Shoes for Anthony (34 page)

‘Where have you been stirring it?'

‘Back step.'

‘Ant!' she exclaimed. ‘It won't turn unless you've got some heat under it.'

She lifted up the bowl and transferred the milk into a pot. ‘There,' she said, lifting it onto the stove. ‘Get the vinegar and rennet in, and then you can stir it. It's my fault. I should have paid more notice to what you doing. I thought you were sitting outside staring at the clouds.'

‘Brain made of cloth,' said Alwyn, giving the back of my head a clout.

With everything in and some heat underneath, the curds formed quickly, and I spent the rest of my time fingering them out from the whey. I liked how they felt in my fingers, the chalky beads rolling across my palm. Mam salted the curds, so they'd be preserved, then moulded them into round balls, wrapping them in little muslin bags and hanging them outside the back door, their milky drips popping off the steps. ‘Wartime Cheddar,' that's what Bopa called it.

‘Right, then,' Mam said, wiping her hands on a tea cloth. ‘I think you've earned a treat.'

She reached for her oven gloves and opened the stove door, the sound of sizzling meat bouncing around the kitchen. A large smoky cloud billowed out, and my mouth filled with saliva. The joint looked amazing: beautifully browned end bits and crowned with a mighty golden crackling. She took a small knife and tapped it. Rock solid.

‘Pass me the bread knife, Ant,' Mam said, as she took two large forks and lifted the pork onto an oval display plate.

Tucking a loaf into her armpit, she took the knife and carved off a thick slice. ‘There you go,' she said, handing me the bread. ‘You can dip that in the gravy. Alwyn! If you want dripping, you can have some!'

It was like nectar: thick, greasy, heady nectar. I loved how the bread looked just after a dip: deep brown at its tip then lightly golden towards the edge.

‘Who needs fancy meals?' said Alwyn, sucking on a crust. ‘All you need to die happy is a chunk of bread and some liquid fat.'

‘Don't tell anyone,' said Mam, in a conspiratorial whisper. She was holding out three small squares of crackling. ‘One each.'

I took mine and popped it into my mouth: syrupy, salty, crispy skin. Alwyn and I smiled at each other. ‘It's like a meat sweet,' I said, rolling it round my tongue.

‘God,' he said, ‘that was magnificent.'

‘Right,' said Mam, crunching down, ‘let's get this up the Guild.'

The Women's Guild met once a month at the Social Club at the top of the village, near Tynewydd, and we dropped the pork off in a large function room at the back. I wasn't paying attention to anything much, and Mam had fallen into casual conversation with Enid Simpkins, who lived in the next road over: nothing of particular interest, just a general round-up of people's state of health.

‘Gallstones,' said Enid. ‘I couldn't believe it. Who's got a diet to give them gallstones, these days? I'm telling you, Emily, they're on the fiddle. Mind you, they're clamping down on unauthorised food …'

I turned and looked down towards the end of the street. Three men were coming. To be more specific, Hughes the Grocer and Old Morris had hold of a third man who, by the looks of him, appeared a bit roughed up.

‘Mam,' I said, tugging at her sleeve to get her attention. ‘Look.'

The pair of them followed my pointing finger.

‘What's all this, then?' said Enid, her eyes narrowing.

People were coming out from their houses, some women holding carving knives aloft. The man looked terrified, his nose was bloodied, his lip thick and split. Hughes and Morris had a tight grip on him and were bundling him up the street, yanking him upwards when he stumbled.

From a side street to our left, Arthur Pryce appeared. He was running and had his truncheon out. ‘Where is he?' I heard him shout.

‘We've got him, Arthur!' yelled Hughes, pulling up the man again. ‘We've bloody got him!'

I looked again at the man between them. He was almost unconscious. One of them, probably Mr Hughes, had clearly given him a proper wallop.

‘Oh, my God,' said Enid, grabbing Mam by the shoulder. ‘They've caught the bloody German.'

‘Come on, Mam,' I cried, picking up pace and running towards them.

‘Oh, God,' she said, behind me. ‘They'll tear him limb from limb.'

Catcalls filled the air and the man, pummelled by passersby, ducked as a small, rotund woman shoved forwards and slapped him hard about the face. He reeled backwards, his brown trilby flying sideways and rolling into the gutter.

