Grumpy Old Man

Chapter 1: Mr. Donner Appears

Niklas came home from school one Tuesday to find a large removal van parked outside the house next door.

‘Oh good,’ thought Niklas, ‘somebody’s bought the house. I hope they have children.’

As he crossed the road he craned his neck to look around the side of the van hoping to spot somebody but he could see nobody there. He paused just inside his gate and watched for a while. After a few minutes three men came out of the house next door, two were younger than his father but the third looked older than his grandfather. The three men went to the back of the van and the two younger ones went inside to pick up one of the pieces of furniture that were still inside. It was an old desk they lifted, heavy and dark with a green leather top covered in old ink stains. The desk was obviously very heavy and the two men were struggling to lift it. As they came to put the desk on the small lift at the back of the van one of the men tripped over the small step and lost his grip on the desk. It fell a short distance to the metal floor of the removal van with a deep thud.

“For god’s sake be careful with that,” shouted the old man, “it’s an heirloom. That desk is over a hundred years old. It’s survived two world wars and seven fires and I don’t want it ruined by a couple of thumb fingered removal men.”

Niklas looked to where the old man was leaning his heavyset form forward on his stick, scowling at the two younger men handling his desk. His shoulders were tense and his one foot was tapping and he was glaring at the removal men in a way that promised dire consequences to them if any harm came to his beloved possessions. The old mans’ hair was thinning on top and almost completely colourless and only his thick but neat moustache showed any trace of its original colour. His face was a weather beaten mass of wrinkles and his liverspotted hands white with tension as he gripped his ancient wooden walking stick. His clothes were old in style and age, a jacket at once threadbare and hairy, trousers that would no longer hold the crease that had obviously been designed into them and, hiding a plain white shirt with stiff starched collar and cuffs, a waistcoat with a watch chain across the front!

The old man watched as the desk was slowly lowered on the lift and than hefted carefully and inched across the pavement towards his garden gate. As he turned top follow its progress his scowl turned towards Niklas, watching from just within his own garden, and deepened. Niklas turned hurriedly and walked quickly up his path and through his door.

Niklas’ father was not yet home. His mother was in the kitchen, peering into the open refrigerator. Niklas stopped in the kitchen doorway and watched, leaning against the frame, his bag hanging by its straps from both his hands and swaying gently against his ankles.

“Hi mom. There’s somebody moving into the house next door.”

“Ah, Niklas, you’re here at last. Good. Yes I know about Mr. Donner, I went to say hello when he arrived.”

“Is there just him moving in? I had hoped there would be some children.”

“No dear, he’s all on his own.” Mrs Edlund looked up from the open refrigerator, “Now don’t you go bothering Mr. Donner, he’s come here for a rest and he needs some peace and quiet. Now dear, I’m short on eggs I think. Would you be kind and go to the shops for me before you change?”

“Okay mum.” Niklas threw his schoolbag casually into a corner of the hall and waited while his mother dug into her apron for her purse, talking to him all the while.

“Now you’re to go to Mr. Mercies’ and get a dozen free range eggs, free range mind you, and you’re to check them before you pay for them. Last time when I got home I found three out of the dozen were cracked. I’ll give you $5 but you’re to come straight back with the change now, no stopping of for sweets.”

All the while she was digging into her purse and Niklas was nodding and making ‘yes mum’ noises at the appropriate times until she had finally handed over the money and pushed him gently towards the door.

“And straight back now, you hear, your father will be home soon and I want to get dinner on as soon as possible.”

“Yes mum,” said Niklas as he rushed down the hall. He opened the front door a little and poked his head out. There was no-one by the removal van so he went out, got his bike from the garage, mounted carefully and set off, straight through he open gates of the drive and on towards the shops. He wondered if he could get away with just a few toffees. Probably not.

Mr. Mercies’ shop was the fourth one along of a small row of shops three corners away from Niklas home. It was a sort of mini supermarket, crowded with shelves selling all the sorts of things that people could forget while doing their regular shop at the big supermarkets as well as all the things that they may need to buy in between but which were not worth a special trip to buy. Two doors down from Mr. Mercies, there was a takeaway outside which, propped carefully against the wall Niklas recognised Fabian’s distinctively painted bike. It had been a rusting wreck when Fabian’s mother had bought it from a second hand shop but Fabian had carefully cleaned it up and painted it with colours and designs taken from the album covers of his favourite bands. It was uniquely and unmistakably his. Niklas passed straight by Mr. Mercies shop and peered through the window of the takeaway. Fabian was leaning forlornly on the wall in the middle of medium sized queue, a slightly lost look on his face. Niklas went in.

“Hi Fabi, what ya doing?”

Fabian’s face lit up with a smile. “Hi Nik, my mother had to work late today so she said to get a takeaway for my dinner. I’m going to get cheeseburger and chips.”

“Oh. I’ve got to get some eggs for our tea from Mr. Mercies. Why don’t you come with me and then you can come home and eat with us?”

“Won’t your mother mind?”

“Why should she? She likes you. And if she says no, then you can just get the takeaway after all.”

Fabian smiled and nodded and the two boys left the takeaway and went into Mr. Mercies shop to buy the eggs under Mr. Mercies watchful gaze before retrieving their bikes and heading back to Niklas’ house. On the way, they talked.

“There’s someone moving into the house next to ours.”

“Oh, good. Do they have any boys?”

“No, there’s just an old man and I think he was in a bad mood, he scowled at me. Mum says to keep away from him.”

Fabian frowned. “He probably doesn’t like children. One of my mother’s boyfriends was like that, he went away because he didn’t want to be saddled with me.”

“Oh. He must have been a very silly man, it’s not like you were bad or anything.”

“He said he just wasn’t very good with children, I don’t know why because I quite liked him.”

By this time the boys had turned the final corner into Niklas’ road. The removal van was gone and there was no sign of the old man but both boys looked carefully at the house as they parked their bikes before going into Niklas’ house.

“Hi mom, Fabian’s here.”

“Hello Fabian, how are you?”

“I’m fine Mrs. Edlund, thank you.”

“Fabian’s mom had to work late so I said he could eat with us today. Is that alright?”

“What again? Your mother works too hard Fabian. Of course you may eat with us, you’re always welcome here. Your father just phoned Niklas. He’s going to pick up Tina from her dance class and then come he is on his way. He should be here within about half an hour, so if you boys will set the table, I will make dinner and we can get started as soon as your father gets here, but first you must change out of your school clothes Niklas. Fabian dear would you pass me those eggs, please.”

Niklas disappeared upstairs to change while Fabian began helping his mother and setting the table.

Niklas had changed and was helping his friend finish the setting of the table when his father and sister came home. He was wearing his favourite battered T-shirt and jeans while Fabian was still dressed in his school shirt and trousers. They made quite a contrast as they worked silently together laying the cutlery carefully in place. Mr Edlund had to stop and watch them for a few moments as he stood in the kitchen doorway, his daughter staring at Fabian with a sour expression beyond him. Mr Edlund reflected that for anyone seeing them for the first time it would appear that Fabian was the perfect image of the clean cut, fresh washed schoolboy. It was, he thought, a great argument in favour of school uniforms, as for his own son, in frayed and faded jeans and the threadbare T-shirt. He smiled. All in all, he was immensely proud of his son, though it wouldn’t do to let him know. “Hello boys. Fabian, how are you?”

Mrs Edlund looked around at the sound of her husband’s voice, “Hello dear, Fabian’s mother had to work late again so I said that he could eat with us today.”

Tina stepped forward and sniffed, “what again?”

“Tina!” frowned Mr Edlund.

“Well he’s always here.”

“Now dear,” said Mrs Edlund, “that’s not nice.” She turned to Fabian. “Pay her no attention, Fabian, you know that you’re always welcome here.”

“Thank you Mrs Edlund, I like it here, you’re always very kind to me.”

“That’s very nice of you to say dear, now if you’ve finished setting the table, we can sit down and eat.”

Mr Edlund left the kitchen briefly to put away his coat and hat and returned in time to end an argument over who was to sit next to Niklas.

“No Tina, let Fabian sit next to Niklas, he is Niklas’ friend.”

Finally they were all seated and the meal was served.

As the boys began to eat, Niklas with his accustomed single-mindedness, and Fabian, delicately, almost absently by comparison, Mrs Edlund spoke to her husband.

“Mr Donner finally moved in today.”

“He did?” replied her husband, “good. It’ll do him good to get settled into his own place at last. How is he feeling?”

“He was fine when I spoke to him, although he did seem a little tired.”

“Only to be expected. It was no doubt a strain, moving house and all. Did it take them long?”

“Yes, Niklas says they were still there when he came home from school.”

“Hmm. You didn’t go bothering Mr Donner, did you Niklas? I know your habit of introducing yourself to all the new people in the neighbourhood.”

Niklas hastily swallowed what he was eating and shook his head. “No dad, I just watched for a couple of minutes and then went inside.”

“Good. Because you’re not to go bothering Mr Donner. He needs peace and quiet and the last thing he wants is a lot of noisy kids around.” Mr Edlund smiled as he said it but Niklas looked serious.

“I won’t bother him dad.”

When his father turned his attention away from him, Niklas looked to Fabian and the two of them exchanged unspoken warnings. And curiosity.

After eating the two boys decided to go, first, to Fabian’s house where he could change out of his school clothes and then to their friend Jason’s house. There was no problems with Niklas’ parents about this plan since the three boys often spent the evenings at each other’s houses, each set of parents considering it a holiday when they were at the other’s house, but Tina was at first insistent that Niklas stay to play with her and then insistent that she could go with them. It took the combined arguments of both boys and the final word of both parents before she could be persuaded, reluctantly, to let them go. The boys rushed out before she could think up any more arguments, they both remembered the times she had managed to persuade Niklas’ parents that she should go with them and they had spent a wasted evening explaining over and again that boys did not play ‘dressing up’, nor did they play at tea parties. As they passed next door they stared without staring at the empty windows but saw nothing.

Niklas push-jumped onto his bike and then looked back at Fabian.

“Race you to your house,” he shouted and then started peddling for all he was worth.

“Hey not fair,” cried Fabian and quickly raced to follow him.

The two boys tore around the thankfully quiet streets as fast as they could peddle. Despite Niklas’ start, Fabian slowly caught up with him, not only peddling faster on the straight, thanks to his longer legs, but also taking the corners much faster and sharper than Niklas dared. By the time the two boys had reached Fabian’s house Fabian was only a few feet behind Niklas and had to brake and turn sharply to avoid a collision.

“I won, I won,” panted Niklas, his grinning face glowing from the exertion.

“Only because you had a start on me,” complained Fabian, “next time I’ll beat you by miles.”

Fabian’s house was untidy. It was not that his mother did not clean, but rather that she worked so late so often that she could never catch up with the mess as it was made. Fabian was accustomed to helping her out by doing some housework himself between eating and doing his homework, but since he had eaten with the Edlunds that day, nothing whatsoever had been done since the previous afternoon. There were books lying around the living room and dining room, both Fabian’s and his mother’s – she was taking a correspondence course in her limited spare time – and the previous nights’ dishes still waited in the kitchen sink. Fabian sighed as he saw them.

“I’d better do these.”

“OK, I’ll help. What do I do?”

“Well, if you dry while I wash, it’ll only take half the time.”

While Fabian ran the water for the dishes, Nik looked around the room. Fabian’s house always fascinated him, even the kitchen was crammed with strange objects that his mother had picked up from various places. In her youth she had travelled extensively visiting and collecting souvenirs from many different parts of the world. When she was in the mood, she would tell the boys stories of the places she had been and the people she had met but she was mostly too tired.

Niklas turned to ask Fabian the origin of one particularly mysterious object but saw that in the time he had spent nosing about the kitchen, Fabian had run the water and piled the draining board half full of freshly cleaned dishes. He hurriedly put the strange object back in its place and ran to help his friend.

“There should be a tea towel on the side there,” Fabian told him.

The two boys between them soon finished the dishes and, having put them carefully away, moved up to Fabian’s bedroom.

Fabian lost no time in ridding himself of his school clothes and then opened his drawers and the doors of his wardrobe, one after the other inspecting and rejecting one item of clothing after another. He tried one T-shirt against his body and then rejected it muttering, “no good, too small”. Niklas picked up Fabian’s guitar and leaned back on the bed watching his friend.

Fabian had always been thin but now he seemed to be all bone, his stomach was concave and his elbows and shoulders stood out like knots in the string of his arms. It was not that he had lost weight, Niklas knew, but rather that in the last few months Fabian had grown head and shoulders above Niklas, his body elongating like a ‘stretch Armstrong’ doll or a figure made of silly putty, flesh tightening over suddenly lengthening bones, skin becoming taut and muscles wiry while the bones of his ribs showed through the gaps. Jason had told Niklas privately that he feared Fabian was ‘growing up’. Fabian though seemed to be the only person who had not noticed and continued in the same old way without mentioning anything about his growth except to complain, as now, when he could no longer fit into any of his clothes. Fabian finally found a T-shirt that looked like it would fit him and opened the wardrobe door to take out a pair of jeans. Niklas stopped strumming an almost tune on the guitar and watched as his friend pulled on the jeans.

The jeans fit Fabian in the same way a balloon fits the air inside it. It was almost funny to watch him hopping about from one leg to the other as he tried to jump his way into them. Niklas managed to put the guitar to one side before Fabian finally lost his balance and came crashing down on top of the bed, and on top of the giggling Niklas.

