Stay Where You Are and Then Leave (5 page)

She'd saved it all for him.

Alfie filled the kettle, put it on the range, threw a few sticks on top of the still-red embers inside, and waited for the whistle before making himself a cup of tea. He always felt like a grown-up waiting for the leaves to brew. He didn't much like the taste of it, but it made him feel important to sit at the table in the morning with a steaming mug and a slice of toast before him, the newspaper propped up against the milk jug. It was how Georgie had always done things. Before he went away.

Charlie Slipton from number twenty-one didn't deliver the papers anymore. He'd left for the war in 1917 and been killed a few months later. Alfie had written the name of the place where he died in his notebook but still couldn't pronounce it correctly.
Passchendaele.
Now the papers were delivered by Charlie's youngest brother, Jack, who had just turned ten and never spoke to anyone. Alfie had tried to make friends with him but eventually gave up when it became clear that he preferred to be left alone.

Looking at the newspaper now made him think of that horrible day a year ago when they'd heard about Charlie's death. It was a Sunday morning, so both he and Margie had been at home when there was a knock at the door. Margie, who had been baking bread, looked up in surprise, running the back of her hand against her forehead and leaving a white streak of flour behind. They didn't have many callers. Granny Summerfield had her own key and usually came straight in without so much as a by-your-leave. Old Bill next door always did a sort of
rat-a-tat-tat
on the woodwork so they'd know it was him. And of course Mr. Janá
č
ek and Kalena had been taken away to the Isle of Man. Alfie didn't like to think about what had happened to them there.

“Who do you think that is?” asked Margie, rinsing her hands in the sink before walking into the hallway and standing before the door for a moment as if she might be able to see straight through to the other side. Alfie followed her, and after a moment she stepped forward, reached for the latch, and opened it.

There were two men standing outside, both wearing military uniforms. One was quite old, with a gray mustache, a pair of spectacles, and dark-blue eyes. He wore a very fine pair of leather gloves, which he was in the process of removing when the door was opened. The other man was much younger and had cut himself shaving that morning; Alfie could see a bead of blood clotted on his cheek. He had bright-red hair that stuck out at all angles and looked as if it would put up a good fight against any brush that tried to tame it. Alfie stared at him in wonder. He'd never seen hair that red before, not even on his teacher Mr. Carstairs, who everybody called “Ginger” although his hair was really more like a burned orange.

“Don't,” said Margie, holding on to the front door as she stared at the two men, her hand clutching the frame tightly. Alfie saw how white her knuckles became as she gripped it.
“Don't,”
she repeated, much louder this time, and Alfie frowned, wondering what she could possibly mean by this single word.

“Mrs. Slipton?” said the older man, the one with the mustache, as the redhead stood to his full height and looked over Margie's shoulder to lock eyes with Alfie. His expression turned to one of sorrow when he saw the boy, and he bit his lip and looked away.

“What?” asked Margie, her voice rising in surprise at being addressed by the wrong name. Alfie stepped forward beside his mum now, and he noticed all the doors opening on the opposite side of the street and the women coming out and putting their hands to their faces. The curtain at number eleven twitched, and he could see Granny Summerfield staring out, her hands pressed to the sides of her head. Mr. Asquith trotted by with young Henry Lyons on the bench seat. Henry couldn't fill a milk jug to save his life; everyone said so. He'd start pouring and half the churn would end up on the side of the road. But the dairy needed a delivery man, and Henry was deaf so he couldn't go to war. Alfie was sure that Mr. Asquith stared in his direction as he passed, looking over the boy's shoulder in search of his true master.

“Mrs. Slipton, I'm Sergeant Malley,” said the man. “This is Lieutenant Hobton. May we come in for a moment?”

“No,” said Margie.

“Mrs. Slipton, please,” he replied in a resigned tone, as if he was accustomed to this type of response. “If we could just come in and sit down, then—”

“You've got the wrong house,” said Margie, her words catching in her throat, and she almost stumbled before putting her hand on Alfie's shoulder to steady herself. “Oh my God, you've got the wrong house. How can you do that? This is number twelve. You want number twenty-one. You've got the numbers backwards.”

