Valentine Joe (17 page)

‘You too, sir.'

‘And thank you for the chocolate heart, Grandad. I've eaten it already.'

‘That's all right. Every girl should have something on Valentine's Day. Isn't that right, Fred?'

Grandad winked and Fred smiled politely. Rose rolled
her eyes. It was the kind of thing that would've embarrassed her before. It didn't any more, she didn't know why.

‘Actually, Rose,' Grandad continued. ‘I've got another surprise for you.'

‘What?'

‘Stay there.'

Rose and Fred looked at each other as he went into the hotel, returning straight away with –

‘
Tommy?!
'

The little dog pricked up his ears at the sound of his name. Grandad was holding him by a lead that was attached to a new red collar. Rose crouched down and scratched him in his favourite place behind the ears, enjoying the familiar feel of his wiry fur.

‘Is that what you're going to call him?' said Grandad. ‘Good name. Suits you, don't it, matey?'

There was something in the tone of his voice that made Rose look up. He sounded so terribly pleased with himself.

‘What d'you mean?
Brian
?'

Grandad put on his look of comedy innocence. ‘What d'you mean, what do I mean?'

‘You said, is that what you're going to call him?'

‘Did I? Oh, yeah. Well, he's got to have a name, hasn't he? If he's coming to live with you.'

‘What?!'

‘We've got it all arranged, haven't we, Muriel?'

Grandad's friend from the hotel had come out to join them. She nodded, smiling as she watched Rose's face shift between disbelief and delight.

‘We have. I have asked all my neighbours about the dog and they agree that he is a
stray
.' She pronounced her newly discovered word with pride. ‘No one owns him.
People feed him, but he needs a proper home.'

‘So that's what you were up to this morning?' Rose could hardly believe it. She stood up. ‘Oh, Grandad.' Then a thought struck her. ‘What about Mum?'

‘Panic ye not, Cabbage-face.' Grandad looked very smug. ‘I rang her and she's agreed.'

‘What? That we can take him home with us? Really?'

‘Not straight away,' said Grandad. ‘In a few weeks, after he's been through all the vet stuff – rabies injections, you know, all that. Muriel says she'll take care of it.'

‘And then?'

‘We'll jump back on the old Eurostar and pick him up!'

Rose couldn't speak. She dropped to her knees and buried her face in Tommy's fur. She was going to have a dog. And not just any dog. An amazing magical dog who existed outside of time and was the only creature in the whole world who knew what she'd been through. Who had helped her find Joe.

And she was going to be able to keep her last promise to her Valentine – and look after Tommy.

It was Fred who broke the silence. ‘I could take care of him, if you prefer. Until you come and pick him up, of course.' He looked at Muriel. ‘It may not be so convenient for you to have him in the hotel, I think? And my cousins live on a farm just outside the city. I know they will be pleased to help.'

Muriel shrugged and smiled. ‘Well, it would certainly be better for the dog to stay on a farm—'

‘Then it's settled!' Grandad sounded triumphant. ‘If you're sure it will be all right with your family, Fred?'

‘Of course,' he replied. ‘They already have three dogs. One more will make no difference.' He turned to Rose,
trying to hide the smile that was curling round his lips. ‘And it will mean you have to come back and see me again.'

‘Three weeks next Saturday?' said Grandad. ‘That all right with you, Cabbage?'

Rose nearly laughed with happiness. ‘What do
you
think, Grandad?'

Three weeks next Saturday would be trez, trez beans.

After that everything was a bit of a blur. Rose threw her clothes into her suitcase, Muriel called a taxi, and before Rose knew it she and Grandad were on their way to the station, bumping over the cobbles of Ypres for the last time.

Fred and Tommy had set off first (Fred left his bike locked up in the square) and they were waiting outside the station when the taxi arrived. Tommy was looking almost respectable in his brand-new collar. On the way, Fred had stopped at an engraving shop and bought Tommy a name tag in the shape of a bone, with Rose's phone number underneath Tommy's name.

Grandad shook Fred's hand, and Rose double-checked her number before burying her nose in Tommy's fur again.

