Free Five Boys by Mick Jackson

against the authority next to him.
    “What’s there to wonder about?” he said.
    Aldred rested his chin on his hands. “You know how many men died towing Cleopatra’s Needle to London?” he said.
    Bobby had to admit that he didn’t.
    “Six,” said Aldred. “Drowned in the Bay of Biscay.” A faraway look came over him. “I saw a picture once.”
    This picture must have made quite an impression on him, for its very recollection seemed to carry him off into a reverie of drowned Egyptians, with whom he rolled and turned for some considerable time, leaving Bobby at a bit of a loss and a little embarrassed, but he thought it best not to interfere. And in time Aldred rolled his head on his hands and cast his thyroidal gaze up at him.
    “Cursed,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “And if there’s one sort of curse you don’t want to get mixed up in, it’s an Ancient one.”
    A few minutes earlier, Bobby had never heard of Ancient Egypt or been the least inclined to wonder about its pyramids, but the more Aldred kept on about it, the more he was troubled by its evil curses, and soon the church’s very crenellations threatened to crumble beneath his fingertips.
    “You know what’s buried under Cleopatra’s Needle?” said Aldred.
    Bobby didn’t and was tempted to say that if his finding out was likely to unlock yet more curses, he would rather things stayed that way. But Aldred was already raising a hand to his forehead and assuming the persona of the Memory Man.
    His words came out of him almost automatically, as if they were being communicated to him from the other side. “Bibles in several languages,” he reported, “… wire ropes … specimens of marine cables … a box of assorted pipes …”
    Bobby hadn’t the faintest idea what Aldred was going on about. The only thing it reminded him of was the gamethey sometimes played at his auntie May’s in which a tray of household objects was brought into the parlor, then removed and you had to try and remember what you’d just seen.
    “… a shilling razor,” Aldred continued, “… jars of Doulton ware … a box of hairpins …”
    He surfaced briefly, winked at Bobby, then added, “… photographs of pretty English girls …” which seemed to Bobby to be neither particularly Ancient nor particularly Egyptian but Aldred carried on, oblivious.
    “Bradshaw’s Railway Guide … a gentleman’s walking stick …” he said, but his little recitation seemed to be running out of steam. “…
Whitaker’s Almanac,”
he said, and screwed his eyes up. The wheels had stopped turning. “… and other things of interest,” he said.
    He opened his eyes and turned blinking to Bobby to bathe in the glory of his mnemonic feat and would have bathed a little longer had Bobby not asked him what an almanac was.
    “It’s a bit like whiskey,” Aldred said, distracted, “but you can rub it on, like medicine. What’s important is, why was it buried under the Needle?”
    Bobby shrugged.
    “So that Man may know of us,” Aldred declared, “when London’s greatness has ebbed away.”
    Bobby stared blankly back at him.
    “Like Noah’s Ark,” Aldred said.
    London, he said, was full of landmarks with things hidden under them. The poets’ bones under Westminster Abbey … the bronze from captured cannon on the base of Nelson’s Column … the torture chambers under Buckingham Palace …
    But all this talk of bones and London’s ruination was doing Bobby no good at all. And the more Aldred persisted the more panic Bobby felt stir in him, like the horror he’d felt as he trawled through Miss Minter’s newspapers and come across a blasted terrace which looked just like his own.
    His chest was as tight as a joint of brisket. He felt as if it had been bound with cable and wire ropes. He didn’t
want
London’s greatness to ebb away. Didn’t want to have to grub around for hairpins or old crockery to know that his mother and father had once lived there.
    The