Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [52]
“Yer got it bad, comrade,” Goz said, riding home.
The boys still went to the fields together but worked separately now. Clem’s distraction was proving uneconomic.
“Have I?”
“Yeah. And yer playing with fire. It’s a good job yer so bleddy wet.”
He couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was ridiculous. It was like a mental illness or something. A continuous rerunning of little films in his head. Her eyes slowly opening after a long snog. Tipping her head back to swing the hair away from her face. Pulling a damp strand of it from her lips. The movement of her bum as she walked away. At home, he sat in the living room trying to stop the projector, black out the images. Silently reciting the names of the kings and queens of England until the shameful bulge in his jeans subsided and he could stand up.
Ruth turned away from the telly.
“Wassup with you, Clem?”
“Nuthun. I’m orright.”
“You look like someone who’re lost a fiver and found a shillun.”
“I’m orright, Mum. Bit bored, is all.”
“You usually like this program.”
“Yeah. Not very good tonight, though, is it?”
George said, “Do you mind? I’m trying to watch this.”
Clem checked the state of his lap. He stood up. “I might go out for a bit.”
He spent the nights praying that his bed wasn’t creaking too audibly. Luckily, his grandmother was often loudly murmurous in the nights, praying for something else altogether. Clem synchronized his devotions with hers.
Hiding, waiting for him, Frankie felt angry. Angry that she hungrily fancied a badly dressed working-class boy like Clem Ackroyd. Angry that she couldn’t be with him whenever she wanted to. Angry that she should have to conceal herself from people who worked for her father. Then Clem would step through a gap in the hedge or brush aside a veil of leaves, and her breath would catch in her throat and her whole body would come alight.
Over dinner, her mother looked at her. “What’s the matter, darling?”
“Pardon, Mummy?”
“You’ve hardly eaten anything. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s good. I’m just a bit tired.”
Nicole turned to her husband. “Gerard, how much longer are you going to continue this farce, treating your daughter like a laborer? She is exhausted. She can hardly lift the food to her mouth.”
“Nonsense, Nicole. It’s doing her the world of good. Look at her. She’s the picture of health.”
“She is too much in the sun, Gerard. She looks like a Gypsy. Her nose is peeling.”
Mortimer dabbed his lips with his napkin, then grinned.
“Very well,” he said. “Françoise, I’m putting you on parole. Time off for good behavior.”
She looked across at him, frowning, not understanding. Parole was French for “word” or “speech.”
“You don’t have to work anymore,” her father said.
Frankie tried to keep her hand steady, lowering the heavy silver fork onto the tablecloth.
“It’s okay, Daddy. I like it, actually. The people are nice. Funny.”
“Françoise,” Nicole said. “What has that to do with anything?”
Frankie forced a shrug. “Nothing, I guess. I just like being in the fresh air. And it’s something to do. I’ll work until the end of the season.”
Gerard Mortimer leaned back in his chair. “Well said. Spoken like a farmer’s daughter, eh, Nicole?”
His wife pulled the corners of her mouth down and cut a neat slice from her veal for the spaniel who sat by her chair.
On the day following this conversation, Frankie did not plant her mouth on Clem’s as soon as they were alone. She did not even look at his face. Instead, she unbuttoned his shirt, silently concentrating, as if it were a strange and difficult task.
“Frankie?”
They were kneeling in the lee of a low brambly hedge where the long lines of raspberry canes petered out. The sky was paper white and the air was heavy and thick.
A vortex of midges coned above their heads.
She opened his shirt and put her arms inside it, holding him, her palms against his shoulder blades. She rested her head on his shoulder. After a moment or two, he put his arms around her, his fingers meeting on the hard nubble where her bra fastened.