‘You're coming to London, Tommy,' she whispered. ‘You're going to have to learn to speak English.'

Tommy grinned and wagged and looked at them all with his bright, interested eyes. Then, as Grandad started to limp his way across the car park to the station, Rose became aware that Fred was making awkward little coughing sounds. As she gave Tommy one last hug, he produced something from behind his back. It was a bunch of celandines.

‘I—' He stopped and looked at his feet, before trying
again. ‘They—'

Rose decided to help him out. She stood up. ‘Are they for me?'

He nodded, still unable to look at her. ‘Not as good as your other present,' he said. ‘But . . .'

Rose looked down at the little yellow flowers then back up at Fred's serious grey eyes. ‘They're lovely,' she said. ‘Thank you.'

Before she could say any more there was a shout from Grandad: ‘Rose!'

He was on the steps of the station, pointing at his watch. The train was about to arrive.

Rose turned to Fred. ‘I'll see you in three weeks,' she said. ‘Both of you,' she added, looking down at the dog.

‘Wuff!' Tommy's polite little bark sounded different this time. He was going to London!

‘ROSE!' Grandad called, more urgently this time.

Fred held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Rose.'

Rose smiled. He was such a serious boy. ‘Bye,' she said.

Then, ignoring his hand, she stretched up, standing on tiptoe because he was so much taller than she was, and kissed him on the cheek. A handshake just seemed too formal after everything that had happened.

Her last sight of Ypres was of Fred standing on the station platform with Tommy beside him, one hand raised in farewell.

‘What have you got there, Cabbage?'

They were ten minutes into the journey home. Rose was looking at her wooden heart while Grandad munched a custard cream, showering crumbs all over the table. Rose discreetly removed one from the back of her hand.

‘Someone gave it to me.' She passed it across the table to him.

‘What a nice thing. Looks quite old.' Grandad put on his glasses to examine it more closely. ‘“To my Rose”,' he read aloud. ‘“From your Valentine”.' He peered at Rose over his glasses, his face full of questions. ‘“To my Rose”?' he repeated. ‘Is that you, Cabbage?'

Rose nodded.

Grandad looked down at the heart and traced the letter R with his forefinger. ‘But—' He stopped. and looked at Rose again. ‘But this thing – it's
old
. Isn't it? How can it be—?'

Rose didn't know what to say. She wasn't going to lie to her grandad, make up some story about the person who gave it to her finding it or buying it in a second-hand shop or something. But she couldn't explain to him what had really happened, how she'd really come to own the heart. How could she? She didn't understand it herself.

‘Bit tricky to explain,' she said, hoping he wouldn't ask her anything else.

Grandad shrugged and handed the heart back. ‘You young girls with your secrets. I don't know. Have a biscuit.'

‘No thanks, Brian, you're all right.'

Grandad smiled. ‘Going to that party of yours tonight?' he said. ‘We should be back in time.'

Rose had forgotten about Grace's party. It didn't seem like such a bad idea now. ‘Yes,' she said, as if the idea had only just occurred to her. ‘Yes, I think I might.'

She watched the fields as they slipped past the window, wreathed in the mists of the February afternoon. The perfectly round ponds didn't make her feel sick any more.
It just seemed nice that something pretty had come out of something so horrible. And the neat manicured cemeteries with their rows of white graves didn't fill her with fear and sadness. They reminded her of Joe.

Rose looked at the precious wooden heart on the table in front of her, next to the little bunch of celandines, and thought of Joe's grin and Dad's eyes and the feel of Tommy's fur beneath her fingers and everything that had happened in that one little city with three names.

She understood now why it wanted to be Ieper. It had moved on. The past was important, but so was the future. And the present.

She would remember to buy those yellow flowers for Mum when they got to London. The biggest bunch she could afford.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a buzz from her phone. She looked at the screen, aware that Grandad was watching her face.

