The Kite

From the top of the hill two kites were flying. They moved out, curvetting in the wind, over the belt of trees at the bottom of the slope, over the town itself, then on almost to the curved yellow sea-beach.

A small boy, perhaps ten years old, stood in an upper street and watched them. To an onlooker they might have seemed frames of wood and paper, but he knew better – for hadn’t he held the cord of one an hour before? Once he had seen a picture of a kite – this time an ugly bird of prey. But these had an entirely different life. The kite was like a snail’s eye on an elongated stalk, vibrating in the air, a link with another existence where there was only wind and sunlight.

He thought none of this clearly for there were no words to say clearly what was in his mind. Surely he could get one of these miraculous things that rose twisting in their will to be free and gave power and sureness to whoever held them. The big boy had only let him hold it for a moment, but he had known himself changed, felt the wind blowing in him.

Slowly he trudged back through the suburbs past unsold allotments, houses with paint-smears on empty windows. A tumble-down shed and junk- yard lay at the edge of the lived-in part, with a notice above the gate – ‘Old Iron and Bottles bought here’. Then at the corner of his own street a shop in whose window hung a huge kite of yellow paper. Below it – ‘MONSTER Kites for sale. 2/3.’

Tears came in his eyes for he knew he couldn’t buy it. Suddenly he thought of the bottle-man. There were a pile of old bottles in the wash-house. He could sell these and buy the kite.

He ran quickly along the street and in the gate. Soon he came out carrying a sack which jangled each step he took. At the bottle-merchant’s it was strange to see the heap of bottles dissolve into a single silver coin. (‘Half-a’crown and no more,’ said the man, middle-aged in a dusty black coat. ‘Some of them bottles were chipped.’)

The kite was taller than he was, and tapped on the ground as he carried it. Into the garden he went and hid it behind a trunk in the shed. No-one would guess he had it; tomorrow it would fly from the summit on the hill out overpage 3 the curved yellow sea-beach.

His mother called him from the house. ‘John! Where are you? Come in at once!’ His father, a thick-set red-faced man, was coming in the gate. He went into the house.

. . . That night he dreamed that he was flying the kite from the top of a high cliff. The wind grew stronger and stronger till he was lifted off his feet and carried out above a shining sea. Strangely, he had no fear. Suddenly the kite became a great grey bird swooping towards him. He tried desperately to escape but was falling entangled in the cord while the monstrous bird grew nearer. Then a cord broke . . . and he woke to hear the rain beating on the roof.

Next morning, however, was fine and windy weather. As he sat at breakfast a van stopped at the gate, and the driver, a man in a dusty black coat, walked up to the front door. His mother rose, went out, and after a few words came back. ‘It’s the bottle-man,’ she said. ‘Have we got anything to sell him?’

‘I’ve a heap of old bottles out the back,’ said his father. ‘Just a minute and I’ll see about it.’ He left the room.

His face was hot. He saw the bottle-man pass the window out to the van. He waited. His father came back into the room – carrying the kite. ‘Every damn bottle’s gone! And how did this get here? Do you know about it, John?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he said slowly.

‘Oh, you don’t? And where did this kite come from?’ ‘I don’t know.’

‘And you haven’t touched the bottles?’ ‘No.’

‘So the man’s a liar is he? – and so am I!’

The father’s face grew more red with anger. A little vein stood out on his temple. He put the kite over his knee and broke it. Twice.

‘You’d thieve my bottles to buy yourself a kite. Come here, and I’ll show you.’

He reached out for the belt that hung by the mantle-piece. The kite would not fly now.

1942? (2)