Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson Page B

was wearing a tweed cap and carrying a fishing rod (they were going to Scarborough). Frank was a draper’s assistant but neither Albert nor Jack ever let on to Frank that they thought being a draper’s assistant wasn’t much of a job, especially when they could see that he knew that well enough for himself without being told.
    Jack leant against the back yard wall and smiled a lazy smile at noone in particular. He had a straw boater on and Albert laughed and said, ‘He looks like a real toff, eh, Nelly?’ and gave her a wink so that she didn’t know where to look. Underneath the hat his black hair was slicked back from his forehead and he was so cleanshaven that Nell wanted to reach out and touch his skin just above where it met the whiteness of his collar. She didn’t of course, she could hardly bring herself to even look at him as they stood in the yard, waiting for Albert. ‘We’ll miss the train if he doesn’t hurry,’ Frank said, and Lillian said, ‘Here he comes!’ as they heard their brother’s boots on the stairs, and then Lillian smiled at Jack with her cat-green almond eyes and gave Nell an invisible prod in the back and hissed, ‘Go on, Nellie – say something,’ because she knew how sweet her sister was on Jack.
    But then Albert came out and said, ‘Come on, we’re going to be late,’ and all three turned to go and were half-way along the lane at the back of the house before either Nell or Lillian remembered the lunch they’d packed for them. Lillian shouted, ‘Wait!’ so loudly that an upstairs window across the way shot open, the sash rattling, and Mrs Harding looked out to see what the fuss was about. Nell ran back into the kitchen and grabbed Tom’s old haversack off the kitchen table and ran back out into the lane.
    The packed lunch had been the subject of much discussion between Lillian and Nell because originally they were only going to do enough for Albert, but then it struck them that Frank didn’t have any family so maybe he wouldn’t make himself a good lunch – if any at all – and then they thought about Jack and decided it wouldn’t be right to leave him out, and in the end Lillian laughed and said they were going to end up making lunch for the whole football team if they weren’t careful. Eventually, inside Tom’s old knapsack they placed – a dozen ham sandwiches wrapped in a clean tea-towel, six hard-boiled eggs in their shells, a big piece of Wensleydale, a slab of parkin, a bag of cinder toffee, three apples and three bottles of ginger beer (even though they knew there’d be crates of beer going with the lads). Needless to say, Rachel knew nothing of this largesse.
    Jack broke away from the other two and walked back towards Nell and, taking the haversack from her said, ‘Thanks Nell, that was right good of the two of you, we’ll think about you when we’re sitting up on the Front eating this lot.’ Then he gave her his boyish, cheeky smile and said, ‘Maybe one evening next week you’d like to walk out with me?’ and Nell nodded and smiled and kicked herself because he must think she was a deaf-mute for all she ever said anything to him, and eventually she managed to say, ‘That would be nice,’ with a tremulous little smile.
    She almost ran back to Lillian at the gate and the two of them stood, framed in pink clematis, watching the three men walk to the top of the cobbled lane where they all turned and waved. The sun was behind them so you couldn’t see their faces, but Lillian imagined their smiles and she had to put her hand to her mouth and blink away the tears that had formed because she was thinking what fine young men they were and how afraid she was for them, but all she said was, ‘I hope they’re careful if they go out on a boat.’ Nell said nothing, she was thinking how sad Percy Sievewright’s mother would have felt if she’d been here at that moment, seeing his three pals going off to Scarborough and knowing Percy couldn’t go with