Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Lawrence Page B

Auntie Ivy hit me yesterday just because I said the picture on Mrs. Sims's mantel was a picture of my friend who's a soldier. She hit me so hard that I might have chipped a tooth. The marks of her fingers were still on my cheek when I went to bed and that was a long time later. She called me a monster and
    Auntie Ivy came thumping up behind me. I tried to hide the letter, but she saw it and snatched it away.
    “That's mine!” I cried.
    She turned aside. It took her only a moment to read the letter, and a moment after that she was stuffing it into the firebox. “You're not going to worry your father with petty things like this,” she said. “Chipped a tooth, indeed.”
    “I might have,” I said.
    “You got just what you deserved.” She put the lid onthe firebox. “You might have stopped her heart; did you think of that? The state she's in, you could have killed her, Johnny.”
    “But it was true,” I said. “That was my soldier in the picture.”
    “A dead man?” she asked.
    “Maybe Murdoch isn't dead.”
    “Oh, Johnny,” she said, heaving a great sigh. “I'll tell you what happened, and then maybe you'll admit you were wrong.”
    She sat and told me all about Murdoch. It was a cracking good story, but she made it sound as dull as a grammar lesson. “Murdoch's regiment attacked the Germans. They went out and came straggling back. There was no sign of Murdoch for three days, until he was found in a shell crater with a bullet in his leg. He was just four yards from his trench, but he lay there for three days. Then he was carried back to a dressing station, and his parents were sent a telegram saying that he was coming home. They were hanging streamers of bunting in the doorway—to welcome him back—when the postman brought the second telegram, saying that Murdoch had died of his wounds.”
    “Was he a sergeant?” I asked.
    “Yes, he was.”
    “So was mine,” I said. “And I think mine was wounded in the leg, too. He couldn't walk very well.”
    Auntie Ivy scowled. “Why won't you listen to reason?” she asked. “The next day an officer showed up at Storey's farm, carrying a little package. Murdoch's wallet and identification tag were in it.” Auntie Ivy put her fingers round her wrist to show me where Murdoch wouldhave worn his bracelet. “There were a few letters that he had written but had never got around to sending. It was so sad. Such a little parcel, but everything the poor boy owned.”
    “Everything?”
    “Yes.” Auntie leaned forward, and a look of kindness came to her face for the first time since she had slapped me. “Now don't you see that you have to be wrong? There's no way on God's earth that Murdoch could have come to the garden, is there?”
    “No, Auntie,” I said.
    “Are you sorry?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, it's a little late for sorries.” She stood up, her chair squeaking. “You've put it into poor old Storey's head that his son is still alive. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
    She didn't speak to me for the rest of that day. She ate supper in silence, then sent me to bed by pointing her finger.
    The night was crisp and clear. By morning, I thought, there might be frost on the ground. I lay in bed and watched the moon come up through the branches of the beech tree. I heard the guns in France.
    They were faint but furious, a steady drumming of low-pitched pops and puffs. It was strange to think that such a harmless sound meant that the ground was shaking where my father was, that all the earth around him would be churning like a stormy sea, and the air would be full of razors. I didn't know if the guns were German or British. For all I knew they might have been both,firing together, hurling shells back and forth in the darkness, like giants playing at pitch-and-toss.
    The moon was bright enough to cast shadows on my wall. The branches of the beech tree made patterns there, of loops and crosses, like the writing on my father's letters. I saw them, and thought again