Rising Summer by Mary Jane Staples Read Free Book Online Page B

your dad, I don’t want to be hanged as well.’
    ‘Oh, I never ’eard anything dafter,’ said Minnie, ‘you can’t be hanged just because I’m still at school and look ’ow grown up I am.’ I wasn’t going to look. If I did she’d take a deep breath and puff herself up.
    ‘Buzz off, Min, behave yourself.’
    ‘Oh, come on,’ said Min. A secretive little smile appeared. ‘Kiss me like you did on rising summer night.’
    Rising summer night still had hazy recollections for me. Sheldham celebrated the advent of summer not on the first of May, but on the first Saturday in April. It was something to do with the ritual of rising summer. The village hall had been packed, American GIs there in droves. Barrels of cider were tapped, cider being the only strong beverage allowed. And it was Suffolk cider, not Somerset. Whoever brewed it had squeezed every last drop of biting juice from the apples and its heady tang was of a ripe harvest, bitter-sweet. It was a great help to the GIs, it sent them in pursuit of everything in skirts and there was a bumper crop of those. Taking no notice of whatever the band was playing, the GIs turned every number into a flying jitterbug. The ancient rustics of Sheldham looked on, nodding with the wisdom of people who knew what rising summer cider was all about. Flushed housewives and rosy-cheeked maidens were whirled around. The band was a mixture of baldheads, roundheads and whiskers, all native-born, and their music reached back to some pagan mystique of long-gone ancestors. The ritual song, ‘Rising Summer’, kept cropping up. There were a hundred verses to it, someone said and the natives knew them all. I only managed to pick up the first line of the chorus. ‘ Put ’ em in a barrel and roll ’ em in the barn .’ Eventually, the music and the rhythm took complete hold of the senses and everything else sounded raw and wrong.
    The cider did for me. It was my first encounter with Sheldham’s rising summer night. Some BHQ personnel who’d attended last year said watch the cider. And Jim Beavers said the same thing. I did watch it, pouring from a barrel into my glass several times, but once it was down my throat it was out of sight. I jitterbugged in a fog with no idea who my partners were. But one of them resolved into Minnie, at which point I made a rolling exit from the over-heated hall in search of cool fresh air. I also needed a wall to lean against. The fresh air and the coolness of the April night kind of clouted me. Minnie insisted on helping me in my search for a wall. I had a vague idea that a lot of wall was occupied by GIs and village maidens, but Minnie found a welcome piece of secluded brickwork for my back.
    ‘There, ain’t that nice, Tim?’ she murmured.
    ‘Where’s a bed?’ I asked unthinkingly. I meant a quiet spot where I could fall quietly down without breaking a leg. I knew I’d never trust Suffolk cider on rising summer night again. Minnie drew her own inference.
    ‘Oh, no need for a bed, Tim,’ she said. ‘It’ll be bliss any old how with you and I won’t tell Dad.’ She put her mouth to mine.
    Fortunately, I fell down then and Mother Earth drew me to her cool and comforting bosom. When I came to I had a racketing head and the hall was emptying. Minnie had disappeared. I didn’t think anything had happened until I tasted lipstick. Then I worried a little. Then I didn’t. Nothing illegal could have happened, the cider had pole-axed me.
    But I wasn’t too keen now on her secretive little smile. ‘Hold it,’ I said, ‘what d’you mean, kiss you like I did on rising summer night?’
    ‘Ain’t telling, am I?’ she said, trying to look coy. Coy? What a hope. ‘Won’t tell Dad, neither.’
    ‘Won’t tell what?’
    ‘Not saying, am I?’ She looked sunny and girlish and innocent against the green hedge. Wonderful little actress, she was.
    ‘I hope you’re not going to grow up a bit devious, Min.’
    ‘Me? Course I won’t, I couldn’t,