On the first day after our schools broke up for the summer, Ray Mundo called for me early in the morning. When I opened my front door, the first thing he said was, “Are we still best friends forever, Queen Isabella?”

“Our bond can’t be broken, noble Ray Mundo,” I said.  “What new adventure do you have in store?”

We’d been at different schools for two years. I’d passed the 11-Plus exam for Avon Fach Grammar.  Ray Mundo had failed and was sent to Aneurin Bevan Sec. Mod. We didn’t see much of each other on school days.  I had hockey practice and homework and new friends to go about with, and Ray Mundo had an after-school job with a carpenter, fetching and carrying, sweeping wood shavings off the floor, and learning to saw and solder. The carpenter told him, “You’re only thirteen but you’re a top notch worker, as good as any man in the whole of South Wales, I’d wager.” (“And a lot cheaper,” Grandma said.)  In summer we were still as thick as we’d always been.

“Our new adventure is a deep and dangerous one.”  He was speaking low on my doorstep so Grandma and Grandpa in the kitchen wouldn’t hear. “We’re going to uncover a dark secret. I’ve been watching the person under suspicion for a while, only waiting for you before making a move.”

“Who is it?”  I couldn’t think of anyone we knew who might have a dark secret.

“I’m not saying anymore here.”  He jerked his head towards the kitchen at the end of the passage.  “There are ears, Queen Isabella.”

“I’m going out with Ray,” I called down the passage.

We’d only taken the few steps across Einion Row’s narrow pavement and opened the garden gate when Grandma and Grandpa appeared at the front door.

 “Don’t you lead Isabel into any trouble this summer, Raymond,” Grandma said.

“I don’t want her coming home again half-drowned.”

We just waved and went on up the garden path, not making any promises.

“Did you hear, you two?” Grandpa was wearing his dai cap and holding his toolbox, ready to go to work.  “You’ll feel the back of my hand across your brainless head if there’s mischief like last year, Raymond.”

We waved again and went through the garden’s back gate and out into the vast wasteland that used to belong to Crawshay the ironmaster in olden days and was now the wild kingdom of neighborhood children. All the little kids in our street were there already, playing in the ruins of the ironworks, yelling and chasing each other and climbing the broken walls to shoot pretend arrows using bits of sticks.  Ray Mundo’s three younger brothers were among them with chicken feathers in their hair and dirt streaked on their faces for war paint.

            As we went past, his eleven-year-old brother Stephen shouted, “Stop, strangers!  We’ll kill you if come on our land.”

“Shut your gob, Stevie,” Ray Mundo shouted back, “or I’ll shut it for you,” and that was what their father, Jac Hughes, used to say to Ray and his brothers before he went off to live with his fancy woman. “And he does it an’all,” Ray Mundo had told me back then.  “I’d fight him only it would upset Mam.”

“And you might end up in the hospital.”

“I’d crack his head open with the poker before he could do anything to me.”

“Then you’d be a murderer, Raymond.” I’d used his proper name to mock the way Grandma and other women in our street said it so it sounded disapproving.  Only I called him Ray Mundo.  There’s a story to how he got that name.

My mother, on one of her rare visits to Avon Fach two years ago, had told him that Ray was spelled r-e-i in Spanish, meaning king, but pronounced the same as in English, and mond was like mundo, meaning world. “In Spanish, you’re king of the world, love,” she said.

She was living in Chile with my stepfather whom I’d never met.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come back with me to Chile?” she’d asked me.

“I love Grandma and Grandpa and I love living in Avon Fach,” I’d said, “and I love Raymond.”  He was there in our kitchen so I didn’t want to leave him out and hurt his feelings, and anyway, it was true.

“Raymond can come,” she said, in that way she had that Grandpa called heedless. “Don’t let love stop you from going out into the world.”

“Not as far as you’ve gone, I hope,” Grandpa said.

“It was you who told me to go out into the world, Dad.”

“I was thinking Cardiff Uni, and then a good job in London.  I wasn’t meaning the whole world.  Certainly not Chile.”  He pronounced it Chilly.

“My degree is in Modern Languages so you should have known.”

“Can I really come to Chile?” then-Raymond asked her.  He adored my mother and he was always in our kitchen when she was visiting.

