Read Online The Runaway Summer by Nina Bawden - Free Book Online Page A

close: it was almost as if he had been listening. She said, ‘Come on now, it’s all right, he’s gone.’
    She put out her hand towards him and, rather to her surprise, he took it and let her help him up. Standing, he was almost as tall as she was, though thinner; his wrists and the bones of his face so small and delicate that she felt clumsy. She sat him on the steps and washed him with the sea water from the bucket and her handkerchief.
    She said, ‘I expect you’re hungry. The first thing, I’ll have to get you something to eat. Not much, because you’ve been sick, just a little something to settle you. I expect it was the boat made you sick; I once went in a boat to France and I wassick all the time. And sometimes I’m sick for no reason at all, just over-excitement, Aunt Alice says, and it’s better up than down. You’ll feel better when you’ve had a little sleep. You could have a little sleep in the hut, I could put towels on the floor to be comfy, and then I’ll have to think what to do, because you don’t want to go to prison and be sent back to Pakistan, do you? So you’ll have to be good and stay quiet and not make any noise and try not to be scared …’
    She rang out her handkerchief in the pail. He looked cleaner now and he didn’t smell so badly, but his shirt was wet and the evening wind was flattening it against his chest and making him shiver …’
    She said, ‘You’d better get out of that shirt. Wearing wet clothes is asking for trouble. I could give you my jersey. It’ll be big on you, but it’ll keep you warm …’
    He was watching her steadily and she sighed. It was no good talking. He couldn’t understand, and it didn’t really help her, either: it just put off the awful moment when she would have to decide what to do.
    She turned away from him to empty the bucket and to spread out her handkerchief to dry on the stones. The sun had gone now, leaving a pale, candle-yellow light, stretched out thin on the horizon. The rest of the sky had filled up with small, puffed clouds, so that it looked mottled, like marble. It must be nearly supper time, and she would be expected home. If she was only ten minutes late, Aunt Alice would worry, and if Aunt Alice was worried, she was quite capable of telephoning the police.
    Mary caught her breath and turned back to the boy.
    He had taken off his jacket and was unbuttoning his shirt.
    For a second, the significance of this didn’t reach her mind, which was busy with the problem of Aunt Alice and the police.
    Then she said, thunder-struck, ‘You heard me. All the time .’
    He didn’t answer. His small face was expressionless as he slipped off his shirt and held out his thin, shivery hand for her jersey. It wasn’t until she had taken it off and given it to him and he had pulled it over his head, that he finally spoke.
    He said, ‘I am not from Pakistan.’
    Mary looked at him with her mouth open.
    He said, ‘I am from Kenya. My name is Krishna Patel. And I am a British Subject.’
    He stood up, wearing her jersey, and looking, not thin and frightened anymore, but rather angry and proud, and suddenly Mary began to get angry too. He was such a cheat! She thought of all the things she had said to him—silly, gentle, soothing things that she would never have dreamed of saying to anyone who could understand her—and felt cold and humiliated.
    She said, ‘I think you’re rotten! That was a rotten, mean, sneaky thing to do!’
    She took a threatening step towards him, but he didn’t back away, just stood quite still, his eyes widening with surprise.
    She said, ‘What did you do it for? Pretending …’ but there was no time for him to answer her, because at that moment Simon appeared, bursting on them suddenly from the space between the huts. He was panting for breath and so pale that the freckles stood