ said Isabel. ‘What happened?’
    ‘I think some of the village lads had a go at him. They’d been in the hotel after work, and there was some kind of altercation going on between the tattie howkers and the local lads. You know how it is?’
    ‘But not Francis.’
    ‘Ah well...’ Malcolm glanced at Francis who had made his way to the stone bench outside the house door and was sitting there, forlornly, with the