“You have an open invitation,” she said, “if Minnie will let you.”

“Mam won’t mind.  She wants me to get on.  Where do you live in Chile?”

“Santiago, that’s the capital city, Miraflores 95, and my last name is Ventura now.  Can you remember all that?”

“Santiago, Miraflores 95, Ventura,” he said, pronouncing the Spanish words just like her.

“Isabel’s stepfather is a wealthy and generous man who can’t have children of his own.  He’s always wished for a son,” she told then-Raymond. “You’d suit him no end. You’re a brave, adventurous boy any proper father would be proud of.”

Thanks a lot, I thought, for not saying he wished for a daughter as well, but I didn’t really mind. It pleased me that she esteemed then-Raymond as no one else in our street did except me.  Besides, I had a real father in France who might have wished for me if he knew I existed.  My mother only found out herself two months after she’d left him, and she’d never told him.  “I was too young to marry, darling,” she’d said, “and he would have tried to insist.  He’s a decent man, your father.  When you’re eighteen, you can go to Paris and surprise him.”

“It’ll be a surprise all right,” Grandpa said, “if he’s married with kids.”

“I’ll write to him first,” she said.  “I’m still in touch with mutual friends who’ll know his address.  He will want to see you, Isabel.  I know that about him.”

So I’d always felt all right about my absent father.  I knew where he was, and I knew his name, Victor Daboussier, and she’d said he’d want to see me, and it wasn’t his fault he never had.  There was no shame on me either for how I came to be.  Grandma told me when I was old enough to understand, “We’re saying your father passed before you were born.  People will think, poor Isabel, we mustn’t ask, and it’s not a lie.  He has passed out of your mother’s life.”

After my mother left, then-Raymond said, “Let’s go to Chile, Isabel.”

“Some day we’ll go,” I said, “not yet, but I will call you Ray Mundo. It’s the name you deserve, you’re so super at finding adventures. You’re like Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus and Walter Raleigh.” We agreed we’d keep the spelling R-a-y because it looked fancy in cursive when we twirled the tips of the y.

As we left the ironworks and entered a jungle of giant burdocks, I said, “Tell me the adventure details.  No one can hear you now.”

             “I’m still not saying. You have to see.”  Ray Mundo put his first finger beside his nose to show the secret was too deep to talk about even with no one else listening.

After the burdocks there was a long stretch of weedy grass and the dried-up bed of the canal where the barges used to transport iron, and across from that a row of five joined houses Crawshay had built for his bargemen called Canal Row. It was a quiet street, not like Einion Row, always full of children, and women gossiping, only older people living in four of the houses, and the other was a museum where the composer Joseph Parry was born in 1841, a hundred and twenty years ago, and Mrs. Kirby, the widow in Number One, had the key and the job of showing tourists around.   A year ago, I’d paid tuppence each for Ray and me to see inside and Mrs. Kirby had told us Joseph Parry’s history, how his family was large and poor and he’d had to leave school at nine years old to work in the coalmine and then the ironworks, “but he raised himself up through his own studies,” she said, “to get a degree in Music at Cambridge University and become a professor himself as well as a famous composer.  I hope his story inspires you, children.”

Afterwards, I said to Ray Mundo, “That’ll be your story.  The raising yourself up part I mean,” and he said, “Aye, I know, cos you inspire me, my queen.”

At the other end of the street, attached to the last house, there was a fenced allotment full of rose bushes and flowerbeds, a glorious sight, all dazzling colors.  It was Old Albert’s house and allotment and the fence was to keep Einion Row children from stealing his flowers that he sold to shops and offices in the town, and to women in our neighborhood when he brought them around every Friday afternoon in a hand card. 

Old Albert looked a bit like an ogre with his big, heavy body and bulbous nose, and he had an ogre’s temper, grumpy and gruff, except when he was selling his flowers.  He could turn on the charm for women all right.  It was hard to match him with those flowers.  How could an ugly-tempered person create beauty?

Behind Canal Row a bank sloped down to the River Taf and we could go no farther so I was starting to wonder where and when Ray Mundo’s new adventure would turn up, but I didn’t hurry him. We had the whole summer with no school.  The carpenter had taken his family to their cottage in North Wales so Ray Mundo had no work either.  We sat on the grassy slope and looked at the river flowing beneath us, and Ray Mundo said, “Remember the raft?”

