The Pals swung up the road, keeping perfectly in step.

None of them were old. They all looked like their photograph.

But then, Tommy Atkins didn't look old any more. It was a young man who got to his feet, marched out into the car park, turned, and saluted Johnny and the dead.

Then, as the Pals strode past, he stepped neatly into the gap they'd left for him. All thirty men wheeled about, and marched away.

The dead streamed after them. They appeared to walk slowly while at the same time moved very fast, so that, in a few seconds, the car park was empty even of its ghosts.

'He's going back to France,' said Johnny. Sud- denly, he felt quite cheerful, even though he could feel the tears running down his face.

The British Legion man, who had been talking, stopped.

'What?' he said.

'Tommy Atkins. He's going back.'

'How did you know that?'

Johnny realized he'd been talking aloud.

'Uh—'

The British Legion man relaxed.

'I expect the lady from the Home told you, did she? He mentioned it in his will. Would you like a handkerchief?'

'Uh. No. I'm all right,' said Johnny. 'Yes. She told me.'

'Yes, we're taking him back this week. He gave us a map reference. Very precise, too.' The man patted the second box he'd been given which, Johnny suddenly realized, probably contained all that was left in this world of Atkins, T, apart from a few medals and some faded photographs.

'What will you have to do?' he said.

'Just scatter his ashes. We'll have a little ceremony.'

'Where ... the Pals died?'

'That's right. He was always talking about them, I do know that.'

'Sir?'

The man looked up.

'Yes?'

'My name's John Maxwell. What's yours?'

'Atterbury. Ronald Atterbury.'

He extended a hand. They shook hands, solemnly.

'Are you Arthur Maxwell's grandson? He used to work for me at the boot factory.'

'Yes. Sir?'

'Yes?'

Johnny knew what the answer was going to be. He could feel it looming ahead of him. But you had to ask the question, so that the

answer could exist. He took a deep breath.

'Are you related to Sergeant Atterbury? He was one of the Pals.'

'He was my father.'

'Oh.'

'I never saw him. He married my mother before' he went off to the war. There was a lot of that sort of thing. There always is. Excuse me, young man, but shouldn't you be in school?'

'No,' said Johnny.

'Really?'

'I should be here. I'm absolutely sure about that,' said Johnny. 'But I'd better be getting to school, anyway. Thanks for talking to me.'

'I hope you haven't missed any important lessons.'

'History.'

'That's very important.'

'Can I ask you one more question?'

'Yes?'

'Tommy Atkins's medals. Were they for any- thing special?'

'They were campaign medals. Soldiers got them, really, for just staying alive. And for being there. He went all the way through the war, you know. Right to the end. Didn't even get wounded.'

Johnny walked back down the drive barely no- ticing the world around him. Something important had happened, and he alone of all the living had seen it, and it was right.

Getting medals for being there was right, too. Sometimes being there was all you could do.

He looked back when he reached the road. Mr Atterbury was still sitting on the bench with the two boxes beside him, staring at the trees as if he'd never seen them before. Just staring, as if he could see right through them, all the way to France.

Johnny hesitated, and then started back.

'No,' said Mr Vicenti, right behind him.

He'd been waiting by the bus shelter. Haunting it, almost.

'I was only going to—'

'Yes, you were,' said Mr Vicenti. 'And what would you say? That you'd seen them? What good would that do? Perhaps he's seeing them too, inside his head.'

'Well—'

'It wouldn't work.'

'But if I—'

'If you did something like that a few hundred years ago you'd probably be hung for witchcraft. Last century they'd lock you up. I don't know what they'd do now.'

Johnny relaxed a little. The urge to run back up the driveway had faded.

'Put me on television, I expect,' he said, walking along the road.

'Well, we don't want that,' said Mr Vicenti. He walked too, although his feet didn't always meet the ground.

'It's just that if I could make people see that—'

'Maybe,' said Mr Vicenti. 'But making people see anything is a long, hard job - excuse me ...'

He jerked his shoulder a bit, like a man trying to

find a difficult itch, and then pulled a pair of doves from inside his jacket.

'They breed in there, I'm sure,' he said, watching them fly away and disappear. 'What are you going to do now?'

'School. And don't say it's very important.'

'I said nothing.'

They reached the entrance to the cemetery. Johnny could just see the big sign on the old factory site next door, its blue sky glowing again the dustier blue-grey of the real sky.

'They'll start taking us out the day after tomorrow,' said Mr Vicenti.

'I'm sorry. Like I said, I wish there was something I could do.'

'You may have done it already.'

Johnny sighed.

'If I ask you what you mean, you'll say it's hard to explain, right?'

'I think so. Come. You might enjoy this.'

There wasn't even a dead soul in the cemetery. Even the rook had gone, unless it was a crow.

But there was a lot of noise coming from the canal.

The dead were swimming. Well, some of them were. Mrs Liberty was. She was wearing a long swimming costume that reached from neck to knees, but she still kept her hat on.

The Alderman had stripped off his long robe and chain, and was sitting on the canal bank in his shirtsleeves and some braces that could have

moored a ship. Johnny wondered how the dead changed clothes, or felt the heat, but he supposed it was all habit. If you thought your shirt was off, there it was ... off

As for swimming ... there was no splash when they dived, just the faintest of shimmers, that spread out like ripples and vanished very quickly. And when they surfaced they didn't look wet. It dawned on Johnny that when a ghost (he had to use that word in his head) jumped into the water, the ghost didn't get wet, the water got ghostly.

Not all of them were having fun, though. At least, not the usual sort. Mr Fletcher and Solomon Einstein and a few others were clustered around one of the dumped televisions.

'What are they doing?' said Johnny.

'Trying to make it work,' said Mr Vicenti.

Johnny laughed. The screen had been smashed. Rain had dripped into the case for years. There was even grass growing out of it.

'That'll never—' he began.

There was a crackle. A picture formed in the air, on a screen that wasn't there any more.

Mr Fletcher stood up and solemnly shook Solomon Einstein's hand.

'Another successful marriage of advanced theor- etics and practical know-how, Mr Einstein.'

'A shtep in the right direction, Mr Fletcher.'

Johnny stared at the flickering images. The pic- ture was in beautiful colour.

Enlightenment dawned.

'It's the ghost of the television?' he said.

'Vot a clever boy!' said Solomon Einstein.

'But with improvements,' said Mr Fletcher.

Johnny peered inside the case. It was full of; old leaves and stained, twisted metal. But over the top of it, shimmering gently, was the pearly outline of the ghost of the machine, purring away without electricity. At least, apparently without electricity. Who knew where the electricity went when the light was switched off?

'Oh, wow.'

He stood up and pointed to the scummy green surface of the canal.

'Somewhere down there there's an old Ford Capri,' he said. 'Wobbler said he saw some men dump it in there once.'