Stay Where You Are and Then Leave (11 page)

She left the bedroom and Alfie heard her sweeping the hallway before leaving for work. He felt a bit guilty for making her sad but it was for a good reason, he was certain of that. He ran out to the landing, charged down the stairs, out to the privy at the end of the garden, then back inside before the cold could freeze his fingers and toes off, and upstairs to his room, where he took his bag of coins from the back of the sock drawer and poured the contents out onto the sheets.

He counted his money. He'd been saving ever since becoming a shoeshine boy and there was almost eight shillings there now. Eight shillings! He'd never counted it before because he worried that if he knew how much he had, then he might go a bit mad and spend it all. But he'd always felt that the day would come when he would need this money; he just didn't know when that day might arrive, or why. And the day was finally here.

Downstairs, he ate his breakfast, had a quick wash at the kitchen sink, and made sure that his hair was neatly combed. There was less chance that anyone would stop him if he looked like a respectable little boy. Satisfied, he put his shoes on, slipped a handful of change into his pocket, and left the house.

As he walked down Damley Road he noticed Joe Patience smoking a cigarette in his doorway just as an army van came round the corner. Alfie froze. He glanced over at Joe, who looked back at him with an empty expression, but then his eyes, like Alfie's, watched the car as it began to slow down and all the curtains along the street started to twitch. In a moment, the doors opened one by one and the women came out, looking at each other in fear, their faces pale and white as Joe stepped back into his hallway, the door still open, but out of sight of his neighbors.

Not me
, they were all thinking.

Please, God, not me.

Not today.

The car stopped in front of Alfie, the window rolled down, and an officer stared at him as he pressed himself back against the wall.

“Is this Damley Avenue?” the man asked, and Alfie gave a sigh of relief. He only wanted directions.

“Damley Road,” he replied, the words getting caught a little in his throat.

“What's that, son?”

“Damley Road,” he repeated. “For the avenue, you need to go down the end of the street, turn left, then take the first right. You can't miss it.”

The man nodded, rolled the window up again, and the car drove off as the women went back inside, leaving only Alfie and Joe Patience looking at each other.

“We live to fight another day,” said Joe, smiling the kind of smile that wasn't a real smile at all. Alfie noticed that one of his front teeth had been knocked out and he had a black eye that wasn't really a black eye at all; it was more of a purple, green, and yellow eye. “All right, Alfie?” he asked.

“All right, Joe.”

“You wanna know, don't you? You wanna know what they done to me? My own fault for answering my door after dark.”

Alfie stared at him. He didn't know what Joe meant, but he didn't have time to find out. He had a busy day ahead of him. He shook his head quickly and ran down the street, turned right, and made his way toward King's Cross.

He got there more quickly than usual because he wasn't weighed down by his shoeshine box, which always seemed to grow much heavier halfway between home and work, and when he reached the station he glanced toward his usual spot, which was empty now, but standing next to it looking around was Mr. Podgett, the banker whose son Billy hoped that the war would never come to an end. He was looking at his watch, probably waiting for a shoeshine, but a moment later he gave up and disappeared into the crowd. Alfie marched over to the ticket counter, which was higher than his head, and waited his turn.

“How much to Suffolk?” he asked, unable to see the person behind the counter.

“Who's that?” came a woman's voice, and he repeated his question.

“Lad wants to know how much for a ticket to Suffolk,” said the man in the queue behind him. “He's too short to see you, isn't he?”

“Thru'pence one way, fivepence return, open all day,” said the disembodied voice, and Alfie reached into his pocket, carefully took out one penny, two ha'pennies, and twelve farthings and reached his hand over the top to drop the money in.

“Saints alive,” said the woman's voice.

Still, she swept the money up and he heard the sound of a machine twisting into action; a moment later a ticket fell into the slot and he reached in to take it.

“You want to grow a little taller, sonny,” said the man behind him as he turned away. “It makes it all easier in the end.”

