Free Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson Page B

his thinking to this new idea his foot slipped and he was half-falling, half-sliding down the side of a muddy crater, holding his rifle above his head and screaming at the top of his voice because this was one of the pits of Hell and it was going to be bottomless.
    But then he stopped falling and sliding and screaming and realized that he was about two-thirds of the way down the side of a huge crater. Down below was thick, muddy-brown water and in the water a body floating face down. A rat was swimming round the body, executing slow, lazy circles and Frank was suddenly reminded how he and Albert had taught themselves to swim one sweltering hot day. It had been years ago, although now it could just as well have been another lifetime. They’d been on Clifton Ings and the Ouse had been that same thick colour as the water in the shell-hole. Jack had been ill with measles and it had just been the two of them that day. Frank closed his eyes and pushed himself back into the soft mud of the side of the crater and decided that the safest place to be was in the past.
    Frank concentrated hard until he could feel the heat of a childhood sun on his skinny, nine-year-old shoulders and smell the cow-parsley and hawthorn along the banks of the Ouse. Now he could feel what the water was like when you first stepped into it, the shock of the cold and the strange feeling of his toes splaying out into the mud at the bottom. And he could feel the itchy hemp of the rope that they took it in turns to tie round each other – one splashing out into the river while the other one stood guard, ready to haul him back if he started to sink. And the willow tree in full, silvery-green leaf that trailed in the water like a girl’s hair.
    Frank stayed in his crater for several hours recreating his first swimming lesson with Albert until by the end of the day they could both make it nearly half-way across the river. Exhausted but triumphant, they lay down on the hard, dry earth under the willow tree until the water evaporated off their skin and Frank remembered he had pieces in his jacket pocket (this was before his mother died) and they sat and ate the squashed squares of bread and strawberry jam. When they finished, Albert turned his jam-smeared face to Frank and said, ‘This has been a right good day, eh, Frank?’
    He thought he might have fallen asleep because he looked up suddenly and found the gunsmoke fog had cleared and the sky was a pale blue. Standing above him on the lip of the crater was Albert, laughing and smiling, and Frank’s first thought was how perfectly like an angel Albert was, even dressed in khaki and with his blond curls crammed under his cap. There was a thin line of blood and grease along the golden skin of his cheek and his eyes were as blue as the sky above, bluer than the forget-me-nots on the tea-service in the front parlour of Lowther Street.
    Frank tried to say something to Albert but he couldn’t get any words to come out of his mouth. Being dead was really just like being trapped in a dream. Then Albert put up his hand as if he was waving goodbye and turned and disappeared, dipping down over the horizon of the crater. Frank felt a terrible sense of despair when Albert was lost to sight, as if somebody had torn something out of him, and he began to shiver with cold. After a while he decided the best thing to do would be to try and find Albert and so he dragged himself out of the crater and set off in the general direction of Albert’s disappearance. When, some time later, he staggered into a dressing-station and announced to a nurse that he was dead the nurse merely said, ‘Go and sit over in that corner with that lieutenant then,’ and Frank walked over to a sandbagged wall where a subaltern on crutches was leaning, staring at nothing with one eye – the other one was bandaged. Frank reached into his pocket and found to his surprise that he still had his tobacco so he rolled up two cigarettes and gave one to the