As Fabian fell, Niklas helped him out with a guiding hand – straight onto the bed beside him where he could reach his sides to tickle. Fabian, at first annoyed at having fallen so embarrassingly could not help but crease with laughter at Niklas tickling.

“Stop it! It’s not funny,” he said through his laughter.

“Yeah,” grinned Niklas, “seems funny to me.” And with that he redoubled his attack upon his ticklish friend.

By batting Niklas hands away for a moment Fabian caught his breath enough to begin retaliating and soon both boys were rolling about the bed in hysterics at each others tickling. It could not last, of course. Niklas rolled a little too far, unused to the narrowness of Fabian’s bed and tumbled off with a yell, dragging Fabian after him. Landing on the floor below, Niklas with Fabian on top of him knocked the wind out of both boys and they lay there on top of the carpet and the heaps of discarded clothing until they both got their breaths back.

Fabian relaxed on top of Niklas, pushing his head into the angle of his friend’s shoulder while Niklas’ arms went around him. They lay like that for some time.

Finally, Niklas sighed. “It’s good when it’s like this. I wish it could stay this way forever!”

“Well, why can’t it? All we have to do is stay here like this and it will be forever!”

At that moment the boys heard a door slam downstairs.

“Hello, Fabian. Are you home?” It was Mrs Waitaweill, Fabian’s mother, home from work at last. The two boys sighed and looked at each other for a long moment before getting up from the floor.

Fabian shouted down to his mother: “Yes Mum, Niklas is here too, we’re upstairs. We’ll be down in a minute, I’m just getting changed.”

Niklas helped his friend pull on the jeans properly and do up the final button then waited near the door while his friend quickly pulled on a T-shirt. All the while the two boys could hear Mrs Waitaweill pottering about in the kitchen downstairs. While Fabian’s mother was not a particularly noisy person she was an adult and it sometimes seemed to the boys that nobody over the age of fourteen could do anything without sounding like a one man band all the time.

Finished dressing, Fabian led the way downstairs to the kitchen where his mother caught him with a hug and a kiss before he could escape. She was just about to do the same to Niklas when Fabian said, “We’re just going to Jason’s to play.”

Mrs Waitaweill frowned: “Already dear? Have you eaten?”

“Yes mum, I ate at Niklas’. And it’s nearly half past six.”

“Well, if you’ve done your homework?”

“Didn’t get any today, it’s too near the holidays.”

“Well okay, but don’t be too late back, it’s still school tomorrow, the holidays don’t start for another three days.”

“No, mum, I won’t be late. Bye!”

“Goodbye, Mrs Waitaweill,” and with that the two boys went out the door and onto their bikes to their friend Jason’s house.

This time there was no racing as the boys peddled slowly side by side towards Jason’s house, talking.

“Did you really get no homework?” asked Niklas, “I got loads.”

“Well, I got a little, but I can do it in morning break. I bet most of your homework was for maths?”

Niklas groaned, “Yes, we got a whole lot of sums to do.”

“Well there you are, you have Mr Swansen for maths, I get Mr Carey. He hardly ever gives us homework.”

Niklas grinned mischievously, “You know what they call him, don’t you? Carey the F…”

“Yes, I know what they call him,” interrupted Fabian, “but he’s alright. He always treats us like we matter not like most of the teachers. I don’t think some of them like kids.”

Niklas groaned, “Mr Swansen doesn’t, he’s trying to kill all the kids in the world with overwork!”

The two boys were turning the last corner before Jason’s house now, one tidy semi-detached in a street full of almost identical tidy semi-detacheds. As they turned the corner, Fabian grinned slyly at his friend and started to sprint the remaining few hundred metres to Jason’s house, Niklas yelled in indignation and then bent over his peddles to catch up. Fabian relaxed a little as they approached the house, allowing Niklas to almost catch up. Once in the driveway, the two boys dropped their bikes with a double crash, Niklas only moments after Fabian, and stared at each other. Each boy was trying his hardest not to laugh and almost daring the other to start first.

“Good morning boys,” came Mrs Van Mason’s voice from the front garden, “Jason is round the back with Vince and Jonathon. I think you’d better go through, I have a feeling he needs rescuing.”

Niklas transferred his stare to Mrs Van Mason. If he had not known better, he would almost have sworn that she was also trying to suppress laughter.

“Humph!” said Niklas then turned to the door at the back of the garage that led to the rear half of the garden.

“Thanks Mrs Van Mason,” said Fabian with a grin and he turned and followed.

Niklas was still in the doorway as Fabian arrived, his slender form blocking the view beyond. Fabian pushed him slightly to one side and peered over his shoulder. There in the middle of the lawn lay Jason, arms held above his head by his little brother, being sat on by a laughing Jonathon who was bouncing as Jason struggled against the tickling he was getting.

The two boys in the doorway looked at each other and then with a single voice yelled “charge” and ran down the garden towards their friends. Jonathon and Sniv looked up in horror at the noise but had no time to prepare themselves before the two boys were on them, Fabian rolling over Jonathon and dragging him with him off the helpless Jason while Niklas caught Sniv round the chest and pulled him over on top of him. Soon it was free for all, with each boy, even the recovered Jason, tickling the nearest available target and each boy trying to hold out against the hands coming at them from every direction.

It was not long before they were all out of breath and unable to continue. They lay quiet together in a heap, breathing deeply and wiping the tears of laughter from their eyes. Jonathon humped himself up onto his elbows and slid sideways until he could lay down again with his head this time, in Jason’s lap. Sniv picked a blade of grass and leaned up on his elbow, watching his big brother and friend while he chewed it. Niklas stared at the sky and Fabian just lost himself in the warm contact of the bodies around him. They were still and silent for a long time.

It was, of course, the irrepressible Jonathon who broke the silence.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have your own jet plane?”

The other boys ignored him, well aware that Jonathon would often talk just to break a silence.

“No, really, it would be great wouldn’t it? You could go wherever you wanted anytime you liked.”

Jason looked down to where he was playing with Jonathon’s hair, twisting a lock of it around his fingers.

“But where could you park it? I’d rather have a car, one that would fit in my garage.”

“But you can’t go anywhere in a car, only where there are roads.”

“And you can’t go anywhere in a plane either, only where there are airports.”

Jonathon batted Jason’s hand away from his hair and turned to face him, lying on his friend’s stomach with his elbows on either side of Jason’s waist.

“But you could buy a jump jet and that way you could land it anywhere you wanted, and still go anywhere in the world.”

Niklas and Fabian were beginning to become bemused by this point but Sniv, by now used to his brother’s weird conversations with Jonathon, just sighed.

“Anyone want a drink,” Sniv looked at Niklas and Fabian only, knowing that the other too would not have heard him, both boys nodded and followed him as he unfolded himself to his feet and headed towards the house. Behind them as they went they heard Jason arguing that a man with a car could also afford to go to an airport and buy a plane ticket anywhere in the world, to which Jonathon asked ‘what if the man could only just afford the car with nothing left over for the plane ticket’.

“Do they often get like that?” asked Niklas of Sniv.

“All the time,” said Sniv, “Jason was always weird and since they met, Jonathon’s gotten just as bad. I think it might be contagious.”

“I think it’s sweet,” said Fabian.

“I think it’s weird,” said Sniv. “What do you want, Coke or lemonade?”

Both boys opted for coke and while Sniv was pouring the dark liquid into five glasses they watched their two friends through the kitchen window. Jonathon was still lying on Jason’s stomach but his restless and never-ending energy was showing in movement of his feet and lower legs, twitching like a lions tail in one of those nature films about the African wilds. Sniv handed the boys their full glasses, and one extra to Niklas for one of the other two, and then they headed back into the garden.

By the time they reached the two boys their conversation had ended, or at least come to a long pause. Jonathon was lying with his hands on Jason’s chest and his chin resting on his hands. Jason was once again toying with Jonathon’s silky blond hair, a habit he seemed to be getting into. The two boys were staring into each other’s eyes with vague smiles on their faces. Sniv put the base of an ice-cold glass of coke to the back of Jonathon’s neck.

“Yow! Wassat?” Jonathon rolled instinctively away from the cold sensation on the back of his neck, rolling off Jason and onto his back to look up at Sniv holding the cold glass out to him. He gave a glare and then accepted the glass. Jason also glared at his little brother but accepted the glass that Niklas offered him.

Sniv looked around at his friends and took a sip of his coke.

“So what are we going to do today?”

“Let’s play soccer!” said Jonathon.

“But there’s only five of us, not enough for a soccer game.”

“We could go for Martin!”

“No good, he has his art club on Tuesdays.”

“What about Keith?”

“His step-dad’s keeping him in again.”

“What for this time?”

“I don’t know, just something stupid.”

“Well, why don’t we just go to the play fields and see if there is anyone there we can play with?”

“What if there’s nobody there?”

“Then we’ll just play ‘headers and volleys’.”

They thought for a while and then each in turn nodded.

“I’ll get my ball,” said Jason.

The conversation went with the ritual singsong of long-time intimates. It was not a decision being made but rather a made decision being agreed upon and then put into effect. Each of the boys had known the others so long and so well that when Jonathon had first suggested the game of soccer they had all known that that was what they would be doing, it merely remained to go through the ritual of agreement.

The boys gathered together while Jason went into the house to find his ball. When he returned with it, they walked in a loose group, laughing and chatting, round a corner an up a small hill to the recreation ground. Once there they used the empty bowling green, the only empty space at that time, for a series of football based games of the type that boys in their age group make up constantly and instinctively. In this way they spent their evening and others after it, relaxing together after the pressures of the schoolday. Perhaps on his way home occasionally Niklas would look rather longer than he had intended at the house next door, but in the main he forgot about it and its grumpy occupant. In this way the few remaining days left before the holidays passed quickly and before they knew it they were packing away their school-clothes to remain unused for the next six weeks, an eternity as far as they were concerned, and looking forward to the freedom of their summer holidays.

Chapter 2: The Gnome

The summer holidays had crept unaware upon Niklas and his friends, as usual. Even though they had been looking forward to the holidays for weeks, they were unprepared. The Saturday morning, the first day of the holidays found Niklas lying in bed looking at the sun peeking through the curtains and wondering what plans to make for the day. His eyes were half closed and his mind was wandering so that he did not notice when Jason came creeping into his room, silently and on tiptoe. Jason was almost to the bed before some slight sound or movement gave him away.

Niklas started to turn, too late, as Jason leapt onto the bed and on top of Niklas, capturing his hands above his head and sitting on his belly.

“Got you, lazy bones. You should have been up hours ago instead of wasting the first day of the holidays in bed.”

Niklas smiled a lazy smile

“But I like being in bed, especially with you.”

“But you were in bed before I came!”

“Only because I was waiting for you.”

“And how did you know that I would be coming?”

Niklas grinned.

“Because you always do. You always come for me in the mornings, and you always jump on top of me!”

Jason pulled back a little and looked down at his friend.

“In that case, I’ll let you off with a kiss,” he said and bent down to touch his lips lightly to Niklas for a brief moment. Niklas strained up to meet him and prolong the kiss but his arms were still held and he was pinned too tightly to the bed to reach Jasons’ disappearing lips.

“Hey, no fair,” complained the struggling Niklas,” That’s no kind of kiss!”

“It’s all you deserve lazybones. Hurry up and get out of bed, we’re all meeting down at the Bowling Green.”

While Niklas dressed, Jason opened the curtains and looked out of the bedroom window, over the back gardens.

“Hey, there’s all kinds of little men in the garden next door!”

Niklas barely looked up.

“They’re Mr Donners’ gnomes, he talks to them.”

“Gnomes? Like those little plastic things that people put in their gardens?”

“Yep, exactly those. What do you think, shorts or jeans?”

“Shorts, definitely, it’s hot enough. And he talks to them?”

“All the time.”

“Weird. Has he talked to you?”

“No, I’m keeping out of his way, just like mom said. She talks to him sometimes.”

“He can’t be that bad then, if your mom talks to him. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready. I don’t know though, she talked to that vicar last year and he was slimy.”

“Yeah, but he was vicar, you’ve got to talk to vicars. Come on lets go before they start without us.”

And the two boys raced out of the room, down the stairs, past Niklas’ mother with hardly a word and out of the front door. If only their bikes had engines, they would have made scorch marks across the concrete as they set off.

At the Bowling Green, everybody was there apart from Niklas and Jason. There was Fabian and Jonathon, Sniv and Keith and Martin (with his little dog, Fix). Jonathon was trying to ride his skateboard down the steps leading up to the green. The others were watching him with resigned concern. At each step, Jonathon caught the middle of his board on the lip of the step and swayed, waving his arms in the air to keep his balance.

Jonathon was on the last step when Niklas and Jason pulled up outside the small green gate. The two newcomers watched, Niklas resigned, Jason concerned, as Jonathon slowly shifted his balance on the board, trying to put one end on the ground before the other came off the step. There was a slight grating sound as his skateboard slid lightly down the edge of the step, and a slightly louder gasping sound as Jason gripped the gate in worry. The tip of Jonathons’ Board touched the ground and stopped, Jonathon shifted his weight once more, twisted and jumped just right and landed, on the ground, on his skateboard and erect.

“See! Told ya I could do it.” Jonathon looked up for the first time and saw the two newcomers. “Hi Jase, Hi Nik, did you see?”

Jason sighed and Niklas giggled. They could not help but be affected by the younger boy’s infectious grin.

