Angel Boy (8 page)

So he did something either very clever or very crazy. He doubled back. Those fishermen were back there in the market somewhere, and the street kids would still think he was blindly running on and on, away from them. Throwing a quick look back to check that he couldn't be seen, he ran past a large white house and then right around it, doubling back down a parallel alley to where he could sprint towards the market, and the harbour.

Would his quick thinking outwit their faster legs? Tired, scared, grabbed back from safety, Leonard could only pray that it would.

Back in Accra, a call came to the Nile Hotel. As the hotel owner lifted the phone from its cradle Stephen Boameh was busy in the office printing more pictures of his son. He hardly looked up; a ringing telephone with no news was what he expected.

But the tone of the hotel owner's voice made him lift his head.

‘Yes! Yes!' She was beckoning to Stephen. ‘He's right here, you tell him!'

Stephen grabbed the phone from her.

You got a boy…?' the voice over the phone said.

Stephen somehow found breath. ‘I got a boy.'

‘Leonard… something?'

‘Leonard Stephen Boameh.'

‘Yeah. What school he goes to…?'

‘Blessed Wisdom Primary. Accra.'

‘Sounds like. Police here, Elmina, he's been seen. Some fishermen. Found him an' lost him. In a mix-up with street kids…'

Stephen's face showed quick relief and then
fear. ‘I'm coming! I'm coming fast!'

‘Brekoso police station. You bring a picture of the boy…'

Leonard's father threw down the phone, snatched up a handful of prints and ran out to his car.

‘Good luck!' called the hotel owner.

Stephen slammed himself into the Vauxhall. ‘Pray for us!' he shouted through the cracked windscreen, before reversing on screeching tyres into Nsawam Road.

Leonard was trapped. Within seconds he would be back in the grip of the street kids – who would hide him deep in the shanties until the busy fishermen had forgotten him.

He was running back through the town, not daring to believe that he had outwitted the kids. The trouble was, he didn't know the geography of this place the way he knew his own district.
He suddenly found himself facing the bridge that spanned the harbour entrance. There was no way to the left, no way to the right. He threw a quick look behind him. Nothing. He looked across the bridge. Nothing. So he ran on to cross it, praying that he'd find some sort of hiding-place on the other side. If he lay low up beyond Elmina Castle, perhaps he could make his way back to find the police after darkness came.

He was only halfway across the bridge when he saw it. Like a scare in the night, a figure came springing out from nowhere – the tall street-kid, the fastest runner of them all, his face grimacing around the girders.

No! Please, no!

Like a jack-rabbit, Leonard swung round to go back the way he'd come – and his heart sank. There stood the daddy and the others. Leonard was trapped.

He said, ‘Please!' to passers-by, but the busy world brushed him aside.

‘Get off, boy!'

‘Tek yourself away!' Bare-chested kids with big eyes and begging hands were nothing new in Elmina.

Leonard looked desperately from side to side. The harbour bridge was a narrow roadway with high, wrought iron sides and a hand rail – which offered him one crazy option.

He took it. With the last of his strength, his shaking feet and arms pulled him up the hand rail and on to the steel parapet above everyone's heads.

There he tottered above the derisive laughs, the blood rushing from his brain, making him dizzy.

‘Come on down, Angel Boy!'

‘We got work for you!'

‘Come back to your daddy!'

Thirty metres below him on one side were the harbour waters, filled with hard-edged barks and canoes. Two metres below him on the other was the yelping band of street kids, three of them already running back off the bridge to get down
to the water's edge.

Leonard couldn't swim. Even if he missed injury on the boats, he would drown if he jumped. His life would be over…

‘Leonard! Is that you, Leonard? What on earth are you doing up there?'

It was a voice from heaven.

Someone recognised him!

Leonard looked down, nearly lost his balance and only just stopped himself from falling into the water.

‘Leonard, it
is
you!'

It was Chris and Vicky, the tourists he'd come with in the tro-tro to Elmina. They were squinting a bit, making sure that this bare-chested boy was the same smart kid in the scarlet school shirt that they'd treated to go into Elmina Castle with them. And the street kids were having to give ground, waiting to see what happened.

‘Are you all right?' Vicky was coming nearer, climbing up a rung of the hand railings, reaching up to Leonard.

‘No! I'm not!'

‘Do you want help?'

‘Yes! Yes, please.'

From where he was, Leonard could see the street kids coming to some sort of decision; not with words, more with pack instinct. They backed off, just a bit. To attack a tourist would not be clever.

Shaking, crying now, Leonard came warily down, helped the last metre by the strong arms of Chris from London.

‘Looks like things went wrong for you,' Chris said. ‘We felt rotten, losing you outside the castle. Thought you'd gone off to do your own thing…'

‘Can you forgive us?' Vicky asked.

Forgive them?
Leonard would love them for ever! But he didn't say it. He just nodded weakly; but he remembered his manners, drilled into him by Nana. ‘Thank you,' he said, ‘thank you',
as they walked off the bridge with their arms round him in the direction of Brekoso Road.

It took nearly an hour and a half for Stephen Boameh to drive to Elmina. But Leonard immediately recognised the sound of those brake-discs, the clunk of the engine, the rattly slam of the driver's door when the Vauxhall pulled up. And into the office his father came, happy and angry and crying, all at the same time. He stood to attention before the sergeant as they told him how Chris and Vicky had saved his son, and he thanked them, thanked them, thanked them.

What now? All the while he had been looking at Leonard, and yet not looking at him. Now he reached across the room to grab at him, and clutched him, and gave him the biggest hug of his life; which turned into a shake, and then an arm's-length hold; and finally a straight, serious
talk into Leonard's crying face, saying what a stupid thing he'd done.

And what Leonard's father said were words that the boy would never forget. ‘Them quarry kids, and them abducted child soldiers in other countries, you know about them! You're a lucky, lucky boy to be coming back home!' And he wept and nodded as he spoke. ‘Because… some… never do…'

And as one more hug squeezed the breath from him, Leonard pressed his face into his father's shirt, shivering with relief, and with love for this dear man. Now he realised just how precious home was, and how precious Nana was – even if she couldn't get down to low shots these days.

 

 

 

 

BERNARD ASHLEY
's first children's novel,
The Trouble with Donovan Croft
, won the Other Award. Sixteen novels have followed, establishing him as a gritty writer in sympathy with the underdog and winning him three shortlistings for the Carnegie Award and the Guardian young fiction prize. His television work has included
Running Scared
(from which he wrote the novel),
The Country Boy
and his adaptation of his own
Dodgem
which won the Royal Television Society award as the best children's entertainment of its year. Bernard lives in South London.

www.bashley.com

 

REBEL CARGO

James Riordan

Abena is an Ashanti girl sold into slavery and transported on the notorious sea-route from West Africa to Jamaica's sugar plantations. Mungo is an English orphan who becomes a cabin boy, only to be kidnapped and sold on as a white slave. Mungo risks life and limb to save Abena from death, and together they plan their escape to the Blue Mountains, to a stronghold of runaways ruled by the legendary leader Nanny. But can Mungo and Abena get there before the Redcoats and their baying bloodhounds drag them back…?

Based on events and records of the time, the novel unflinchingly describes conditions of slavery in the early 18th century – a time when profits took precedence over humanity – and ends on a note of hope.
ISBN 978-1-84507-525-5