Read Online Shoes for Anthony by Emma Kennedy - Free Book Online

have to get dressed up to give my father baccy,’ I said, frowning.
    â€˜Well …’ said Alf, with a small smirk. ‘There might be other people in the house.’
    Ahead of us there was a commotion. Raised voices. A sound of tearing. I jumped down from the pavement and stood out in the middle of the street so I could see up through the line of sheets. Ade, Fez and Bozo had leapt out on Emrys and his team. They were all strutting about pretending to be Hitler. Emrys was on the floor, trying to extricate himself from a sheet. Captain Pugh was blowing his whistle.
    â€˜You lot better scarper,’ said Alf, adjusting his cap. ‘Before old Pughsy blows a gasket. I’ll be off in, then. Ta-ra.’
    â€˜Ta-ra,’ I said, watching him walk on to our front door. He stood for a moment, knocked twice on the doorframe, and then disappeared inside.
    I looked back up the street towards Ade and the others. They were being chased in circles by Emrys, but the boys were pulling down sheets as they went. It was chaos.
    â€˜Come on, Ant!’ yelled Ade, sprinting towards me. ‘They’ll have us!’
    Fez and Bozo were hard behind him, and then I saw Emrys, emerging from a wave of floating sheets, red-faced and furious. I didn’t need asking twice. I turned on my heels and ran.
    The den was beneath the Big Stone that faced south over the valley. On a clear day, Fez reckoned you could see all the way to Cardiff, but I wasn’t so sure. We’d seen lights from bombing raids, but that was different from actually seeing the city. All the same, it was a grand viewing platform. Behind us towered the peak of our mountain and, beyond that, a mighty panorama of rolling green. The Big Stone was a large, flat-faced boulder, a relic from a long-ago rockfall that had embedded itself in an upright position. Beneath it was a shallow hollow that someone, probably a shepherd, had once built up with smaller stones. It had a weather-beaten wooden roof, but to mend the holes, Ade and I had covered it with planks we’d found by the coal tips. It was our place, now.
    Inside, we had two wooden planks resting on three upturned tin buckets we’d nicked from the back of the Men’s Club. They all had T.M.C. painted on the side, but nobody had ever asked after them, so we reckoned they’d been chucked out for salvage and forgotten about. We had a few wooden crates, too. One for sticks set aside for whittling, and another for mountain treasure: a sheep’s skull, a few jaw bones, a clay pipe we’d dug up by the stream, an old bottle – green with a marble inside the neck – an atlas we’d found, and a lump of fool’s gold we used to start fires.
    Tucked at the back of the den, we had an old biscuit tin that was used to keep sandwiches in. If we were lucky, Fez might bring up a bag of toffees sent by an aunt who lived somewhere near Reading. She’d married a doctor, right posh, like, and was given to sending unexpected parcels. Fez had seen their house, once. It had a garden front and back and a bath you didn’t have to carry. I hardly ever got to have sweets, but if Mam was feeling generous, she’d spoon some sugar into a cone and let me have it. She’d squeeze lemon juice into it, and I’d sit, legs dangling off the Big Stone, licking the sharp sweet sugar off my finger. Sweets were a rarity, these days, what with rationing being so tight.
    â€˜You still got a Hitler moustache, man,’ said Fez, pointing towards Ade. ‘If the Mozzies see you, you’re done for.’
    Ade put a hand to his top lip and rubbed. ‘They can’t see it from up b’there, man!’ He threw his other arm up towards the clouds.
    â€˜They can,’ said Fez, pulling an army knife from his pocket. ‘They’ve got magnifiers. For when they’re doing the bombing runs. Pilot looks down, sees Hitler’s moustache. He’s not going to take