Shoes for Anthony
Authors: Emma Kennedy
Contents
âThey're running wild. Feral! If I had a shilling for every time a Scott Street boy said he was doing something when he was doing something else entirely I'd be living in Cardiff in a house made of Lardy cake. What did I say? Bad things will happen!'
The idea of the war coming to their small, impoverished Welsh mining village always seemed remote, but with one explosive event and the arrival of the Americans preparing for the invasion of France, the people of Treherbert find their world turned upside down.
But war brings distrust, lies and danger. And as the villagers find themselves hopelessly divided, Anthony, an 11-year-old who hasn't had a pair of shoes in years, is going to have to choose between what is popular and what is right. Joyous, thrilling and nostalgic, Emma Kennedy's
Shoes for Anthony
will have you wiping your eyes one moment and beaming from ear-to-ear the next.
Emma Kennedy is the author of nine books, including bestsellers
The Tent, the Bucket and Me
and
I Left My Tent in San Francisco
. She has also written the Wilma Tenderfoot series for children. She has adapted
The Tent, the Bucket and Me
for BBC1, renamed
The Kennedys
and is a regular writer on CBBC's
Strange Hill High
and
Dangermouse
. She is also an actress and has appeared in many award winning comedies including
Goodness Gracious Me
,
People Like Us
and
Miranda
. She is the Fun Editor at
Tatler
, won
Celebrity Masterchef
in 2012 and is a Guinness World Record holder. You can follow her on Twitter
@EmmaKennedy
For Georgie, Geoffrey and Sarah
Pen Pych, our mountain: here she came, rising out from the fog, ground up, like a woman quietly raising her petticoats. I loved this time in the morning, when the mountain made her presence felt. The wind blew away the haze of night and there she was, the Queen of the Valley. We were standing, the five of us, stolen tea trays tucked into our armpits, staring up towards the spoil tip that sat at her base. It was such a blot on the landscape, and yet, in a way, it fitted right in: muck and beauty, side by side.
âRace up, then race down, right, boys?' said Ade, spitting into his hand. Ade was my best bud. He had a face so ingrained with dirt he looked like the inside of a teapot. He was wearing a pair of muddied shorts and a jumper so oversized it floated round him as if he were suspended in a well. Nobody had had new clothes in years, certainly not since the start of the war. All the kids on Scott Street were reliant on hand-me-downs and the clothes of the dead.
âOnesies, right?' said Thomas Evans, scrap of a thing, tough as hell. He was like gristle â a chewy lad, we called him â forever breaking his limbs. âStarting b'there.' He pointed up to a flat section to the left of the heaped-up spoil tip. âBut feet up, like. No brakes.'
We all nodded.
âWho's doing starters, then?' asked Bozo, shoving his glasses up his nose. One of the lenses was covered in sticking plaster, on account of him having a lazy eye. Plaster was supposed to make his lazy eye less lazy. None of us understood how that worked, mind, but there it was.
âI will,' said Fez, glancing sideways. Fez was a stick of a lad, all knees and elbows, with an explosion of curly blond hair. He looked like a firework. He lived three doors down and was an only child, something that was virtually unheard of in Treherbert. There'd been something wrong with his mam and she couldn't have any more; that's what Bopa Jackson said. Bopa lived next door to us. She knew everything about everyone. âBetter than the
Pathé News
,' Mam said. Still, it meant Fez always had stuff. He was good to hang around.
When it came to clambering up spoil tips, the general rule was low and fast. There was a knack to it: light on the toes, no digging the heels in, don't stand still for any length of time. Easier said than done in rubber wellingtons, but I'd been climbing spoil tips for as long as I could remember. Up and at it. There was no other way.
The five of us took up position, slightly bent at the shoulders, one leg forward. We cast each other a sideways glance. âOn your mark â¦' I began, getting ready to crouch.
âGo!' yelled Fez, and off he dashed, his plimsolls digging in.
â
Uffarn den
!' yelled Bozo, clambering after him. âThat's not starters! That's cheating, you bastard!'
I got off to a bad start. My first footfall slid away from me and I tumbled at the off. Falling down into a crouch position, I used my free hand to stabilise and began to make inroads upwards. Fez was already a quarter of the way up. He was darting left and right, taking a leaping zigzag approach towards the summit. I'd seen him do that before. I knew it tired him out. He'd have to stop, and when he did, he'd slide down.
Bozo was struggling: for every two steps forward, he was slipping a step back. He had good balance on his left side, but his right was letting him down. That would be his lazy eye, I thought.
Ade and Thomas were neck and neck, just below Fez but higher up than me. I glanced up. There were miniature gullies in the spoil tip. You didn't want to run up those. The clinkers tended to be finer, less stable. You wanted to run up the harder stuff. It had less of a tendency to fall away.
I looked over towards Fez. He was slowing down. I clawed myself forwards with my free hand and tried to push myself up on to my toe tips. A light touch and high knees, that's what was needed. It wouldn't look pretty, but it would get the job done.