 “Lucky I’m still here to remember,” and we laughed our private laugh and lay back on the grass under the warm sun and took turns telling each other the story. Recalling our adventures was our favorite pastime except for having them:

             Last year, in Ray’s woodwork class at the Sec. Mod. they’d built a plywood raft and his teacher had let him bring it home.  Ray Mundo was the star of that class, and he’d done most of the work on the raft.   His teacher said, “Give it a go on the lake at the park.  It should do fine on a smooth surface. You shouldn’t take it on the river. The current might be too strong.  Do you understand, Raymond?” and Ray said, “Yes, sir, I do,” and when he told me, I said, “You lied to your teacher.”

            “No, I never,” he said.  “Mr. Bennett said I shouldn’t, and I agreed I shouldn’t.

I never said I wouldn’t.”

            “Ray Mundo, how on earth did you manage to fail the 11-plus?”

            “I managed easy.  I wanted to go to the Sec. Mod. to learn a trade.  What use is grammar school learning to me and Mam?”

            Only I knew he’d failed on purpose.  Everyone else in the street thought he’d failed because he was stupid, and Ray Mundo didn’t care a fig about that. 

He’d made an oar for the raft, and a flag on a flagpole with our two names on it in black marking pen, Ray Mundo on one side, and on the other, Queen Isabella, and as the flag fluttered in the breeze you could see our names turning one into the other.  It was a brilliant craft all round, and Mr. Bennet had put it in the back of his truck and driven Ray Mundo home, and his three brothers helped him carry it to the river bank so Ray Mundo could surprise me. 

We’d slid the raft down the slope to the grass below and climbed down after it.  Then we took off our shoes and socks, and I tucked my skirt into the elastic bottoms of my knickers, and Ray waded into the water, pushing the raft out, and I was right behind him, and we clambered aboard.  Everything was tip-top for a few minutes.  The raft started to move as Ray Mundo plied the oar, and he was singing at the top of his voice, “Way hey, and up she rises/ Way hey, and up she rises/ Early in the morning,” and I was shouting, “Give me a turn at the oar,” when I felt my feet in water.  Ray felt it at the same time.  The Ray Mundo/Queen Isabella was sinking. 

 Ray shouted, “Abandon ship!” and we swam to the shore, only a few yards away. When we got there, the submerged raft was going rapidly downriver, just the flag at the top of the pole still visible, waving cheerily in the breeze and still turning our names one into the other’s.  We went home to Grandma soaking wet.  She didn’t give us a row.  She wasn’t a shouter.  She only said, “You must never take a risk like that again.  What if you’d drowned?  My life and Minnie’s wouldn’t be worth living,” and we crossed our fingers behind our backs and promised we would never.

Ray Mundo especially liked retelling this adventure because although the raft sank and the voyage had to be abandoned, I told him it proved he was worthy of his name, a real explorer like the ones who discovered the New World centuries ago, and though he couldn’t discover new countries because they’d all been found, he could join the Royal Navy and become Admiral Ray Mundo, and not like people in our street said, “He’ll be a criminal, he will.  He’s already out of control.” 

Nobody in Einion Row had much opinion of Ray Mundo, not even his own mother who loved him. “I don’t know what to do with him,” she’d told Grandma.  “He’s more out of school than in, and he roams at night.  I wish his father would give a hand.”  Jac only came to our street once a month to give Minnie her money. A stingy amount, Grandma said, though he lived like a lord with his lady.

We finished retelling our story and sat up and I guessed, “You’ve built a canoe.” I wouldn’t have put it past his ability, and this time we’d sail through the town and all the way down the valley as far as Cardiff, but Ray Mundo shook his head and pointed to the bushes behind Canal Row.

“The adventure’s in there,” he said.  “Come and see what you’ve never seen.”

The bushes grew between the back wall of the houses and the top of the steep river bank, so crammed together I didn’t see any way to get into them, and even if we could, we might fall down the slope to our doom, although there was thick grass on the bank, so we might not kill ourselves, just break a leg or an arm.

