Shoes for Anthony (8 page)

‘You were right, Anthony,' said Bopa, balancing her teacup on her forearm. ‘Thomas Evans fractured his ankle. That's twice in two months. He's had another cast put on. Doctor reckons it was the same place as before. Hadn't healed proper, like. It's the lack of red meat. That, and being a right little bastard.'

‘Bopa!' said Mam, stifling a laugh.

‘Well,' said Bopa. ‘Thomas Evans. He's an absolute terror. If it turns out it was him stealing the ration books, I wouldn't bat an eyelid. I watched him once, up the veg patches taking bites out of tomatoes. Didn't pick them off and eat the whole thing like a normal person. Took bites out of them. Like a maggot. He's not normal. I don't know why you like him, Anthony.'

I gave a shrug and leant against the kitchen table.

‘
This isn't an ordinary cell
,' an older woman's voice rang out. ‘
This is the condemned cell. They're going to hang you in the morning.
'

A terrible scream filled the room.

‘I wish they'd turn that down a bit,' said Bopa, with a shiver. ‘I'm going back to an empty house, later!'

‘Might not be empty for long. Bethan reckons there'll be Americans billeted round the valley,' said Mam, wrapping a strand of wool around her finger. ‘P'raps you'll end up with one? Be nice company.'

‘Or more. I've got room for at least two. Maybe three if I have one bunk up with me!' She gave a wink. ‘Can you imagine! Ha!' She threw her head back and gave a deep, throaty laugh.

‘Pipe down in there, you two!' shouted Alwyn. ‘We're trying to listen!'

Bopa raised her eyebrows and leant in to whisper, ‘You know what they say about Americans, though, Em. Gangsters. The lot of 'em. With their rough talk and swaggering ways. We'll have to have our wits about us. Make sure they don't take us for Indians. Try and kill us.'

‘That's cowboys,' I said.

Bopa nudged Mam. ‘Cowboys,' she said. ‘That's it. We'll have to get Ant to whittle us a bow and arrow. Protect ourselves, like.' She laughed again.

I drifted back towards the parlour. Bethan was sitting on the floor, clutching a cushion to her chest. Alwyn was on the sofa, leaning forwards, his head resting in an upturned hand. Father melted into the back of his chair, his fingers locked together, his eyes fixed on the fire.

‘
Got herself mixed up with a thorough-going swine called Philip Gayle. Threw her over for a woman with money. They argued, he chased her out. She took a revolver, told him to beg for mercy. He raised his arms, she shot him. Cold and callous, in a way only a woman can be. After that, she couldn't remember a thing.
'

Behind me, Bopa was still laughing.

‘I wish they'd stop their bloody yapping,' said Alwyn, irritably. ‘I can only hear every other word. Father, tell 'em.'

‘Be quiet, Alwyn,' he said, his voice low and steady. ‘You're making as much noise as they are.'

‘
I'm not lying. I'm not
.'

‘'Ere, Ant,' called Bopa. I turned and looked towards the two women, heads huddled together. They were whispering. ‘Ant!' She gestured to me to come back into the kitchen.

‘
The prisoner has been told there is no hope. It's cruel to raise her hopes where there is none!
'

‘I think she did it,' I heard Alwyn mutter. ‘She was found with the revolver in her hand. And the brother saw her do the shooting. This fella's had his head turned because she's pretty, or something.'

‘Ssshhhh,' said Bethan.

‘You watch the flicks, don't you?' said Bopa, poking me on the upper arm as I came to stand next to her. I nodded. ‘What are they called? Those fellas that run around Chicago chasing people who shoot policemen?'

‘G Men,' I replied.

‘That's it. G Men.' She shoved Mam in the knee. ‘That's what we need round here. Some proper G Men. They'd sort out the likes of Thomas Evans. Bites out of tomatoes, indeed.'

‘Bit harsh to get shot through with bullets just for snaffling a tomato,' Mam said, frowning.

Bopa nodded. ‘Fair do's,' she replied. ‘It would be excessive. Deserved. But excessive.'

‘
Come with us now! To the condemned cell!
'

The sound of soaring strings resounded from the parlour. A clock struck six times.

‘What's the time?' said Bopa, squinting towards the one-handed kitchen clock.

‘About quarter past nine,' I said, glancing at the familiar face.

‘Getting late,' said Bopa, looking into her teacup. ‘Well, well,' she added, turning the cup in her hand, ‘interesting leaves …'

Mam shot me a glance and a small, wry smile. Bopa often liked to convince us that she could read tea leaves. She had the ‘gift', she said. ‘Gift of the bloody gab, more like,' said Alwyn, who didn't believe in any of her nonsense. All the same, Bopa once said the leaves had told her Mam was going to come into money, and then, on the same day, Mam found a shilling in the back garden. ‘The leaves have spoken!' declared Bopa, and we'd all laughed.

