Title: Barrels

Author: DCWash

Characters: Allan, Annie, and Seth

Disclaimer: All characters belong to BBC/Tiger Aspect

Rating: E for Everybody.

Spoilers: None, really.

Length: 2728 words

Summary: Allan babysits. 'Nuff said.

Allan was engaged in the type of work he enjoyed least. Not that he "enjoyed" any work, but tending to the beer barrels in his new cellar was both tedious and exacting—tedious in that it didn't take a lot of thought or imagination to move one barrel from one place and put it in another before doing the same with the next barrel, exacting in that the barrels were heavy and he had to be maneuvered carefully. He had two goals at once: to agitate the freshest barrels so the still-brewing contents would be correctly distributed, and to order the barrels in such a way that the ones with the nearest "sell-by dates" were most accessible. If one got away from him and rolled hard into the wall, it could smash to pieces and he would lose all that work and all those potential sales. If the stack shifted, it could collapse on top of him, and while being buried by beer may sound appealing in theory, it's different when you're faced with the reality of it. There was a genuine element of danger to it, which made it that much more stressful.

The whole thing, combined with the more vague worries it generated, made Allan snappish. Annie had left him to it: she thought it better to make her daily run to Winifred the baker, where they took the yeast left over from the brewing process and Winifred gave them fresh bread in return, than to stick around and get into a knock-down fight. Allan was supposed to be babysitting Seth while she was out, but as far as Allan was concerned, "babysitting" meant going about his business unless and until he heard such a scream that it could only come from a small boy breaking his arm. (Seth was tacitly in agreement with this arrangement but they each, separately, thought it better not to speak of it to Annie.)

Allan hadn't heard a peep from Seth for a while, which, if he had enough thought to spare from his own concerns about beer—have I made enough? have I made too much and it will go to waste? will this new cellar actually make a difference?—would give him pause right about now. It could be, though, because Seth was banned from the immediate vicinity and so was out of earshot. Technically, the cellar was no cellar at all, though it served that purpose. Instead, it was a cave Allan's escaped pig had uncovered while rooting around, and that Allan had expanded by paying some of the neighborhood lads who were eating their parents out of house and home food and beer to widen the opening and dig out the floor, giving the room more height. Nottingham was riddled with caves that people used for making malt and storing beer and Annie was thrilled at the prospect of having something similar to work with, especially once Allan attached a shed to the entrance and called it a brewhouse. But she thought it no place for Seth—besides the question of the safety of the barrels, if the gallumping great boys who dug out the cave were fascinated at the thought of exploring it, then she was sure an intrepid and self-reliant five-year-old who was about the right size to fit into the crevice in the back would find it irresistible.

At about the point where Allan should have been wondering what Seth was up to, he heard some pings and patters and light thumps and a familiar tuneless humming, and he realized Seth was in the other end of the brewhouse. Officially, he wasn't supposed to go in there, either, at least not without an adult, but Allan thought he'd let it slide rather than interrupt the delicate operation he was involved with. Between getting the bottom barrels to the top and the top barrels to the bottom, and working them all around the empty barrels on the other side, he didn't have a lot of room to maneuver.

The humming and thumping came closer. When Allan looked up, Seth was in the doorway.

"Seth? Out. Now." Allan hoped he sounded authoritative.

"Dum de dum de dum de dummm….." Seth sat on the stop step and bounced down to the next one on his rear. And then to the next one.

"Seth, I mean it! You know you're not supposed to be in here! Now go out and play!" Allan was occupied with a long rod, trying to nudge a barrel in the right direction.

"Dum dum dumm dUUUUUm de dum…" Seth wasn't saying the words, but his whole demeanor was an expression of, "I wonder how far I can go with this?" with a soupcon of "You're not the boss of me!"

By now he was over at the pyramid of empty barrels. He put his hands on the bottom one, as if assaying how steady it was. It may have been Allan's imagination, but he thought he saw the stack shift.

"Alright! That's IT! You're coming with me!"

Allan was by Seth's side in two strides and had him by the arm and up the steps seconds later. Seth was astonished, so astonished that he didn't start wriggling until they were in the house. Allan opened the door next to the kitchen and flung Seth in (if "flung" is the word for the relatively gentle action Allan took) and said, "There! You sit on that bed, and you're not coming out until I'm finished or your mother comes home! You understand me?" And he latched the door behind him before heading back to the cellar, fuming the whole way.