Alfie felt like sticking his tongue out at him but decided against it; that was the kind of thing children did, and today he was not a child but a grown-up. On account of the fact that he was going to do a very grown-up thing.

He looked up at the station information board but couldn't find any train whose destination was Suffolk. But then he saw one going to Ipswich, leaving from platform two in a few minutes' time, and he made his way over there and stared at it, uncertain whether or not he should risk it. But the hospital, after all, was called the East Suffolk and
Ipswich
Hospital.

“On or off?” said a conductor, tapping him on the shoulder as he glanced at his watch. “Look lively, lad. She leaves in a minute or two.”

“On,” said Alfie, taking a chance and jumping aboard.

Alfie had never been on a train before, and despite the importance of his mission—his secret mission—he couldn't help but feel a bit excited to be sitting in a carriage waiting for the conductor to blow his whistle and the train to get moving. He remembered his dad telling him how he had thought about working on the trains himself before he got his job in the dairy, and he wondered whether things might have been different if he had. He had read in the newspaper one day that some “essential service people” were allowed to escape conscription if they provided “valuable support on the Home Front,” and he knew that train drivers and conductors were part of this elite group. But then he remembered that his dad hadn't been conscripted—he'd volunteered—so it wouldn't have made much difference in the end.

A few minutes later the train started to move, and Alfie watched out of the window as it picked up speed and made its way along the track. It was, he decided, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him—
ever
, in his whole life. He watched the scenery moving past for a long time, until his neck started to hurt, and then he turned around, noticing for the first time the young woman in the carriage with him. She was sitting across from him, but not by the window, reading a book called
The Extraordinary Nature of the Human Mind
by Dr. F. R. Hutchison. Alfie wasn't sure how the second word in the title was pronounced and tried sounding it out with his lips. After a moment the young woman turned and stared directly at him.

“Are you quite all right?” she asked.

“Yes, thanks,” said Alfie, turning away in embarrassment and looking out the window again. He could feel her eyes boring into him.

“Don't you have something of your own to read, or are you just going to stare at my book for the entire journey?”

Alfie said nothing. He wished that he had brought
Robinson Crusoe
with him.

“Are you traveling alone?” she continued after a moment.

He turned back to her, swallowing nervously, and then nodded.

“Astonishing,” she declared. “What age are you anyway, ten?”

“Nine,” said Alfie, flattered beyond his wildest dreams. She thought he was ten! That was an absolute triumph.

“And they let boys of nine travel the railways alone, do they? It wouldn't have happened when I was a girl, let me tell you. I remember my brother Will ran off on a train one day and—” She stopped herself and shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, well,” she said. “That was all a long time ago now. I'm sure you don't want to hear about it.”

“How old was he?” asked Alfie.

“How old was who?”

“Your brother. When he took the train alone?”

“A few years older than you, if I remember right. Fourteen or fifteen, I should say. He took a notion to go to London for the day. Came home drunk and reeking of ladies' perfume. There was an awful fuss. I remember him sitting in my father's armchair as my parents read him the riot act and all he could do was giggle. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.” She laughed and looked away for a moment, lost in her thoughts, before opening her eyes wide, blinking them furiously a few times, and then looking back at him, smiling.

“I expect you don't have any plans like that, do you?” she asked. “You're rather young for that sort of depravity. What's your name anyway?”

“Alfie Summerfield,” said Alfie.

“Mine's Marian Bancroft,” said the young woman. “You can call me Marian if you like. I don't stand on ceremony. Or Miss Bancroft, if it makes you feel more comfortable. It's a pleasure.” She reached her hand out and Alfie stared at it, uncertain what he was expected to do next. “Haven't you ever been told that it's rude not to accept an outstretched hand?”

Alfie extended his hand now too and shook Miss Bancroft's. No grown-up had ever asked him to do this before, but of course he had seen it happen a thousand times.

“Very good,” she said, nodding in approval. “Where are you going anyway?”