“I made a path for us,” Ray Mundo said. “We’re going to spy on the scoundrel who calls himself Albert Jones, though I bet that’s not his real name.  Wait till you see what I’ve seen and you’ll agree with me.”

Ray Mundo hated Old Albert.  He made Minnie sad every Friday when he came with his flowers because she couldn’t afford to buy them.  She stayed in her kitchen with the front door closed.  One afternoon, Ray went out and said to Old Albert, “Give us some of your flowers for my Mam.”

“Give them!” Old Albert said.  “You’ve got a nerve.  I wouldn’t be in business long if I was giving my flowers.”

 “Go to hell then, you mingy bugger,” Ray said. “I hope Old Nick comes for you soon.”

“The truant officer will come for you sooner,” Old Albert said, “and pack you off to reform school. That’s a hell on earth for chopsy little devils.”

After that exchange Ray Mundo and Old Albert were enemies.

When we went into the beginning of the bushes, Ray Mundo showed how he’d broken off a lot of branches and cut the nettles, and we could crawl into quite a nice little tunnel, only minding to stay close to the wall side not the bank side.

“I done it all the way to the end,” he said. “I used Mam’s kitchen scissors.”

“When did you do it?” I asked as I crawled behind him.

“A week ago so I could spy out what was what before I surprised you. It took me all night. Here’s Mrs. Kirby’s house. Want to have a look in?”

We crawled up to her window and Ray Mundo parted the branches across the pane, and I stuck my head up over the window ledge. Mrs. Kirby wouldn’t be looking out because that back room was obviously her parlor that we had in the front rooms of our houses in Einion Row. The parlor was the best room in everybody’s house, only used when important people came, like the doctor, or some relative from away. 

            For everyday living, we used our kitchens. Mrs. Kirby would be in her kitchen, cooking or knitting like Grandma, but not gossiping on her doorstep with neighbors like Grandma because they kept to themselves in Canal Row.  Often she came over to chat with Einion Row women.  Her parlor was spic-and-span, embroidered doilies on the side tables and the sofa back, and ornaments on the mantelpiece.

            “Let’s go on,” Ray Mundo said.  “It’s Old Albert we’re after.  You won’t believe your eyes when you see what’s in his parlor.”

            “I like the china shepherdess on her mantelpiece.”

            “Do you want it?” Ray Mundo said. “You can have it if you want it.  We’ll come back when she’s gossiping in our street.  The window’s not locked.  None of them are locked except Joseph Parry’s.  I suppose they don’t bother. No burglar would come through that tangle.   Look, it opens easy.”  He put his hands on the wood frame at the bottom of the window and started to lift it. 

“Stop!” I said.  “We can’t steal from people.  Is that the new adventure?”

“No,” he said.  “We’re just spying on Old Albert. We won’t take anything.  I only thought of nabbing the statue because you like it.”

The parlor door was opening. 

We both moved back in shock and Ray Mundo pulled a leafy branch across the window.  Mrs. Kirby stood in the doorway.

“Come in here,” she said to someone in the passage.

Then we had a bigger shock.  Who should step into the parlor but Old Albert. He was carrying a bunch of his prize red roses that Grandma would never buy, they were priced so exorbitant.

“Put them in that vase, Albert.” We could hear her because Ray Mundo had left the window up a crack. “I’ll fetch water.”

She was going to do that, but Old Albert put his hand on her arm, the one that wasn’t holding the roses, and said, “Embrace me first, Diana darling.”

Embrace me! Diana darling!  It was like watching a film at the Castle Cinema, except they didn’t look like film stars, of course.  Old Albert put the bunch of roses on the table and opened his arms and Mrs. Kirby—Diana—stepped right into them. Next thing, they were kissing.  Ray Mundo and I stuffed our fists half into our mouths so we wouldn’t burst out laughing.

They stopped kissing and Old Albert took Diana’s hand and led her out of the parlor.  Through the parlor’s open door, we could see a bit of the passage and the bottom stairs, and we could see their two pairs of feet and legs going up them.

 “They’re carrying on!” I said.  ‘Why don’t they get married?”

“He doesn’t want to share his riches with her,” Ray Mundo said.  “Now’s our chance. They’ll be busy for a bit.” He shut Mrs. Kirby’s window and we crawled through the bushes, passing Joseph Parry’s house, and the crippled couple’s—him in a wheelchair and her walking with a cane—and the two retired sisters,’ until we came to the last window.