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When Annie got home she went to hang her cloak in the storeroom she and Seth slept in, and found Seth sitting on the edge of her bed, legs dangling, head bowed, and sniffling.

"Seth! What's wrong?" She was alarmed. He did his share of crying and moping, but no more than that, and he generally liked to run off to a hidey-hole he had created in the barn when he did.

"Allan's mad at me," he half mumbled, half whimpered.

This was a new one. She trusted Allan, but really, how well did she know him? What could he do if a child got irritating enough?

"Tell me what happened." She tried to keep her voice calm but at the same time looked Seth over for cuts and bruises, just in case.

"He was doing stuff with the beer...and…and…I tried to help…and he got mad…and he yelled at me, really loud! And he pulled my arm, hard! And he made me stay here for hour and hours and hours! And all I wanted to do was help!" Snuffle. Seth looked at Annie with hope and trepidation. And maybe a little guilt?

Well, then. "He was working with the barrels?"

"Um…yes." His head started hanging again.

"In the cellar?"

"Yes," Seth whispered. He didn't look up this time.

"All right." She gave him a hug. "Come on. Let's wash your face."

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"Allan."

Allan looked up from trying to wedge a barrel into place and saw Annie in the door of the cave.

"What happened with you and Seth this afternoon?"

Oh, so THAT'S how it's going to be, is it? Accusations…suspicions…and in my own home! When I'm the one she left in charge!

"Look, Annie, you know he's not supposed to be in here! You made that rule yourself! But he came in anyway, right when I'm doing the most dangerous bit, and he would not leave, even thought I gave him plenty of chances. He started climbing on the barrels and I couldn't have that, so I took him back to the house and told him to stay there. And I'm sorry if he's upset but what's done is done and he'll have to get used to it. That's the way it goes when I'm in charge." He reminded her of Seth, except that he sounded defensive more than guilty.

"All right." And she got up to leave.

"What? That's it?" Annie was protective of Seth—over-protective, to Allan's mind—and he was surprised she hadn't lit into a tongue-lashing. Her calm didn't make sense. He didn't see that it was a calm she had to fight to maintain.

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"I dunno." Allan had worked himself into such a state of shame and self-justification since The Incident that he half wanted to be punished himself to clear it all out. And now Annie was acting like nothing had happened! "You mean you believe me?"

She sat down on the same step Seth had sat on earlier.

"Why shouldn't I believe you? I came home, and there was Seth, crying…"

Crying! Oh, God!

:…so I asked him what was wrong. He said he had been in the cellar—which he knows he's not supposed to do—when you were working with the barrels—which he knows is dangerous—and that you got angry and took him back to the house. He tends to exaggerate but he's not a flat-out liar—he said he had been there for 'hours and hours and hours' but I hadn't been gone 'hours and hours and hours,' so I knew that part wasn't right. But he didn't say you beat him or anything, and his story matches yours (if you read between the lines) so as far as I'm concerned, that's that."

"'That's that?' But….he's crying! I didn't mean to make the little bugger cry!" Allan wasn't looking at Annie but over her shoulder, towards the house, as if he could picture the poor little ragged orphan child huddled on a dirty pile of straw in a blackened room, sobbing piteously at the injustices of the world. (Forget that Seth wasn't any more ragged than any other country boy, was only half an orphan, and that Annie kept his straw pallet scrupulously clean.) Allan was obviously quite distressed, maybe more distressed than Seth was by this time.

"Maybe he should cry. He's a normal little boy, not a saint, and though I love him more than life itself I'll be the first to admit he can be naughty on occasion. This sounds like one of those occasions. You were the adult, he was the child; like you said, you were in charge, he disobeyed you, you punished him for it. End of story. You did what you should."

This whole conversation was going in just about the opposite direction from the way either Annie or Allan had anticipated. Annie was taking the hard line; Allan was sympathizing with Seth. A mumbled "But…he's crying!" was the only way he could respond.

"Allan!" God, but this man could be exasperating! "I'm trying to give you a compliment, man! You didn't take a horsewhip to him, you didn't tie him up, you didn't lock him in a blackened tool shed! You sent him to his room for being naughty! What did your father do when you were naughty?"

