A Kestrel for a Knave Read Online Free

She lungedforward, Billy skipped back and they faced up again from their original positions.
    ‘I’ll bloody murder you when I get hold of you.’
    ‘Gi’o’er now, mam, I’ll be late for school.’
    ‘You’ll be more than late, unless you do as you’re telled.’
    ‘He said I’d get t’stick next time.’
    ‘That’s nowt to what you’ll get if I catch you.’
    Billy ducked down. His mother followed, holding on to the table top to retain balance. They faced each other under the table, then Billy feinted a move forward. His mother dived, at nothing. Billy jumped up and ran round the table while his mother was still full stretch on the floor.
    ‘Billy come back! Do you hear? I said come back!’
    He whipped the kitchen door open and ran out into the garden. He was half-way down the path when his mother appeared, panting and jabbing her finger at him.
    ‘Just you wait lad! Just you wait ’til tonight!’
    She went back in and banged the door. Billy turned away and looked down the garden, over the fence into the fields. A skylark flew up, trilling as it climbed. Higher and higher, until it was just a song in the sky. He opened his jacket and dipped into the pocket. The egg carton was dented. He opened it. Two of the compartments were filled with yellow slime and shell. He eased out the sound eggs and placed them together on the path. Their shells were sticky, so he carefully wiped each one in turn and re-grouped them like a four egger, crouching over them and looking down. Then he picked one up, weighed it in his palm, and threw it high in the direction of the house. The egg described a parabola in the air and fell on to the slates. He threw the others in rapid succession, stooping and releasing while the previous one was still in the air. The kitchen door opened and his mother came out. Billy backedaway down the path, massaging his right biceps with his left hand. She locked the door and turned round.
    ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten, lad, ’cos I haven’t!’
    She slipped the key under the lip of the step, then pulled the ends of her headscarf tight under her chin.
    ‘An there’s a bet of our Jud’s to take, an’ all. You’d better not forget that.’
    ‘I’m not taking it.’
    ‘You’d better, lad.’
    ‘I’m fed up o’ taking ’em. He can take it his sen.’
    ‘How can he, you dozy bugger, if he don’t get home in time?’
    ‘I don’t care, I’m not taking it.’
    ‘Please yourself then….’
    She rounded the house and hurried up the path. Billy gave the path a V sign and made a farting noise with his mouth. When he heard the gate bang, he turned round and walked down the path towards a shed at the bottom of the garden. In front of the shed a small square of ground had been covered with pebbles and bordered with whitewashed bricks, set into the soil side by side, at an angle. The roof and sides of the shed had been patched neatly with lengths of tarpaulin. The door had been freshly painted, and a square had been sawn out of the top half and barred vertically with clean laths. On a shelf behind the bars stood a kestrel hawk:
    Rufous brown. Flecked breast, dark bars across her back and wings. Wings pointed, crossed over her rump and barred tail. Billy clicked his tongue, and chanted softly, ‘Kes, Kes, Kes, Kes.’ The hawk looked at him and listened, her fine head held high on strong shoulders, her brown eyes round and alert.
    ‘Did you hear her, Kes, making her mouth again?…Gobby old cow. Do this, do that, I’ve to do everything in this house…. Well they can shit. I’m fed up o’ being chased about…. There’s allus somebody after me.’
    He slowly lifted one hand and began to rub one of the laths with his forefinger. The hawk watched it all the time.
    ‘An’ our Jud, he’s t’worst o’t’lot, he’s allus after me… allus has been. Like that day last summer when I fetched you, he was after me then….’
    … Jud was having his breakfast when Billy came downstairs.