When I looked in, I was astonished.  Old Albert’s parlor was like a room in the National Museum in Cardiff. Framed paintings covered the walls, a Persian carpet covered the floor, and on tables and shelves, carved wood figures and china statuettes.

“How could he afford all this treasure?” I said.

“He’s rolling in money,” Ray Mundo said.

“How can he be?  He only sells flowers.”

“That’s his retirement job, in’it?  He had another life before he came to Avon Fach, but he’s kept it quiet.  So what was he?  That’s what I’d like to know.” 

“Maybe he was a commander in the Navy and traveled all over.”

 “More likely a smuggler, the boss of a world wide gang of thieves. Anyway, we can find out.  See that desk with all the papers on it?  There’s a drawer he opens and a book he takes out and writes in.  It must be his diary. All his secrets are in there.  We have to get in and read that book, and then we’ll report him to Scotland Yard.  They’ll come down and arrest him and give us some of that treasure as our reward.  This is our new adventure, my queen.  No stealing in it, I promise.”

Ray had stolen from Old Albert once and got caught. One Friday, not long after the time he’d refused to give Minnie flowers, Old Albert was wheeling his handcart up our street and he’d seen a big bunch of dalhias in a vase in Minnie’s parlor window.  He banged on her door, and when she came, he said, “Where’d you get them flowers? Before you answer, I’m warning you, don’t lie because I recognize them.”

“My son Raymond gave them to me,” she said.  “You threw them over the fence and he picked them up off the ground.”

Old Albert had snorted then.  “Don’t be daft.  Why would I throw my flowers away?  Your Tom Pepper son climbed over my fence and stole them and now you owe me a shilling.”

 “I don’t have a shilling to spare,” she said.

“In that case I’ll have to report the theft.  Your juvenile delinquent will be taken away from you and sent to Borstal.”

Minnie started crying and Grandma, who’d heard it all from her doorstep where she’d come out to buy flowers, came down the street and said, “For goodness sake, Albert, stop bullying.  I’ll give you your precious money,” and later Grandma had warning words for Ray Mundo, who said to her, “He deserves to be stolen from because he won’t give his flowers to nobody who can’t afford them.  He’d rather throw them away even if he didn’t”

“And he’d rather see you in Borstal and be the one to send you there,” Grandma said. “Don’t do it again, Robin Hood.”

Stealing was something boys were sent to Borstal for.  So was breaking into someone’s house, even if you didn’t steal anything, and there was a girls’ Borstal, too, but I did want to get a closer look at Old Albert’s treasures and read what was in his secret book, so I said, “When shall we do it?”

“Tomorrow’s Friday,” Ray Mundo said. “He’ll be selling his flowers.  He’s always in our street for ages, buttering up the women.   That’s when we’ll come.”

It sounded like a foolproof plan.  “All right then,” I said.

We crawled back through the tunnel and went to Grandma’s for Welsh cakes and lemonade.  After that we decided to race our bikes to the park. Ray Mundo could have won the race easy.  He cycled to school, two miles each way, and got there in five minutes, and even faster coming home, he said.   But he courteously let me win and I accepted the tribute seeing I was his queen.

At the park, we went into the museum that used to be Crawshay’s mansion and strutted arm-in-arm from room to room, pretending to be Sir William and Lady Rose Mary, imitating posh English accents and boasting about our exorbitant possessions, her jewelry and ball gowns and furniture, and his trophies, including a whole wall of the heads of wild animals he’d shot on safari. (“Ironworkers’ heads could be up there,” Grandma said.  “He killed them as well.” She didn’t mean he’d shot them, of course.)

In front of the life-size portrait of the Crawshays in their wedding finery, all crachach and cocking their noses up, Ray Mundo said, “Will you marry me?”

“We’re married already, silly Willy.”

“Not playing, Isabel, serious. When we’re grown up, will you?”

 “Being grown up is years away.” He’d flabbergasted me with such an un-Ray Mundo question. “I’ve never thought about marrying you or anybody.”

“Will you think about it now?  You can give me your answer tomorrow.”

