The English Refugee: The Day It Happened Here

by Jonathan Pidduck

  "Good. I wouldn't have to listen to you being bossy, if I was."

  The Russian soldier was watching us as we argued. I think he was trying not to laugh. They must find different things funny over there, as it was very serious, what we were saying, and nothing to laugh about at all. Ben was calling me a baby, and I wasn't having it.

  We carried on arguing for quite a while. There was nothing else to do, as the man wasn't letting us out of the room, and I didn't want to go back to bed with him standing there, watching me. After a while, we ran out of things to argue about, so we just stood there, waiting for something to happen.

  "Hello," the man said when he saw us looking at him, which was a silly thing to say as he had been in the room for ages. I think maybe he just wanted something to say.

  After what seemed like ages, the other man came back. He didn't have reinforcements so Ben was wrong about that. He was puffing a little bit. He had two big bottles of water in his hands. He offered one to Ben, but he wouldn't take it. He offered the other one to me, and I took mine. Ben moaned at me, but I decided just to ignore him. The man gave me a little bow as he was giving me the bottle, as if I was a prince or something, which was a bit weird, but I guess that's just what they do over there.

  The older man pretended to drink from an invisible bottle. I took the top of my bottle myself (I didn't need any help) and drank. I never used to like water all that much, but after drinking nothing but orange squash (without water) while I was ill it tasted really nice.

  "Drink it," I told Ben.

  He shook his head. "No. It might be drugged."

  "If you don't drink it, you'll die, and then you can't look after me."

  He looked a bit tempted.

  "Go on. It's fine. Drink your drink, and then you can look after me if you want."

  He took the bottle, and was just about to open it, when the older man said "drink," and it put him off. He kept the lid on after all. Dad wasn't the only one who didn't like being told what to do.

  The big man went back downstairs. I thought he might be looking for the squash, but I could hear him going through the drawers, so he must have been looking for something else as you don't keep squash in drawers.

  The older man looked from one of us to the other. He got a photo from his pocket. It was a picture of two little boys, maybe a little bit younger than me. He showed it to us, but he wouldn't let me hold it. He put it back in his pocket after I'd looked at it for a bit. He gave us a little smile. "Home," he said.

  "Home," I said, too, though I didn't really know why as we were in someone else's house. I was just trying to be polite, really. It seemed to make him happy.

  "Will you help us bury Mum and Dad?" Ben asked him. That surprised me, as he wasn't supposed to be talking to them. "They're outside. I want to bury them, but they're too heavy."

  "Mum and Dad?"

  "Outside. In the road."

  "The road?"

  "Yes. Mum and Dad. Can you help us?" he pretended he was digging. "Bury them. In the garden."

  "Garden?"

  The man didn't understand. He was just saying the same words as Ben was saying, without knowing what he meant. I pretended to dig, too, in case that helped, but he looked even more confused than he did before.

  "Drink," he told us.

  "Dig," we told him back.

  "Dig?"

  "Dig."

  "Dig water? No. Water here." He pointed at the bottle in Ben's hands. "Water here."

  Ben stopped digging. "What's the use? They won't help us anyway."

  The big man came back in the room. He had put some stuff in a carrier bag. I hoped he wasn't stealing our cornflakes. He said something to the man who had given us chocolate, who looked at his watch and nodded.

  "Drink," the older man said to Ben. He walked to the door. He gave us a wave. The big man waved too, and said something in a baby voice. I think he was trying to be funny, but the joke was on him as we didn't know what he was saying so he was wasting his breath.

  "More chocolate," the older man said. "Tonight. More chocolate. Stay. Not there."

  He pointed outside, and then threw his arms up in front of his face as if he was afraid of something. "Not there."

  And then they were gone.

  #

  Ben wanted us to go as soon as the Russians had left, but they had given me chocolate and I was staying put. If they came back, they might bring more.

