Love in Revolution by B.R. Collins Read Free Book Online Page A

quite sadness, but something close. ‘Now, let’s not dawdle any longer, girls. Didn’t you hear me ring the bell?’ She looked round, and the crowd that had gathered dispersed rapidly, draining into the schoolhouse through the door marked PUPILS . ‘Esteya, you can wait here for a moment.’
    I stood still by the bench, holding on to the bit of paper so hard I couldn’t feel my fingers.
    Miren and Ana stayed where they were too, but Sister David ignored them and stepped closer to me. Her eyes were narrowed against the sunlight. ‘I’m not going to ask you whether your brother wrote that article or not,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to know. But what I will say is . . . this: be careful, Esteya. Prudence is as great a virtue as courage. No one – no one – gains from unnecessary suffering. Do you understand?’
    ‘Who saw Teddy being taken away?’ I said. I didn’t have time to be polite. ‘How do you know?’
    It was as if she hadn’t heard what I’d said. ‘Your brother has made his own choices. He’s chosen to put himself in danger. But you needn’t let him endanger you . Esteya, are you listening?’ She held my look for a few seconds longer, as if she was trying to tell me something else silently. Then she walked away, looking to left and right and shepherding the littlest girls into line.
    I swallowed. I could taste the egg I’d had for breakfast. The sun was too hot and too bright and there was too much noise. I thought of the police smashing down Teddy’s door in the dead of night, dragging him out into the street, shoving a canvas bag over his head and driving him away. I thought of the silence, and the bag sucking in and out as Teddy breathed. He would have panicked; or worse, tried to reason with them. They would have hit him to shut him up.
    And he would have been in his pyjamas. I’d seen Teddy’s pyjamas, flapping on the washing line he’d rigged up between his windows. They were dark green, with a faded paisley pattern, and an iron-shaped scorch mark on the collar.
    Ana said, ‘How does it feel, knowing your brother is a murderer?’
    I wanted to tell her to shut up, but my mouth wouldn’t obey my brain.
    Miren stood up, sat down, fiddled with her satchel strap and stood up again. ‘I’m just . . .’ she said, and gestured at the schoolhouse door. No one answered.
    ‘Mind you,’ Ana said, stroking the rose on her shoulder, ‘the Englishman was probably asking for it, wasn’t he? If he was stupid enough to let your Communist brother write a cheap, nasty article like that – and then publish it . . .’
    Something gave way. I heard myself raise my voice, the words blurring and overlapping one another. ‘So the police are right to take him away, are they? If the police come for my brother, and my father because he’s Leon’s father too, and my mother because she happens to be married to him –’
    ‘I’m going inside,’ Miren muttered. I didn’t turn my head, but I heard her hurry across the yard towards the door. Ana and I were almost the last people left.
    Ana said, ‘Everyone knows what happens to people who say stupid things. Your brother is lucky he hasn’t been arrested already.’
    ‘And Mr Arcos? And Bero and Jone Carkaya? And the priest from Zurian? They all had it coming, did they, for saying that the harvest’s going to be bad and the poor people are discontented and the King has a lot more money than anyone else?’ I heard my voice get higher.
    Ana opened her mouth and then shrugged. ‘I’m just saying he’s stupid to risk it, that’s all.’
    I stared at her. I wished she hadn’t said something I agreed with.
    I said, ‘As if you ’d know what’s stupid and what isn’t. With that pathetic thing on your shoulder. What is it, anyway? A very small, rotten lettuce?’
    ‘It’s a ro–’ She stopped. She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze. Everyone else had gone in. We were going to be late for prayers.
    Suddenly she reached