“I’ll give it in ten years, when I graduate from Cardiff Uni like my Mam.  Now, get back in the game, Willy-nilly. Let’s go and admire our swanky chamber pots.”

As we sashayed into the Crawshays’ bedroom, Ray said, “Tinkle tinkle, splash, splash, I’m watering the garden,” because flowers were painted on the big china pots they’d done their business in at night.  Some poor servant girl had to empty the pots every morning. “That was a stinky job, all right,” Ray Mundo said.

Next day at two o’clock we stood on Ray Mundo’s doorstep and watched until along came Old Albert, pushing his wheelbarrow and calling, “Flowers for sale.  Buy my lovely flowers,” and Mrs. Rees next door to Ray Mundo came out with her purse in her hand and started choosing, and other women were coming out higher up the street, 26 joined houses in all, and loads of time for us.  Ray Mundo and I dashed into his garden and out through the back gate and across the wasteland to Canal Row.  As usual, nobody was outside there.  We went behind the houses and through the tunnel, not stopping until we reached Old Albert’s window.

            “Ready?” Ray Mundo asked me.

            “Lead on,” I said. 

The window was harder to open than Mrs. Kirby’s.  As Ray pulled, it groaned and resisted.  “He never oils it,” Ray said, but he got it up wide enough and climbed in.  My heart did thump a bit as I followed, but I thought, It’s all right, we won’t get caught, and we won’t do any damage, only looking.

            I stood gazing around at the paintings and woodcarvings and china. Ray Mundo went straight to the desk and opened the drawer and took out the secret book. “Do you want to open it, my queen?” he asked, as was seemly, and I went over and took it.  On the first page was a date in January and under it long columns of money sums.  It was the same all the way through, as far as July, the present month.

            “It’s just his accounts book,” I said.

            “Daro,” Ray Mundo said,  “so he can’t be arrested. What a bomper swizz.” 

            There was nothing else in the drawer except a bulky brown envelope. It wasn’t sealed, so I opened it. There were pound notes inside.

            “How much?” Ray Mundo asked me.
            I pulled out the wad and started counting out loud, laying each note down on the desk when I’d counted it.  They were all ten-pound notes and there were thirteen of them. Also in the envelope were Lloyd’s Bank deposit slips.  Ray Mundo studied them. “He makes a deposit of a hundred and fifty pounds every Saturday,” he said, “and he’s already got a hundred and thirty from the shops and offices he sells to in town. He’ll get the other twenty today in our neighborhood and he’ll go to the bank in the morning.”

            “Good calculation.” I started to roll the notes back into a wad.

            “Hold on,” Ray Mundo said.  “My Mam could do a lot with that money. I’ll give her half and you and me can share the other half.”

             “Don’t be twp.  He’ll find it’s missing as soon as he comes home and inform the police.”

            “But he won’t know who took it.  I’ll make Mam swear to keep it secret.”

            “Then she’ll be your partner in crime, and if the police catch you, she’ll go to jail, and you to Borstal. You’ll be his first suspect because you’ve stolen from him before.”

             “Let’s just take some of it then.  He’ll think he didn’t count it properly.”

            “None of it.  It’s too risky.  You said no stealing.”

            “All right, how about a souvenir each?  He won’t miss a couple of ornaments.  Look how dusty they are.  Shows he never bothers about them.”

            And that was tempting.  I was entranced by those small wooden figures.

            “Go on, choose us one each.  I’ll put the money back.”

             I chose a little wooden cat standing up like a human and wearing a long, flowing robe, one paw twitching its hem.  I turned her upside down to see all of her, and there was a tiny label under her stand with three words on it.  The first was Netsuke and I thought that must be her name, and then Albert’s Antiques.  When I turned round, Ray Mundo was closing the draw, slowly, as if it hurt his hand to do it.  His heart was hurt, I knew, leaving all that money he might have given to Minnie.

            We climbed out of the window. I helped to tug it shut and we made our getaway through the tunnel.  When we were out, I showed him the cat.  “He kept an antique shop,” I said.  “All his treasures come from there,” and I showed him the label.

            “They could still be stolen goods,” he said.

            Two of them are now, I thought, and I said, “This one’s for you,” and gave him

a dragon no bigger than my thumb with a row of miniscule spikes sticking up on its back and down its tail, each one ending in a curl.

