Kirkby Fold, by Eric Hebden

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Ronnie Clegg was fourteen when he took the job as telegraph messenger at the post office in Kirkby Fold, in the summer of 1940, and he was proud of it for exactly a week. He had a red bicycle with the crown painted on the frame, a leather pouch on a belt and a pillbox hat that his mother had to stitch inside so that it would not slide over his eyes. He knew every lane within four miles and could ride the hill to Low Ings without standing on the pedals, which no other boy could do. Then the casualty telegrams began. Ronnie learned that women watched him from their windows as he came down a street, and that some of them went inside and shut the door, as if that would keep him away. He took to whistling as he rode when the message was an ordinary one, a birthday or a cattle price, so that the street would know. When it was not, he rode in silence and stood at the gate a moment longer than he needed, straightening his tunic, before he knocked.

List five things you learn about Ronnie Clegg in this extract.