4th Estate
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © Alan Garner 2018
Cover photograph provided by the author
Design by Jack Smyth
Alan Garner asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008305970
Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008305994
Version: 2018-09-11
For Tom
Pancake Tuesday’s a very happy day.
If you don’t give us a holiday we’ll all run away.
Where shall we run to? Down Moss Lane.
Here comes Twiggy with his big fat cane!
Contents
John and I were going up the Hough to pick watercress in Pott Brook and to look at the anti-aircraft battery in Baguley’s fields.
DANGER. DON’T TOUCH.
The notice was on the board outside the police station on Heyes Lane. A red arrow pointed to pictures of a high-explosive shell, small bombs with fins, a hand grenade; and there were some harmless-looking things too. And underneath was printed:
IF YOU FIND ONE OF THESE, TELL TEACHER OR A POLICEMAN.
DO NOT TOUCH IT, EVEN WITH A STICK.
AND DO NOT THROW STONES AT IT
Pott Brook goes under Hough Lane, and we jumped from the bridge into the field and began to look for caddis fly larvae in the water.
Caddis larvae build tubes from grit and bits of leaf and twig bark to protect their bodies, with only the head and legs poking out. They showed the water was clean. If there were no caddis flies we didn’t pick the cress.
It started to rain.
We walked along the bank to where the cress grew, and John found five tubes. We left the cress to be gathered on the way back and went upstream to look at the guns.
We were nearly across the field when we saw it.
It was on the other side of the brook, floating in a tangle of alder roots. It was grey, with a neck, and a black mark or letters or numbers on the side. We couldn’t read them that far off. But we knew.
What must we do? There was no teacher to