            “Whoever made these is a genius,” Ray said.  “What kind of knife carved so tiny and so perfect, and how many years did he have to train to use it so good?  What a world we live in.  We don’t know even the half of it, Isabel.”

            I loved the cat, but I couldn’t feel at ease as we walked home, and besides, I could never put it where I could see it because Grandma would ask, “Where did this come from?” and she’d know I didn’t have enough pocket money to buy it, even if such a beauty existed in the High Street shops.  At my garden gate, I decided. 

“I can’t keep it,” I said. “I can’t be a thief, and you can’t either.  We have to take them back.”

            “Too late,” Ray Mundo said.  “Old Albert might come home and catch us.”

            “When he goes to the bank tomorrow morning then.”

            “Saturday morning in’t safe either.  Mrs. Kirby and them others might be out in their gardens or going to do their weekly shopping.  It’ll have to be tonight.”

            “He still might catch us.”

            “Not us, only me.  At the time I go he’ll be fast asleep.”

            “I’m coming with you.”

            “No, my queen.  What if your Grandma caught you going out or coming back? It’s not like she’s used to you wandering in the night like my Mam.  And it’s safer for one to go into Old Albert’s than two.  You could put me in danger.”

            So I had to agree to that plan and bear the worry and guilt I felt, which were the wages of sin according to Mrs. Beale who taught Religious Knowledge at my school, and I supposed they were the wages of crime, as well.  I stood at my window for ages hoping to see Ray crossing the wasteland, but by two o’ clock I was sleepy and I went to bed.

I woke late next morning.  It was already half past nine when I went down to the kitchen and nobody was there.  I knew Grandpa had gone to work to do a bit of overtime, but I wondered where Grandma was, and then the front door opened and she came in. 

“I’ve got very bad news, Isabel,” she said, “about Raymond. Mrs. Kirby was here, telling the whole street. I’ve been down to see Minnie. The police came to her house—”

            “Is Ray dead?” I cried.  Had Old Albert caught him and killed him?

            “He was alive and well when last seen, but he’s in serious trouble.  He broke into Albert’s house at three o’ clock this morning and stole a lot of money. A hundred and fifty pounds, Mrs. Kirby says. Albert heard his parlor window creaking, and when he got downstairs, Raymond was climbing out.  He rushed to his front door shouting, ‘Stop thief!’ and Raymond was racing across the wasteland. All the Canal Row neighbors came out and Mrs. Kirby went down to the Square to ring the police. Albert was in no state to do it.”

            “Is Ray in jail?”

            “They haven’t caught him.  It took a lot of time between Mrs. Kirby changing out of her nightdress to go to the Square, and then for a policeman to come. You know Avon Fach police aren’t famous for being swift.  Also, his bike’s gone from the garden,

Minnie told me.  So he’s got away for the time being.”

            “Did Minnie say he left her anything?”

            “Like what?  The money he stole?  She’d have to give it back to Albert if he did, but she didn’t mention it.  He wouldn’t have had time to go into the house.  He jumped on his bike and bolted.”

            I was sure he’d left money for his Mam.  It would only have taken swift Ray Mundo a minute to dash into the house and hide it in the teapot or the biscuit tin. I hoped she’d keep it, spend it bit by bit, and tell no one.  She needed it more than Old Albert.  If that was thinking like a criminal, I already was one, and I might have made Ray Mundo one as well.  If I hadn’t made him take back the little figures, perhaps he’d never have stolen the money.  Perhaps he was only tempted too strongly to resist when he was actually there. I was an abettor, but nobody knew, so I was safe while Ray Mundo was in peril.

             Jac Hughes came.  The police had informed him. Grandma saw him coming into the street and she said, “I’m going down to protect Minnie if he tries to hit her,” and I followed.  We saw Ray’s three brothers run out as soon as Jac went in.

 In Minnie’s kitchen, Jac was ranting. “I didn’t expect this scandal, even of that little sod.  You’ve bloody ruined him, letting him run wild like an effing hooligan. It’s Borstal for him soon as he’s caught.  I’m filing for custody because you’re a slummocky mother. You can keep the other three.  I’m not filing for them.”