‘See those leaves,' said Bopa, gesturing for me to look. ‘What can you see, Anthony?'

I stared down into the wilted mass of shredded tea. Just looked like tea to me. Nothing special. ‘Dunno. It's tea leaves, innit?'

‘Quieten your mind, boy!' she whispered, slowly rotating the cup in her hand. ‘Let the leaves speak to you. Empty your head of all thoughts! Now, then, what do you see?'

I squinted down into the cup. ‘Dunno. That bit there looks like a crocodile.'

‘Crocodile, Em!' declared Bopa. ‘A vision of false friendships and deception! And look there … an exclamation mark. Beware of impulsive actions, Anthony. The cup is speaking.'

‘I don't really know what it means,' I said, with a shrug.

‘Trouble!' said Bopa, jabbing her finger upwards. ‘That's what! And the tea never lies.'

She grabbed my chin between her hands and squeezed my cheeks with her long fingers. ‘Look at you! He's such a good boy, Em, inne? Bright as a button. Make sure you keep it that way. Americans coming. Wind shifting. All change. Trouble in the tea! Bad things happen, Anthony!' She smiled and patted me on the cheek. ‘Right, then, I best be off.'

She stood and rinsed her cup out at the sink. ‘That's that, then. Ta-ra! See you tomorrow.'

‘Ta-ra!' said Mam.

‘What's in your cup?' I said to Mam, as she stood and walked towards the sink.

‘Just leaves, Ant,' she said, giving her cup a swirl. ‘It's all silly nonsense. Just fun, remember.'

The front door slammed shut. Bopa always had a heavy hand.

‘Could that woman make any more noise?' complained Alwyn. ‘Seriously? It's like having a bloody magpie in the house. Jabbering on, and then, Boom! goes the door.'

‘
And so
…' returned the voice of the Man in Black, ‘
we come to the end of the
Appointment with Fear.
If you can say that only the graveyard has yawned, then we are deeply grateful. I shall return to tell you more stories of corpses and the midnight hour, but until that happy day when we meet by some evil crossroads of the future, this is your storyteller, the Man in Black, saying goodnight and goodbye
.'

Father stood up and switched off the wireless. ‘Right,' he said. ‘That's enough silly entertainment. Off to bed with you, Ant. School in the morning.'

‘I prefer it when it's ghosts and stuff. Dead people walking about, like,' said Alwyn, spitting on the toecap of his shoe.

‘Hang on,' said Bethan, ‘I'm confused. So she didn't kill her fella? It was the brother?'

‘Aye,' said Alwyn, bringing up the shine with a chamois leather. ‘Second son, wan'he? Nobody took any notice of him. Don't you be getting any ideas, Ant. You're the third son. You're even further down the pecking order. Small boys are to be ignored at all costs, but that doesn't mean they can go about shooting their elder brothers.'

‘Mean,' said Bethan. ‘Don't mind him, Ant. I notice you.'

Father sat back down in his chair and folded his paper so he could read it more easily. He had turned the gas lamp back on and he sat, illuminated, looking more like a bookish librarian than a hardened pitman. ‘Get to bed, Anthony,' he muttered, without looking up. ‘I'll not tell you again.'

‘Can I take a candle up, Mam?' I asked, as she walked into the room.

Mam reached for one of the candleholders lined up on the mantelpiece. Sticking the wick into the embers, she passed it to me. ‘Don't burn it for long, mind,' she said. ‘Those are my last candles until we can get some more.'

I shared a bedroom with Alwyn and Emrys. Being bigger than me, they always shoved me to the end of the bed to sleep by their feet like a dog. So instead, I slept under the bed on some old jumpers Father didn't wear any more. I could have chosen to sleep on the floor next to the bed, but I preferred it underneath: it felt more like a den, my space. I had a pillow and a blanket and a shoebox where I kept my own treasures: a tooth I'd knocked out playing football, a flint, a seashell I'd brought back from a day trip to Porthcawl, and a comic,
The Dandy
, I'd been given on a birthday by an uncle from Tonypandy. I also had an encyclopaedia, a brown, battered old thing that Mam had picked up at a jumble sale. It was the only book I owned, and I loved it.

