Five Children on the Western Front

by Kate Saunders

  They were inside the office now. It was a large, untidy room, cluttered with books and long sheets of printed paper. Father was stroking his moustache, as he did when agitated.

  Anthea and Ernie sat on the other side of the desk. They were all very serious.

  ‘It puts me in a difficult position,’ Father was saying. ‘I’ll have to tell your mother, and – well, it might be tricky, that’s all.’

  ‘But you can’t object to Ernie because he writes for a living,’ Anthea said. ‘It’s exactly what you do yourself.’

  Father smiled painfully. ‘My darling, that’s why I ought to object – it’s a chancy living at the best of times.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked her to marry me if I wasn’t making a decent amount of money,’ Ernie said. ‘I’ve got enough to set us up in a home of our own – though I’m staying with Mrs Taylor for the time being.’

  ‘Oh, I know all about your brilliant career,’ Father said. ‘It’s hard to get away from you when the entire world goes round quoting your “Common Soldier” column – including Lloyd George in the House of Commons!’ He sighed and sat down at the desk. ‘But I’m not thinking like an editor now, I’m thinking like a father. And the fact is that we don’t know a thing about your people.’

  ‘I’m not marrying his people,’ Anthea said.

  ‘There’s nothing much to know,’ Ernie said. ‘My parents have been gone for years, and I don’t know who my grandparents were. All I’ve got in my favour is that I’ll work my fingers to the bone to make Anthea happy.’

  ‘We’re not asking for permission,’ Anthea said, holding her head up proudly. ‘I’m over twenty-one – old enough to make my own decisions. It’s just that it would be so much nicer if you gave us your blessing.’

  ‘But he must!’ Edie cried out. ‘It’ll be so beastly if he doesn’t – and I want to be a bridesmaid!’

  ‘Good gracious,’ the Psammead said faintly, ‘my paws are tingling! I shall give the lovers a blessing – as I should have done with Osman and Tulap!’ He held his breath and his little body swelled and strained. An invisible change came over the room, as if a mist had cleared or a stone lifted.

  ‘Let’s not be dramatic,’ Father said. ‘Of course I give you my blessing – and so will Mother, when she meets Haywood properly and finds he hasn’t got two heads.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Ernie said, grinning at Anthea.

  ‘The fact is,’ Father said, ‘young chaps like you have risked life and limb for your country. The older generation has lost any right it ever had to lay down the law. You go on and be happy, in any way you can – don’t listen to us.’

  Anthea jumped out of the chair to fling her arms around him. A shaft of sunlight pierced the grimy windows, until the whole room was a blaze of light, and Edie and the Lamb had to close their eyes against the glare.

  *

  When they opened their eyes, the Lamb and Edie were a tangled heap of arms and legs on the old sofa in the attic, and it took them several seconds to get free.

  ‘Well, that was a pretty good adventure,’ the Lamb said breathlessly. ‘The flying was prime – though I could’ve done with a lot more of it.’

  ‘It was the best adventure ever and I wish we could see them both right now,’ Edie said. She reached over to the sand bath to stroke the Psammead’s head. ‘Are you all right?’

  The sand fairy was trembling all over. ‘Great heavens,’ he whispered. ‘My orders have come at last!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She was alarmed. ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘Not at all – I feel better than I have done for years! The lovers have been blessed, and I have been forgiven!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I can feel it in my whiskers – I’m about to go home!’

  Twenty-four

  LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

  ‘OH, COME OFF IT,’ JANE SAID, without looking up from the thick textbook she was reading. ‘You’re always saying you’re about to leave, and you never do. I bet half a crown you’re still here next Christmas.’

  The Lamb and Edie had brought the Psammead down to Jane’s bedroom. She spent most of her time at her desk these days, studying for the first of the exams that would get her into the London School of Medicine for Women. Father’s generous cousin Geraldine had offered to pay all the expenses, and – more importantly – managed to make Mother see that Jane wasn’t going to change her mind about being a doctor. Edie was pleased to see Jane so happy, yet couldn’t help feeling this was yet another of the Bigguns slipping away from them into a private, grown-up world.

