Chapters (28)
“You are hiding that book, right?” he asked. This discussion was disquieting enough; thought of having the same discussion with Jemmy made his stomach turn over.
“Yes,” she assured him. “I was hiding it in the bottom of my sketchbox, but even Mandy knows how to open that now.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t be interested. I mean, it’s not got a title or pictures …”
She shot him a sharp glance.
“Don’t you believe it. Kids snoop. I mean, maybe you didn’t, being a goody-good preacher’s lad …” She was laughing at him, but dead serious underneath. “But I went through my parents’ stuff all the time. I mean, I knew what size my mother’s brassieres and panties were.”
“Well, that would have been well worth knowing … No, I did, too,” he admitted. “Not about the Reverend’s underpants—he wore long johns, with buttons, year-round—but I learned a lot of really interesting things I wasn’t supposed to know, mostly about the Reverend’s congregation. He gave me my dad’s letters from the War when I was about thirteen—but I’d read them two or three years before, from his desk.”
“Really?” she said, diverted. “Did you wear long johns with buttons, too?”
“Me and every other young lad in Inverness in the 1940s. You know how cold it gets up there in winter—but actually, when I was about thirteen, I found a trunk of my dad’s old RAF uniform stuff that they’d sent home when he—disappeared.” He swallowed, stabbed by the unexpected memory of the last time—and it was the last, he was sure—he’d seen his father. “There were a few pairs of underpants amongst the other things; the Reverend told me the fliers called them ‘shreddies,’ God knows why—but they looked like what you’d call boxer shorts. I took to wearing those, in the summers.”
“Shreddies,” she said, tasting the word with pleasure. “I’m not sure whether I’d rather see you in those or in the button-front long johns. Anyway, I’ve been hiding it in Da’s study. Everybody’s afraid to mess around in there—except Mama, and I suppose I ought to show this to her, anyway. When I’ve thought it out a little further.”
“To be honest, I think seeing whatever you’re writing would give your da the absolute whim-whams.”
“Like the whole thing doesn’t anyway.”
And he’s not the only one, Roger thought. A cool draft of rain-scented air from the window touched his back.
“Ye told me that when a scientist makes a hypothesis, the next thing to do is test it, right?”
“Yes.”
“If ye think of a way to test this one … don’t tell me, aye?”