  At first, I tried to talk him into staying. I was still a bit ill, I told him, and I didn't think that I would be able to walk very far. My knees were still hurting from when we walked to Canterbury, but if we stayed a few more days I thought they would be alright. I was too hungry and thirsty to go to Ramsgate, but another couple of chocolate bars and I might just make it. All these things were true, actually, but Ben thought I was just making it all up. He said I would be fine when we started walking and that we were going whether I wanted to or not.

  So I fell back on what I do when Mum wants me to go somewhere but I don't want to go (like going home when we're at the children's play area). I refused to budge. He could do what he liked, but I was staying there, whatever he said. He tried to do what Mum does, and said he was going anyway, with or without me. He really went as well, which made me worried, as when Mum does it I can always see her, however far she has walked. But then I heard him coughing, and I knew he was standing just outside the front door, and then I heard the sound of a car or a tank or something, and he came back in. And he sulked a lot, but we stayed put.

  I had a dream that night. Just for once, it wasn't about bombs. It was about Mum and Dad. We were at home, doing family stuff, and at the back of my mind I thought that something bad would happen to them, but it didn't. We just played Monopoly, and they made us dinner while me and Ben were playing on our i-pads. It was nice.

  I woke up all of a sudden. And just for a little while, I thought I was back in my bedroom and Mum and Dad were downstairs watching TV. But then I felt Ben moving around next to me, and I knew that we were in a double bed in a stranger's house far away from home, and that my Mum and my Dad were dead and rotting away in the road outside.

  I cried. I tried to cry quietly so I didn't wake up Ben, but it's hard to cry quietly when you're really upset. I would have gone downstairs so I could cry louder without waking him, but I didn't want to be on my own in the night-time (it was bad enough going to the toilet in the night, but at least that was in the room next-door so I could run back into the bedroom if anything scary happened). And then I wanted Ben to be awake, so he could tell me that everything was going to be alright, so I cried a little bit louder, and then a bit louder still, until he opened his eyes.

  "Jack?" He sounded all sleepy, which wasn't surprising really.

  "Are you awake?"

  "I am now."

  "Sorry. I was trying to cry quietly."

  "Why are you crying? Do you feel ill again?"

  "I had a dream about Mum and Dad."

  He didn't say anything to that.

  "I miss them." And then I was crying really loud, and he gave me a cuddle to make me feel better. It was really good of him. We don't cuddle, us two, not at all. Not for as long as I could remember. And we only had a cuddle one more time after that, as far as I can remember. But I really needed it, right then, and he seemed to know that, and he gave me a cuddle and for some reason him being nice to me made me cry all the more.

  #

  The older man came again the following day. He didn't bring the big man with him, which made me happy as I didn't trust him at all. He brought bread with him instead, which was nice but not as nice as chocolate. And much more water.

  Ben started talking about him while he was there, because he knew that he couldn't understand English very well. I think Dad would have told him off for that, as it's rude, especially when he was giving us stuff, but Ben was being nice to me and I didn't want to make him upset so I just nodded and smiled.

  "He's treating us like pets," Ben said. "Br
inging us food and stuff. Like we're little doggies. He'll be stroking us next."

  I nodded, but I hoped he was joking because I didn't want anyone stroking me.

  "Good doggies."

  "Doggies?" asked the man. "What is doggies?"

  I think he thought that "doggies" meant chocolate, as when Ben didn't answer him he patted his pockets and shrugged to show that he had not brought any with him. "No doggies."

  Ben laughed. I laughed, too, and the man joined us. Ben stopped laughing when the man started, as if he didn't want to share the same joke with him, but I carried on as it was funny that the man thought that chocolate was called "doggies" when it's really called "chocolate".

  The man pointed to his chest. "Valerie."

  "Valerie?"

  He repeated it.

  "Is he saying his name's Valerie?" I asked Ben.

  "That's a girl's name," Ben replied. He was smiling. I think he was glad that the man had the name of a girl. "Maybe the other man is called Megan or Grace or something." (Megan and Grace were girls in his class at big school).

  "Or Honey," I said, who was a girl at my school I quite liked.

  "Honey's not a girl's name."

  "It is."

  "Valerie," the man said again, as if we hadn't heard him the first time.