  ‘That’s a bet you’d lose, Jane,’ the Psammead said. ‘This time it’s really happening. I have the oddest feeling of invisible hands tugging at me.’

  ‘Please don’t leave us,’ Edie said, for the hundredth time. ‘The house will be so sad and horrid without you!’

  ‘I have always appreciated your devotion, Edie, but don’t you DARE cry! Jane, stop looking superior. And Lamb, there’s no need to curl your lip like that – this time it happens to be TRUE. You really ought to be very pleased for me. I feel the old magic tingling in my fingers again, ready to whisk me away to my long home.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help crying.’ Edie scrubbed her eyes on her sleeve; here was the news she’d been dreading ever since the very first day she’d seen the sand fairy in the gravel pit. ‘It’s just that I love you so much!’

  ‘I know, my dear,’ the Psammead said. ‘But even your love isn’t strong enough to change the workings of the universe. And I feel, deep in my ancient bones, that my transformation is very nearly complete.’

  The Lamb and Edie stared silently at the sand fairy, who’d been part of their lives since the beginning of the war, and tried to imagine the White House without him.

  ‘Look here, if it’s not another false alarm,’ the Lamb said gruffly, ‘I’ll really miss you, Psammead. Couldn’t you wait until we’re all together again, so we can say a proper goodbye?’

  ‘No time, I’m afraid,’ the Psammead said. ‘If sand fairies had suitcases, I’d be packing mine at this minute. Jane, kindly shut that book and find a pen and paper – I wish to dictate my last will and testament, and you have the neatest writing.’

  *

  ‘No whispering, please,’ the Psammead said. ‘This is the solemn occasion of my farewell. Edie, please try to stop crying.’

  He had summoned them all to the gravel pit at the bottom of the garden, where he’d made his very first appearance. The weather was dry but the wind was cold; Edie had wrapped her school scarf around his plump body. Lilian was busy digging the tennis court at Windytops into a vegetable garden (the food shortage was getting worse and no one had unpatriotic things like tennis courts anymore; half the lawn at the White House had been given over to cabbages and potatoes), but she had dashed back to lead Robert to the gravel pit.

  Robert and Lilian, Jane, the Lamb and Edie stood awkwardly, like mourners at a burial. The Psammead stood on a small hillock, clutching a piece of paper between his paws.

  ‘As you all know,’ he began importantly, ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for years.’

  ‘I thought you still had some more repenting to do,’ Robert said.

  ‘More repenting? My dear Robert, I’ve been doing nothing else since 1914! Just how sorry am I supposed to be?’

  ‘Hmm, I don’t know. You don’t exactly strike one as a reformed character.’

  The Psammead was offended. ‘Of course I’ve reformed! I wouldn’t be moving along unless I’d turned myself into a better creature.’

  ‘I know you have,’ Edie assured him. ‘You’re so much kinder than when you first came.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said, ‘that’s certainly true. You’ve learned to consider other people’s feelings, which you never did before. But where exactly are you off to now – heaven?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ the Psammead said. ‘All I know is that the universe is on the move, and I’m going – somewhere.
’

  Lilian leaned forward to touch the creature’s head. ‘I haven’t known you long – but I think you’re adorable.’

  ‘Thank you, Lilian,’ the Psammead said. ‘Now, if you’ll all be quiet, I’d like to read you my will.’ He cleared his throat and his telescope eyes turned to the piece of paper. ‘This is the last will and testament of the last sand fairy, also known as the Psammead, the Mighty One – and the rest of my hundred-and-eighty titles.

  ‘I don’t have any money or property – though several cases of jewellery in the British Museum actually belong to me, and I’ve marked the numbers on this bit of paper, so that you can steal them back.’

  Robert snorted with laughter, which the sand fairy loftily ignored. ‘I can only leave a very strong vibration of good feelings and my blessings for the future. You have all been very kind to me, and I’m sorry I didn’t have enough magic this time to grant you any decent wishes. Thanks to you children, the concept of “love” now means something to me. If only I’d learned about it sooner, the entire course of history might have been different!

