Blurb: Evy Miller thinks a summer with her grandparents in sleepy Dorset will be painfully dull. Her suspicions are confirmed when Juby, a wild-haired, lanky old man, strolls through her grandparents' doorway. At first, she thinks he’s nothing more than an odd duck who charms her grandmother and annoys her grandfather. The last thing she expects is to become his companion on visits to the small village of Rouklye, whose entire population was evicted during WWII.
She has no idea that the reason for Juby’s visits will become a defining moment in her life and change her understanding of history and her own family forever.
Purchase Link - https://books2read.com/u/bwBNZy
In this extract, Midge is at her grandmother, Inger’s, shop. Midge has been sent to stay with her grandparents for the summer while her parents are away for work. She thinks she’s in for the most boring summer of her life.
‘Midge, we have a visitor!’
The shop door sprang back and the hyperactive brass bell drowned out the thud of forehead smacking lintel. The incredibly tall man’s knees folded and he staggered in clutching his head, one leg trying to walk away from him. If he’d been a character in a comic he would have had a halo of stars whizzing round his head. Inger jumped back from the window and threw a chair under the graceless giant just in time to stop him crashing to the floor.
‘Juby Bench, how many years have I had this shop?’
He groaned. ‘Please, not a quiz, spare me, woman.’
‘And how many times have you banged your head on that door?’
‘Can’t remember, it’s all that banging me head on the bleedin’ door.’
He removed his hand from his forehead and looked at it. There was nothing in it, but on his brow there was a reversed OU where it had rushed at the embossed MIND YOUR HEAD above the door.
‘Bloody country. Everything’s so low here.’
‘Sit quiet a moment,’ Inger commanded.
‘I thought I was.’ He scowled about him. The shop interior must have seemed very dull after the brilliant light outside. He peered Midge’s way through the comparative gloom. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Midge,’ Inger said. ‘She’s staying with us for a while.’
‘Midge?’
‘Midge Miller, my granddaughter from Winchester. Midge, come and meet Mr. Bench.’
‘Juby,’ the old man said. ‘Just Juby.’
As she approached he raised his rump two inches off the chair and extended a startlingly long arm. The wrist on the end of the startlingly long arm was like a dog’s favorite bone, while the palm that swamped hers was as smooth as a piece of worn old leather that’s been left out in the sun. The knobbly fingers closed lightly but firmly, jerked her hand up and down twice, and withdrew. Then Juby Bench sat back and studied her.
‘Does she look like your girl?’ he asked.
‘She has her height,’ Inger said. ‘And Kristin’s eyes, I think. Not her nose, though. That’s all her own.’
‘Don’t talk to me about noses,’ Juby Bench said.
Inger laughed. So did he. Obviously an old joke between them. His nose wasn’t one you could ignore. Midge had always been self-conscious about her own nose, but hers was positively petite beside his great beak. His eyes had not left her. Very pale gray eyes. Unnerving, the way they examined her.
‘Midge, was it?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Like the insect?’
‘Lost none of your charm over the past year, I see,’ Inger said to him.
He ignored this. ‘Why would anyone call their daughter Midge?’
‘It’s a nickname.’ Inger again.
‘Nickname?’
‘She was a very small toddler.’
‘She’s not a toddler now, or small. What’s your given name?’ he asked Midge.
‘Evy,’ said Inger.
He flashed her an annoyed glance. ‘Doesn’t the girl have a tongue?’
‘You’re making her uncomfortable, can’t you see?’
‘Me? Making her uncomfortable?’ To Midge: ‘I’m not, am I?’
He was, but she wasn’t going to admit it. ‘No.’
‘Midge,’ he murmured, turning the name over in his mouth like a boiled sweet he wasn’t sure about. He shook his head. ‘Nah. Doesn’t fit. Not the young lady I see before me. I’ll call you Evy. Much better.’
‘She might not want you to call her Evy,’ Inger said.
The exceedingly pale eyes drilled a silent question into Midge’s own. She shrugged off-handedly. She didn’t care what he called her; just wished he’d stop looking at her that way.
‘How’s the head?’ Inger asked their visitor, tactfully obliging him to release her granddaughter from his gimlet gaze.
‘Oh, wonderful,’ he replied. ‘If it belonged to someone else.’
Midge escaped to her shelves while she had the chance. From there, watching the pair of them between and around books, she saw Inger reach out and touch the old man’s cheek, a cheek of white bristles, very delicately, like someone attempting Braille for the first time.
‘Why so late this year, old fella?’ Almost a whisper.
‘Less of the old,’ he said.
‘You’re usually here before now.’
‘I’ve been a bit…’
‘A bit what?’
‘Under the weather.’
‘Oh, nothing serious, I hope.’
‘If it was, you think I’d tell you? You’d send me straight to bed with a thermometer and a bunch of grapes.’
‘But you’re staying to the end of the month?’
‘Can’t say.’
‘You’re not usually so vague either.’
Juby Bench gripped his knees to ease himself upward. His joints creaked as he rose. On his feet, he was forced to stoop in the low room, the ceiling flattening his unruly shock of wiry gray hair. He settled his jaw on one shoulder and his lips moved as though preparing to pass words, but then clamped shut. His eyes cut across to Midge, who tried to look engrossed in her work. He wants to tell Gran something, she thought, something personal, but he can’t with me here.
It wasn’t that. It was nothing like that. But it would be several days before she discovered what was on Juby Bench’s mind, and then she would be sworn to secrecy, unable to share it with anyone. Anyone at all.
AUTHOR BIO MICHAEL LAWRENCE has written and published a great many books, but he's done a few other too. For instance, after leaving art school he began training as a graphic designer in a London studio before morphing into a photographer. As a photographer he took pictures for advertising agencies, publishers and newspapers, of pop stars and politicians, of fashion models and underwear, and many other kinds of people and things besides. He also worked in a travelling circus for a little while, and has been an antiques dealer, co-owned two art galleries, and made hundreds of paintings, drawings and experimental digital images. One of his private joys is recording songs (many of which he's written) under the alias Aldous U.
As a writer he's won the odd award, had books translated into twenty or so languages (one of which - 'Young Dracula' - was the inspiration for five BBC-TV series), has shuffled onto stages at literary festivals, and been interviewed on TV and radio. 'There's more,' he says, 'but I don't want to bore you. There's a lot of me in the Rainey novels, but I'm not saying which bits.'
Social Media Links – https://www.youtube.com/@michaellawrenceswordspictu8659