“Yes, we saw,” said Jason, with a smile.

This was Jonathon’s cue to strut, his chest thrust out and his head held up, with his skateboard held tight to his side and looking almost bigger than he was.

“I told them I could do it, they didn’t believe me, but I could. I can do anything on a skateboard.”

As he walked his out-thrust chest and pulled-back shoulders gave him the air of a victorious Caesar. Behind him Martin grinned at Keith and then parodied his movements, exaggerating each bounce and jerk. Keith tried to look disdainful but could not stop the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. Fabian just grinned wickedly at the oblivious boy’s preening back.

“I could do it again for you, it’s easy!”

Jason’s face dissolved from his prior concern into one of adoring delight at the boy’s antics but Niklas could no longer hold back his giggles.

“What?” The indignant Jonathon said, “what did I say?”

Behind him, the silently smiling Sniv picked up his ball and bounced it gently off his friend’s head.

“Come on hero, lets play soccer.”

Jonathon tossed his head in a fine display of pique and overacting. “Huh! You’re not worthy.” And then turned to race up the steps to the bowling green. “Come on, can’t catch me.”

The other boys followed Jonathon, running and laughing but unable to catch the dodging, hyperactive youngster. Martin soon fell behind, his smaller legs unable to keep up the pace, and left it to his dog to keep his place in the game, a small yapping bullet that still seemed unable to reach the boy. Niklas and Sniv were the next to drop out of the chase, exhausted and breathless. Only Fabian, Jason and Keith were able to come even close to the nimble Jonathon; Fabian through the speed of his long legs, Jason though his inborn athleticism, and Keith through an uncanny ability to anticipate the small boy’s dodging and darting path. Even these three were having no luck actually catching the boy.

Finally Sniv, laughing at their inability to catch his friend, threw the soccer ball that he still held and hit the fleeing boy square on the back.

“Hey!” yelled Jonathon indignantly, glaring at Sniv and trying to twist his arm up his back to rub where the ball had hit him.

“Gotcha!” shouted Keith, grabbing the ball and throwing it at Jonathon.

Jonathon quickly side stepped, avoiding the ball. The ball was taken up by Jason, who also threw it and narrowly missed the dodging boy. The game was gleefully taken up by all the boys and Jonathon was soon surrounded by a circle of his friends all trying their hardest to bounce the soccer ball of the nearest part of his body while fighting off their own growing laughter.

All to no avail. The grinning Jonathon seemed to be immune to all the boys’ best tactics, easily avoiding even the most skillfully thrown ball, taunting them all the while with an almost obscene little dance and wiggling his bum as a target for them.

Eventually, Jason, overcome with laughter, fluffed a throw and the ball went high and then bounced to end up just short of the side stepping Jonathon. Jonathon turned quickly and kicked the ball before it had even come properly to rest, sending it in a wild trajectory towards the gates of the bowling green where the green’s proper patrons, a line of white dressed elderly men and women, were just ascending the few shallow steps.

The boys looked on in horror as the ball sailed majestically into the sky and then came down as if guided straight into the moon face of a fat white dressed man, who had at that moment just reached the top of the steps to the bowling green. The ball hit the man full in the face and knocked his wide round glasses askew then dropped flat to the ground at his feet.

The man paused, and the trail of elderly men and women behind him also stopped, while he took his glasses of, cleaned them with a handkerchief from his pocket and replaced them on his face. Fix, oblivious to the atmosphere, ran growling and yapping to the ball at his feet and proceeded to chew futilely at the tough leather.

“So,” the man said, “this is who has been making plough furrows in our nice green lawn.”

The boys guiltily looked down at the grass, which was indeed showing signs of wear and tear from their activities of the last few days.

“It takes a lot of time and effort to get a bowling green properly flat and smooth, and to give it the right bounce. A lot of my time and effort.” The man took his glasses off once again and peered at the boys without them. “Don’t you boys know better than to play soccer on a Bowling Green? Aren’t there enough soccer fields for you? Hmmm?”

The boys hung their heads and muttered their apologies.

“I should really report you to the park authorities, or to your parents.”

The man paused and considered the boys for a moment while they shuffled uncomfortably, and guiltily. Most of the boys were worried to some degree, though only Martin was really afraid of what the man might do. Jonathon, though contrite, had no fears over what the man might tell his aunt, she had long since given up her last desperate hope that he might turn into the angelic child she had always longed for. Keith stared at the man with growing and barely concealed fear and fury.

“No, I don’t suppose that would accomplish anything.” He booted the ball gently away from Fix and towards Sniv, the nearest. Fix followed it.

“Go on with you, and remember in future that a Bowling Green is for bowling not for soccer.”

Sniv took the ball off the excited dog and shuffled guiltily passed the queue of glaring elders on the steps towards where the boys had left their bikes, head bowed and followed by the rest.

A few minutes later the boys pulled up, en masse, in front of Niklas’ little house, still subdued but recovering.

Niklas led the way into the house and through into the kitchen. The house had an empty feel but Niklas shouted anyway.

“Mom, Dad, are you home?”

There was no reply.

After waiting a few moments to listen, the boys went out into the garden while Niklas and Sniv poured drinks.

“Damn the man,” spat Keith, once back in the open air, “does he think he owns the park? Who made him god so he could tell everybody else what to do? ” Keith stamped his foot, hard. “I should have made him EAT his damn bowling bowls, ‘cept he looks like he already has!”

The others looked at Keith in shock as he began his tirade. Martin recovered first, slightly more used to Keiths’ outbursts than the rest and settled back with a resigned sigh to let him burn himself out. Fabian tried to pull Keith into a hug but was brushed off absently as Keith started to recite catalogue and verse of the darker possibilities of the fat mans ancestry. Jonathon stared in unabashed awe as Keith moved on to the possible futures the man might have, and the place of bowling ball in them. Fix followed Keiths’ stomping feet, yapping and snapping at a trailing shoelace.

At that moment Niklas and Sniv emerged into the garden, carrying drinks, and stopped, shock still, to listen to Keith in mid rant.

“Anyway, he looks more like a beach ball than a bowling ball. He looks like he had an accident with a bicycle pump, yeah that’s it, he probably swallowed it and everytime he sits down it pumps him up a little bigger. Well he better watch it ‘cos one day he’s gonna sit down once too often and BOOM!” Keiths’ arms flew recklessly apart, miming the explosion, “There he goes, blood and big fat guts all over the room!”

The other boys listened, and watched his ever more expansive gestures, with horrified fascination and a growing amusement as Keith became more fanciful. Jonathons’ eyes widened and his nose wrinkled above the wide grin that stretched his mouth. Sniv eyed the boy with analytical respect, as if awarding marks out of ten. Even the horrified and slightly awe-struck Fabian had to stifle a giggle. Martin seemed to be taking notes. Eventually, the yapping Fix managed to grab hold of the shoelace he was chasing and Keith fell with a yell to the ground. No longer angry he sat up, looking relaxed and slightly bemused. Martin took two cokes from the tray held by the dazed Niklas and went to sit beside him

“Here, ” he said, gently, offering Keith one of the glasses.

Keith sniffed and smiled and then gratefully took the coke. The other boys also took their drinks and lay or sat on the ground drinking them. The boys formed a loose circle on the lawn, all except Jonathon who sat between Jason’s legs and leaned back against his friend’s body. At first the boys were awkward, as the air still seemed to hold the echoes of Keith’s ranting, but as the sun warmed their bodies, the air cleared and they relaxed

It was nearly midday now and the day was becoming hot, not uncomfortably so but with the promise of a summer of burning, languid days and warm evening breezes. Jason moved his friend’s body forward just long enough to take off his T-shirt. Sniv and Jonathon followed suit, Jonathon smiling up at Jason as he did so.

“I think he was alright, that guy,” said Fabian, “I mean he could have told on us there and then but he didn’t so I don’t think he will now.”

“Nah,” said Jonathon, “he won’t say nothing! He was cool.”

Keith shrugged. “Well I wasn’t really worried anyway, just a little…” Keith broke off with a shrug. There followed a short and awkward silence as each boy tried to think of some safe subject.

“My Aunt says they’re going to build a new soccer pitch where the old tennis courts used to be.”

“That’s an old plan, they’ve been going to do that for years but they never managed to find the money.”

“My Aunt said some rich guy promised them a million dollars to do it with.”

The other boys looked at Jonathon, and then started talking all at once.

“Never, who’d want to give a million dollars for a soccer pitch.”

“It would never cost that much.”

“Nobody’s got that much money.”

Sniv just looked at his friend in disgust and then picked up the soccer ball from between his legs and tossed it at the other boy. The ball hit Jonathon on the top of his head, bounced up and hit Jason’s downward looking face.

“Hey!” Jason jerked backwards in shock more than pain and looked hurt towards his little brother. Sniv lowered his head and covered his mouth, half in contrition and half to stifle his giggles at the expression on his brother’s face. Jonathon looked daggers at his friend and then dived out of Jason’s arms to grab the ball.

Sniv looked alarmed, “hey, wait, it was an accident, I didn’t mean to hit him.

“No,” scowled Jonathon, taking aim with the ball, “you meant to hit me, and you did.”

“Hey, wait, no.” Sniv was just a little too slow getting up and the ball bounced off his back and over towards Martin and Keith. Martin kicked the ball wildly away from him and it shot off at a tangent down the garden, closely pursued by Jonathon and Sniv, wrestling and giggling trying to keep each other from getting to the ball first.

“Hey you two, watch my mother’s flower beds,” shouted Niklas as a tackle from Jonathon on Sniv send the two boys rolling helpless with laughter down the remaining length of the lawn. Jonathon, under cover of the wrestling started tickling Sniv, who was soon gasping with laughter under his onslaught.

Jason looked at Niklas, Fabian looked at Jason, Martin looked at Keith, and soon there were five more small bodies hurtling down the lawn to join the ticklefest, attacking first Jonathon, then Sniv, and then each other in one indiscriminate mass of reaching hands and giggling flesh.

Jonathon, left alone for a brief instant climbed out of the writhing mass and went for the ball, dancing around the mound of friends and bouncing the ball off any surface that presented itself. At first the other boys, too wrapped up in their pleasure, did not notice the bouncing ball.

Then:

“Hey!” yelled Martin as the ball bounced off his upthrust buttock. He stared at Jonathon in indignation then rolled off Jason to reach for the ball, a little too late. Jason felt Martin’s weight move off him and looked around to see where the boy was going. He caught sight of Jonathon lining up the ball for another shot.

“Watch out, Jonathon’s loose and he has the ball!”

Realising at last the liberties that Jonathon was taking the mass of boys broke up, spreading out and chasing the joyfully laughing Jonathon.

Jonathon dodged and rolled, evading the boys with ease, bouncing the ball at every opportunity off some back or head or buttock and catching it an its return. But even the hyperactive Jonathon could not keep up the pace forever. Gasping and shaking with laughter he bounced and missed, sending the ball off Niklas back at an angle towards Jason. Jason grabbed the ball and grinned evilly at his little friend, he feinted left and then right, and then with Jonathon totally off balance and confused he threw the ball straight at the boy. Jonathon made one last desperate attempt the evade it and lost his footing, lashing out wildly with his foot as he fell.

The foot made contact, square on the ball, sending it powerfully up and over the next door fence. In the sudden silence the boys clearly heard the unmistakable crash of something fragile and expensive breaking.

In the silence that followed, Keith’s quiet, agonised groan sounded unnaturally loud.

For a long time nobody moved, then Niklas, as host, slowly moved over to the fence and peered cautiously over it. He stayed there, looking, for what seemed like an age. When he turned back to the boys, his face was blank, his voice bleak.

“One of Mr Donner’s gnomes.”

The other boys rushed to the fence, lining up to peer over it.

The ball lay in the middle of Mr Donner’s neat and tidy garden, at the feet of a headless gnome, the obvious cause of its headless state. The boys regarded it with sinking hearts.

“What do we do?”

There was a pause.

“We’ll have to go and apologise. If we offer to pay for it, maybe he won’t be too angry.”

Niklas and Fabian gulped and looked at each other.

“I’ll go,” said Niklas, “It’s my house so I should go.” The others shifted backwards and forwards on their feet.

“We’ll all go,” said Jason. And so they did.

Niklas raised his reluctant finger once again and pressed the doorbell for the third time. In the silence that followed the boys held their breaths and waited once more. Still there was no reply. The house lay silent and still, exuding an air of emptiness.

“He can’t be home.”

“When does he come back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe,” and here Keith nibbled worriedly on his bottom lip, “Maybe if we can replace it before he gets home?”

“How much does a gnome cost?”

“How much have we got?”

There was a quick count up.

“Twenty Seven Dollars.”

“Is that all?”

“I have some more at home, I was saving up for a new basketball.”

“How much?”

“Only another seven dollars.”

“Does anybody else have any more at home?”

Martin thought he had three dollars left from his birthday money, Fabian’s mother had left him ten dollars for food.

“That makes forty-seven dollars, can we get a gnome for that?”

“I don’t know but we have to try.”

“Hey,” said Martin, “where do you buy gnomes?”

“That’s easy,” replied Fabian confidently, “they sell them in the garden centre at the end of Oak Tree lane. I saw them there last week when my mum went to buy some herbs.”

“Right,” Niklas took the lead, “Fabian, Jason, Martin, you go home and get your money, the rest of us will meet you there.” Amid nods all round, the boys parted.

