Free Sparrow Falling by Gaie Sebold Page A

wondering how to make one, now, aren’t you?”
    Beth grinned. “Maybe. You’d need lenses. And...” Her grin dropped away. “There’s soldiers,” she said quietly. “A lot of them lose eyes, and hands. Most of what’s made for them isn’t much good. And if there is a war... it would be good to have some designs ready.”
    “You still on about the war? What’s it to do with us?”
    Beth hunched her shoulders and drew a finger around the rim of her mug.
    “Beth? You don’t think they’re going to come here, do you, just ’cos we’ve been teaching our girls stuff? They’re hardly going to come swanning up going, ‘Right, we hear you got females what can handle a machine, off to the front with you,’ are they?”
    “Women have been soldiers, you know. Artemisia of Caria was a famous one.”
    “Who?”
    “She was a naval commander under Xerxes.”
    “What are they?”
    “He was a very famous Greek person who won a lot of wars. And he said Artemisia was the finest officer in his fleet. And there was Boudicca.”
    “I thought Boudicca was made up, like Robin Hood and that.”
    “No, she’s real. She was.”
    “Where d’you find all this stuff?”
    “One thing we had at home was books. Not much else, but a lot of books. Explorations and politics and military history. They were left to Mama by one of her uncles, she used to say he must have thought she’d have a son one day. Then she’d cry, or break something.” Beth looked down at the table, rubbing at a stain with her finger. “Anyway I read quite a lot of the military history. See, I had an uncle, too. My Uncle Bertie. He was a soldier. My Mama’s brother. The only one of her family who still came to see her, once... once she had me, and was in disgrace.”
    Beth pulled out a rag from her pocket to blow her nose. The rag had probably been a perfectly good handkerchief before it got used to wipe down oily machinery and sop up various colourful fluids. It left a dark streak down one side of her nose.
    When it seemed she wasn’t going to go on by herself, Eveline said, “He came to see you.”
    Beth nodded. “That house was so quiet. Mama hated noise. The first thing I remember her saying to me is, ‘Ladies do not shout.’ She’d get headaches, and lie on the settee, and if one of the neighbours banged a door loudly or a carriage went past she’d moan. If I made too much noise she’d shut me away until she thought I would be quiet.”
    No wonder Beth hardly ever raised her voice much above a murmur. Now it was so low Eveline had to lean forward to hear her.
    “Uncle Berry – it was Bertie, really, but when I was little I couldn’t say it, so I called him Berry. I kept doing it, because it made him laugh. He used to come to visit and he had such a loud laugh, and sometimes he came in his uniform, all bright and brass buttons, he had a great big blonde moustache and when he smiled it bushed out, and it was like... he was like this big happy wind blowing through the house, waking things up. He’d bring me things, toys. Dolls, mostly. I’d rather have had a train set, but the only time I asked him for anything like that Mama...” Beth’s hand wandered to her cheek. “She was so furious. I don’t know if she was more angry that I’d asked for something that wasn’t suitable, or that I’d asked at all. So I played with the dolls when he was there because it made him happy. I felt guilty that I didn’t like them much. But I found the books, then when he came I’d tell him I’d been reading Vegetius or Polyaenus’ Stratagems . He’d laugh and swing me up and call me his Little General. Mama hated it but she couldn’t say anything, in case he stopped coming to see us. I think he gave her some money, sometimes. He’d take us out to the seaside. I remember him lifting me onto a donkey, and the sound of the gulls and the children shouting, and the beach, and the sea so long and wide and blue. There was a boat and I thought, I want to