The older man stared at her for a moment; then his expression changed to one of utter dismay as the redhead pulled a piece of paper from his inside pocket and ran his eyes across it quickly.

“Sarge,” he said, holding the paper out and pointing at something.

The sergeant's lip curled up in fury and he glared at the younger man as if he wanted to hit him. “What's wrong with you, Hobton?” he hissed. “Can't you read? Can't you check before we knock on a door?” He turned back then and looked at Margie and Alfie, shaking his head. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so very, very sorry.”

And with that the two men turned around but remained on the street, looking left and right, their eyes scanning the numbers on the doors before turning in the direction of Mr. Janá
č
ek's sweet shop, where the windows were still boarded up from when they'd been smashed a couple of years before and the three words painted in white remained.

No Spies Here!

Margie stepped back into the hall, gasping, but Alfie stayed in the doorway. He watched as the two soldiers made their way slowly along the street. Every door was open now. And outside every door stood a wife or a mother. Some were crying. Some were praying. Some were shaking their heads, hoping that the men wouldn't stop before them. And every time Sergeant Malley and Lieutenant Hobton passed one of the houses, the woman at the door blessed herself and ran inside, slamming it behind her and putting the latch on in case the two men changed their minds and came back.

Finally they stopped at number twenty-one, where Charlie's mother, Mrs. Slipton, was standing. Alfie couldn't hear what she was saying but he could see her crying, trying to push the soldiers away. She reached out with both hands and slapped Hobton across the face, but somehow he didn't seem to mind. The older man reached forward and whispered something to her, and then they went inside and stayed there, and Alfie found himself alone on the street again. Everyone else was indoors, counting their lucky stars that the two soldiers hadn't stopped at their door.

Later that day, Alfie heard that Charlie Slipton had been killed, and he remembered the afternoon when Charlie had thrown a stone at his head for no reason whatsoever. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel. That was the thing about the war, he realized. It made everything so confusing.

Alfie didn't read much of the
Daily Mirror,
but he liked to look at the headlines, and he picked it up now to see what was going on in the world. More news about the Marne; there was always something going on there. Details of casualties and fatalities from a place called Amiens. A report on a speech by the prime minister, Mr. Lloyd George, who Alfie was sick of reading about because he gave speeches every day.

And then, finally, he did what he always did in the morning. He turned to page four to read the numbers. The number of deaths on our side. The number of deaths on their side. The number of wounded. The number missing in action. But there was only one number that Alfie really cared about: 14278. His dad's number. The number they'd assigned him when he signed up.

He ran his finger along the list.

14143, Smith, D., Royal Fusiliers

14275, Dempster, C. K., Gloucestershire Regiment

15496, Wallaby, A., Seaforth Highlanders

15700, Crosston, J., Sherwood Foresters (Notts & Derby Regiment)

He breathed a sigh of relief and put the paper down, sipping his tea, trying to think of something else. He shivered a little; the house was always cold. Margie put a few coals on the fire first thing in the morning, but she said there was no point heating the whole place all day when there was just the two of them and she'd be at work and he'd be at school.

“Throwing money away, that is,” she said. “No, we can live with the cold in the mornings. When you get home from school, you can light it for the evening. Only a few coals, mind, and not too many sticks. Kindling isn't cheap.”

Alfie finished his breakfast and went over to the sink, washing everything that was sitting there—Margie's breakfast things and his own. He dried them with the tea towel, then hung it on the hook next to the range before putting everything away in the cupboard. He took out the scissors and left them on top of the newspaper so he could cut it into squares later; today's news was tomorrow's toilet paper. He looked around and wondered whether the floor needed sweeping, but it seemed clean enough. That was one of Alfie's jobs now; he kept the place shipshape and Bristol fashion. That's what Margie called it, anyway.

“We all have to pitch in,” she said. “I wouldn't ask you if I had time to do it myself.”

Alfie didn't mind. He hated mess.