  ‘Time will pass, and memories will fade, but you needn’t worry that you’ll forget me.

  ‘Who could?

  ‘The Last Psammead.’

  *

  In the long silence a bird cawed above their heads.

  ‘Is he still here?’ Robert murmured.

  ‘I’m still here,’ the Psammead said. ‘I’ll be on my way any minute now.’

  ‘Are you nervous?’ the Lamb asked.

  ‘A little – but mostly excited, as if I were going away on a lovely holiday. I haven’t had anything like a holiday for untold centuries.’

  ‘I wish you could visit us sometimes,’ Edie said.

  ‘You know that won’t be possible – but I can still visit you in your imagination. You must think about me as much as you can.’

  ‘I’ll never stop thinking about you!’

  ‘Of course you won’t. And wherever I happen to be, I shall miss our after-school chats. But we’d have had to stop them soon, anyway – you’ll be leaving Poplar House and going to the high school.’

  ‘Why must everything change?’ Edie burst out. ‘We were so happy!’

  ‘Because things DO change, whether we like it or not.’ The Psammead suddenly held up his paws and stared at them hard. ‘My fingers are getting warm – the warmest they’ve been since I went into hiding! That means the moment of our toodle-oo is imminent.’

  ‘Well, thanks for everything, Psammead,’ Robert said. ‘It’s been a pleasure to know you.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Lilian said.

  ‘We’ll miss you terribly,’ Jane said.

  ‘Thank you, Jane. I hope you have a lovely time cutting off limbs when you’re a doctor.’

  A shudder suddenly ran through the Psammead’s body. ‘It is upon me! Children – stroke me one last time!’

  They all gathered around him and took turns to stroke his little head for the final time. The girls kissed him, and Robert and the Lamb shook his paw.

  *

  ‘Pooh!’ snapped the Psammead. ‘What are you all doing here? Can’t I ever shake you off?’

  The gravel pit had been swallowed up in darkness and noise; Lilian, Jane, Edie and the Lamb stared around them. ‘What’s going on? Where are we?’ Robert said.

  ‘If we’re following you to your long-term home,’ the Lamb said, ‘does that mean we’re dead?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ the Psammead said, ‘of course you’re not.’

  ‘I don’t feel dead, however that feels,’ Lilian said shakily. ‘Is this – is this the normal sort of thing that goes on with the Psammead?’

  ‘More or less,’ Jane said. ‘We’re at the front, Bobs, right in the thick of it.’

  They were in a trench, so wide and deep that all they could see of the sky was a flashing strip high up between the sandbagged walls. The earth shook, the heavy guns thundered.

  The Psammead scuttled along the wooden duckboards at the bottom of the trench, and suddenly dived through a doorway and into a dugout. It was a cramped, dark place that looked as if it had once been the cellar of a house. A gramophone was scratchily playing ‘Hitchy-Koo’.

  Two soldiers sat writing on either side of a table, by the flickering light of three candles stuck into wine bottles. One of them was Cyril.

  Lilian, her eyes round with awe, quickly described the scene to Robert.

  ‘Squirrel looks so old,’ Edie said. ‘And doesn’t he look like Father?’

  The other officer was a lot younger, as young as the senior boys at the Lamb’s school. The louder explosions made him twitch nervously.

  ‘Pemberton—’

  ‘Hmm?’ Cyril glanced up.

  ‘I don’t know what to write.’

  ‘It’s not a prize essay – just put what you’d want to say to them.’

  ‘What I want to say is too big to put into words.’

  ‘Put that they’ll know what you mean,’ Cyril said.

  The boy took a fresh piece of paper, and they all watched him write ‘Dear Mother and Dad, What I want to say is too big—’ He sighed and screwed up the paper. ‘That just looks idiotic.’

  Cyril wrote busily. He had already written two letters, which were neatly sealed beside him. One was addressed to ‘Mother and Father, In the event of my death’, the other to ‘My Esteemed Siblings’.

  ‘They’re about to go over the top,’ Jane said. ‘They’re writing letters in case they don’t come back.’

