The Shadow of the Sycamores by Doris Davidson Read Free Book Online

Nothing Mick could say would shock me.’
    ‘Frankie wanted me to try a drop whisky and Mick said it would put lead in my pencil. What does that mean?’
    She couldn’t hold back the laugh, though she could see he was put out by it. ‘It doesna mean a thing,’ she gasped at last. ‘They were wanting you to … take up wi’ one o’ the lassies.’
    ‘But I still canna understand,’ the boy persisted, his eyes wide and serious. ‘How can I put lead in my pencil when I havena got a pencil? And, if I had, what am I supposed to write?’
    His earnest, pleading expression made her straighten her face, though it needed a great effort, and the explanation she gave, in the down-to-earth words she had learned through years ofworking with men, left him in no doubt as to what Mick had meant. Clearly overwhelmed with embarrassment when she ended, he rushed outside.

    Feeling that he was blushing from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, Henry looked for a quiet place to think and, passing the byre it came to him that the kye wouldn’t be taken in for the milking for hours yet. Casting a surreptitious glance around to make sure that nobody saw him, he scuttled inside and plopped down on the straw-strewn floor behind the door. As he should have known from previous experience in the cows’ domain, the stink was overpowering. His stomach was heaving already and he’d be sick in no time. He couldn’t concentrate here.
    Sneaking out again, he remembered the dairy. It, too, would be empty for hours yet. It was the cleanest place on the whole farm but he’d have to take care that the milkmaid didn’t come in and find him there. Again, he took up his position behind the door – it was the safest place.
    Hesitantly, he went over what the cook had told him, the strange words she had used and had explained by patting his front and her own. What Mick Tyler had called his ‘pencil’ was really his … No, he wasn’t even going to think the word – his Gramma would go daft if she knew what Janet had been saying to him. It wasn’t decent to discuss things like that. And it surely couldn’t be true? Was that really how bairns were made, like the cook had warned him? He could never do anything like that.
    In fact, he would never as much as touch any woman, except the one he took as his wife – if he ever took a wife, which he wasn’t at all sure about. It seemed to him that wives weren’t all the same and a man couldn’t be certain of getting a good one. He’d known of some fine wives and some bad – his father had had one of each. Mrs Legge was a good wife to the farmer, always laughing – he’d never seen her angry, though the kitchen maid must try her patience at times, she was so slow and dimwitted.
    What was it that made a woman a good wife, though? It couldn’t be a good figure – that was one thing. They came in all shapes and sizes, from tall and skinny Ina Sim, the ploughman’s wife, to Gramma, thin, too, but cuddly with it, to the farmer’s wife, who could only be classed as fat and it was a puzzle how Jim Legge could get his arms round her – though he must have managed at one time. Then there were women like Janet Emslie, not fat as such, just well padded all over, but her breasts didn’t swing when she walked like Nessie’s. Were they what had attracted his father enough to make her his wife?
    Henry felt uncomfortable thinking about breasts. They hadn’t figured in his thoughts before but Janet had said that fondling breasts was part of the lead-up to the taking. Intrigued by this and doing his utmost to picture it, he was startled by the sound of footsteps but the dairymaid walked in without noticing him in his dark corner. She stood for a minute or two, side on to him, thinking about a lad maybe, and he found his eyes drawn towards her bosom, swelling gracefully up from her waist – two perfectly-sized, well-rounded, pointy-finished … breasts.
    It was as well that the girl moved now, before