On the wall between the bottom of the mattress and the skirting board, there was an advert for a pair of men's shoes, cut out from one of Bethan's American magazines and stuck up with a splash of wallpaper glue. ‘Regal Shoes!' the advert exclaimed. ‘A rugged Scotch grain brogue! As ultra correct in the swankiest clubs as on the busiest sidewalks from Boston to Hollywood!' The shoes were the grandest things I'd ever seen: a rich, nut brown with fancy stitching on the toes. They had wooden shoe trees inside to keep their shape, and were sitting between a fine tweed jacket and some smart leather driving gloves. I would lie staring at that picture, wondering what it might be like to walk into a ‘swankiest club' or along a ‘busy sidewalk'. If I had shoes such as these, I'd feel ten feet tall. But then, I didn't have any shoes. I had my stinking wellingtons.

The bedroom door opened. I turned over and watched Alwyn's trousers flying onto the wooden chair in the corner by the window. It was never warm in our room. The window was north facing so, even in the hottest summers, no warmth permeated it. There was always a damp, reluctant chill that hung heavy in the air. Not having anything fancy, like pyjamas, I'd sleep in my clothes and old jumpers.

The mattress springs gave a creak and sank towards me.

‘Blow that candle out, boy,' said Alwyn. ‘Down in your condemned cell.'

I took one last look at the Regal Shoes, then leant over and blew out the candle. Pitch black, cold, sleep.

I wiped the blood from my nose.

‘
Uffarn den
! Whaddya do that for, man?' yelled Ade, frowning angrily at Gwyn Williams.

‘Finishing business, innit?' he yelled back, gesturing towards me. ‘Come on, then.' He raised his fists. ‘Let's have it.'

I had fallen backwards, trapped up against the wall of the schoolhouse. I'd scraped a knuckle against the brickwork as I fell, and it was hard to know whether the blood on the back of my hand was from my nose or my fist. He'd caught me unawares, jumping out from the culvert by the main building and landing me with a punch that had found its mark.

I squinted upwards. Gwyn was standing in front of the sun, his silhouette dark and flat. There was a metallic taste in my mouth. ‘I don't want to fight,' I mumbled. ‘Leave off.'

‘What?' said Ade, staring at me. ‘Come on, man! He lamped you!'

‘I don't want to,' I said, pushing myself upwards. I shielded my eyes against the sun and saw other bodies crowding in behind Gwyn's black frame.

‘Won't fight?' said Gwyn, jabbing me in the shoulder. I recoiled away.

‘No,' I said, my eyes casting downwards. ‘I won't.'

Someone at the back of the pack made an exaggerated clucking noise. ‘Chicken!' Gwyn yelled. ‘Chicken!'

I stood, my head hung low, back against the wall. A drop of blood fell onto the toe of my wellington. I felt another poke, into my shoulder, but I didn't look up.

‘Lamp him, Gwyn!' I heard, and then another crunch, deep into my belly. The breath exploded out of me and I went down again, doubled over, my face contorted into a look of pained surprise as I gasped for air. Shoes clattered on the cobbled courtyard around my head. Yells. The smell of earth and wet stone. I gasped again. A hand on my shoulder. Tugged upwards. A smell of lavender. The sun in my eyes. A kite circling.

‘Everyone to your classrooms!' shouted Miss Evans, her arm shoved under my armpit. ‘Who hit him?'

‘Gwyn Williams, Miss,' said Bronwyn, her brown hair scraped back into a ponytail. She was pointing towards him. He'd backed off and was skulking by the entrance to the culvert.

‘I'll speak to you later, Gwyn Williams,' said Miss Evans. ‘Picking on boys smaller than you! This isn't how we're trying to win a war, is it? Get inside. Go on!' She shooed her hand towards the other loitering children. ‘Inside, the lot of you. Stand up, Anthony. Hold the top of your nose. Pinch it.'

From the corner of my eye I could see Ade peering round the back of our teacher. ‘He wouldn't fight him, Miss,' he said. ‘Is his nose broken, like? Gwyn tried to break it yesterday, 'n' all.'

‘No,' said Miss Evans, squinting at me through her glasses. ‘Got your breath back? Right, then. Inside. The pair of you.'

She took out a small handkerchief and wiped her fingers. She was always meticulously presented, a rarity for the women in our village, whom we were only used to seeing dressed up on a Sunday for chapel. There was an accepted dress code for weekdays – stout shoes, thick stockings, shapeless skirt, jumper with sleeves shoved just past the elbows, and a checked blue housecoat pulled tight at the waist – but none of this would do for Miss Evans. She was thoroughly modern, wore trousers and was rumoured to smoke a pipe. She'd been to a university in England, drank wine and had once been to a party in London where she had briefly stood five feet away from Alec Guinness.