"He'd aim a horseshoe at my head."

That brought Annie up short, because…well, how do you answer that? You shift the subject, that's how.

"Seth's not used to making you angry. But to tell the truth, for a man who knows so little about children, you're pretty good at this."

"'This'?"

"This…thing. With him." Instinctively, neither of them wanted to use the "fatherhood" word—Annie thought that was going too far and Allan wasn't nearly ready for that kind of responsibility. "He adores you! It wasn't what you did that made him cry, Allan. It was the fact that you did it." How did I get from comforting Seth to comforting Allan? "Think of that hobby horse you made for him!"

"It's just a stick with some sacking on the end…." But at least he looked less disconsolate.

"And you always give him a boost up when he tries to climb the chestnut tree out front. Always! I don't know how you're not sick of it by now. I would be."

There was a now-familiar bumping sound emanating from the brewhouse, and a second later, the top of a little black-haired head peeked through the doorway behind.

"Seth?" Annie stood up and went to him, urging him forward. "Don't you have something to tell Allan?"

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, not looking up.

"I don't think Mr. a Dale can hear you? What did you say? And look him in the eye when you say it." She gave him a nudge.

"I'm sorry I was bad." Seth said clearly. He didn't look happy, but he did what Annie said.

"Well…Don't do it again," Allan replied, rather lamely. He half-heartedly waggled a finger at Seth and felt a total fool for doing so.

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An hour or so later, it was Allan's turn to poke his head shyly through a doorway. Seth was finishing up his supper and was--Allan was surprised to see--acting as if nothing had happened. "Pssst! Mate! I got something for you!"

Seth dashed outside, with Annie following more slowly, and found Allan standing rather proudly next to an empty, scrubbed-out barrel, lying on its side with both caps removed.

Seth eyed it curiously. Annie eyed it dubiously. "It sprung a slow leak and I shifted the beer that was in it," he explained to her. "It could hold flour or we could use it for firewood, but we don't especially need to…." He shrugged and smiled one of those ingratiating smiles he was so good at. Annie was about to ask what Seth could possibly do with an old barrel, but by the time Allan had finished Seth had already crawled through it like it was a tunnel and climbed astride like it was a horse. She looked Allan over. As much as it may surprise him, he really was good at this thing.

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But events after supper caused Annie's high opinion to waver.

She was puttering around, alone in the house and enjoying the rare quiet and privacy, when she heard a shriek that put her heart in her throat and almost made her break the cup she was wiping. She ran outside, sure she would find Seth with, at the least, a mouthful of broken teeth, but all she saw was a barrel rolling down the road…and Allan trotting along ahead of it.

"Seth! Where is he? What happened? What happened?" she panted.

Allan had caught the barrel by that time and looked rather sheepish.

"We're just having some fun."

Her heart was still knocking when she heard a muffled giggle emanate from the barrel.

Her mouth dropped open.

"Are you rolling my son down that hill in a barrel?"

More giggles. The original shriek had obviously been one of glee, not of pain and terror.

"Yeah! What's wrong with that?"

"It's dangerous, that's what!"

"Aw, Annie! C'mon! I'm here to catch him. That's the rules of the game—he pushes the barrel up the slope, climbs in, I push him off, and then we race to the bottom. If I get there first, I catch him. If I don't…."

"If you don't, he could get hurt! Seth, get out of that barrel right now!"

"But, Annie! Getting hurt while you're having fun…well, that's the whole point of being a boy! Ain't that right, Seth?" Allan gave the barrel a little backwards kick to emphasize the point.

"That's right, mate!" More giggles and a thump that echoed the kick confirmed the answer.

"Seth! Show some respect for your elders!"

"Sorry!" But enough of his head poked through the end that Annie could see Seth was smiling, though hopefully a bit chastened.

Seth was smiling. Allan was smiling. She looked up the road at the hill they had come down—it really wasn't very steep at all. She looked down the road—it sloped just as gently the other way, so the barrel couldn't roll forever. And if it ran off the road altogether? It would get bogged down in a muddy field.

Annie, hand on hip, opened her mouth as if to say something sharp and biting, but instead turned on her heel and stalked off back towards the house, muttering something about, "As if taking care of ONE little boy wasn't enough…."

And Allan bent over to the end of the barrel and whispered, "So, Seth, can I try it this time?"