Read Online Five Boys by Mick Jackson - Free Book Online

just as empty and no building more than a five-minute walk away.
    For a while the two boys sat in silence, each stumped by the other’s stupidity.
    “Have you ever been up Cleopatra’s Needle?” Aldred said eventually.
    “I don’t think so,” said Bobby.
    Aldred shook his head and a coy smile played upon his lips. Bobby was a stranger in his own city.
    “You should,” he said.
    Miss Minter had poured out the milk but decided to give the boys a couple of minutes on their own before barging back in. So she stood in the hall, like an old maid, with a glass of milk warming in each hand, and listened to Aldred’s incredible confidence being pitted against Bobby’s modesty, as the Devonian told the Londoner all about Cleopatra’s Needle, its incredible vistas and its fateful journey to the Embankment all those years ago.

Anxious Hands
    B OBBY STOOD in the lane, wondering which drainpipe to tap on. He had a map in his hand that Aldred had drawn for him. The same penciled line that had wiggled around the streets of London wiggled up and down the village’s lanes. It had led Bobby to Aldred’s own terrace of cottages without any trouble, but the note at the bottom, telling him to “tap on pipe,” failed to specify which one. So Bobby stood and puzzled over the choice of drainpipes. Then he stepped up to the nearest one and raised his fist when a window swung open above him and Aldred appeared.
    “Wait there,” he whispered. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
    He was about to close the window but stopped and looked back down at Bobby. “You’re not scared of heights, are you?” he said.
    Bobby had been so scared on so many different occasions that it would have taken him hours to sift through them all.
    “I don’t think so,” he said.
    Aldred nodded. “I knew it,” he said and disappeared.
    When he emerged he had on his head a balaclava which was so old and stretched that it gathered in folds on the collar of his coat. He adjusted it so that he could see where he was going, slipped his arm through Bobby’s and led him off down the lane. He wanted to know if his map had beenuseful … told Bobby he could keep it … said that sometimes he would just sit and draw maps of made-up places—places that nobody else had heard about. The only time he stopped talking was when he climbed up onto a garden wall and began plucking plums from a tree and stuffing them into his jacket pockets.
    “Ammo,” he whispered, then jumped back down.
    The light was fading and the village was deserted but when they got to the war memorial Aldred suddenly dropped to the ground. He dragged Bobby down next to him, slowly crawled around the memorial’s stone base, checked up and down the lane, then sprinted over to the church gates, bent double, as if some sniper in one of the nearby cottages had him in his sights. When he waved at Bobby to follow he put his head down and sprinted just as Aldred had done a few seconds before. Then they crouched by the gates, Aldred checked the lanes again, pushed the gate open and ushered Bobby in.
    Bobby had felt no inclination to visit the graveyard in broad daylight and was trying to remember why on earth he had agreed to go creeping around it so close to dark. The church stood before him like a rock face, the graveyard was full of shadowy sumps and when Aldred left the gravel path to weave between the tombs and headstones Bobby followed only because he didn’t want to be left on his own.
    Aldred raced ahead. Bobby tried to take a shortcut but got stuck in a gravestone cul-de-sac and by the time he found his way out and caught up with him, Aldred was standing over a headstone in a billowing cloud of his own steam.
    “I’ll just give old Wenlock a rinse,” he said and winked at Bobby. “It keeps the ivy off him.”
    Bobby had already discovered that being out in the country meant a boy could urinate more or less at will, but to do so on the grave of a dead man seemed to be just asking for trouble.