The four remaining boys wondered up and down the aisles of the garden centre until they found the gnomes

“Hey, look,” said Niklas, “there’s some gnomes here for only thirty dollars.”

Fabian arrived at the entrance and headed straight for the four boys. From the other end of the plot a tall dark-haired man was also heading their way, putting on a professional smile.

“Are there any that look like the one that got broken?”

Niklas frowned. “Not here, not that I can see.”

Fabian arrived at the group first, closely followed by the man.

“How can I help you boys?”

Niklas looked quickly to his friends but was elected. He wet his drying lips and then spoke.

“We’re looking for a gnome.”

The man painted on a cheery grin “Gnomes we have in plenty, boys. Take your pick.” And he waved an expansive hand towards his stock.

Niklas frowned and bit his lip.

“We were looking for one in particular,” Niklas blushed, “you see, we had a little accident.”

The man frowned, “Perhaps you could describe this gnome.”

“Well,” thought Niklas, “It had a yellow jacket and a red and black checked waistcoat and it had a cheery grin.”

“Deep Blue trousers?” asked the man with a tilt of his eyebrows and a more serious expression on his face.

“Yes,” said Niklas in surprise, “do you have one?”

“Ah,” said the man, deep sorrow in his voice, ” I recognise that gnome, they don’t make that one any more.”

Jason and Martin had just arrived and listened with silent concern.

“You don’t have any left at all?” asked Niklas in wistful hope.

The man hesitated, considering his answer, then spoke reluctantly.

“I’m afraid they never made many. Never mind boys, I’m sure it’ll be alright.”

“Oh no,” Niklas voice was full of disappointment. ” It belonged to the man next door, and he’s really grumpy. He’s going to be really angry.”

This seemed to amuse the man for some reason; his eyes twinkled with mirth though he kept his face straight.

“Don’t worry boys, I’m sure his bark’s worse than his bite.”

Niklas sighed and turned, walking with the group back towards the entrance of the garden centre. The man watched for a little while a smile of merriment playing across his face, then he turned towards the small office cabin and broke into a grin before walking briskly towards it.

Outside the garden centre the boys stood in a dejected group, silent for once.

“Well,” said Niklas, “there’s nothing for it, we’ll just have to face the music.”

Keith frowned, “Well I can’t tonight, my stepdad’s picking me up at six and I daren’t be late.”

Niklas frowned. “No, that’s alright, in fact it might be better if it was just me that met him, he might feel sorry for me.”

Slowly, reluctantly, the other boys agreed.

“Okay,” said Jason, “but we must all share the punishment, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise.” All the boys nodded.

“Okay,” said Niklas, “We’ll meet tomorrow and I’ll tell you what he says.”

“Not me,” said Keith, “You’ll have to wait ’til Monday to speak to me.”

“Okay,” said Niklas, “We’ll see you Monday.”

There were nods all round and the boys parted. Jonathon grabbed the back of Jason’s and Sniv’s bikes, his skateboard pulled along between them. Fix bounced along beside Martin occasionally snapping at the wheels of his bike. Niklas, Fabian and Keith rode slowly off, their paths together for a while.

Mr Donner looked up as his son walked back into the office of his small garden centre, a huge grin spread over his face.

“Hummmph. And what has amused you today?”

The man pulled over his chair and sat down facing his scowling father.

“Nothing, nothing. But did you happen to recognise any of those boys that were just here?”

“I may be old but I’m not yet blind. Unless I miss my guess, that was the young lad from next door and some of his friends, why do you ask?”

“Well, it just happens that they were after a garden gnome,” The man’s grin grew impossibly wide, “it seems they had a little accident.”

Mr Donner narrowed his eyes at his son, “Which one?”

“The one with the yellow coat and the checked waistcoat.” He was grinning insanely now.

Mr Donner shuddered.

“You mean that horror your auntie June foisted of on me last Christmas? My god how I’ve longed to smash that thing myself!”

“No need to now, it’s been done for you, and you can tearfully regret to June how you’ve lost your favourite sister’s best gift.”

Mr Donner scowled, then frowned, then his face lit up with a now-unaccustomed evil grin.

“Still,” he said, “it was act of wanton vandalism and it should not go unpunished.”

His sons’ grin faded, to be replaced with a piercing glare.

“What are you up to you old fraud?”

“Nothing,” chuckled Mr Donner, “it just strikes me that there’s an awful lot of work to be done in a garden and I’m not as young as I was.”

The man stared at his father.

“Hmmm. Maybe I should have sold them that replacement.”

“What! You wouldn’t!” he paused, a look of comprehension dawning on his face, “You didn’t? You did!” He stared at his son in sudden betrayal.

“Sorry old man, June bought the ugly thing from me, she wouldn’t take any others. It’s the only one I ever sold. I’ve still got the rest of the batch hidden in a shed somewhere.”

The old man glared and aimed his outstretched fingers as if they were loaded.

“And they can stay there! If that thing turns up in my garden again, I’ll come looking for you!”

His son chuckled, “Another drink before you go get the silver bullets and crucifix?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” grinned Mr Donner.

Chapter 3: An Agreement

On his way home, Niklas once more tried ringing the doorbell of Mr. Donner’s house. Again, there was no answer. He thought briefly about leaving a note but in the end decided that it would be better to break this news in person. There was still nobody home as he entered his house so he went up to his room and started drawing spaceships. He had intended to check periodically for Mr. Donner’s return but he was soon lost in a fantasy world, his mind wandering the galaxy in spaceships of his own imagination. He did not notice when his mother came home, nor when Mr. Donner rang the doorbell.

Niklas was diving through the stars in a sleek streamlined silver spaceship, the roar of the engine merging with the song of the stars. The sounds echoed through his dreams and seemed to call his name.

“Niklas.”

Niklas turned his ship towards the sound and dived into the light of a star-becoming-a-sun.

“Niklas.”

Niklas woke with a start. He had been dreaming but the sound had woken him, the sound of his mother calling.

“Niklas, can you come down here a moment.”

Niklas yawned and blinked his bleary eyes, working his mouth to rid it of the bitter after taste of sleep.

“Niklas?”

“Coming mom.”

Downstairs, Niklas heard the murmur of voices from the living room, his mother’s and an unfamiliar one. He walked in and looked.

There was Mr. Donner, sitting opposite his mother in his father’s favorite armchair. All of a sudden the events of the day came back to Niklas and he was suddenly wide awake and blushing towards his feet. After a brief pause, Niklas’ mother spoke.

“Well Niklas, have you something you want to say to Mr. Donner?”

Niklas blushed even deeper.

“We… I mean…” then suddenly, all in a rush, “it was an accident, we didn’t mean to, we did try to replace it.”

“And you found out you couldn’t.” Mr. Donners’ voice was kind and gentle. “It’s alright, I know you didn’t do it deliberately.”

Mr. Donner chewed his lip for a moment.”

“The thing is, that Gnome was a present from my sister and quite irreplaceable.”

Niklas shoulders slumped and his head sank even further. He looked so pitiful that for a moment Mr. Donner was tempted to relent, but Niklas’ mother spoke first.

“We know that you can’t replace the Gnome but we think you should do something to make up for your carelessness.”

“Anything,” said Niklas looking at his mother with open eyed sincerity. “We really want to make it all ok.”

Niklas mother looked up at Mr. Donner but, getting no help from him, she continued.

“We think that you and your friends should help Mr. Donner with his garden for a week or so. That would repay him for what you did. There are some things that Mr. Donner just can’t do anymore so we think that you should do them for him.”

Niklas slowly nodded. “Ok, we’ll all help because we were all there. But Keith can’t start until Monday because he is at his mother’s for the weekend.”

Mr. Donner nodded. “That’s alright. I need to get some things ready anyway, I can do that tomorrow and you can all start on Monday.”

Niklas smiled a smile that lit up the room. He nodded. Mr. Donner felt like a heel.

“Ok.”

There was a moments awkward silence, then Mrs. Edlund spoke.

“Ok, that’s sorted. Would you like another cup of tea Mr. Donner? And perhaps some biscuits?”

“Oh thank you no, Mrs. Edlund but I have to make some phone calls, get some things organized for tomorrow. Mr. Donner stood up and offered his hand to Mrs. Edlund. “Thank you for the tea Mrs. Edlund. And thank you, young man.”

Niklas looked at the man’s proffered hand in surprise and pleasure, then took it with a shy smile. Mr. Donner shook his hand and smiled back at him.

Niklas stood by while his mother showed Mr. Donner to the door, looking after them with a quizzical expression on his face. Mr. Donner was not so bad after all, in fact he was quite nice. Niklas wondered why he was not supposed to have talked to the old man.

Mrs. Edlund walked back into the living room and sat down with a sigh, picking up her magazine. Niklas looked at her for a few moments, twisting back and forth on the ball of one foot, judging her mood.

“Mom.”

“Yes, Niklas?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a biscuit.”

His mother looked up at him and after a moment, laughed indulgently.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. Ok, but just the one, dinner won’t be long.”

Niklas grinned, “thanks mum.”

Niklas woke up early the next morning, half past nine, and dressed for church. Church was not so bad, reflected Niklas, but why did you have to wear such itchy scratchy clothes for it. Would god not listen to anybody who was not trying to repress the urge to scratch? Niklas was certain that Jesus had never had to wear sandpaper shirts and strangulating ties. Niklas looked at his reflection in the mirror and sighed. Carefully he unpicked the lopsided, hard-as-metal tie knot and started over. Eventually he headed for the kitchen, looking neat and uncomfortable.

Niklas father was sitting at the table behind the yellow section of the Sunday papers, showing brief glimpses every now and then as he sipped his coffee. Niklas mother was at the work surface, making up bowls of muesli, their regular Sunday (and only Sunday) breakfast. Gruel, thought Niklas, remembering ‘Oliver’, the film they had been shown at school as a last day treat. Tina was bouncing up and down on her chair, rumpling her frilly Sunday church dress. She looked up as Niklas entered.

“Niklas is in trou-ble, Niklas is in trou-ble” she swayed from side to side, in time with the rhythm of her words.

Niklas scowled at her but she continued in exactly the same rhythm.

“Niklas is in trou-ble, Niklas is in trou-ble.”

“Shut up Tina, or I’ll pull your pigtails soo hard…”

Niklas balled up his fist and moved on his sister, threatening. Tina wailed.

“Daaad!”

Mr. Edlund looked up from his paper.

“That’s enough, you two. Niklas, sit down. And Tina, be quiet.”

Niklas sat, sulking, as far from Tina as he could manage. His mother placed a bowl of muesli and a glass of milk in front of him.

“Mum,” said Niklas, toying with his breakfast, “can I go see Fabian after church?”

His father put down his paper. “I think, perhaps, you should have a quiet day indoors today.”

“But Dad..”

“No buts, Niklas, stay indoors today.” He looked a little kindly at his son, “It’s not as if you’re going to miss much, there’s never anybody out on a Sunday anyway. Especially not the first Sunday of the holidays, and it will keep you out of trouble.”

Niklas shrank into himself and stared down into his breakfast bowl. Tina made a smug face and stuck out her tongue at him, then put on a virtuous, holier than thou expression, and started to eat.

Church was as boring as ever and Niklas spent his time in a doze, waking only to wince as the congregation caterwauled their way through another hymn. Niklas wished as always that he had the courage to drown out their cacophony with his own sweet, pure voice, to show the adults how it should be done. Instead, he whispered his way through the words and tried to close his ears to the noise around him.

After the service, Niklas played tag around the gravestones with some boys he vaguely knew while his parents talked to the vicar and his sister sat in the dust with her friends, playing dollies and dirtying her Sunday dress.

Jason and Fabian were waiting outside the little house as the family returned home, standing by their bikes, dressed for play. Niklas jumped out of the car almost before it had stopped and ran to greet them.

“Hi Jason, Hi Fabian.”

“Hi Niklas.”

“We’re going to the adventure playground, wanna come?”

Niklas looked sad, “I can’t, I gotta stay in.”

“Because of yesterday?”

“Yes”

“Ok, we’ll stay with you.”

“What about the others?”

“Sniv and Jonathon have gone somewhere with Randy, and Martin has gone to visit his grandma, there’s no one else.”

“Ok, I’ll ask my mum.”

Despite her husbands hesitation, Mrs. Edlund said ok, so the three boys raced up to Niklas room. After a brief discussion, they decided to play ‘battleships’. Niklas and Fabian started while Jason watched. Then Niklas, winner of the first game, played Jason while Fabian watched. Niklas won the second game also and started to set up for the third but by this time Jason had had enough of just watching. As Niklas and Fabian set their little plastic ships in the board, Jason sneaked behind Niklas and quickly tickled him. Then, as Niklas brushed him off impatiently, he went behind Fabian and did the same.

“Hey, leave off,” scowled Fabian.

“Make me,” challenged Jason, grinning.

Niklas and Fabian exchanged quick glances then Fabian stood up in front of Jason while Niklas quickly sneaked up behind him. As Fabian lunged, Niklas grabbed Jasons arms from behind, holding him helpless against Fabian’s attack. Fabian’s fingers attacked every available and ticklish part of Jason while Niklas held his wriggling, struggling body firm. Jason gasped and giggled and tried to gain enough breath to yell while using most of his energy kicking and fighting to break free. None of the boys heard the door opening. Jason managed to lodge his foot against the corner of Niklas’ desk and pushed, sending the desk banging into the wall and Niklas falling backwards onto the bed with Jason on top of him. Jason rolled of Niklas and tried to escape, only to be pinned by the leaping Fabian. Niklas quickly rolled and grabbed an arm, Fabian concentrated on the other. Each boy kept one of Jason’s legs trapped between his own. Jason struggled ineffectually for a few moments and then gave up, laying back, panting and red faced between his two friends.