  "Jack," I replied.

  "Don't tell him your name!"

  "Why not? What difference does it make?"

  "It just does."

  Valerie was looking at Ben. "Fido," said Ben, pointing at his chest, thinking he was being clever. "Fido."

  Valerie put out his hand to shake. "Hello, Fido."

  Ben shook it and barked at the same time. Valerie gave him a bit of a weird look, but then shook my hand, too. "Hello, Jack."

  I barked as well. I don't know why, because I hadn't called myself Fido, but it seemed kind of funny. I laughed. Ben laughed, too.

  "Doggies!" Valerie said, and we laughed even more.

  I hated living here, just me and Ben, with no Mum and Dad to look after us. It was lonely and it was scary, and even with the chocolate and the water we were still hungry and thirsty all the time. But I thought that with Valerie looking after us, we might be safe, even if it was just for a little while.

  #

  I had another dream again that night. I don't remember having all that many dreams before the bombs dropped, but I seemed to be having them all the time now. This time, it was just me and Mum. We were going to see a film together, and then we were at football practice together, and then we were going home. I kept cuddling her, even when we were walking along the street, which was weird as I don't cuddle outdoors any more in case someone sees me. But in my dream, I didn't care about that, and I cuddled her all the same.

  We were walking along the road, and I knew that we'd be home soon, and I would see Dad, and we would be making something together (I can't remember what now). But then all of a sudden I was awake. Ben was pulling me out of bed. I shouted at him. I didn't want to wake up; I was with Mum, and I was going to see Dad, and I was going home, which is where I wanted to be most. He had ruined it all. But he shouted back, and I was out of bed, and he was pulling me towards the wardrobe we had hidden in earlier.

  "Let go of me!"

  But he wouldn't.

  And then I saw the man in the doorway; the big man, Valerie's friend. He was holding the doorframe as if he would fall over if he let it go.

  We couldn't get out the room, not with him standing there, but there was no way I was staying in bed. Ben pulled me into the wardrobe. It wasn't safe in there - not at all - but it was the safest place we had. Ben stood in front of me. He raised his hands; I think he was showing the man his fists but I couldn't quite see as his back was in the way.

  "I'm scared," I told him.

  He shushed me.

  The man came and sat on the bed. I peered round from behind Ben's back, and could see that he was waving at us. We didn't wave back. We wanted him gone.

  He tried to take off his shoes. This seemed to take him a long time, and he stopped and sat there, staring into space, between shoes. A bit like Dad had been at the end, before he died.

  "What's he doing?"

  Ben shushed me again.

  He got the other shoe off, and he laid down on the bed where we had been sleeping. He pulled the covers over him. And then he was snoring.

  "What do we do now?"

  I was expecting Ben to shush me again, but he didn't. We stepped out of the wardrobe, and left the room.

  "We're going," he said. "We're going now."

  I nodded. I wasn't going to argue this time.

  Ben went to get what was left of the breakfast cereal (we had saved it, as we had been eating what Valerie had brought us), along with half a bottle of water we had left over from what Valerie had given us. I went with him, as I didn't want to be left on my own with the man asleep upstairs.

  We went to the front door and looked out. There were two Russians standing nearby, guns over their shoulders. They were talking to each other in foreign. We had been very quiet, so they didn't see us. Ben pointed to the back door. I followed him out to the back garden. It was surrounded by a wall, about as tall as Dad.

  "Can you get over it?" he asked me.

  I shook my head. It was a bit embarrassing. I think that all the boys in my class would have been able to get over the wall easily, but I was never very good at climbing. I hated PE. Mum gave me a letter whenever Dad wasn't looking, saying I had a cold and couldn't do it, but Dad wanted me to do PE and didn't like it when he found out that I was missing lessons. He said it was good for me, but I don't think it was.

  "I'll give you a bunk up."

  Ben stood by the wall and cupped his hands. I stood in them, as if I was getting on a horse, and he tried to lift me up into the air, but I lost my balance and fell over on my back. I bumped my head, but it was only grass so I was okay. We tried again, but I was frightened of hurting myself, and though I could touch the top of the wall I wasn't even close to getting over it.

