A Kid for Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz

out of his pocket and studied it for a while. Afterwards he folded the paper up carefully, took a last look through the grating, and walked on.
    Joe watched him the whole time. That piece of paper was his plan for stealing Africana, and the only thing to do was to follow him, find his lair, and tell the sweetshop man, the informer, who would then tell the police. As it was only cold and not raining, Joe waited until the cannibal king was a bit ahead, and followed.
    All the way along, Joe watched the cannibal king carefully, ready to take up the position of defence at a moment’s notice. But the old man didn’t look back once, which showed how cunning he was, trying to make Joe think that he didn’t know he was being followed.
    Once he sat down on the kerb for a short rest, and Joe turned to look into the window of a magazine shop where there were thousands of covers in full colour. They showed horrible monsters about to eat beautiful ladies with torn dresses, and rockets going to Mars, the red planet of mystery, and boxers beating one another bloody, and cowboys shooting and gangsters shooting and Huns shooting. Joe was thinking that the pictures were exciting but not very real because you never saw things like that in Fashion Street. He started to think then how it would be if when he got back to Fashion Street a whole lot of horrible monsters were trying to get into the greengrocer’s shop to eat Mavis, and her overalls were torn. When he looked round, the cannibal king was gone, which again went to show how cunning he was.
    There was a little sunshine now, not much warmth in it, but it made things look brighter, especially the small pools of ice in the gutters. After looking round for the cannibal king for a while, Joe began to carefully break the ice with his heel.
    Joe had just found a small pool which was solid ice safe for skating on with the toe of one foot, when there was a great clanging of bells. A fire engine rushed past, covered with ladders, hoses and firemen in helmets, the brass everywhere gleaming in the cold sunlight, the engine bright red and glossy as it flashed past. In case the fire was nearby, Joe ran off in the direction the fire engine had taken.
    Joe ran a long way keeping a sharp look-out for fires everywhere, but it was no good. The fire engine had disappeared. It’s always the way with fires. You never see them, because they’re tucked away somewhere you never dream could catch fire, like the one just round the corner that time when some curtains caught alight. Joe heard the bells and ran all over the place, but when he finally went round the corner, there was the engine with all the firemen standing about, and a lot of people watching, but of course the fire was out.
    Joe sighed. He could tell from the way his stomach felt that it was dinner time, and since the old cannibal was nowhere to be seen, he might just as well go home. He would have gone straight home, except that he noticed the big chocolate advert over the railway bridge, and being so near, thought he might as well have a look at Itchy Park to see if any flowers were coming up yet.
    Itchy Park was an old graveyard which, though full up, had hedges and a few big old trees. Flowers grew up round the graves, which were so covered with grass that without the gravestones and monuments you would think it was a real park. There were two iron benches painted dark green for your convenience, should you happen to be tired, and in nice weather old men used to meet there to talk politics, while mothers pushed their babies in prams, and children played Release round the graves. With its white stone pillars with iron fences between them, the iron all black and green, the stone all white and black and grey patches from the rain and smoke, it was like ancient Greece. In nice weather, a pleasant place for a short outing.
    At Itchy Park the sun made the white stone pillars and whitened headstones shine like alabaster, and Joe dawdled between the