“Suffolk,” he replied.

“You know this train is for Ipswich, don't you? But it's so slow I'll be an old lady before we arrive. It was easier of course when the train went from Liverpool Street, but since the bombings, everything's been diverted and you never know where you're supposed to go to catch the train you need. Everything keeps changing, and the station attendants are worse than useless. One might as well ask a rabbit for information. Do you know, I've already been to Paddington and Victoria today before I finally discovered that I should be at King's Cross. Still, one shouldn't complain, I suppose. That was a dreadful business.”

Alfie nodded. He remembered reading about this in the newspaper the previous year. A squadron of German Gotha planes had dropped bombs on Liverpool Street Station, killing and injuring a huge number of people. The mother of one of the boys in his class had been killed, as had the headmaster's brother, Maxwell. A total of 162 dead. More than 400 injured.
More names and numbers
, Alfie thought.

“Would you care for a sweetie?” asked Marian, reaching into her bag and withdrawing a white paper bag of apple drops and handing them across. They were all stuck together, and Alfie had to pull at two in order to separate them. “Oh, take them both,” said Marian, waving a hand in the air. “Take three. Take them all if you like. I've had too many as it is, but then, I'm addicted to them. I'll turn into an apple drop if I'm not careful. I think I must be the only person in England who's putting on weight during the war. Everyone else looks positively malnourished.”

Alfie took two, popped the first in his mouth, and put the other in his pocket for later.

“It'll get all furry in there,” said Marian with a frown. “You'll have to wash it before you eat it or you'll come down with something.”

Alfie nodded. Back when Mr. Janá
č
ek still had his sweet shop, Georgie used to buy him a quarter of apple drops every Saturday morning when he went for his newspaper. He'd come back with the paper folded in half, and Alfie would stand there grinning at him until he opened it up—“Look what I've got for you,” he'd say—and revealed the package contained inside.

“Ipswich is quite close to Suffolk, of course,” continued Marian, “so you're probably on the right one after all. Did you speak with a conductor?”

“Yes,” said Alfie.

“Did you tell him where you wanted to go?”

“No.”

“Well, that's where you made your mistake, you see. There's no point boarding a train unless you're absolutely certain that your destinations match. Doing it your way is what lands a person in Edinburgh when he had designs on Cornwall. Are you enjoying your sweetie? You're making a tremendous noise with it. Learn to suck without making that horrible chewing sound—you'll prove far more popular with traveling companions.”

Alfie was uncertain how he could eat any more quietly, and swallowed the entire thing in one go, which made an awful gulping sound, which in turn made Marian narrow her eyes at him as if she were considering switching carriages (which he rather hoped she would).

“What's in Suffolk anyway?” she asked. “Do you have a sweetheart there?”

“No,” said Alfie, blushing furiously.

“I'm only teasing. Sweethearts are more trouble than they're worth, if you ask me. Mine threw me over, but you don't want to hear about him, do you? But do tell me, what brings you out there?”

Alfie thought about it. He hadn't planned on revealing his secret mission to anyone; not Margie, Old Bill Hemperton, Granny Summerfield, or Joe Patience. But he didn't think it could do much harm to tell a stranger, particularly when she seemed to know everything about everything.

“The East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital,” he said quietly.

“Oh,” she replied, opening her eyes wide in surprise. “The East Suffolk? Why, that's where I'm going too! What a coincidence! Or perhaps it's not, since we're clearly heading in the same direction. But why on earth is a boy your age going to the East Suffolk? Are you a young genius who became a doctor at the age of five?”

“I'm just visiting,” he said.

“Just visiting? Queer sort of place to go on a visit, but all right, I won't ask any questions. Tell me what you want, keep the rest to yourself. Doesn't matter to me much. I have to attend a lecture there, if you can believe it. Frightful bore. But terribly interesting, of course,” she added, a contradiction that didn't make a lot of sense to Alfie.