Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Lawrence Read Free Book Online

found inside the package, the man who brought the breakfast. It made me smile to see his arms stretched so long by the weight he carried that his hands reached nearly to his ankles. But I wanted soldiers, not messmen, and he would look rather silly, I thought, running over no-man's-land with kettles in his hands. I stood him on the table and took the wrappings from the second man.
    “Oh, he's a darling,” said Auntie Ivy.
    He lay on his side, curled into a ball like a khaki-colored kitten. He had an old Burberry pulled over his shoulders, his forearm for a pillow. His cap was twisted sideways and his face smiling, as though his dreams were happy.
    “I'll make him a dead man,” I said.
    “Oh, Johnny,” said Auntie Ivy. “Do you have to think of things like that?”
    “But I don't have any dead men,” I told her.
    “You should count yourself lucky.” She turned her chair sideways and read my other letter, from my mum this time.
    I always closed my eyes to hear my mother's letters. She wrote just the way she talked, and Auntie's voice was a lot like hers, so it seemed that Mum was there beside me.
    “There is great pressure on all the men to do their bit and enlist. Today Mr. Brown joined Kitchener's army, and you know very well how little like a soldier he looks. But it must be nice to feel wanted by someone. I think that every man in London could be off to France and there still!! would be no work for women. If you're not a nurse or a seamstress there's precious little you can do, except stay home and knit wretched socks!”
    Auntie Ivy
tsked
.
    “I got a scare last night, when the guns started shooting in Regent's Park. I looked out and saw the searchlights sweeping across the sky. Back and forth they went, making circles on the clouds. The shells burst above them, with flashes like lightning. I didn't see a zeppelin. Maybe there wasn't even one there. But I thanked my lucky stars that you're safe and well looked after.”
    I took my new soldiers out to the garden, and stood the messman in the Tommies' trench. I put the other down in no-man's-land, then covered his foot with a bit of mud, to make it look as though he had been there for a long time. He made my battlefield look proper and gory.
    I hurled some shells about, but didn't have time for a battle. The potting shed and the ground around it were littered with the remains of Mr. Tuttle's roses. I felt like a killer, with Scotland Yard closing in; I had to get rid of the evidence. I hid the branches deep in the forest. I carried away the leftover mulch and scattered it among the bushes. Then I built my bonfire with the bits that were left, disguising them below a layer of twigs and moldy leaves. It was the saddest little fire I'd ever seen, no bigger than a pudding.
    As soon as darkness came, Auntie Ivy touched a match to the shreds of rotten leaves. They fizzled but wouldn't burn. They filled the garden with a thick smudge of smoke.
    Auntie Ivy said “Ooooh!” as the Crimson Rain squirted up in a crackly spurt. She said “Gracious!” when my first whizz-bang sputtered and popped. Then the second one went off with a tiny yellow flame, and Auntie Ivy said, “Are you finished now? It's getting rather cold.”
    “I have to burn the guy,” I said.
    “Well, hurry up,” she told me.
    I dragged him from his corner, his poor head lolling on its strings. He was more than twice my size, but I heaved him up to my shoulders and staggered with him round my little fire.
    “Guy, guy, guy,” I sang. “Stick 'im in the eye.”
    “Watch your shoes,” cried Auntie Ivy. “You'll scorch your good shoes.”
    I looked down and saw that the fire was right between my feet. It had dwindled already to ashes and embers.
    “Get away from there,” snapped Auntie.
    I stepped back, and tripped over the guy's dangling leg. I fell in a heap on top of him, and the prickly thorns of Mr. Tuttle's roses stabbed me through the burlap body.
    Auntie Ivy laughed. I heard her voice