“Now we’ve got you,” gloated Fabian.

“Yeah,” panted Jason, “but what you gonna do about it?”

Fabian pulled back and considered his friend for a second. “This” he said, leaning forward and planting a kiss on Jason’s cheek.

“Ugh!” came a voice from the doorway, “dirty!”

The three boys jerked at the sound, startled, and looked back towards its source.

“Tina!” yelled Niklas, furious, “What are you doing in my room.”

Tina just stared at them, one hand on the doorknob, dolly hanging from the other.

“Is Martin coming today?”

Fabian snickered.

Niklas glowered.

Jason answered, hiding his laughter. “No, he’s visiting his grandma today.”

“Oh,” said Tina, still staring at the boys.

“Well,” said Niklas, still glowering, “what are you doing in my room.”

“Mom, sent me. She said to tell you to made sure you changed before you messed up your church clothes.”

Niklas looked down at his crumpled, tail hanging shirt and blushed.

“Well, now you’ve told me, you can go.”

Tina didn’t move. “What were you doing to Jason?”

“None of your business.”

Tina glared back at her brother. “You better leave Martin alone, or else.”

“Go.”

Tina stuck out her tongue, Niklas grabbed a pillow but let it drop as Tina ran out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her. Niklas glared at the closed door.

Fabian and Jason exchanged grins.

“Martin has a girlfriend”, laughed Fabian. Niklas gave a sour look.

“If my sister’s after him, I pity him. I better change.” And with that he left the other two boys and headed for the wardrobe, stripping off his Sunday suit as he went. Fabian lay back and watched. Jason got up and went to the window.

“Hey, isn’t that the guy from the garden center?”

“What? Where?”

“Outside, talking to Mr. Donner.”

Fabian rushed up beside Jason, Niklas hopped over in half on jeans and squeezed in between them. Together they all stared out the window.

Outside, in the garden next door, Mr. Donner leaned on his stick while the man from the garden center talked and made wide sweeping gestures with his hands, occasionally pausing to write something down on the clipboard he held. Mr. Donner would mostly just nod, but occasionally he would say something to the man which the man would listen too attentively and then look down to write furiously on his clipboard. The two of them toured almost the whole garden but spent most of their time looking at one particular corner, at the back, near the little shed. After a while the man took out a tape measure and started measuring the ground around that corner.

“What is he doing there do you think?” asked Jason.

“Oh!” said Niklas, “I forgot to tell you. Mr. Donner came to see me last night, he knew it was us that broke his gnome. He said we should work in his garden for him to make up for it.”

The three boys pulled away from the window and looked at each other.

“Well, I suppose that’s fair enough,” said Fabian,” did he say what we were supposed to do?”

“No, but he did say he had to get some things ready for us, that must be what the man is doing there.”

“Ok, when are we supposed to start?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

The boys turned back to the window and continued to watch as the man made his measurements until he went inside with Mr. Donner. Then they found places to sit, on the bed and on the floor.

“I suppose it won’t be too bad, a little weeding and planting some flowers. It might even be fun.”

“Yeah, we can plant you and grow lots of little Jasons!”

There was a moments grinning pause, then the other two jumped Jason once more and started tickling.

The boys alternated playing games with rough housing for most of the rest of the afternoon, stopping only to watch when a pair of burly men arrived to unload what seemed an incredible amount of bags and stone slabs into Mr. Donner’s back garden. The sheer amount of stuff worried them slightly, each boy beginning to feel that perhaps they were not going to get of quite so lightly as they had first thought, but the mood of the afternoon soon dispelled their worries and they returned to their play. Before Jason and Fabian left that afternoon, they promised to see the other boys and arrange to meet at Niklas house early the next morning, ready for their work. Niklas waved goodbye sadly.

Jonathon was the first to arrive the next morning, at a time that Niklas thought only existed on schooldays, and well ahead of the others. This pleased Niklas mother since it gave her a chance to feed Jonathon several breakfasts. Niklas mother was of the opinion that Jonothon did not eat nearly enough. Jonathon of course, wolfed the whole lot down as he did with everything edible, the voracity of his feeding only reinforcing Mrs. Edlunds false impression. Niklas was staring in awe at yet another empty plate, evidence of his mother’s desire to ‘put some flesh’ on Jonathon’s bones, when the doorbell rang by Jason, Sniv and Fabian. Mrs. Edlund opened the door for the boys and ushered them into the kitchen. While they were saying their helloes, she made up plates of breakfast for them.

“Jonathon,” said Mrs. Edlund, “would you like a little more.”

Jonathon looked up with a smile and licked his lips.

“Yes please, Mrs. Edlund, just a little.”

“Jonathon,” cried Niklas in a shocked tone, “you’ve already had three plates, if you eat any more you will burst!”

“Nonsense, Niklas,” said Mrs. Edlund, “a little breakfast never hurt anybody.” And she rushed to the cooker with a smile on her face.

Jason and Sniv laughed at the anticipation on Jonathon’s face while Niklas threw up his arms in disgust.

“So,” he said when the other boys had received their food, “it’s just Keith and Martin to come.”

“Keith won’t be here today,” said Jason, “he has to stay an extra day at his mother’s. He said he would join us tomorrow though.”

“Ok,” said Niklas, “we just wait for Martin.”

“He should be here soon, we stopped in at his house on the way here and he was just getting up. Another sleepy head.”

Niklas stuck out his tongue.

The boys had almost finished their food by the time Martin arrived, still sleepy eyed. Mrs. Edlund immediately offered him breakfast.

“But mum,” cried Niklas, “we had better go and start, otherwise Mr. Donner will think we have forgotten.”

“Nonsense, Niklas dear, it’s only half past nine and Mr. Donner will not want to start that early. He needs to sleep you know.”

“But mum!”

“No arguments, dear, just wait. Now Martin dear, did you want some breakfast?”

Martin politely declined, nevertheless, Mrs. Edlund made the boys wait until nearly ten o’clock until she would allow them to go to Mr. Donner’s. The boys spent the time trying to guess what Mr. Donner had in mind for them. Niklas, Jason, and Fabian described the bags and bundles that had been delivered the previous day. Jonathon’s face fell melodramatically as he listened to the amount of materials that had arrived.

“He’s going to get us to rebuild his entire house!” he wailed.

“Not quite that,” laughed Mrs. Edlund, “I’m sure it won’t be too much for you.”

Niklas frowned at his mother.

“You mean you know? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never asked, dear.”

Suddenly Mrs. Edlund was surrounded by eager boys.

“Please, tell us!”

“Yes Please do!”

Mrs. Edlund laughed and shooed the boys away. “Now then boys, you’ll find out soon enough, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Despite the protests of the boys, she would say no more. Eventually the boys decided that the only way they would find out would be by going to see. Mrs. Edlund looked at the clock and allowed that Mr. Donner was probably up by now, so the boys could go. They rushed out, yelling good-byes and thank-you’s behind them.

Standing outside Mr. Donner’s front door the boys became nervous again. Excited, but nervous. Niklas rang the bell and the boys waited, shuffling and jumping. There was no answer. Niklas rang again. Again, there was no answer. The boys looked at each other uncertainly. Niklas was about to ring the bell once more when there was a noise from within the house. While Niklas hesitated the door open to reveal Mr. Donner peering from behind it, in his dressing robe.

Mr. Donner was sweating and shaking and ghostly white. One hand clutched his dressing robe closed while the other gripped his stick so hard the knuckles seemed about to pop. He was leaning so heavily upon his stick that the boys fancied they could hear the wood creak. The boys stared at him, frightened, while Mr. Donner stared back blindly, as if trying to make out their forms through thick fog. The only sound was the sound of his breathing, hard and coarse and grating.

“Um, Mr. Donner?” said Niklas, “We…” Niklas looked back to his silent friends for support, “We’re here. Like we said.”

Mr. Donner blinked a couple of times and screwed up his eyes, looking at Niklas. Then he groaned.

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry boys. I didn’t sleep well. I forgot you were coming.” Mr. Donner took a deep breath, a little of the life returning to his face. “I’m sorry boys, but could you just give me a little time, half an hour, an hour, just to get dressed and get something to eat? I’m sure you can find something to do for that long?”

“Ok,” said Niklas and turned to go. Then he hesitated and turned back.

“Are you alright; Mr. Donner?”

Mr. Donner frowned at him and banged his stick weakly against the floor, his face flushed angrily. “Of course I’m alright. Just go. And come back in one hour. One hour do you hear? Not one minute later.” And with that he slammed the door leaving Niklas staring at the peeling woodwork. After a few moments, Niklas turned his shocked face to his equally shocked friends. For a few moments, the boys exchanged looks, then turned as one and walked, dispirited, towards Niklas’ house next door.

The boys sat in silence around the kitchen table, even Jonathon only sipping his lemonade in between pulling pensively at his bottom lip with his teeth. Mrs. Edlund had been concerned to hear of their reception at Mr. Donner’s house but her concern seemed mostly directed at Mr. Donner, not the boys, a state of affairs that had Niklas sulking slightly and feeling left out. There had been silent, meaningful glances traded between the boys since they had left the old man’s house but no one yet had spoken. Niklas, as host, felt duty bound to try and explain away the old man’s behavior but did not do so until his mother was out of the house, hanging up washing in the garden. He used the time to try and think up excuses for the old man.

“He wasn’t like that yesterday. He was quite pleasant then. Maybe it’s just a morning thing.”

“I know what you mean,” chirped Martin, making patterns in the dew frosting his glass, ” my dad’s like that until he has his first cup of coffee in the morning. He’s unbearable.”

“Not unbearable,” giggled Jonathon, “in fact, just like a bear. With a sore head.” And with that he jumped up and started to prowl round the table, acting the part.

Sniv rolled his eyes in exasperation. “We know what a bear looks like, thank you very much Mr. Jonathon.” And Jonathon started to prowl round Sniv, growling and making swipes with his clawed hands. Sniv tried to bat the paws away but Jonathon kept coming and soon Sniv could no longer hold out against his friend’s reemerging infectious good humor.

“Right bear!” shouted Sniv, “the only thing to do with a bear, especially one with a sore head, is to hunt it!”

Sniv grabbed the mop from where it leant against the kitchen wall and, holding it to his cheek like a shotgun, started stalking the bearish Jonathon. Jonathon shrieked and ran to hide behind Jason.

“Hey,” yelled Jason, moving smartly to one side “don’t hide behind me, I don’t want to get shot!”

Sniv chuckled evilly and raised his pretend gun for a shot. Jonothon shrieked loudly and dodged, almost hitting the piled breakfast dishes on the sink.

“Pretty poor excuse for a bear, if you ask me” said Fabian, “running away from one little hunter.”

Jonathon pulled himself together and then reared, in perfect imitation of an angry bear about to strike, chest swelled, hands raised, claws ready. At that moment the back door opened and Mrs. Edlund walked in, carrying an empty laundry basket. Jonathon and Sniv froze, in mid pounce and mid shot, faces turning slowly red.

“Having fun boys?”

Jonathon and Sniv slowly lowered their respective weapons, mop and hands, and moved sheepishly back to their chairs, Sniv carefully replacing the mop back against the wall of the kitchen.

“I have to clean the kitchen now, why don’t you boys go and play in Niklas bedroom until Mr. Donner is ready for you.” Mrs. Edlund raised a quizzical eyebrow, ” unless you’d all like to help me here, that is?”

“Come on,” said Niklas, “I’ll show you the picture I drew yesterday, it’s a really cool spaceship, it can do hundreds of times the speed of light.”

Fabian hesitated a moment then shrugged and smiled at Mrs. Edlund before rushing off to catch up with the others.

Niklas’ small room was crowded with the six of them in it. Niklas, Fabian and Martin, huddled around his small desk while the other three lounged back on his bed. Niklas showed the two boys beside him his drawings and they made the appropriate noises before passing them on to the others. Only Martin could really muster up any enthusiasm for the drawings, always being interested in the work of other artists. The rest, including Niklas himself were once more remembering their reception earlier in the day at Mr. Donner’s front door. Except of course for Jonathon, who had already forgotten the whole incident and was merely enjoying relaxing, leaning into the side of his best friend, Jason. It was Jason who was the first to speak what was on all their minds.

“I wonder if Mr. Donner is going to be crabby all day.”

“Like I said,” answered Niklas, “he was alright yesterday. Maybe he just didn’t sleep well.”

The boys thought in silence for a while.

“I wonder if he’s alright?” said Sniv.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, your mother did say he came here for a rest, didn’t she? And he looked really ill this morning. And he is old.”

“You mean he could be sick, like my grandmother got before she…” – Jonathon bit his lip and was silent.

The boys were all silent for a long time, thoughts turned inwards, each boy examining the details of his memory of Mr. Donner, looking for telltale signs of illness. Niklas, who had seen Mr. Donner looking bright and cheerful just the day before, was the least willing to attribute his manner to illness but even he had to admit the old man had looked pale and weak, trembling visibly and sweating. Restless, Sniv got up and walked to the window, followed slowly by the other boys. They stared out of the window at Mr. Donner’s garden looking for the old man but seeing only the piles and piles of materials delivered the day before. All but Fabian, who merely leaned against the edge of Niklas’ desk and looked down at his shoes.

