Border Crossing by Pat Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

Tom.’
    ‘I’m not invited.’
    ‘Oh.’ She swished her drink round the bottom of the glass, not looking at him. ‘It’s not good, is it?’
    ‘Everybody has bad patches, Mum.’
    She nodded her acceptance. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’
    The meal passed in gentle, inconsequential chat. Jeff Bridges, his best friend from primary-school days, was getting a divorce. ‘He was always trouble, that one,’ Tom’s mother said, rather harshly he thought. Marriage wasn’t easy, and Jeff had embarked on it far too young. Home from university for the first long vacation, he’d met Jeff pushing his eldest daughter in her pram. Tom had felt like a schoolboy, still, in comparison with Jeff, though he’d had sense enough not to envy him.
    Just as they were finishing lunch, a sudden squall of rain blew up. Shadows of black clouds, chasing each other up the hill, dowsed the gorse. Tom dashed out to lower the parasol, wrestling with its damp folds, feeling drops of rain patter on to his back through the thin shirt. The slap of wet cloth against his face exhilarated him, and he went back into the house, glowing.
    As soon as they finished their coffee, he said, ‘I think I should be getting back.’
    They embraced on the doorstep, but his mother was the one who broke the embrace first. A scrupulously honourable woman, she would never, for a second, leech off her son’s life, or use him in any way as a substitute for his father. ‘Ring when you get back,’ was all she said.
    Danny Miller had been at the back of his mind all day, and he wanted, before setting off home, to revisit a place he had played in as a child. It was only a few miles away, a slight detour off the main road. He pulled on to the grass verge, and set off to walk the rest of the way.
    The path to the pond seemed less clear, less well trodden, than when he was a boy, and he and Jeff Bridges came here to play. The recent heavy rain had turned dips into quagmires. He edged past them, shuffling sideways along the steep verge, hawthorn twigs snagging on his shirt. Pushing down the green tunnel, he seemed to be going back into the past. He wouldn’t have been surprised to meet his ten-year-old self coming in the other direction, holding a jam jar, the murky water thick with tiddlers or tadpoles. Or spawn.
    They’d been looking for spawn that day. He and Jeff had wanted to go off by themselves, but instead they’d been saddled with Neil, the four-year-old son of some friends of Jeff’s parents who’d turned up for the weekend and wanted to go for a drink in a pub that didn’t take children. ‘The boys can play together,’ Jeff’s father had said easily, ignoring Jeff’s muttered, ‘Da-ad, do we have to?’
    They were told to stay in the garden. They did, for about twenty minutes, playing piggy in the middle. Neil had to be the piggy because he couldn’t throw the ball. They sent it high above his head, getting a sour pleasure from his increasing bewilderment as he ran to and fro. Then, bored, they decided on a quick visit to the pond, got their jam jars and set off, dragging Neil after them. He was a polite, solemn little boy, with dark-rimmed glasses and an anxious expression. Grown-ups thought Neil was cute, kids thought he came from another planet. He trotted along with his mouth open, breathing noisily through his nose because he’d been told not to breathe through his mouth, and Neil always did what he was told. ‘We’re going to get frog spawn, Neil,’Jeff said, in the spuriously excited, isn’t-this-fun tone of voice he’d heard used by adults (mainly adults who didn’t like children very much).
    Wellies, that day. It wasn’t raining, but in spring all the paths were deep in mud. Once they’d got to the pond they saw that the frog spawn – newly laid, standing proud above the water – was five or six feet away from the bank. Too deep for wellies, so they pulled them off and stood on the edge of the pond, barefoot, cold goose shit oozing up