Attention, troops.
I hope you've all been well during lockdown. Life goes on, and ours has had its ups and downs, but of course this was ever thus. Over on my seldom-used blog, I've been positing old short stories and started serialising a new story that I'm making up as I go along. Episode 1 is up there now, with episodes due to follow on a more or less weekly basis. I have only a general idea where it's going, so this will be a fun experiment.
Whilst being at home for most of the time, I've been able to devote some more attention to the manuscript for A Hundred Years to Arras, and I thought it was about time I posted a new extract as a thank you to subscribers for hanging on in there.
The crowdfunding campaign started on my birthday, 7th June 2019, and I'm hoping to bring it to a close on 7th June 2020. That isn't to say that Unbound won't extend beyond that, but it would give it a nice symmetry and echo nicely the novel itself, the title of which refers to an anniversary too.
So, it would be wonderful if you could keep spreading the word so we can lock this one down and get on that publishing schedule. In the strange situation we're all in, books are so important, and so is community. It's brilliant when the two come together.
EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER SIX:
“Keep up!”
“I’m trying!”
“Take your boots off – you might run quicker”. The teasing encouragement came from Beth as she raced ahead of Robert, her bare feet skipping through the long grass.
She raced alongside a line of alders that grew out of the bank of a stream. The water meandered through a meadow, dotted here and there with cows that mooed their daily gossip seemingly in time with each lap and splash. Redpolls – tiny finches with a flash of red atop their crowns – nested in the trees, one fluttering out in search of food. Beth waved to it in greeting as she passed.
“G’morning, little bird,” she chimed.
“You’re mad,” said Robert, catching up.
“You’ve still got your boots on”.
“You don’t give me time to sit down and unlace them,” he panted.
“Well, they’re gert clodhoppers. If you want to court me, you’ve got to come nimble of foot and easy of mind, Bobby Henson”. She winked.
He sat amongst the grass and daisies and started untying the knots that kept his laces from flapping. “Is that what we are doing now? Courting?”
Beth flopped down beside him, ran her fingers through the swaying grass. Her skirts spilled around her, spreading like a blanket. She blushed slightly, a different red than the usual shade of her cheeks. “What do you think?” she asked, her eyes closed, her face angled upwards to the sun.
They had been walking out together for several months, although it had been gradual. Each meeting was casual, sometimes accidental, but never escorted. If parents knew, nobody had let on. Beth and Robert were circling their sixteenth birthdays within a few months of each other, dancing around whatever their friendship was leading to beside streams, on top of haystacks and under the sun in midday fields.
Beth’s lips were slightly parted, breathing in the sunlight. He leaned towards her, instinctively aiming to steal a kiss. One eye opened, she glimpsed him an inch away from her face, then sprung up, laughing.
“Race you to those trees,” she said, pointing to a sorry-looking clump of silver birches at the base of a shallow rise in the ground some twenty yards away.
One boot off, one still on with a half-loosened lace, Robert scrambled to his feet. He ran a few steps, then stood on his flapping lace and sprawled to the ground. Beth’s shoulders shook with laughter, pressing a hand against her stomach to hold it in. Propping himself up on one elbow, Robert screamed at himself inside but forced a smile, flushed red with inward anger and outward embarrassment.
“Come on,” Beth said, taking his hand. She started to pull him to his feet, but with a gentle tug he pulled her down towards him. Feigning immense weakness, she let her legs buckle and laid down beside him in the shade of the silver birch. Their eyes met and this time didn’t stray. She lifted her head and their lips met. The kiss was a peck, but another followed. Her eyes glistened and he kissed her again. Robert turned onto his back, their shoulders touching as they looked up at the tree. A bullfinch nesting in the upper branches let out its call.
“They don’t live long, these trees,” Robert said.
“Aye?”
“Silver birches, at least these ones, won’t last. Look at the bark”. And he pointed out brackets of white fungus that embossed the trunk. “Heart-rot”.
“What a terrible thing to call it”.
“Well, I didn’t think of it. That’s what it’s called”.
“No, I mean hearts don’t rot, do they? So, it’s a silly name for fungus”.
A memory of finding a corpse of a cat dug up by a fox in the high field, disembowelled and headless, half decayed, flashed across his thoughts. The heart was small and ripped away. The remains lay beside it, swarmed with ants. “Well, it depends how you look at it,” he conceded.
“How do you look at it, then?” she said, a finger tracing the outline of a heart on the chest of his shirt. Fingertips strayed between the buttons, gently brushing the downy hair. “You’re getting hair on your chest,” she added.
...
They lay under the tree, hands clasped together, lips meeting occasionally. Both scared to be misinterpreted or rejected by the other, they each let the prickly heat of desire envelop them like a blanket, an itch they didn’t yet know how to scratch. Neither were they sure they wanted to. Robert squeezed her hand and looked up at the leaves, swaying almost imperceptibly in the breeze. Beth squeezed him back, her woman’s body stirring for the boy that pulsed beside her.
“See those patterns on the leaves?” he said.
“Little swirls”.
“Aye. That’s the larvae. Baby insects mining the layers of the leaves, eating them under the surface”.
“That’s horrible”.
“Why?”
“Waiting under the surface, eating their way out, all hidden? That’s horrible,” she grimaced.
“It’s nature. It’s all horrible. And beautiful at the same time”.
“Know what else is beautiful?”
“What?”
“Me!” she beamed gleefully. And she was. Oh yes, she was.
...