Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by John Boyne Read Free Book Online Page A

thing, and Alfie loved that part of it.
    All the teachers now were different than the ones he’d had a few years before. Back then, there were a lot of young men in the school and they were good fun and always wanted a kick-about at lunch time. Now, of course, there wasn’t a single young man left, except Mr. Carstairs, who had two bad legs and walked with crutches. There was hardly a single young man anywhere, in fact, except for Joe Patience, the conchie from number sixteen, and no one ever talked to him. Not even Granny Summerfield, who’d known him since he was a child and had once said that he was like a second son to her—or that she was like a second mother to him, Alfie couldn’t remember which. (Now you couldn’t mention Joe’s name to Granny Summerfield or she’d lose her temper, and once Alfie, watching from his window, had seen them passing in the street, and Granny had slapped him, hard, across the face. Joe Patience! Who was the nicest, friendliest man you could possibly meet!)
    The school was now run by old people, some of whom used to be teachers before the war and who said that they thought they were finished with all this malarkey, that they’d been looking forward to a long and happy retirement. People like Mrs. Jillson or Mr. Flaker, the retired civil servant, or Mr. Cratchley, whose son used to teach in the school but was “over there” now, as he told them every day when he asked them to say a prayer for Cecil, for that was his son’s name. Cecil Cratchley. Some had never taught in schools before, but it was all hands to the pump now—that’s what Mr. Flaker said, anyway. Needs must.
    And the old people were the worst for caning. The young teachers before the war didn’t do it so much, but Mr. Flaker could barely get through a lesson without beating a boy. Mr. Grace, who had been a valet at Buckingham Palace until he turned sixty-five, even kept a stick up his sleeve with a metal weight taped to the top of it. He called the stick Excalibur. Almost everyone had been on the receiving end of it at one time or another. Not that the boys complained much; most of them got a slap at home for the slightest thing. Only Alfie had never been struck by his parents—Georgie and Margie said they didn’t believe in it—and when he mentioned this one day to Mr. Grace, he went home with Excalibur’s mark seared deeply into his left hand as punishment for his cheek.
    Today, however, wasn’t a Monday and it wasn’t a Thursday, so there would be no history and there would be no reading. It was a Tuesday, and so when Alfie was fully dressed, he reached into the back of his wardrobe and pulled out the wooden shoeshine box that he kept there. He placed it on the carpet, opening the lid carefully. The pungent smell of two boxes of polish seeped out, and he checked that everything he needed was inside: his brushes, his shine mitts, his jars of polish, his shoehorn, his horsehair brush, and his leather balm. He checked to see how full everything was, but he’d only restocked from his earnings the previous Friday so it should be another two weeks at least before he’d have to buy anything new. When he was satisfied that he had what he needed, he closed the box, went downstairs, made sure that there were no dirty marks on his face—he had learned long ago that he did better business when his hair was neatly combed and his skin clean—put his coat and scarf on, and went out into the cold October morning.
    Alfie Summerfield was the man of the house now, after all. And he had a living to earn.

 
    CHAPTER 4
    YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT YOU
    The shoeshine box was made of dark-brown mahogany. It was twice as long as it was wide, with a gold-colored clasp to unlock the lid from the base that, when opened, revealed three compartments within.
    The first contained two horsehair brushes—one black, one brown—with corrugated grips on