The boys stared out of the window for a long time, wide eyed and open mouthed, tension growing in the room. Then.

“Boys, it’s nearly time to go.”

Mrs. Edlunds voice jerked them all out of their reveries and they looked at each other, smiling uncertainly before climbing down the stairs.

Mrs. Edlund was fussing over the boys before they left, straightening hairs and brushing off imaginary particles of dust. “Now you remember to be good for Mr. Donner, no running about and being rowdy and no cheek, do you hear?” and here she wagged a finger at Niklas with a mock stern expression. “You listen to what he tells you and do what he says.”

Niklas glared at his mother with shocked indignation while the other just nodded and tried to avoid the worst of Mrs. Edlund’s mothering.

“Mum,” said Niklas into a lull in the constant stream of worrying, “is Mr. Donner alright?”

Mrs. Edlund paused, taken aback. “How do you mean ‘alright’?”

“Well, I mean, he looked really sick this morning, I mean, he isn’t, you know, ill is he?

Mrs. Edlund pursed her lips. “There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Donner that a little peace and quiet won’t cure, so you be sure you don’t do anything to upset him.” She stood back for a moment and looked at her son before resuming, almost to herself, “Hmmm, I’m beginning to wonder if this is such a good idea after all. Well, it’s decided now, so you’d better all be off before I change my mind.”

And with that she shooed them all out of the house and pointed them towards Mr. Donner’s house next door.

Once more the six boys stood on the path in front of Mr. Donner’s front door, nervous and uncertain. Niklas shot a glance at his companions before screwing up his courage and taking a step forward. He licked his lips and then reached out uncertainly to ring the bell. As soon as the sound of the doorbell filtered out through the thick wood of the door, Niklas stepped quickly back to rejoin his friends. There was a pause while the boys listened first to the silence and then to the sound of approaching footsteps and finally to the unlocking of the door. Mr. Donner opened the door and looked out at the boys.

The boys watched Mr. Donner closely, almost suspiciously. The old man was dressed now in his old and old-fashioned clothing. He was smiling and steady, showing no sign of the pale weakness that they had seen in him earlier that morning. The boys stared silently as Mr. Donner pulled the watch from his waistcoat with a flourish and flicked it open with a practiced gesture.

“Ah, good. Spot on time. Well done boys, come on in and I’ll make some drinks while I explain what you’re going to be doing.” Mr. Donner thrust the watch back into his pocket and turned to stride back into the house.

Niklas and his friends eyed each other uncertainly. Had they merely imagined his appearance that morning? Could this powerful figure really have seemed so frail? Nervously, the boys followed the retreating figure.

Chapter 4: The Old Shed

Mr. Donner led the boys through the hallway of his little house to the kitchen at the rear. Niklas knew that Mr. Donner’s house must be almost exactly the same as his own but the hallway seemed somehow narrower, more enclosed.

Perhaps, he thought, it was all the pictures that made it seem so small.

The walls of the hall were covered with old paintings and framed photographs. They covered the walls from end to end and even up the stairwell onto the next floor, spread out almost randomly. Niklas paused before one painting, a little boy looking uncomfortable in a blue sailor suit. It was very good.

When Niklas finally looked away from the painting, he was alone in the hallway apart from Martin, who was also looking at a painting, head to one side as he studied it. Niklas hurried up to Martin and gave him a nudge. Martin looked quickly around and then up at Niklas. The two boys exchanged embarrassed grins and ran to join the others.

In the kitchen the boys had spread themselves out, leaning against walls and work surfaces while Mr. Donner sat himself at a little table which contained nothing but a cup of very strong looking, very black coffee and two tightly rolled, large sheets of paper.

“Would you boys like anything to drink?” offered Mr. Donner, “I’ve plenty of milk in.”

The boys politely demurred.

“Okay then.” Mr. Donner took a sip of his coffee, “You all know basically what you are going to be doing?” He looked around expectantly at the boys who glanced quickly at each other.

“No Sir,” replied Jason, “Nobody’s explained it to us at all, all we know is that we are supposed to be helping you in your garden.”

“They haven’t? Not at all? Well in that case, I’d better explain.” Then maddeningly, he took another sip of his coffee before motioning the curious boys to gather around the little kitchen table.

The boys quickly squeezed themselves around the table, Jason giving Jonathon a little nudge to bring his attention back to the present. Mr. Donner carefully moved his cup to one side and unrolled one of the two sheets of paper in front of him, laying it flat on the table before the boys, who craned their necks to see.

“This,” said Mr. Donner, “is the garden as it is now, and this,” here he unrolled the other sheet of paper and laid it out next to the first, “is the garden as it eventually will be.” The boys compared the two drawings with increasing despair. Apart from the general shape there seemed to be very little that the two drawings had in common.

“Now obviously,” said Mr. Donner once the boys had been given time to compare the two drawings, “I don’t expect you to do all of this, certainly not in just one week.” The boys breathed an audible sigh of relief. “But I think you should be able to manage knocking down the old shed in the corner and putting the pond in its place.” Mr. Donner looked questioningly at the boys who flicked their eyes between the two drawings spread out between them.

“A pool,” whispered Jonathon, “can we swim in it?”

Mr. Donner chuckled, “I don’t think it’ll be quite big enough for that.”

“Will there be fish?” asked Martin.

“Maybe,” replied Mr. Donner, “but not quite yet. Now, are you all here?”

“All except Keith,” said Martin, “his stepfather…” and he was silenced by Sniv’s elbow in his ribs.

“He couldn’t make it today,” continued Sniv, ignoring Martin’s glare, “but he’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Hmm.” said Mr. Donner narrowing his eyes at the two boys. He almost seemed about to say something but then grimaced and shrugged. He rolled up the two sheets of paper and stood up.

“Okay. First job is to clear out the old shed. Now I don’t know what’s in there and some of it may be useful, so as you clear it out, bring everything to me and I’ll decide whether I want to keep it or throw it away. Okay?” The boys nodded.

Silently the boys gathered around the old wooden shed in the corner of the garden. It was ancient and rotten, the wood stained green with mould where water ran down the sides. The ends of the planks that covered it were crumbling and jagged. Jason reached out a finger and pushed gently on one corner. The whole structure swayed away from his push and then swayed back to its original position as he removed his finger.

Jonathon reached out and grasped the end of one piece of wood, crushing it to dust with hardly any pressure of his fingers, “Hey look, I’m a strongman!” and then he sneezed as the dust from the crushed plank drifted up into his nostrils.

Niklas screwed up his face in disgust. “Maybe if we ask nicely, he’ll let us off with just digging and planting.”

“Oh come on,” said Jason, “it won’t be that bad.” and with that he took hold of the edge of the warped and rotten doorway to the shed and pulled. The door was wedged into its frame and the entire shed shook and swayed as Jason pulled and pushed and lifted and jerked. Eventually the door came free with a rasp and a shower of dust and splinters, and a wave of fetid air rushed out from the interior to engulf the boys.

Jason coughed, Niklas sneezed, Sniv stepped quickly back, his face wrinkled up in disgust.

“Yeuch,” said Jonathon.

“That stinks,” complained Martin.

Fabian, safe at the back of the pack of boys and well out of the way of the smell, chuckled. “No wonder Mr. Donner decided to stay back, out of the way.”

Niklas looked back towards the house where Mr. Donner was sitting in a garden chair, drinking his coffee and reading a paper, seemingly oblivious to the boys.

The boys all pulled back to let the air clear. Jonathon, melodramatically holding his nose, crept up to the doorway and peered cautiously around the frame. He stayed there for a few minutes before quickly grabbing a shapeless something from within the shed and then stepping back to let out his breath with a loud ‘whoosh’. The other boys crowded round him.

“So what’s in there?”

Jonathon hid his hands behind his back and tried to tease the others with an innocent look. It lasted all of three seconds before he cracked and shook out the dirty grey cloth thing that he had retrieved from the shed. It turned out to be an old and shapeless, dirty cloth cap of the kind normally worn by fishermen to keep their flies in, or gardeners to keep the sun off them. Jonathon jammed the hat on his head with a grin.

“Hats!” said Jonathon, “and coats and cloths and pots and stuff.”

“Jonathon,” yelled Jason, “that thing’s FILTHY! Take it off, you don’t know where it’s been.” and he reached to try and take the old cloth hat from Jonathon’s head.

“Hey, leave off,” said Jonathon, skipping back, “it’s mine, I found it.”

Jason stepped towards him, reaching again for the filthy old hat, Jonathon dodged him, Jason reached once more and soon, with the magic that always seemed to happen between them, it was a game, Jonathon dodging and teasing his older friend while Jason chased with the usual strange half smile on his face. Normally the game would play itself out all over the garden until Jonathon let himself get caught and the two boys collapsed into a giggling, hugging bundle on the ground. This time, however, the game was cut short.

As Jonathon was dodging, he glanced down at where his feet would be going and saw something already there, one of Mr.. Donner’s many gnomes. Jonathon tried to change direction in mid dodge, almost made it, overbalanced and fell, folding himself over the gnome but somehow not quite touching it. Jason stopped shocked as his friend rolled over onto the ground.

Sniv strolled over to his fallen friend before his brother could react. He leant down and took the hat off Jonathon’s head.

“It’s Mr. Donner’s, if he wants it, but Jason’s right: it’s filthy, and”, here he sniffed daintily at the cloth, “it stinks. So even if Mr. Donner says you can have it, it’ll have to be washed before you can wear it.”

Suddenly apprehensive, the boys looked over to the house where Mr. Donner sat. To all appearances, he was immersed in his newspaper and taking no notice whatsoever of the boys and their antics. Niklas however was almost certain that he caught the brief flicker of Mr. Donner’s eyes as if the old man had been watching them all along and had only looked back to his newspaper when the boys had looked at him. Niklas thought about that for a moment. But if Mr. Donner had been looking at them all along, why had he said nothing about Jonathon nearly running into another of his gnomes? Niklas shook his head. He must have been mistaken, a trick of the light perhaps that had seemed to glint off the old man’s eye. He turned back to his friends.

The boys had gathered once more around the door to the old shed. By now, the air had had time to circulate within it and had cleared away most of the musty rotten odour. Jonathon and Sniv were peering into the gloom of the shed from each side of the doorway, Jason leaning over Jonathon’s back to see inside. Martin was hanging back, his face showing his disgust at the lingering smell of mould and decay. Niklas crept up to the shed and leaned in, one arm each around the waists of Sniv and Jonathon. Disappointingly neither boy jumped at his contact.

Within the shed the dim light showed piles and heaps of old sacks and boxes, as well as more recognisable gardening supplies, pots and canes, and spades and forks and so on. To one side of the door there was a series of nails barely hanging into the rotting wood on which hung more hats like the one Sniv still held in his hand. The shed was jammed with stuff, every available space taken and boxes piles on top of sacks in a great mound. The boys stared breathlessly at the unstable seeming pile.

“Oh, well,” said Sniv, “better get started,” and he reached out to grab a box from the very top of the heap. The others held their breathes as the pile swayed but did not fall, and Sniv backed away with his prize. He stared at the other boys, staring at him. “Well, go on. It’ll never get cleared if we don’t start working.”

The day was already starting to live up to its promise of burning summer heat when the boys started to work and the combination of the heat of the sun and the exertions of the work soon persuaded first Jonathon, then Jason, then the rest of the boys to take off their tops. Unfortunately this meant that the boys’ bodies were exposed to the long trapped dirt and dust that puffed out from the stacked piles of rubbish every time they were disturbed so that by the time Mr. Donner called a midday halt for refreshments, the boys’ bodies were covered with a thin grey film, streaked where the sweat had cut runnels through the dirt. Being boys, they neither noticed, nor minded.

It was not until the boys stopped working that they realised how hot and dry they had become, enthusiasm masking the sheer effort of their labour so that they did not realise how much effort they were expending, nor how much liquid they were losing as sweat. Even the small glasses of iced milk that Mr. Donner laid out for them were welcome. Indeed, ice cold, they were surprisingly refreshing. Nevertheless, Mr. Donner watched with amused concern as the boys inhaled the cold white liquid.

“Hmm, well. I guess I didn’t realise it would be such hot work. I think I’d better get some more drinks in. Or if any of you have your bikes with you and fancy a quick trip down to the shops?”

Immediately six hands went up, even Jonathon who had come on his skateboard rather than his bike. It was decided that Niklas would go for the drinks, because he could get his backpack from home to carry them in. Fabian decided to go with him. Mr. Donner walked the two boys to the front door while digging an old and well worn leather wallet from the depths of his waistcoat.

While the two were about their errand, Mr. Donner went back to the kitchen where the others waited and sat down at the table. There was an awkward silence for a while as the boys stood around the kitchen watching while Mr. Donner tried to finish his crossword. It was a strange moment, with all the boys with their eyes riveted on Mr. Donner and Mr. Donner with his attention seemingly riveted to his crossword yet totally aware of the boys every expression. Perhaps even every thought that crossed their minds. A pack of young cubs facing the grizzled old bear, each sizing up the other. Eventually Mr. Donner spoke.

“‘The bishops put their heads together, touch wood’, five letters.”

The boys looked at each other in confusion, all except Sniv who frowned in thought.