“I’ll write to him in Borstal,” Minnie said.  “I’ll go to see him.”

“No, you won’t,” Jac said.  “They can’t have visitors, and they can’t get letters either until they show good behavior, so that’ll be never for him.  You won’t be seeing him or hearing from him for a very long time.”

Then Minnie burst out crying.

            “Get out, you blaggard,” Grandma said.  “You’ll never get custody.”

            “Wait and see, Mrs. Not-Your-Business,” Jac said, but he did leave.          

            “Don’t worry, love,” Grandma told crying Minnie. “He won’t get his hands on Raymond. The whole of Einion Row will testify how rotten he treated you and the boys and then left you in the lurch for his fancy woman.”

            Grandpa was there when we went home and Grandma told him everything.  “Borstal’s not the end of the world,” Grandpa said.  “A lot worse can happen to adaft young feller let loose with money in his pocket. He’s safer locked up.”

I couldn’t agree with Grandpa.  I was choked, knowing the police were hunting for Ray Mundo.  They wouldn’t have a photo of him though to put up in the post office or stick on lampposts.  There weren’t any photos of Ray Mundo.  No one had taken any, not even when he was the firstborn son, and Grandma had said that was proof of Jac Hughes not caring from the start.  Now it was in favor of Ray escaping.  They’d put out a description, of course, but what could they say?  “Thirteen-year-old boy, short, stocky, dark hair and swarthy complexion,” could be tons of Welsh boys.

He was a speedy cyclist.  If he could cycle two miles to school in five minutes, he’d get to Cardiff in less than an hour on a straight road and no traffic at that time.  He must have kept some of the money, too, knowing he’d have to ditch his bike and get on a train going to London, or Leeds, or wherever else was far away from South Wales.

Even better, he could cycle to Cardiff Docks and sneak aboard a ship anchored there, and by now that ship might be sailing, to America, possibly, and Ray would discover the New World after all. He’d sneak off the ship in New York and travel about looking for a circus where they’d take him on, “no questions asked,” as he’d know from the time he’d tried to join The Great American Circus that came to Avon Fach, but he didn’t go then because Minnie said, “Do you want to break my heart?” He’d start as a boy-of-all-work and train to become a trick cyclist or a tightrope walker.

Best of all, he could go to the Shipping Office at the New York docks and ask for a cabin-boy job aboard another ship, saying he was 15.  Maybe that ship was bound for Chile. He’d remember my mother’s address and some nice Chilean sailor would help him get to Santiago. He’d find her at Miraflores 95 and she’d keep him. I knew that about her.  He’d become a wealthy Spanish-speaking boy, and a wished-for son, and be called Ray Mundo Ventura, the name my mother would put on the adoption papers. 

I kept thinking of all the places he could go, more and more fanciful, because the one place I didn’t want to think of him going was Borstal. 

“Where is Borstal?” I asked Grandpa.

“Far from here,” he said.  “Up England somewhere.  Don’t pull a long face, love.  They do have a heavy hand with the boys, but they teach them a trade so they won’t fall back into criminal ways.  Rehabilitation it’s called. He’ll get an apprenticeship when he comes out, and he’ll make a decent wage later on.  He might go in for boat building. We know he has a talent for it.”  He’d winked at Grandma, saying that.

One thing was certain. There’d be no more adventures for me with Ray Mundo. Like Minnie, I wouldn’t be seeing him for a very long time.  Our paths wouldn’t cross.  I already knew my path.  I’d go to university to study Modern Languages. After that, I’d live in Paris for a while with my father, if he liked me, and call myself Isabel Daboussier.

My future looked more assured than Ray Mundo’s, but I believed that however my life turned out, it could never be as thrilling without him in it.  To console myself, I devised another fanciful story, set in a far off time when we’d be grown up:

When Ray Mundo had become a master carpenter and boat builder, and I’d graduated from university, fluent in foreign languages, he’d come home, and early one morning he’d knock on my door.

“Are we still best friends forever?” he’d ask. “Will you marry me, Isabel?”  I would say, “Yes to both,” and he’d take me down to the river and show me the fine craft he’d built, and together we’d board the new Ray Mundo/Queen Isabella and sail off into the world and our next adventure.