Mr Hughes and Old Morris were holding people off as best they could, but punches were coming in thick and fast.

‘Stop it!' yelled Old Morris. ‘Arthur! Hurry up!'

Arthur, who was running as best he could, reached for the whistle in his top pocket. He tried to blow but was so out of breath that instead of a fulsome blast, there came a thin, halfhearted squeak. As we got closer, Mam held me back, gripping me by the upper arm.

‘Hold back, Anthony,' she said, her voice tight and grave. ‘There's a dangerous mood. This could get nasty.'

I stood staring at the man. He was clean-shaven, apart from a small, functional moustache. His hair, though ruffled, was well kept, thick on top, greased to one side, short and trim above the ears. He was wearing a light-grey three-piece suit, shirt with a starched collar, and a perfectly knotted blue polka dot bow tie. I frowned. Where had a German hiding up a mountain got all that from?

I glanced down at his hands. He was carrying a small case but, as he was buffeted about, that was knocked to the floor too. The lock cracked and the case fell open, revealing a host of papers that began fluttering up into the breeze and twirling away down the street behind him.

‘Get back, please!' shouted Arthur, trying to push his way through the tight, angry circle of people.

‘Let him through!' yelled Old Morris, holding up his arm to prevent another blow coming in.

‘Now, then,' said Arthur, panting. ‘What have we here?'

‘We've caught the German, Arthur,' said Mr Hughes, his face set and serious. ‘I had to punch him. He's a bit on the wobble.'

‘How do you know he's German?' asked Arthur, bending down a little to take a better look at the fellow's face.

‘He talks funny and he's in weird clothes,' said Old Morris, pointing a bony finger towards the man's face.

Arthur frowned and straightened up. ‘Where did you find him?'

‘Walking down the road from Blaenrhondda,' said Mr Hughes.

‘The road from the train station?' asked Arthur.

Mr Hughes and Old Morris exchanged a small, suddenly worried glance.

‘Yes,' said Old Morris. ‘But no matter. He's the German, all right.'

The man, who was still bleeding from his bottom lip, looked up towards Arthur. ‘Can I have a handkerchief, please?' he said, thickly.

‘He can speak English,' said Enid Simpkins, nudging my mother. ‘Bloody tricky bastard!'

He cast an exasperated glance in her direction. ‘I can assure you I am not. Please. A handkerchief?'

Arthur reached into his pocket and handed the fellow a square of blue cotton. ‘It's all right, gents. Let him stand up.'

Mr Hughes and Old Morris released their grip, and the man, dabbing his lip with the handkerchief, straightened up. ‘I'd like you to arrest these men,' he said, gesturing towards the pair of them. ‘I have been assaulted. And that woman there as well,' he added, pointing towards the woman who'd slapped him.

‘Arrested?' cried Old Morris. ‘For saving the village and fighting the enemy? Why, the very brass!'

‘Nobody's getting arrested for punching a bloody German!' shouted Mr Hughes, taking a grip of the man's upper arm a second time. ‘You're from Germany!'

The man shrugged him off and pushed Mr Hughes away from him with a forcible shove to the chest. ‘I am not from Germany. I am from Rye. I'm from the Ministry of Agriculture.'

‘He's lying!' shouted someone towards the back of the crowd.

‘Grab that case, someone!' shouted Arthur, pointing towards the papers billowing down the street.

Mam gave me a shove. ‘Go on, Ant,' she said. ‘Lend Arthur a hand. Chase them papers for him.'

I ran past the tightening circle. Some people were already backing off, embarrassed that a terrible error may have occurred. Others were edging in, reluctant to admit the mistake. The case was resting against the kerb, a file tumbling out. Gathering it up, I shoved the file under my arm and chased the remaining loose papers making a bid to escape.

‘Here you are, Arthur,' I said, squeezing back into the centre of the group. I turned and had a closer look at the stranger. His nose appeared broken and he looked furious. If he was a German, I thought, he was very brilliant at looking like he wasn't one.

‘Pass me that,' he said, gesturing for the case.

‘Don't give it to him, Arthur!' shouted a woman behind Old Morris. ‘Those are German top secrets!'

Arthur picked one of the loose papers and had a squint at it. ‘It doesn't look top secret. Or German. This is a letter about cabbages.'

