Midnight on Lime Street by Ruth Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

sweat from his brow.
    ‘I’m n-nearly OK away from them bastards. As long as you don’t talk about it, it’ll g-g-go away.’
    They stopped for a rest in a little copse outside Netherton. ‘We’ve passed it twice,’ John told them, ‘but that was so we could avoid houses and th-that. We should be
there before dark. There was a p-paraffin stove and mattresses last time m-me and me mates went in. Sacks and blankets and boxes of stuff and tents, too. Unless they’ve been back and t-took
them away, like.’
    ‘Or they might come for them while we’re there,’ Ian said.
    ‘Chance we’ll have to take,’ was Phil’s expressed opinion. ‘We won’t be there at night, anyway, cos we’ll be out on the rob looking for disguises and
stuff. We might have money for paraffin, but we’ll need to dress up when we go for it. During the day, we’ll take turns to be lookouts.’
    ‘Oh, bugger,’ Ian exclaimed. John was snoring. ‘We’d best sleep, too. If we move about after dark, there’ll be less chance of being noticed.’
    They slept, though not deeply. Inside three heads in the small copse, images played in full colour and with sound. Healey, Ellis and Moorhead were up to their tricks in the teachers’ rooms
near the dorms. The boys saw, felt and heard all they had endured, and, when they woke from time to time, relief was their main emotion. What they failed to realize was that these nightmares could
last a lifetime, and they would never be completely free, since a part of each soul had been excised by evil men of God.
    When darkness descended and spread its blanket over three damaged boys, they skirted the edge of a housing estate, Phil and Ian leaving John with their bags of loot while they slipped in and out
of gates gathering forgotten washing from quiet gardens. When the stealing was over, they re-joined John, renamed Stam since he now had just half a stammer. ‘Ian,’ Phil asked,
‘why did God let all that bad stuff happen to us?’
    ‘He didn’t.’ Ian was sorting socks in near-darkness. ‘Where’s this bloody hut, Stam?’
    ‘Other side of them trees. What do you mean, He didn’t?’
    ‘We got free will and some of us choose to do bad things.’
    ‘But He could have stopped it,’ John said.
    Ian threw the socks in a bag – has task was hopeless in the dark. ‘Look, everything bad in the world is done by us, by people. He gave us a beautiful planet, a set of rules and free
will. Some people are crap. Healey, Ellis and Moorhead are bad, but they could stop being bad if they wanted to. Even diseases are our fault, because we don’t live right. Now, pick these bags
up – remember, we need some proper sleep.’
    Phil shook his head. ‘How do you know all this stuff, then?’
    ‘Books. You know, them things in the library with pages of writing in ’em. We don’t all stick to the
Beano
and the
Dandy
, you know. Come on, shift your
arses.’
    They dragged sore feet across the last few hundred yards. The door of the hut wasn’t locked, and the three boys literally fell in, hit the floor and slept. This was night one of freedom.
There was a great deal to be done before they got caught, and they needed a long rest. Tomorrow, their scribe would begin letting the world know about the Brothers Pastoral.
    *
    Helen Carrington pushed her Silver Cross pram into its resting place. She closed the door of the Anderson shelter and applied the padlock before turning towards the house.
Ignoring front and rear entrances, she descended cellar steps and reached her own domain. Everything she needed was to hand in her basement flat. When her filthy clothes were locked in a
seafarer’s trunk, she ran a bath and immersed herself in tepid water; it had been one purgatory of a day.
    There was no further news about Jean Davenport, a young mother whose corpse had been found near the river. Quick Mick had died in hospital; even the two young constables had shed tears.
Thirty-nine years of age and the