Free Five Boys by Mick Jackson Page B

behind his binoculars. “Forty degrees south, fifty degrees east.”
    Bobby glanced over his shoulder and watched as Finn shifted one buttock, then the other, so that he rotated fractionally around to one side. He was still settling when Hector gave the order to fire.
    “Hang on,” said Finn, picked another plum from the pile, quickly composed himself, then flung it up into the sky.
    The boys followed its flight.
    “That’s better,” said Hector. “Ten degrees north, twenty degrees west.”
    In this way the Boys occupied themselves for the next ten minutes, singling out a gravestone, systematically bombarding it, then moving onto another one. Harvey and Lewis each took a turn at dispatching the plums, but it seemed that only Hector and Finn were qualified to give the coordinates. The others made muffled explosions in their cheeks as each plum landed, but of all those thrown only one definitively hit its target, spattering the shrouded urn on one of the more ostentatious graves and making a distinct
clink
when the plumstone struck the stone.
    The troops were still celebrating when Harvey hissed from behind his binoculars, “He’s coming, he’s coming. Here he is.”
    The Boys swung their binoculars around to the right, onto a cottage just beyond the war memorial, and with a little effort Bobby picked out a figure at the attic window. It was an old man. Then Bobby realized that it was, in fact, the Captain, who had taken the unusual step of sloughing off his sleeping bag to stand at his window in nothing but his vest and underpants. Bobby drew his binoculars down from his face and looked over at Aldred but decided against disturbing him, and when he looked back at the attic window the Captain was setting a telescope on a stand.
    The Captain made a few adjustments, then bent down and peered through the eyepiece. When he straightened up he had a handkerchief in each hand. Stood as stiff as a board for a few seconds then suddenly flung his arms out—one up to the right, the other out to the left—and froze. But just as his handkerchiefs were settling, he flung them out into a new position—one out to his right this time and the other straight down at the floor.
    It was as if several hundred volts were being sporadically fed into him, inducing a highly mechanical, robotlike display.
    “He’s like a little bloody windmill,” said Lewis and sniggered to himself, until one of the bigger Boys shushed him up.
    Bobby knew that they were all meant to be keeping quiet, but after watching the Captain wave his arms around for a couple of minutes suddenly couldn’t stop himself.
    “What’s he
doing?”
he said.
    “Signaling,” said Hector.
    Bobby carried on watching. “What’s he saying?” he said.
    Lewis shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody knows,” he said.
    The Captain must have flapped for five or ten energetic minutes, stopping only to squint through his telescope before going back to his hanky waving with vigor renewed—must have contorted himself into every letter of the code’s alphabet until, all at once, he crossed his handkerchiefs before him and dropped his head onto his chest. A moment or two later he snapped himself out of his little trance, dismantled his telescope and disappeared from view.
    “Is that it?” said Bobby.
    Lewis nodded.
    “Until next Tuesday it is,” he said.
    As the boys made their way down the lane ten minutes later any illicit thrill Bobby had felt from spying on the Captain was easily eclipsed by the euphoria of having spent almost an hour in the Five Boys’ company without themhurting him. When he was sure the others were out of earshot he turned to Aldred and told him how impressed he’d been with Finn and Hector’s technical know-how, regarding the aiming and firing of the plums.
    “You mean all the degrees and the easts and wests?” said Aldred.
    Bobby nodded.
    “Oh, they just make them up,” he said.

Sugar Beet
    T HE SPEED with which the Five Boys’ fathers had