‘I'll take that,' said the man, stepping in and grabbing back his case. ‘I shall make an official complaint about this. Mark my words. This won't be the last you hear of it.'

‘Who you going to complain to?' shouted Enid Simpkins. ‘Hitler?'

Another woman made a shushing noise.

‘Here,' said the man, reaching into his inside breast pocket. Everyone flinched as if he might be about to pull out a gun. When a wallet emerged, there were audible sighs of relief. ‘My card from the Ministry. That's me.' He shoved it towards Arthur.

‘James Montgomery. Enforcement Officer. Ministry of Agriculture,' read Arthur, slowly.

‘Does it look faked?' asked Old Morris, stepping forward. ‘Excuse me,' he said to the man, ‘I want to get a better look.'

‘I bet you do,' said the man, his jaw tensing.

‘No,' said Arthur, turning it over. ‘It looks pretty real. Well. Sorry about that, Mr Montgomery. We've got a German on the loose, see. People are a bit tense.'

‘Tense? They're out of their minds,' Mr Montgomery yelled, glaring at Mr Hughes.

‘What you here for, anyway?' said Arthur, handing back the card.

‘I am here to stop the unauthorised selling of eggs,' the man declared. ‘But now I've been treated so abysmally, I shall be taking a very dim view of anyone selling any produce without the appropriate licences.'

There was another audible gasp.

‘That man there,' said the woman who had slapped him, ‘that's Mr Hughes. He's the grocer.'

Mr Hughes stared at the woman in disbelief. ‘Don't tell him that!'

‘Oh, really?' said Mr Montgomery, wheeling about to stare at Mr Hughes. ‘Well, perhaps I'll start there. Take me to your shop. I want to see all your books.'

‘Bit late, innit?' said Mr Hughes, his face crumpling. ‘It's almost five o'clock. Look, I didn't know you were from the Ministry. I thought you were from the Third Reich. I wouldn't have hit you, otherwise.'

‘To your shop, please,' said Mr Montgomery, his voice hard and insistent. ‘And I shall deal with the rest of you later.'

We stood, dumbfounded, and watched as he marched Mr Hughes off in the direction of the grocer's. There was a brief moment of silence.

‘I'm glad I hit him,' said Old Morris. ‘He's an arsehole.'

And finally, everyone had something they could agree on.

With the mountain out of bounds, we had to make a different sort of fun. Bozo had emerged from his self-imposed exile and he, Fez and I met by the sheep dip pens, the first time we'd been together since that night up the mountain. We were more subdued than usual, but that was to be expected. It felt odd for the three of us to be without Ade. He had been the driving force, the engine that drove us forward. Now, with him gone, we felt rudderless and unglued. There was a sense of awkwardness, too, as if none of us knew quite how to address what had happened.

‘All right?' I said to Bozo as he wandered over. He gave a small shrug and pushed himself up onto the wall I was sitting on.

‘S'pose,' he said. ‘You all right?'

‘S'pose,' I answered, picking at some lichen.

Silence descended and we stared off towards the Americans' Nissen hut in the field beyond. At our feet, Fez was making a cairn of stones, finding flat-sided pebbles and layering them on top of each other. We sat and watched him, none of us saying anything. For a while, we hung about, waiting for the Americans to come and be fed, but it was taking too long. Besides, they might not be back before nightfall, if at all. We needed to do something else.

‘Three days till school again, Mam says,' said Fez, standing up and dusting off his hands. ‘They reckon they'll have caught the German by then. Be weird without Ade, wannit?'

I hadn't thought of that: the empty seat that would be beside me, the window, with my name carved into the sill. I was suddenly consumed with regret that Ade hadn't carved his own name there. I wanted solid reminders that he'd existed. I didn't want to forget.

‘Oi!' came a cry from below us. We all turned. It was Thomas Evans, sitting in his wheelchair. ‘Shove us up! I can't do it over grass!'

I jumped from the wall and ran down towards him.

‘Christ,' he said, as I hunched over and began to push, ‘I'm bored witless. I need a caper. Come on, lads. Let's go up the spoil tip.'

‘Are you mad?' said Fez, frowning. ‘You can't get up the spoil tip with your leg in plaster. Besides, that's how you got like that in the first place.'

‘I can't break it if it's already broke, can I?' protested Thomas. ‘Come on! I can sit on my arse and shuffle myself up.'