  ‘Look, don’t worry too much,’ Cyril said. ‘Ten to one you’ll be back to rip it up. I’ve ripped up dozens of farewell letters in my time. It’s a good thing to write them because you feel you’ve sort of settled everything, and then it all goes to the back of your mind. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ the boy said, and looked a little less scared.

  Cyril went back to his writing. Edie and the Lamb looked over his shoulder to read it.

  My darling Mabel,

  If you’re reading this, it means only one thing – that I’ve bought it and won’t be coming back. I must tell you how much you’ve meant to me in the few months we’ve known each other. You’re so easy to talk to, and you have just your brother’s way of ragging me when I get too gloomy.

  I wish I’d been to India – that’s where my regiment was supposed to be going, until this war got in the way. I had all sorts of dreams about taking you out there to eat curries and ride on elephants. If it’s possible to be a ghost, I’ll come and visit you in your garden in Oswestry, among those prize-winning pink roses of yours; you’ll feel a slight breeze on the spot below your left ear where I like to kiss you, and that will be me.

  Dearest, I hate to think that all I’ve done is make you sad. For your sake I could almost wish we’d never met – but for my own sake I’m awfully glad we did.

  ‘We shouldn’t read any more.’ The Lamb’s voice was choked. ‘He’ll be back later to rip it up, just like he said.’

  ‘I say, Pemberton,’ the boy said.

  ‘Hmm?’ Cyril patiently raised his head.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt again – but is it always like this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The way the waiting seems endless, and you dread it but you’re somehow impatient to get on with it, and terrified of bungling the orders—’

  Cyril put down his pen. ‘Yes, it is always like this. We all feel just the same about going over the top, even the CO. I won’t say you get used to it, but it’s a bit better when you know what to expect. You’re with Sergeant Bates, aren’t you? Stick close to him, do what he says, and you’ll be fine. He’s a brick and nothing surprises him – he’s been in the army since the Wars of the Roses.’

  The boy smiled uncertainly. ‘Righto. Thanks.’

  ‘Look here, give me a moment to finish my letter, and we’ll have a game of rummy.’ Cyril smiled in a way that made him look much younger, and much more like himself. ‘It’s a good way to pass
the time and take your mind off the noise, and your winnings may amount to as much as one and six.’

  ‘Typical Squirrel,’ Robert said, ‘the great cheere-rupper.’

  ‘And you finish that letter to your people,’ Cyril went on, ‘because it’ll worry you if you don’t – square up, tell the beggars you love them, then go and find Private Mitchell and tell him to pass round the tea and rum.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The boy was happier now, and went back to his letter; this time, he knew what to write.

  ‘And so it is accomplished,’ the Psammead said. ‘Children, hold tight to my paws – the picture is about to change.’

  Edie picked up the Psammead and took hold of one of his scraggy little paws. ‘Where are we going now?’ There was a strange, heavy feeling of dread in her chest, and she could see that the others felt it too; Lilian huddled closer to Robert, and Jane put her arm around Edie’s shoulders.

  The dugout and Cyril and the young soldier dissolved like a wet painting; the whirling colours resolved themselves into a view of sunlit countryside. Suddenly, they could smell hay and pollen. The Psammead, surrounded by the children and clutching the fingers of Edie and the Lamb, was floating above rich green meadows towards a small town.

  On the edge of the town they flew over big houses with large gardens filled to overflowing with summer flowers.

  In one garden, a girl stood beside a great cascade of pink roses, with a little black dog cavorting around her feet. The dog looked up at them and began to bark.

  ‘It’s Mabel and her dog, Hamish,’ Edie said. ‘And I think he can see us.’

  ‘Stop it, Hamish,’ Mabel said. ‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’

  She stopped in the middle of cutting roses and glanced up sharply, letting out a little gasp as her hand touched the spot just below her left ear.

  And the picture changed again.

  *

  The next picture drew together slowly, then they were in a small, bare, white room, like a very clean prison cell. Through the single window they could see red-brick cloisters around a quiet patch of green. In the room was a hospital bed containing a patient almost entirely covered with bandages. A stout nun sat in a hard chair beside him, bent over a book.