1. Dead Bones

Jack is now eleven and maybe wants to go into the woods in search of adventure...

Jerry Newby liked his work. He worked for the government in the sort of department that meant he really ought to keep what he did a secret from the rest of the world, but he did love it. But the downside was it did mean he was moved around the country, having precious little time to settle in any one place, and he took his son Jack with him as well as she who had developed her role into an odd mixture if housekeeper, and occasional lover, Angela Smithson.

Angela’s was a strange story, having begun as “bestie” to Jerry’s deceased wife Janice, then after she died Angela slowly morphed into nurse cum nanny to Jack as he grew from babyhood. She was happy with the situation because Janice had meant more to her than she would ever dared admit, and Jack was of Janice’s flesh and when she bathed him she was bathing part of Janice. That was how she saw it, anyway.

The happy trio had moved for the third time since Jack had been born, this time to a sleepy little corner of central England where Jerry could keep am eye on people of interest to a Government that was paranoid about antisocial or criminal groups emerging from the shadows, and it seemed that Emerald Cottage where he now lived would provide the perfect environment for the growing Jack, who had just passed his eleventh birthday.

Like most young children, it didn’t take Jack long to fall in love with things that happened on screens, especially a handful of games he played on his own laptop computer for every hour of just about every day. At first this hobby of the young boy provided Jerry with time he needed in order to complete his observations, but he began to worry that Jack wasn’t enjoying the boyish things he remembered having loved years earlier, when he’d been around ten years old.

“You know Jack,” he said on one occasion, or maybe more than one, “when I was a kid like you I had adventures…”

“Like on your laptop?” asked Jack, aware that a personal and rather boring lesson might be in the offing

“There were no such things like laptops back then,” sighed Jerry, “in fact the most modern thing I remember being invented was the quartz watch.”

“What other kind are there?” asked Jack, “I mean, all watches work from quartz, don’t they? Even old fashioned ones like yours, with fingers that point to numbers?”

“This may be old fashioned, son, but once it was state of the art. It’s automatic and I’m very fond of it. Automatic means it winds itself up from my movements when I walk. No quartz and no battery.”

“Cool,” replied Jack, grinning impishly.

“No. Not cool. Just clever,” replied Jerry. “Ah, so, I used to have adventures with my mates…”

“You had mates then, dad?” teased Jack.

“Us lads went round together, Jack,” explained Jerry, “and we would go into the woods… there were some woods near where I used to live, nor quite as big as the woods round here but big enough for lads to get lost in if they wanted the fun of getting lost and finding themselves again…”

“Boring…” sniffed Jack.

“It could be quite exciting,” corrected Jerry, “like the time I found a skeleton!”

“You found a skellington, a real live living skellington?” gasped Jack.

“That I did, and besides being excited I was a bit scared,” confessed his father, “bit it wasn’t a real live living skeleton but a collection of very old bones that had once been a person and no longer were, and they were all very dead indeed.”

“Spooky, then. What did you do, dad? Pick them up and show them round?”

“Really Jack! That would be silly and horrible! What if the bones belonged to someone’s mum or dad? Would they like a small boy showing them off?”

“Probably not…”

“No, I went to constable Jones who lived on our street and reported my find to him. I even took him to where the bones were, and he was most impressed by my honesty. It is important when you find something that might be important to be as honest as you can be, Jack.”

“I would be that, dad,” vowed his son.

“Well, when the papers got hold of the story of me finding the bones they put my picture in the paper, pointing to a piled of ribs lying where I’d found them. The daft thing was they weren’t the same ribs but some the paper reporters had borrowed from a butcher and made to look like those I found. Those were with the scientists and not left for any old newspaper reporter to photograph.”

“And did you discover whose bones they were, dad? Did they belong to a desperado who had been trying to escape with a bag of loot and died because he was struck by lightning?”

“The bones were examined by clever scientists, and they concluded that they belonged to a man who had been killed over a hundred years ago. There was a bullet still lying where his heart had been, but his heart had long since rotted away. That’s the trouble with flesh, Jack, it’s called soft tissue and it rots away and takes all evidence with it. They couldn’t give the bones a name but were quite sure they belonged to a man.”

“How? Did he still have a willy then, dad?” Jack knew he was being silly but the question did seem somehow relevant to him.

“Now don’t be daft, son! As I said, all soft tissue rots away pretty quickly. But they did have some idea how long the man had been dead and tried lookin g at lists of people who went missing back then, but it was a time of war, the first world war it came to be called, and lists of missing people weren’t all that comprehensive.”

“Hmm,” mused Jack, and then, “dad, I want to go adventuring in the woods!”

“Don’t forget that your brother’s calling some time soon, Jack.”

“I can’t remember anything about him except he’s called Jonny,” sighed Jack. “Did you once tell me that he was a twin with me?”

Jerry nodded. “He was, and the shame of it is your lovely mother died soon after giving birth to the two of you. But Sylvia and Tommy, your actual real grandparents, are bringing him to visit. Maybe you could go adventuring with him when he’s here? Looking for skeletons in the woods, maybe?”

“Or I might show him some of my games…”

“See what he fancies, Jack. He’ll be here any day now.”

“My twin,” sighed Jack, “i wonder what he looks like…”

© Peter Rogerson 26.06.24