Just Joshua Read Online Free PDF Page B

rubbing one foot against the other.
    ‘Joshua,’ she mused. ‘Where do you live?’
    ‘Back there.’ He jerked his head.
    ‘Now I know where I’ve seen you. Your father’s the butcher, isn’t he?’
    He nodded.
    ‘I see.’ She stared at him. ‘That’s a bit different,’ she said.
    He looked up hopefully.
    ‘I can see why you –’ she broke off. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘If I say which windows belong to his ward, you could keep guard on the outside, couldn’t you?’
    He hadn’t a clue what she meant, but he nodded.Any information was better than none.
    ‘His ward is at the back of the hospital. There are six windows and his bed is beside the second window from the far left corner. Now go –’
    He was already scampering away, eager to locate the window, running down the steps and round to the back.
    He found the window and looked up for any sign of movement from inside the glass.
    None came.
    He waited. He counted to a hundred. Still nothing. He wasn’t even sure what he expected, but somehow he had the feeling that the mountain man would know he was there. He counted to two hundred, and then, very patiently, to five hundred. With a sigh he turned to go.
    Something caught his eye. Something that gleamed in the moonlight near the oleander bushes. He bent and picked it up; it felt smooth and hard.
    He carried his find round to the side of the hospital and stood in the electric light that shone through a window so that he could examine it more closely. It was a snake, carved out of blueish-grey stone. The carving was small and perfect, except for the snake’s head, which was missing a tiny chip above one eye. As he gazed at the carving, he remembered the stone in the mountain man’s string bag.
    He clasped the snake tightly with both hands. It was a sign, he thought jubilantly. He was right. The mountain man was trying to communicate.
    He returned to the back of the building. Still no one there; no face at the window. He put his fingers to his lips and blew a piercing whistle, the way his father had taught him.
    There was no response. Perhaps the man felt too ill to whistle back, he thought.
    He raised his right hand high in the air so that the snake could look upwards. Just in case the mountain man was looking. So that he wouldn’t be lonely.
    He ran home. At the entrance to the new shop he paused, listening, then went in, feeling for the small stack of paper bags his father had been given by Oliver for special customers. His fingers touched them almost at once. He drew out the top one and took it outside. He slipped in the snake and went round the back. His father was still whittling away.
    Joshua didn’t want to show him the mountain man’s snake. He didn’t even want to show it to Robert. It was his secret, thrown out while he was there on his own. He went quietly indoors, lifted up the cloth that was draped between his mattress and the floor and laid the snake in the box under the bed where it would be safe and unseen; his father only swept under the beds after the rains. Then he went back outside. He squattedclose to his father, picked up a stick and began drawing fantasy creatures in the dust.
    That night he turned over on to his stomach and felt beneath the bed. He edged the snake from its bag carefully so that the crackling would not wake his father. He closed his fingers around it and lifted it up to the moonlight. The snake’s head reared up from among the thick coils. Joshua ran his finger from the head down along the body and in among the coils; he went round and round until he reached the tip of the tail. The smoothness of the stone against his skin seemed somehow alive. He set the snake down beside his head on the pillow and tried to outstare it, fighting the sleepy drooping of his eyelids. He was sinking now; his back and his legs felt weightless. When his eyelids flickered open for the last time, the snake’s head seemed to have grown till it was as big as his own. He