“No?” said Mr. Donner. “Ah, well it’ll come,” and with a sigh he put his crossword down laying his pencil carefully across the paper.

“You boys will be hungry if I remember right. How about some sandwiches to go with those drinks?”

This was more like it, all the boys nodded eagerly.

“OK, if you,” and here Mr. Donner pointed to Jason, “will reach up into that cupboard there, you will find some bread and some butter, and you,” Sniv, “will find some plates in there. The knives are in that drawer there. And you and me,” Jonathon and Martin, “will have a look in the fridge and see what there is to put in them.”

While Mr. Donner examined the contents of his fridge, Jonathon cheekily poked his head under the old man’s arm. He stayed there while Mr. Donner carried his selection (mostly cooked meats) to the work surface where Jason was unloading almost half a loaf of bread.

“Ugh,” said Jonathon, holding his nose, “this cheese is mouldy!” The others looked toward where Jonathon was standing holding a wooden cheese board with a large chunk of blue-veined cheese on it. After a breathless moment, Mr. Donner, Jason, and Sniv burst out laughing while Jonathon and Martin looked on in confusion.

Eventually, after the laughter had died down, “No silly,” said Sniv, “it’s supposed to be like that.”

“What, mouldy?” said Jonathon, “Disgusting!”

“Actually, it’s quite nice,” said Jason, “sort of.” Jonathon made a face.

“What,” crowed Sniv, teasing, “have we finally found something that Mr. Jonathon won’t eat?” and the other boys all giggled while Jonathon’s face clouded.

Mr. Donner took the cheese board from Jonathon’s hands and cut a thin slice off the end of the cheese. “Here you go lad. Got to save your reputation, I guess.”

Gingerly, Jonathon took the cheese from Mr. Donner’s fingers and sniffed at it. He made another face and then sniffed again.

“I promise you, lad, it tastes better than it smells,” smiled Mr. Donner.

Jonathon shot him a disbelieving look and then, screwing up his courage and his face, took a little nibble. Jonathon’s face turned thoughtful as he tested the tiny morsel of cheese in his mouth, then turned into one of grudging approval. He swallowed.

“Not too bad, I suppose,” he said and then ate the rest of the thin slice in his hand.

Mr. Donner chuckled, “that’s the spirit, we’ll turn you into a gourmet yet.” He smiled and then turned to include the rest of the boys in his gaze. “I hope you boys will do me a little favour by not mentioning to anybody that I had that cheese, I’m not supposed to eat things like that anymore: it’s suppose to be bad for me.”

The boys looked at each other and shrugged. “Okay, no problem.”

The incident with the cheese broke the ice a little and all the boys seemed more relaxed in Mr. Donner’s company. By the time Niklas and Fabian returned with the drinks, they were all laughing and joking, unworried by the presence of the man and seeming to forget their doubts of that morning. Mr. Donner also seemed more relaxed, even joking with the boys, showing a dry and outrageous humour that would have the boys standing gasping, wondering if he could really have meant what they thought they heard. Niklas and Fabian also brought with them a great pile of sandwiches which Niklas’ mum had made for them. With those made in Mr. Donner’s small kitchen, it made a quite respectable meal which the boys took out in the garden with them, sitting on the sun baked flagstones around Mr. Donner’s chair and table to eat in the hot noon sun. Jonathon was enough at ease with the old man to take his usual place between Jason’s knees, leaning back into the body of his friend.

Mr. Donner had just finished a deadpan rendition of a ludicrous story about a time travelling criminal called ‘stein’, ending in an outrageous pun that left all the boys groaning, when Sniv suddenly asked a question that had been on his mind for a while.

“Mr. Donner? Why can’t you eat cheese?”

“Oh, I can, and I do. It’s just that some people think I shouldn’t. Let me tell you boys, being old and being young have a lot in common, both times nobody thinks you can do anything for yourself.” The boys grinned in emphatic agreement.

“At least you get to go to bed whenever you want,” said Martin.

“And at least you get to do what you want in your own house,” said Jonathon.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Donner, “talking of which, we should get back to work. Time to bring the house down, or at least that little part of it at the end of the garden.” He smiled.

The boys got up and slowly followed Mr. Donner down the path to the old shed at the bottom of the garden.

They all gathered at the end of the garden in front of the old shed. It seemed somehow older and more forlorn than it had been now that it was empty.

“How are we going to knock it down?”

Mr. Donner reached out slowly with the end of his cane and gently pushed on the rotten wood of the shed’s side. It swayed even more precariously now that it was empty, as if it had only been the rubbish packed into it that had given it any stability at all. “I don’t think that’s going to be any problem,” said Mr. Donner. He reached out with his cane once more and pushed again, harder this time. The shed swayed and groaned but stayed upright and whole. Mr. Donner let it sway back and then pushed it again, catching it on the rhythm. The shed groaned and creaked, even louder than before but still did not fall. Mr. Donner repeated his trick, letting the shed sway back and then catching it as it tried to return to the vertical, pushing with it and forcing it to go further than it wanted. This time it paused at the end of its travel and a crackling could be heard beneath the groaning of the old wood but still it tried to return to its proper upright position. Once more, and this time there was no return for the old shed. With a loud crack, the rotten and abused wood gave in and the shed fell, seeming to pause momentarily before collapsing into a heap of dead wood and dust. There was a silence as the boys stared in something like sorrow at the remains of the old shed.

“Somebody must have loved it once,” murmured Niklas, “perhaps some boys played in it.”

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Donner, “but that was long ago and there comes a time for everything to go.”

There was silence for another moment, broken at last by a brisk clap of Mr. Donner’s hands. “Right, that’s it ready. Put all the wood to one side and we’ll have a bonfire of it sometime. No sense paying for it to be taken away when it can be burned.”

The boys snapped into life and into good humor at the mention of the bonfire.

“Brilliant! When can we have it?”

“Can we have fireworks too?”

“And baked potatoes?”

Mr. Donner laughed. “Not tonight anyway. Perhaps at the weekend if the weather holds out. I could invite your parents and make it a sort of housewarming.”

“Oh, no. Not our parents, they wouldn’t let us do anything!”

“Oh? And I would?”

The boys gasped and stared at the old man, then grinned as they realised he was teasing them.

“Nah, you’re all right. You’re cool.”

“Cool hey? Well fine. But first pile all the wood up in the corner there,” Mr. Donner pointed to one overgrown corner of the garden, “and then we can get started on the digging.”

Soon the garden was full of the laughing sound of happy boys and the popping of snapping wood as the messy pile on the site of the old shed was slowly transferred to a slightly more compact pile in the corner of the garden. Jonathon in particular made a great game of pulling the still attached planks from the walls and roof of the shed, falling backward onto the grass more often than not as the wood gave way.

Mr. Donner sat back on his garden chair and relaxed, no longer pretending to read his paper but just watching the boys. The young blond haired lad reminded Mr. Donner of his own youngest at the same age, now mostly grown up and working abroad for some charity. Mr. Donner always enjoyed his brief visits home and his tales of the invariably dangerous places he worked. Mr. Donner would never admit it but for all the grief the boy had caused him, he was a favorite. There was none among the boys to resemble his others sons stolid good sense. The boy they called ‘Sniv’ seemed sensible enough, but he showed a flighty intelligence completely at odds with his older boys calm contemplation and delicious irony.

Mr. Donner wondered for a moment if any of the boys were like him as a child. He snorted dismissivly. Mr. Donner was, he reflected, born stubborn. And likely to die that way too, he thought, remembering the totally unallowed, but delicious, blue cheese. He turned his attention back to the boys.

As he looked, one of the boys, the one who seemed to be growing visibly, was absently sucking at a finger.

There would be splinters aplenty from this little job, Mr. Donner reflected. It had gone out of fashion to allow children splinters. Or any of the thousands of other minor injuries that had made childhood such a bittersweet time for him and his friends. Mr. Donner held no store by such fashions. Mr. Donner remembered his own boys, especially his youngest, and the scrapes they had gotten themselves into. Neither boy seemed to feel they had been neglected during their youth. In fact both were on good terms with their parents. Mark had even made the journey back for the…

Mr. Donner’s train of thought stopped dead, like a railway engine whose tracks had unaccountably and suddenly led straight into the side of a cliff. A hand seemed to be clutching at his heart and his eyes prickled as the tears fought to escape. He would not give in. Mr. Donner forced himself to complete the thought, teeth clenched and blood pounding in his ears.

Mark had even made the journey back, all the way from some god forsaken drought land, had fought and ran and called in every favour he had ever earned, and had made it back in time. He had stood with his father and his brother. Mr. Donner could feel his teeth cracking under the pressure. Mark had made it back for the funeral. The thought echoed around Mr. Donner’s mind, bouncing back and forth, picking up speed on each oscillation, picking up power, taking up more and more of his mind.

“Mr. Donner, Mr. Donner?”

Sniv watched as Mr. Donner came back from wherever he had been. It did not seem to have been a nice place.

“Mr. Donner, we’ve finished moving the wood, what next?”

Mr. Donner drew himself together with an effort of will and climbed to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. Sniv watched carefully as he walked up the garden to where the other boys were waiting. Mr. Donner seemed to straighten and lean less heavily on his stick with each step until by the time he reached the end of the garden and the rest of the boys, he was striding along deliberately and his face betrayed non of the pain that had marked it when Sniv had disturbed him. Sniv filed the image away in his mind but decided not to mention it to any one else just yet.

Mr. Donner surveyed the cleared space calculatingly. The stumps of the four corner posts of the shed still protruded from the bared earth of its floor but everything else had been removed. Only the dryness of the packed and empty dirt showed that the shed had been there at all. Mr. Donner eyed the four post remnants, then dug into his waistcoat pocket and flipped open his pocket watch.

“Hmm, first thing to do is to get those posts out, then we can probably get a start on digging the hole for the pond. There are a couple of spades in the garage, if someone would like to get them?” Jonathon immediately ran off, closely followed by Jason. “And if somebody would like to get the plans from the kitchen table?” Sniv immediately ran off to get them.

Mr. Donner, followed by the remaining boys, walked around the site of the former shed, examining the ground and poking here and there with his stick. The shed had been in a corner of the garden, but with a space of nearly a foot between it and the fence on each side. Where the thin strips of land had been sheltered between the shed and a fence, a sort of damp growth had occurred, damp loving weeds growing in the accumulated litter of windblown leaves. When Mr. Donner poked the mass with his stick it gave off a smell of decay and clung to his stick with thorns and wet stems as if clinging to the hope of light and air. There was a clear and straight line marking the boundary of the fence, a rectangle of bare, dry and compacted earth looking like the primeval dust of some holy desert. In towards the garden, there was also a sharp demarcation between the dry earth from beneath the shed and the rest of the garden, unkempt remnants of once cared for flower beds and lawns, slowly growing wild like the pupils in a playground once the teacher has been called away, making the most of their brief freedom before his return.

Sniv returned at a gallop, bearing the two rolls of paper like a hero of marathon. Mr. Donner took them and unrolled them solemnly, turning them to match the now shedless corner and looking back and forth between the drawings and the land they represented. Sniv looked around for Jason and Jonathon.

“Now this,” he said, pointing to the middle of the three ovals he had drawn, “is the outside of the pond. This,” pointing to the outer oval, “is where the liner will come up to.”

“Liner?” asked Martin, looking puzzled.

“Well, yes,” said Mr. Donner, “we have to put a waterproof liner on the bottom of the pond otherwise all the water would just drain away as fast as we put it in. The liner will come up to this outer line and we’ll weigh it down with paving stones. The outer line only needs to go down a couple of inches, then at the middle line, we go down another six inches and that will make a shelf to put the plants on. At the inner line, we go down another foot and give some deep water. But first we have to dig out those posts, now where are those boys with the spades?” Mr. Donner and the boys all looked around, towards the house.

Jason and Jonathon were walking slowly up the garden carrying three spades between them, Jonathon on the handles, Jason on the blades. Both boys were paying more attention to each other’s eyes than the ground. Their expressions were an indescribable mixture of challenge, affection, and suppressed laughter. Sniv sighed and went to guide his big brother and his best friend, to make sure they didn’t trip over their own feet in their mutual blindness. Mr. Donner looked nonplussed at the other boys, who just shrugged. Mr. Donner looked back at the two boys, now more or less following Sniv who carried the three spades cradled in his arms. Mr. Donner smiled ruefully and shook his head.

“Right,” said Mr. Donner, “three spades, first three boys take a post each.” Mr. Donner’s eyes picked out Fabian, Niklas and Martin as the three to start the digging. Fabian was the first to take a spade from Sniv, followed closely by Niklas. Martin took the last spade but did not start immediately, instead he watched Niklas and Fabian, who had already chosen their corners.

Fabian pushed the spade in a little way and rocked it back and forth to try and get it deeper. He seemed to be having some trouble with it. Niklas looked at him for a moment and then turned to his own corner. He lifted the spade up a little and took a firm hold. Then he threw the blade downward into the soil, putting his whole weight behind the thrust. The spade went into the soil about two inches and then stopped short with a muffled ‘CLANG’.

Niklas let go of the spade with a yelp and stuck his stinging hands into his armpits with a pout. Mr. Donner was already half way back to his chair so Niklas flexed his fingers a little to work the shock out of them and then picked up the spade again. A little more carefully this time, he started jabbing the spade into the earth around the post. Always it got no further than a couple of inches before stopping short with the muffled sound of metal striking rock.