It was from
Mummob
:

Hello love, you ok? Can't wait to see you tonight

Then, three kisses:

x x x

Rose suddenly wanted to see her mum very much. She wouldn't be able to tell her what had happened, about Joe and everything. But she'd give her the flowers, and they'd hug and Rose would hide her face in Mum's hair and breathe in her smell of baby lotion and shampoo and coffee. Just like she used to before Dad died.

I'm fine
, she replied.
Can't wait to see you too

And she sent three kisses back:

x x x

AFTERWORD

How
Valentine Joe
Began

I grew up surrounded by stories about the First World War. My dad's mum was a nurse, his dad a soldier who'd been one of her patients. My mum's father was a pilot and her mum, who was fourteen when the war broke out, told me about watching the newly recruited soldiers marching down the high street of the London suburb where she grew up, through the cheering, flag-waving crowds and past the shops selling toys and vegetables and ladies' hats. One young soldier had a rose in his buttonhole which he threw to her. My gran never knew what happened to him, of course, but she kept that rose until it fell apart many years later. She also remembered going into the kitchen at home and finding the housekeeper crying over the sink. Her son was away fighting in France and she was washing his long all-in-one underwear which had been sent back to her in a bag of laundry. It was caked in mud right up to the armpits.

I always thought the strangest, saddest thing about that story was that these young men were fighting in the most terrible war the world has ever seen, miles away from home in a foreign country and in unimaginably horrible conditions –
but they sent their washing home to their mothers . . .

Although these stories made the war feel very real to me (frighteningly real in some ways – for years I had a recurring nightmare that I was a soldier in the trenches), they were all second-hand. They belonged to other people. I never heard the voices of the people who had actually been there.

Until a few years ago.

When my uncle died, I was given a tatty old cardboard folder that had been hidden away in his house for years. Inside there were hundreds of sheets of thin yellowish paper that smelled of dust and mildew and were closely covered with blobby writing in the purple-black ink that was used in typewriters a hundred years ago.

They were letters, written by my grandfather to his parents during the First World War.

His name was Fred, but my sister and I called him Fuffy. Like Rose, my older sister had overheard our gran calling her husband by his first name and tried to copy her. Because she wasn't big enough to pronounce it properly, ‘Freddie' became ‘Fuffy'. And he stayed that way for us until he died when I was seven.

Although I was quite little when he died, I remember him very well. He was the sort of man who made you feel like you were the most interesting, amazing and clever person he'd ever met and that you and he were going to have the most incredible adventures together. I always knew he'd been involved in the First World War, first as an underage soldier and then as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, which later became the RAF.

But I didn't know about those letters.

When war was declared in August 1914, the rule was that you had to be eighteen to join the army, nineteen to be sent abroad where the fighting was going on. But, like many boys in their teens, Fred must have been caught up in the feeling of patriotism that swept the country. Perhaps he thought the war would be exciting, even fun. He almost certainly didn't think he might be killed.

So he lied about his age and joined up. He was sixteen.

He wasn't the only one. In the early years of the war, the
need for recruits was so high that it's thought recruiting officers often turned a blind eye or even encouraged boys to lie about their age. Fred joined the Seaforth Highlanders and, along with his best friend Fraser, travelled from his home in South London to train in the Scottish Highlands with his regiment. From there, he wrote his funny, cheerful letters home several times a week, describing the food, his fellow soldiers and his excitement at being issued with a kilt as part of his uniform. Now, when I re-read those letters, I try and imagine the smiling fluffy-haired old man in the yellow jumper who I remember, as the cheeky ‘Cockney' (which was what the Scottish recruits called him) who wrote them.

I'm very glad Fred did write those letters and that someone (I like to think it was his poor, worried mum) typed them out and preserved them so carefully. Because Fred's letters are the reason I became interested in the boy soldiers of the First World War and found out about Valentine Joe.

Valentine Joe Strudwick was a real person. He was born on Valentine's Day 1900, in Dorking, Surrey. His dad was a gardener and his mum earned money by doing people's washing. Joe left school at thirteen and worked for his uncle who was a local coal merchant. And then, in August 1914, everything changed. War was declared with Germany and, just like my grandfather, Joe joined up.