I got myself into a rhythm: high knees, touch and up. I was passing Thomas. He looked red in the face, exhausted already. Ade was within reaching distance. I checked his position. He was about ten feet from the top but almost at a standstill. Touch and up. My left foot hit a gully and slid away. I managed to stay upright but the heels of my wellingtons wanted to dig backwards. I had to push forwards.
Bozo was nowhere. He was out of it. Ade and Thomas were flagging. It was just me and Fez. I could hear him breathing, heavy, laboured. He was finished. He'd have to crawl the last bit. My legs felt strong. I had him. Push, jump and past Fez I went. The summit was mine.
I let out a cheer and straightened up, arms aloft. âBad luck, Fez,' I said, watching him crawl over the top edge. He flopped down on his back, his chest heaving.
âWell done, man,' he panted. âI got stuck at the top bit, couldn't get a grip.'
âYou got sticks of dyno up your arse, Ant?' said Ade, heaving himself onto the flat. âYou went by like a rocket.'
âBloody plimsoll came off, dinnit?' yelled Thomas, holding the offending item aloft. He slumped down onto the ground and pulled it back on. âWhere's Bozo?' he said, lifting his head.
âComing,' I answered. âHe's on his belly, mind. About to come over.'
A cry went up. âGiz a hand!'
I went to the edge, crouched down onto my haunches and, grabbing Bozo's hand, pulled him onto the top. â
Uffach wyllt
,' he said, breathing heavily. âThat's harder than it looks.'
The five of us sat catching our breath. It wasn't much of a vantage point but just enough to look down over the village, the uniform rows of pitmen's houses, smoke gently rising from the chimneys. I imagined it had always looked this way, from the day it was first built, a village for miners: functional, no fuss, at one with the mountain.
âWell,' said Thomas, standing. âLet's get at it.'
I placed my tea tray on the lip of the spoil tip and straddled it; the heels of my wellies dug down into the clinkers. Bozo went to place his down next to me but, in his exhaustion, he fumbled it and his tray skittered away. âNo!' he cried, grasping for a corner, but it was too late. We watched as it slid and bounced its way inevitably back to the bottom.
âOh, for fuck's sake,' said Bozo, hands on hips. âThat's a bad business, like.'
âYou massive tit, Bozo,' said Thomas, laughing. âChuckin' your tray down, is it? It's not a throwing contest.'
â
Cera yffarn
, Evans,' snapped Bozo, his one eye darkening. âBloody accident, innit?'
âClimb on behind me,' I said, sitting down and shifting my weight forward to the front of the tray. âMine's a bit bigger. You'll fit on. We'll go quicker, 'n' all.'
âHang on!' yelled Thomas. âOnesies, innit? We never said twosies.'
âYeah, but his tray's down b'there, innit?' I replied.
âAnd he's proper knacked,' added Ade. âHe needs a lift, like.'
âS'pose,' said Thomas. âBut you have to do feet down, like. Make it fair.'
âAll right,' I replied, with a nod.
I felt Bozo's arms come about me, his fingers interlocking just below my ribcage. âEveryone ready?' I cast a glance to my left and right. Ade, Thomas and Fez were astride their chariots, each holding up the top end of their tea tray to stop it slipping away.
âReady,' they all yelled.
âKick off, then!' I cried, and with that, I lifted my heels onto the top rim of the tea tray and we were off, sliding down the spoil tip, clinkers scattering, bumping and jolting.
To our left, Thomas let out a whoop, followed by Ade, their excited yelps filling the air. To our right, Fez, screaming, hit a ridge and literally flew through the air, like a man on a magic carpet, his hair whipping backwards and his cheeks flushed pink. Everything else around us was a blur, the distant mountains a smudge of green zipping past as we skeltered downwards. Bozo was yelling something in my ear, but I couldn't hear him, the noise of the slag beneath us scraping and grumbling. I tried to look sideways, to see if we were in the lead, but the bottom was coming up fast, faster than I would have liked. âHold on!' I yelled, grabbing the sides of the tea tray. Wind whipping at our faces, we span off the spoil and skidded onto patchy scrub, and as we hit, the tea tray tipped sideways and sent us spilling.
âCut my leg,' said Fez, holding his shin. He licked his forefinger and rubbed at the long scrape of red dribbling down towards his sock.
I pushed myself up and checked myself for obvious wounds. None to report. Bozo was still lying on his back, his face black from the spoil. We were all pretty filthy. It was the single advantage of being brought up round a mine: nobody minded the dirt. We'd had some chalk, once, spent ages marking out roads for Fez's Dinkies on the flagstones. The mams had gone mental, furious with us for making a clean, white mess on their paving. We couldn't understand it: mad with us for a bit of white when we spent all our days covered in black.
Ade was pushing himself up and dusting coal off his knees. Beyond him, a small, pained moan went up. Ade turned and looked over his shoulder towards Thomas. âWhat's up, man?'
âAnkle, twisted, dunno, hurts like hell.' He sat up and pulled off his plimsoll.
âBet you've bloody broken it again,' said Ade, pointing towards his leg. âYour mam'll have your guts. You only just got out of the last cast.'