Fabian was also gingerly exploring the soil around his chosen post, digging slowly further away from the rotting wood, a few inches at a time. Neither boy could manage to penetrate more than a couple of inches into the dirt.

Martin, watching from the sidelines decided to try approaching the problem from the other side. He stuck his spade carefully into the earth at the centre of the bare patch that marked the site of the old shed. It went in no further than those of the other two boys.

Sniv turned to call to Mr. Donner and found him already half way back.

Martin pushed his spade in once more but this time angled the handle slightly toward his body and leaned his weight on the end of it. The spade slid along a seemingly solid, flat surface just below the level of the earth, making a muffled scraping sound as it went and leaving a shallow furrow in the dirt. The boys huddled around the short distance of cleared earth. Mr. Donner joined them.

At the bottom of the shallow trench was what at first seemed like a layer of small dirty stones, level and almost flat. Mr. Donner levered himself down on his stick and reached out a hand to lay his palm flat on this surface. He rubbed it with his fingers and grunted. He then levered himself back up, with a little help from Sniv and Jason, on either side of him, and stood frowning down at the shallow trench.

“Hmf. Well. I never expected that. Concrete. Looks like it probably covers the whole base of the shed.” He frowned more deeply and rubbed his chin. “OK, well, nothing we can do about it now.”

Mr. Donner turned to the three boys still clutching their spades.

“Let’s clear it all off and then we can see where we are. Put all the dirt off to one side there and clear the whole thing.” With that he stood back, motioning Sniv, Jonathon and Jason to join him and leave the diggers with space to work in.

The three boys had soon removed the shallow layer of earth from the surface of the concrete and it did indeed cover the entire area of the base of the shed. At Mr. Donner’s suggestion, Fabian dug down a little way at the side of the concrete platform, revealing its depth. Mr. Donner tapped it with his stick and measured its thickness against the tip. Then he scowled in annoyance and stood looking down at the offending concrete, tapping his finger against the head of his stick.

“Hmmm, solid. And quite thick. Might get it with a hammer, might even need a drill.” He scowled again in thought. “Well, whichever it needs, I don’t have it. I guess it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

Mr. Donner pulled out his pocket watch and flipped it open.

“It’s a little bit early but I don’t suppose you’ll mind that. And by the time we’ve finished clearing up, it won’t be too bad. Then again, there’s all those weeds to clear up. And you could sort out some more burnable stuff since we’re going to have a bonfire.” The boys looked at each other. Mr. Donner was quickly finding lots of things to do, a habit of grownups right after they tell you there’s nothing left to do. Sniv quickly spoke up.

“That’s no problem, me and Jonathon will help sort out the burnable stuff while the others clear the weeds. We’ll have it done in no time.” Sniv gave Mr. Donner his best cute smile.

Mr. Donner stopped short and then burst out laughing. “OK, OK. I guess that means you don’t mind an early finish at all. Well, fine. I’ll have to arrange for some tools for tomorrow anyway, so we’ll just clear up a bit and then you can finish for the day while I go see Richard. Happy?” He smiled.

The boys smiled back at him.

It took the boys only seconds to clear away the few tools they had used that day and to kick the remaining rubbish vaguely toward the pile of wood in the corner. They were standing around looking to see if there was anything else that Mr. Donner would put under the heading of ‘clearing up’ when Mr. Donner himself emerged from the rear of the house pulling on a thick black coat. The sun was still burning hot enough to evaporate the sweat from their bodies as fast as it appeared, and yet Mr. Donner carefully buttoned up the front of his coat, as if he might catch a chill. The boys looked at each other and shrugged. Adults! They caught up their T-shirts and walked down the garden to where the old man waited.

“Everybody ready? Nothing left behind? Good. Lets get going! We’ll go out through the garage, that way we won’t be trampling dust and dirt through the house.”

The boys looked at each other and seemed to realise for the first time just how dirty they had gotten that day. Not only were their hands and shoes smeared with the soil that they had been digging, but the dust from the inside of the shed had half dissolved in their sweat and then turned their bodies to a sort of dirty streaky grey as the sweat evaporated.

“Euw,” said Martin, “I need a bath.”

The rest just wrinkled their noses in agreement.

“My mother said she was going to make dinner for us all,” said Niklas, “maybe she’ll let us use the shower before we eat.”

Jonathon licked his finger and used the wet digit to draw a stripe of clean skin down his arm. He looked at the result for a minute and then used the damp finger to draw marks across his cheeks, red Indian markings in reverse. The white skin seemed to glow in contrast with the dark grey of the dirt that covered his body.

Jon was filthy.

“Yep,” said Niklas, “we definitely need to clean up.”

The boys followed Mr. Donner through the little passage beside the garage and onto the driveway of the house. Mr. Donner turned to the boys.

“OK, there should be no problem getting the tools we need, so let us assume that we can start tomorrow at 10 o’clock. If there’s any problem, then I’ll let you know, Niklas, and you can tell the others. Okay?”

The boys all nodded. Mr. Donner was about to turn away when Martin caught his attention. The youngest of the boys seemed almost to say something and almost to lose his nerve. Then he pulled himself together and asked.

“Mr. Donner, would it be okay if I brought my dog with me tomorrow? He won’t be any bother, he’ll just sit quietly and not annoy you. He could even help dig if you like?”

Mr. Donner started to smile and then suppressed it. He kept his face as serious as the young boy before him. “I’m sure he’d be a great help. Yes, of course you can bring him. Now, I really must be off. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

Martin looked defiantly triumphant to himself as he nodded emphatically towards Mr. Donner’s retreating back. “See. I knew it would be all right!”

The other boys laughed and Niklas grabbed his arm as he led the way into his house next door.

There was no problem getting Mrs. Edlund to let the boys use the bathroom before dinner. In fact she insisted on it, almost pushing the boys upstairs with cries of, “Good Grief, you’re filthy!” Niklas pouted. What did she expect, they’d been working all day. Did she think they could spend the day digging and cleaning and not get a little bit dirty?

It was decided that Martin should be the first to use the Edlunds’ shower, mostly because he was the one out of all of them who most minded being dirty. Niklas quickly showed him how to use the shower controls and then retreated to his own room with the rest of the boys to decide who was next and to wait for Martin to finish.

In Niklas’ room, Jonathon was trying to erase red Indian marks into Jason’s face to match those he had done on himself, while Jason laughingly tried to fend him off. Fabian was craning his neck, trying to see the back of his own shoulders where he was convinced he had a touch of sunburn. Sniv seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. Sniv did that sometimes, fading away into his own little world, but he would always come back when he was needed.

“That wasn’t too bad,” said Niklas, “he was alright really, Mr. Donner.” Sniv made a noncommittal grunt.

“Niklas, is my back red, just here?” asked Fabian. Niklas moved over behind his friend to examine his back.

“It’s hard to tell under all this dirt, I could probably tell better after you’ve been cleaned up. Does it feel sore?”

“It feels a bit tight, like it does sometimes when you’re just starting a sunburn.”

“You’re probably just a bit stiff from all the lifting and carrying. I’ll give you a back rub,” and Niklas started to gently rub at Fabian’s shoulders.

Jason had Jonathon on the ground now and was kneeling over him, drawing pictures in the dirt of his chest. Jonathon was laying back, almost purring, enjoying the attention. Sniv was looking at the two but his eyes were seeing something of his own. In the background came the sound of Martin pottering about in the bathroom, the clunk of the toilet seat, the pattering of his footsteps, and finally the gentle hiss of the shower.

The boys were enjoying the gentle lassitude that comes from being physically just tired enough. Fabian was melting under Niklas’ gentle massage and Jason was slowly becoming glassy eyed as he drew more and more complex designs in the dirt on Jonathon’s chest.

Niklas was about to speak when the silence was interrupted by a loud shriek followed by the sound of something crashing to the ground. Both sounds coming from the bathroom.

The boys looked at each other and then, all together, rushed for the door. There was a lot of confusion as all five boys tried to get from Niklas room to the bathroom all at the same time but eventually five heads poked cautiously through the door to see Martin, still wet from the shower, sitting on the floor amid the fallen bottles and jars and pressing himself into the wall as he stared in horror at the shower cubicle.

The boys first thought was to look and see what it was that had so frightened Martin, but at first, none of them could see anything unusual in the shower tray. It was Jonathon who first realised what it was, he had kept on looking while the others went to help Martin.

“Oh, cool. That’s the hairiest I ever saw!” The other boys looked at Jonathon in puzzlement, all except Martin, whose face still showed his horror. But also now, dawning disgust.

“Oh, no,” wailed Martin, “he’s going to try and catch it!”

“Catch what?”

In response, Martin merely pointed towards the shower tray and Jonathon, now approaching it with a hunter’s face.

It was little wonder that Jonathon had been first to see what had scared martin so, he had such an affinity for all such things. There, wedging itself into the corner of the shower cubicle, trying to escape the pounding spray, was the biggest, hairiest, blackest spider any of the boys had ever seen.

“Yuck,” said Sniv, looking disgusted. Niklas just blushed.

Jonathon pounced, but the spider was too fast for him. It ducked out from beneath his hands and ran across the side of the shower tray.

“Hey,” yelled Fabian, “don’t hurt it!”

“Don’t worry,” said Jonathon with an evil grin, “I want it alive, I got plans for it,” and with that, he made another lunge at the spider, which again evaded him, this time straight up the corner of the shower cubicle and onto the ceiling where it clung, looking down and waving its two front legs at the helpless Jonathon who was far too small to reach it.

“So, Mr. Jonathon,” said Sniv to the frustrated Jonathon, now bouncing up and down just below the place where the spider was resting, “exactly what ‘plans’ did you have for it?”

Jonathon put on a look of injured innocence as he turned to his friend but before he could say anything, Jason’s grinning head appeared from between his knees and he let out a squeal as he started to rise unsteadily into the air on the older boy’s shoulders.

It was at this point that Mrs. Edlund entered the room. Niklas had managed to help Martin to his feet and the two were standing watching, with the others while Jason slowly pushed himself from hands and knees to fully standing with Jonathon sitting unsteadily on his shoulders and grabbing at his hair for balance. Jason and Jonathon froze as Niklas’ mother cocked her head and raised one eyebrow at them.

“And what, exactly, is going on here?”

“What is going on here?”

Wordlessly, Jason pointed up to the ceiling where the spider was still watching, clinging to a corner. “It frightened Martin.”

“I wasn’t frightened,” said Martin, defensively, “just surprised is all. It ran over my foot.”

“Huh,” said Mrs. Edlund, “all this fuss and bother over one little spider. And what were you going to do with it once you caught it?”

“We were just going to put it out into the garden or something,” said Fabian. Jonathon said nothing and tried to keep his face innocent.

“Well, that’s fine,” said Mrs. Edlund, “you can clear up the mess in here while I go and get something to catch it in.” and she turned and left the bathroom.

While she was gone, Niklas and Martin carefully picked up the bottles and cans that had fallen when Martin had knocked them of the shelf in his fright. Jason carefully let Jonathon down to the ground.

Jonathon barely had time to cast more than a few mournful glances at the spider before Mrs. Edlund returned with a piece of paper and an empty glass jar. Reaching up, she placed the jar over the spider and then slid the paper underneath so that the spider had no choice but to fall into the jar.

“Right,” said Mrs. Edlund, “I’ll let this go in the garden, then finish with dinner. You have about half an hour to get cleaned up, and I don’t want to see any dirt anywhere. Including under finger nails and behind ears.” And she glared at the boys before leaving them once more.

The boys looked at one another and then shrugged. No boy can ever understand how adults can find dirt on even the cleanest boy, nor can they ever understand why they should want to.

Niklas turned to Martin, “did you manage to finish your shower?” Martin shook his head. “Okay, you finish your shower and then let us know. We’ll have to be quick if we’re all to get cleaned by the time dinner is ready.”

Martin still looked unsure, casting nervous glances towards the shower cubicle. Sniv spoke up.

“Why don’t we share our showers, we can wash each other’s backs and get cleaned in half the time.” He turned to Martin, “I’ll share with you if you like.”

The others took one look at the expression of intense relief on Martin’s face and agreed that perhaps it would be quicker to share their showers. Sniv did not wait for a reply, he immediately removed his shorts and socks (he had already taken off his shoes in Niklas’ room) and dragged Martin into the still running shower.

For some reason nobody seemed to want to leave the bathroom, even though it was not their turn yet. Fabian was leaning against the radiator, which fortunately was turned off at this time of year, Jonathon was leaning out of the bathroom window trying to see where Mrs. Edlund was releasing the spider into the garden of the house. Jason was watching Jonathon.

“He was alright, Mr. Donner, wasn’t he,” said Niklas.

“I liked him,” said Fabian.

“He was cool,” came Jonathon’s voice from where he was leaning the whole front half of his body out of the bathroom window. Jason had grabbed hold of his legs.

“No,” said Niklas, “I mean he looked all right. He must have just been tired this morning.”

“Oh, that, yeah.”

“Probably just needed some coffee to wake up properly.”

Sniv listened from inside the shower cubicle where he was being covered in soap by Martin. He thought about the place where Mr. Donner seemed to have been that time, the place that hadn’t seemed very nice at all. He thought about the pain on Mr. Donner’s face and how quickly and thoroughly it had been covered up. He thought for a long time about mentioning it, but by then the conversation had moved on so he said nothing.

He would wait and see what happened tomorrow.