  "Maybe if we get a chair?" he suggested.

  I wasn't too sure that would help very much. "It's a long way down on the other side."

  "We can't stay here."

  "I know."

  "I'll get a chair."

  He went inside. I went with him. He got a chair from the kitchen and pulled it towards the back door. It made a screeching sound on the floor. We stopped. Someone called out from upstairs; the big man had woken up. We listened. And then he was coming down the stairs, and we were running into the kitchen looking for somewhere to hide, but there wasn't anywhere, and I was scared that he would hurt us.

  He came into the kitchen. He gave us a stupid wave again, and started talking, but I didn't know what he was saying. He tried to pat me on the head. Ben punched him in the arm, as hard as he could. The man swore (you could tell he was swearing, even though it was in foreign) and pushed Ben hard in the chest. Ben fell backwards, banging his head and shoulder on the kitchen cabinet.

  Ben jumped right back up again. The man held out his hands in front of him, as if to say that he didn't want any trouble. Ben looked scared and cross at the same time. I hoped he wasn't going to hit the man again, because he was twice his size, and he was a soldier, and if they had a fight my brother wouldn't have stood any chance at all.

  And then Valerie was there. He looked surprised when he saw his friend there. He asked him something. The man gave a long reply, slurring his words a bit. He pointed upstairs, and then at Ben. Valerie spoke over him, and pointed at the door. He was telling him to go. It's funny how sometimes you sort of know what people are saying, even if they can't speak English properly.

  And then Valerie was taking me by the hand, and Ben tried to hit him as well, but Valerie held him off with his other hand without hurting him.

  "We go," Valerie said. "We go."

  Ben tried hitting him again. Valerie let go of my hand and grabbed both of Ben's wrists. Ben tried to pull away but Valerie w
as too strong.

  "We go. Men come. Not safe. We go."

  "Ben," I said. "I think the Russians are coming here. Let's go with him."

  "I don't trust him."

  "We were going to go anyway."

  "Not with him, though."

  "Ben!"

  The big man came back. He said something from the doorway. Valerie nodded.

  "Soldiers come. Soldiers come now."

  "Ben!"

  He made that little noise he makes, as if someone was strangling him. He didn't know what to do. I felt sorry for him. But I knew we had to go with Valerie.

  "Better the devil you know," I said. It was something Dad said when you could choose between two things and one of them was something you had done before which was bad and the other was something bad which you hadn't done yet. I was quite pleased with myself for saying that, because I had never said it before and it made me sound quite grown up.

  Ben shrugged. And then nodded. "Alright. But don't say I didn't warn you. It's your fault if he hurts us."

  I smiled at Valerie. "Okay. We go now." I said it like that so he could understand.

  "We go?"

  "We go."

  He was going to take my hand again, but thought better of it and just waved for us to follow him. "Come, Jack. Come, Fido. We go."

  I thought we would be going out the front door, but he took us into the back garden. He jumped up and sat on top of the wall. He held his hands out for us to follow him. Ben told me that he would go first - he still didn't trust him - but I told him that he would need to give me a bunk-up so I had to go before he did. He put his hands together - like he had before - and I stepped into them and lifted myself up. Valerie grabbed me, hoisted me over the top of the wall and held me over the other side. I jumped down. It was quite easy, really. And then Ben was on top of the wall and jumping down beside me. Valerie landed next to him.

  He stood still for a second. We listened. I thought I heard someone in the house, but I wasn't sure and it might have been his friend anyway.

  He started walking away from the house, waving at us to follow him. "Come, Jack. Come, Fido."

  Ben held back. He was thinking of running off. Maybe it was because Valerie was calling him Fido.

  "I can't run very fast," I pointed out.

  "You're such a baby," Ben said, but he didn't say it nastily so I decided to let it go.

  Valerie was still walking. "Come!" he was looking back at the house, as if he was expecting soldiers to start climbing over the wall after us at a second. I hurried after him. Ben came, too, but he didn't look very happy.