Read Online The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson - Free Book Online
Authors: Deborah Lawrenson
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it, but it was fun to dream.
I f there was ever any trouble caused by our free-ranging activities, and in those we were no different from any of the other children in the surrounding countryside, it was inevitably caused by Pierre. He was the one who fell off walls, was injured by loose rocks, and tumbled off a bicycle he stole not knowing its brakes were shot. His thin legs were always notched with cuts, scrapes, and bruises.
Once, he broke his wrist at the abandoned chapel when a cord of ivy failed to hold his weight. Another time, he was bitten by a fox and his hand swelled right up. Next, he went missing for a day and a night until someone heard his cries from a well, the rotten rope he had lowered himself with had frayed and pulled apart, leaving him unable to climb the slippery, moss-covered sides.
“The boy is a liability, a danger to himself,” Papa would say. But he was never as angry as I thought he would be. Nor did anyone seem to consider he might be a danger to others, although, as it turned out, they should have.
I n between his climbing games and insect-torturing interests (my brother had recently acquired an apprentice in the form of a prégadiou , a praying mantis, which had a formidable record as a vicious slayer of butterflies, including the elegant swallowtails that wheeled around the garden; he and the mantis were learning a lot from each other), Pierre had a scam running.
It involved old bits of machinery, screws and bolts, broken pots, odd plates and cups, a framed picture from a raid on the attic. The objects were nothing important in and of themselves; no one ever noticed. Things were always appearing and disappearing; it was a facet of having so many people threading their way through the house, needing things and taking them, forgetting to put them back in the right place.
But these weren’t simply disappearing in the usual way. Pierre was taking the objects and going into town to sell them on market days, when he was supposed to be at school. I don’t think he even bothered to lie about his absence to the schoolmaster, M. Fabre. He told him he was going to market, just like that, and naturally it was assumed that he was working the family stall. This was the country, after all, and it was understood at that time that there were certain students who would not be in the classroom on a market day.
He took these items down to a junk stall, and was allowed to keep the price they fetched in return for a morning working the crowds for the stallholder. And Pierre kept a little bit more than that, as it happened, for the brocanteur was an inveterate tippler and spent most of the morning in the Lou Pastou bar, and wouldn’t have noticed if Pierre had stolen twice as much as he did.
My brother, at that time, was such a charming, cheeky little monkey, with a certain gift for closing sales, that the man must have reckoned that kept him ahead of the game whatever was going on underneath the counter.
Chapter 2
T he summer was dying.
Blackberries crisped on dying brambles and fungus jutted like trays from the trunk of the big garden oak, hard to the touch and caked with dead ants. The trees farther down our hillside were in sharp relief: first the cleared terraces and then the black trees reaching down to the sea that was not a sea.
I showed Dom my dismal discovery in the old swimming pool: a gaping tear at the deep end where the western wall seemed to have broken away.
“Looks almost like the ground’s shifted,” he said. “More damage there, too.” He pointed into the corners.
“Same story with the house.”
Dom was sanguine, as always. We’d get some advice; we’d get it fixed. It was all part of life here. We’d known what we were taking on.
So we paced the garden. If we had a new pool, should it be ten or twelve meters long? How far from the semicircular walled structure that we could keep as a natural focal point? How wide should it be, and how deep?
I wonder now what would have
I f there was ever any trouble caused by our free-ranging activities, and in those we were no different from any of the other children in the surrounding countryside, it was inevitably caused by Pierre. He was the one who fell off walls, was injured by loose rocks, and tumbled off a bicycle he stole not knowing its brakes were shot. His thin legs were always notched with cuts, scrapes, and bruises.
Once, he broke his wrist at the abandoned chapel when a cord of ivy failed to hold his weight. Another time, he was bitten by a fox and his hand swelled right up. Next, he went missing for a day and a night until someone heard his cries from a well, the rotten rope he had lowered himself with had frayed and pulled apart, leaving him unable to climb the slippery, moss-covered sides.
“The boy is a liability, a danger to himself,” Papa would say. But he was never as angry as I thought he would be. Nor did anyone seem to consider he might be a danger to others, although, as it turned out, they should have.
I n between his climbing games and insect-torturing interests (my brother had recently acquired an apprentice in the form of a prégadiou , a praying mantis, which had a formidable record as a vicious slayer of butterflies, including the elegant swallowtails that wheeled around the garden; he and the mantis were learning a lot from each other), Pierre had a scam running.
It involved old bits of machinery, screws and bolts, broken pots, odd plates and cups, a framed picture from a raid on the attic. The objects were nothing important in and of themselves; no one ever noticed. Things were always appearing and disappearing; it was a facet of having so many people threading their way through the house, needing things and taking them, forgetting to put them back in the right place.
But these weren’t simply disappearing in the usual way. Pierre was taking the objects and going into town to sell them on market days, when he was supposed to be at school. I don’t think he even bothered to lie about his absence to the schoolmaster, M. Fabre. He told him he was going to market, just like that, and naturally it was assumed that he was working the family stall. This was the country, after all, and it was understood at that time that there were certain students who would not be in the classroom on a market day.
He took these items down to a junk stall, and was allowed to keep the price they fetched in return for a morning working the crowds for the stallholder. And Pierre kept a little bit more than that, as it happened, for the brocanteur was an inveterate tippler and spent most of the morning in the Lou Pastou bar, and wouldn’t have noticed if Pierre had stolen twice as much as he did.
My brother, at that time, was such a charming, cheeky little monkey, with a certain gift for closing sales, that the man must have reckoned that kept him ahead of the game whatever was going on underneath the counter.
Chapter 2
T he summer was dying.
Blackberries crisped on dying brambles and fungus jutted like trays from the trunk of the big garden oak, hard to the touch and caked with dead ants. The trees farther down our hillside were in sharp relief: first the cleared terraces and then the black trees reaching down to the sea that was not a sea.
I showed Dom my dismal discovery in the old swimming pool: a gaping tear at the deep end where the western wall seemed to have broken away.
“Looks almost like the ground’s shifted,” he said. “More damage there, too.” He pointed into the corners.
“Same story with the house.”
Dom was sanguine, as always. We’d get some advice; we’d get it fixed. It was all part of life here. We’d known what we were taking on.
So we paced the garden. If we had a new pool, should it be ten or twelve meters long? How far from the semicircular walled structure that we could keep as a natural focal point? How wide should it be, and how deep?
I wonder now what would have
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