Read Online The Nickum by Doris Davidson - Free Book Online Page B

supposed he shouldn’t have seen and it would be best to keep his mouth shut about it. He’d been standing on his bed looking out of the skylight in his attic room, when he spotted Gordie Brodie by the coalshed, and at first it looked as if he was having a pee because the privy was occupied, but it soon became clear that he was pushing another person against the wall. Wondering if there was going to be a fight, it had dawned on the boy that the other body was a girl, and the two were so busy kissing they wouldn’t have noticed if a whole army had been watching them. Willie gave a sarcastic snicher. Fancy kissing a girl, soppy devil. Nobody would ever catch him doing a thing like that. He’d no time for girls. His brows came down suddenly, as the lad bent over to lift the lassie’s skirt. She hadn’t been happy about that, though, and lashed out with her feet, twisting her head this way and that to stop further kisses. That was when he saw that the girl was his sister Connie, and he felt quite proud of the fight she was putting up. But what a nerve Brodie had. He wasn’t a gentleman, that was for sure.
    Fascinated, Willie had kept watching until her knee landed full tilt against her attacker’s most delicate parts. Gordie jumped away with a yell, holding himself as Connie made her escape, and her young brother had collapsed on his bed and rolled about with laughter. Although Gramma Fowlie had come in just a few minutes afterwards to tell him to come downstairs for something to eat, and had looked surprised when she heard him gurgling, he didn’t tell her anything.
    Recalling the whole episode, Willie curled up under his bedcovers and soon drifted off into a deep, comfortable sleep in which he dreamed of standing beside Bonnie Prince Charlie and running forward to thrust his claymore deep into the advancing enemy, who all bore an uncanny resemblance to Gordon Brodie.

Chapter Eight
December 1931
    Jake knew exactly how his ten-year-old son felt. He had felt the same when he was that age. A bike made you feel nearly grown-up. Travelling along the roads with the wind blowing in your face and the bushes and trees whizzing past you was just like being on top of the world – no other experience could match it, but there was no money to buy a bike for the laddie. He’d been in a different position himself; having so many cousins of various ages, he got a bike handed down to him at each stage of his growing up – in addition to the hand-me-down clothes that were not quite so welcome to him. His mother had been very grateful for them, though, for money was always short for the Fowlies then, as well.
    The man had been trying for weeks to think of ways to save enough for a bike. Willie was forever harping on about being the only boy he knew that didn’t have a bike, and it would be a grand Christmas present. But no matter what he did or who he asked, nobody had a bicycle for sale or knew where he could get one at a price he could afford. So it was like an answer to a prayer when, clearing out an old shed that had lain unused for some years, he came across the frame of an old Raleigh, left there by some previous cottared man. But further, frantically hopeful searching produced no other parts of the vehicle, full-sized though it was. Jake decided to keep it anyway, for the rest must be lying about somewhere.
    Willie himself had meanwhile been telling those of his chums who possessed a bicycle to keep their ears open. ‘If you hear onybody wantin’ to sell a bike, let me ken,’ were his instructions to them. Malcolm Middleton – Malcie to all and sundry – offered to take him round the rubbish dumps on the back of his bike, and all the neighbouring farmyards, which offer Willie instantly accepted.
    Thus it was that the two boys could be seen, one pedalling and the other seated on the carrier, making the rounds of the places where they might just see an old bike that somebody had thrown out. Their quest was not entirely