Free Shoes for Anthony by Emma Kennedy Page B

sink. ‘That’s that, then. Ta-ra! See you tomorrow.’
    â€˜Ta-ra!’ said Mam.
    â€˜What’s in your cup?’ I said to Mam, as she stood and walked towards the sink.
    â€˜Just leaves, Ant,’ she said, giving her cup a swirl. ‘It’s all silly nonsense. Just fun, remember.’
    The front door slammed shut. Bopa always had a heavy hand.
    â€˜Could that woman make any more noise?’ complained Alwyn. ‘Seriously? It’s like having a bloody magpie in the house. Jabbering on, and then, Boom! goes the door.’
    â€˜
And so
…’ returned the voice of the Man in Black, ‘
we come to the end of the
Appointment with Fear.
If you can say that only the graveyard has yawned, then we are deeply grateful. I shall return to tell you more stories of corpses and the midnight hour, but until that happy day when we meet by some evil crossroads of the future, this is your storyteller, the Man in Black, saying goodnight and goodbye
.’
    Father stood up and switched off the wireless. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s enough silly entertainment. Off to bed with you, Ant. School in the morning.’
    â€˜I prefer it when it’s ghosts and stuff. Dead people walking about, like,’ said Alwyn, spitting on the toecap of his shoe.
    â€˜Hang on,’ said Bethan, ‘I’m confused. So she didn’t kill her fella? It was the brother?’
    â€˜Aye,’ said Alwyn, bringing up the shine with a chamois leather. ‘Second son, wan’he? Nobody took any notice of him. Don’t you be getting any ideas, Ant. You’re the third son. You’re even further down the pecking order. Small boys are to be ignored at all costs, but that doesn’t mean they can go about shooting their elder brothers.’
    â€˜Mean,’ said Bethan. ‘Don’t mind him, Ant. I notice you.’
    Father sat back down in his chair and folded his paper so he could read it more easily. He had turned the gas lamp back on and he sat, illuminated, looking more like a bookish librarian than a hardened pitman. ‘Get to bed, Anthony,’ he muttered, without looking up. ‘I’ll not tell you again.’
    â€˜Can I take a candle up, Mam?’ I asked, as she walked into the room.
    Mam reached for one of the candleholders lined up on the mantelpiece. Sticking the wick into the embers, she passed it to me. ‘Don’t burn it for long, mind,’ she said. ‘Those are my last candles until we can get some more.’
    I shared a bedroom with Alwyn and Emrys. Being bigger than me, they always shoved me to the end of the bed to sleep by their feet like a dog. So instead, I slept under the bed on some old jumpers Father didn’t wear any more. I could have chosen to sleep on the floor next to the bed, but I preferred it underneath: it felt more like a den, my space. I had a pillow and a blanket and a shoebox where I kept my own treasures: a tooth I’d knocked out playing football, a flint, a seashell I’d brought back from a day trip to Porthcawl, and a comic,
The Dandy
, I’d been given on a birthday by an uncle from Tonypandy. I also had an encyclopaedia, a brown, battered old thing that Mam had picked up at a jumble sale. It was the only book I owned, and I loved it.
    On the wall between the bottom of the mattress and the skirting board, there was an advert for a pair of men’s shoes, cut out from one of Bethan’s American magazines and stuck up with a splash of wallpaper glue. ‘Regal Shoes!’ the advert exclaimed. ‘A rugged Scotch grain brogue! As ultra correct in the swankiest clubs as on the busiest sidewalks from Boston to Hollywood!’ The shoes were the grandest things I’d ever seen: a rich, nut brown with fancy stitching on the toes. They had wooden shoe trees inside to keep their shape, and were sitting between a fine tweed jacket and some smart leather driving gloves. I would lie