Shoes for Anthony by Emma Kennedy

Author:Emma Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781473502925
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

CHAPTER TWELVE

I didn’t want to go back to school. I had no interest in it, none of us did. There was too much going on: Americans training up our mountain, wagons, the excitement of something building, something big. We wanted to sit on a rock and watch it all pass before us. Instead, we had nit inspection.

‘There shall be no discussion about this,’ barked Miss Evans, hands firmly on hips. ‘You will all line up against that wall and nobody is to move until Nurse Blevin says so.’

Nurse Blevin, the dreaded nit nurse, was a mean-faced woman who came from the other side of the valley. She experienced no joy whatsoever from being in the presence of children and, armed with nothing more deadly than a toothcomb, instilled terror into our very depths. She was fleshy, squeezed into a dark-blue serge uniform, with a small, starched white paper hat pinned into her tightly wound hair. She bore the expression of a large, bored dog and rumour had it she had once found a child so infested with head lice, she’d put him in a sack and thrown him in the river. I don’t know if I believed that. But looking at her, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Her method was startling and efficient: grab a child about the neck with the crook of her elbow, shove head into armpit, drag metal comb across scalp. It was as far removed from the notion of gentle nursing as you could get.

‘It’s like when they shear sheep, innit,’ Fez said, edging along the side wall.

If you got the all clear, you were released and shoved away. If you were infested, you were pressed firmly up against the wall and handed a white card to be taken to your parents for your shame to be declared. Your head would be shaved then smeared with a mysterious ointment that left your scalp covered in purple spots. From that point on, you were the butt of all future jokes. In short, it was the very worst thing that could happen to you. The very worst.

‘Have you been up behind the dip yet?’ said Ade, who was lined up next to me. ‘Massive great tent up b’there. It’s where the Yanks have their tea, like. All the food comes in on a wagon. They haven’t even got rationing!’

‘Get away,’ I said, casting a look down the line. Bozo had his head clamped into Nurse Blevin’s armpit. He was pulling a strained, agonised face. ‘I had some chocolate off one a few days back. It was proper horrible. Piotr said it’s cos it’s made not to melt.’

Ade nodded. ‘I got some gum off one. We all did. Where’ve you been, man? Haven’t seen you up the street or the mountain, like.’ He stopped and looked at me, properly. ‘What’s the matter with your hair?’

I ran a finger through the front of my fringe. It was matted with three-day-old pomade and had taken on a strange, solid quality that I found mildly alarming.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.