Free The Tightrope Walkers by David Almond

that!” said Mam.
    “Can’t I? Mebbe war is all there ever really is. Mebbe peace is just a gap, a time to count the ammo and gather your strength before getting back for a proper kill. And this time if it happens, it’ll be a proper kill. This time it’ll be the bliddy cataclysm!”
    “So we shouldn’t try to stop it?” I said.
    “How? With a bunch of long-hairs and beatniks and bliddy draughtsmen and their bairns walking the streets and singing happy-clappy crap? How do they think they know better than them that’s really in the know? Do what they say, and we really are wide open for the kill. Here we are! There’s no defences! Come along and bomb us now! You thought of that? No, you haven’t. It’s not the bliddy fairies that we’re dealing with. It’s warmongers that know how to go to bliddy war and
want
to go to bliddy war. Now, shut yourself up and do something proper with your time. And keep yourself free of the daft ideas of your bliddy Strouds.”
    Later he came to me more sadly, with the scent of beer on his breath.
    “War’s inside us, son. We might not want it, but we’ll never be bliddy rid of it. I’m your dad. I got to tell you what I think is truth.”
    At school, Miss O’Kane stabbed her finger towards the CND badge on Holly’s pullover.
    “What,” she said, “is that?”
    “A badge, Miss O’Kane. It stands for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It is a statement against the evil in the world.”
    “I know what it stands for, Holly Stroud. It’s not allowed.”
    She reached for the cane of Miss O’Kane.
    Holly dared.
    “You wear a badge, Miss O’Kane.”
    “Yes, Holly Stroud. A badge for the Legion of Mary, which is a rather different matter. Now take yours off.”
    Even Holly wasn’t brave enough to continue to speak out against Miss O’Kane and the cane of Miss O’Kane.
    She unclipped her badge, held it in her closed hand.
    “Let that be a lesson to you all,” said Miss O’Kane. “There is naught to be gained by following the fashionable and flawed ideas of the time. Stand up for the eternal truths. Now put your hands together and we will pray for the conversion of Russia.”
    She put the cane of Miss O’Kane back upon her desk.

The ice retreated. Even the kids were glad. We were sick of chilblains and chafed skin and sodden socks and wet jeans. Sick of the sniff and the cough. Sick of icy-cold sheets when you got into bed. Sick of teetering, slithering, sliding, falling. We wanted to walk and run with confidence across the earth. Wanted the sun to haul itself up from its sullen place low over the horizon, to get into the air above us and bliddy shine. Which it started to do of course. For the world turns, and keeps on turning, no matter how things might feel in the darkest of times. And carpets of ice on ponds retreated, and flowers of frost on windows faded, and pipes burst and homes were flooded, and gardens turned to muddy patches, and the whole world started to relax, to sigh.
    At last, at last. It was nice when it started but . . . Ee, we’ll remember this one a long time. It’s just like the one in — when was it?— ’47? Just a short time after the war
.
    We stopped hugging our own bodies and swaddling them in too many inadequate clothes. And the grass showed bright new shoots and here were the snowdrops, and even the buds on hawthorn and roses began to swell. And there were days when you could turn your face to the sun and at last feel some heat coming through all that blue emptiness from a hundred million miles away. And relentless work resumed in the yard, and the men knew the work was there and they’d be able to do an extra shift or two and they knew there’d be a packet of proper pay at the end of the week. They’d be able to feed the bairns and get a few pints in the Iona Club. The spring was coming back. Bliddy phew!
    Now at school we did endless English Progress Papers and endless Maths Progress Papers. Or the brainy ones did. The school