He put the kettle on the stove again and heated some more water, poured it in the sink, and let the carbolic soap sit in it for a minute to soften. Then he took off his pajamas and stood in the middle of the kitchen floor—he'd never have done this if Margie was home; he'd have told her to stay outside and put a chair against the door just in case she forgot—and gave himself a bit of a wash, upstairs and down. There was a second towel hanging by the fireplace, and he used that to dry himself. It was rough against his skin and he hated the feel of it, but it was the only one they had. When he was done, he ran back upstairs and got dressed.

It was a Tuesday—a school day. But Alfie didn't go to school very much anymore. The teachers didn't seem to mind. They didn't take a roll-call and they never called on anyone's mother to say that someone wasn't showing up. He went sometimes, of course, maybe twice a week. Usually on Monday and Thursday, because Monday was when they studied history and Alfie was very interested in history, especially anything to do with kings and queens and all the wars that had been fought for the Crown of England; on Thursdays they did reading, and Alfie was the best in the class at reading—he was the best in the school, in fact—and he loved to hear Mrs. Jillson, the librarian, reading from a book in class or passing it around so that everyone could have a go at a page or two. Mrs. Jillson was as old as the hills, but she put on funny voices and made all the children do the same thing, and Alfie loved that part of it.

All the teachers now were different than the ones he'd had a few years before. Back then, there were a lot of young men in the school and they were good fun and always wanted a kick-about at lunch time. Now, of course, there wasn't a single young man left, except Mr. Carstairs, who had two bad legs and walked with crutches. There was hardly a single young man anywhere, in fact, except for Joe Patience, the conchie from number sixteen, and no one ever talked to him. Not even Granny Summerfield, who'd known him since he was a child and had once said that he was like a second son to her—or that she was like a second mother to him, Alfie couldn't remember which. (Now you couldn't mention Joe's name to Granny Summerfield or she'd lose her temper, and once Alfie, watching from his window, had seen them passing in the street, and Granny had slapped him, hard, across the face. Joe Patience! Who was the nicest, friendliest man you could possibly meet!)

The school was now run by old people, some of whom used to be teachers before the war and who said that they thought they were finished with all this malarkey, that they'd been looking forward to a long and happy retirement. People like Mrs. Jillson or Mr. Flaker, the retired civil servant, or Mr. Cratchley, whose son used to teach in the school but was “over there” now, as he told them every day when he asked them to say a prayer for Cecil, for that was his son's name. Cecil Cratchley. Some had never taught in schools before, but it was all hands to the pump now—that's what Mr. Flaker said, anyway. Needs must.

And the old people were the worst for caning. The young teachers before the war didn't do it so much, but Mr. Flaker could barely get through a lesson without beating a boy. Mr. Grace, who had been a valet at Buckingham Palace until he turned sixty-five, even kept a stick up his sleeve with a metal weight taped to the top of it. He called the stick Excalibur. Almost everyone had been on the receiving end of it at one time or another. Not that the boys complained much; most of them got a slap at home for the slightest thing. Only Alfie had never been struck by his parents—Georgie and Margie said they didn't believe in it—and when he mentioned this one day to Mr. Grace, he went home with Excalibur's mark seared deeply into his left hand as punishment for his cheek.

Today, however, wasn't a Monday and it wasn't a Thursday, so there would be no history and there would be no reading. It was a Tuesday, and so when Alfie was fully dressed, he reached into the back of his wardrobe and pulled out the wooden shoeshine box that he kept there. He placed it on the carpet, opening the lid carefully. The pungent smell of two boxes of polish seeped out, and he checked that everything he needed was inside: his brushes, his shine mitts, his jars of polish, his shoehorn, his horsehair brush, and his leather balm. He checked to see how full everything was, but he'd only restocked from his earnings the previous Friday so it should be another two weeks at least before he'd have to buy anything new. When he was satisfied that he had what he needed, he closed the box, went downstairs, made sure that there were no dirty marks on his face—he had learned long ago that he did better business when his hair was neatly combed and his skin clean—put his coat and scarf on, and went out into the cold October morning.