Perfect Gallows by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

the ration-book at the top of the pile. That odd knack which somehow picks out letters which don’t make sense before one’s started to read the paper on which they’re written—a misprint in a theatre programme, for instance—made him look again. MARY JANE MK—. The pink tape lay across the rest of the name. Mrs McHealy chuckled as he moved it aside. MKELE.
    â€œThere’s a lot get caught that way,” she said. “Thinking I married a Scottie whenas it was really that big buck nigger over there. Do you a couple of rolls for the journey? Marge and Bovril, but better than an empty belly.”
    â€œThank you very much. And thanks for breakfast.”
    â€œDon’t mention it. But mark my words, you’re making a big mistake, running off. Not too late to change your mind.”
    â€œI made up my mind when I was five.”
    (It had been at another panto, in a proper theatre—he wasn’t sure which one—in peace time. He could have shut his eyes now and seen the glitter of the fairy queen.)
    â€œTime we was off,” said Jack. “Where’s that Hazel?”
    â€œGone into a dream on the what-not, I’ll be bound,” said Mrs McHealy.
    But at that moment the child, who had gobbled her egg and stolen away a few minutes earlier, came clattering back. All attention was now on her. Andrew picked up his case and waited, then followed the others down a long corridor and out into a courtyard paved with blue-black brick where the pony, covered with a blanket, waited enduringly between the shafts of the trap. From some distance beyond the house music, just discernibly ‘Pistol-packin’ Momma’, penetrated the freezing grey dawn.
    THREE
    Children were playing in the ruins of the bombed houses at the eastern end of Fawley Street—evacuees who’d been allowed home, or simply sneaked home, for Christmas. Some of them would contrive to stay on for a bit when term began, till their absences from school were noticed and officials came to collect them. A few would escape even that net. Andrew paused for a minute to watch them scooping up the sprinkling of snow and trying to mould snowballs from it. As the snow was half brick-dust the snowballs spattered apart on the way to their targets, but the children still screamed when an icy fragment touched flesh, shouted at a hit and hooted at a miss.
    Mum would be at the NAAFI, so he could slip in and dump his case—hide it for the mo then go and see Cyril and come home to present her with the fait accompli . Then there’d be the problem of what to tell her about The Mimms. First part easy—amuse her by acting the parts, Cousin Blue’s sighings and probings, Cousin Brown’s boom, Uncle Vole’s gobblings and spite. She’d take his side over all that. But second part … Did he have to tell her anything about the scene in the kitchen? The money?
    Mum would love to be rich, not because she was greedy for money but because she was greedy for life. She’d always been like that, even before the closing-in of the war. He could remember her doing the pools back then—secretly, if Dad was ashore, and then secretly sneaking down to meet the postman on mornings she was expecting a win. (£6. 17s. 4d. had been her biggest). Andrew had grown as used to Dad’s absence now as he was to Mum’s presence; before the war the strangest times had been when there was this intruder in the house, with Mum hustling into practices she’d slipped out of while he’d been away—grace before dinner, serviettes on the table, shoes in the house and not slippers, little hidden gestures to Andrew to fit in—like a French farce when the husband comes home. How much had Dad noticed, smoking his thin black cigar and reading the Gazette in what Andrew regarded as his chair?
    It was only since the news had come about Singapore that Andrew had learnt to think of his father as a