Valentine Joe

by Rebecca Stevens

  ‘I’m sure,’ Rose replied, willing him not to do the ‘surey-sure’ thing in front of Muriel.

  Grandad grinned and patted her shoulder. Sometimes he seemed to be able to read her mind. ‘Put your head in the restaurant when you’re back then, Cabbage.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Ten minutes?’

  ‘Twenty!’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  She shook her head at him and rolled her eyes. He was such a fusspot sometimes.

  ‘I promised your mum I’d look after you, Cabbage. So I need you back in one piece. OK?’

  ‘OK, Brian.’

  As Rose walked off into the darkness she looked back to see Grandad and Muriel watching her, standing together in the pool of light outside the restaurant. They raised their hands in reply to her wave, before turning and going inside.

  There was no one about now, but Rose didn’t mind. She’d always liked being alone. When she was little Mum used to worry about the amount of time she spent sitting up the tree in their back garden (there was only one and it was dead easy to climb). Once Rose had overheard Mum saying to Dad that they should have had another child, a little brother or sister for Rose. And Rose would have liked that, she really would, but not because she wanted someone to keep her company. She didn’t mind being on her own. It gave her time to think.

  She made her way past the Cloth Hall, the outline of its tower black against the stars, and turned down a side street. This part of the city was particularly quiet and Rose’s footsteps sounded loud on the pavement. She passed an old-fashioned-looking café , asleep behind its peeling shutters. There was no one about, no people walking home from an evening with friends, not even any lights in the windows of the houses that lined the street. Rose felt as if she had not just the street but the whole world to herself. Then:

  WHOOSH!

  The noise seemed to slice through her body. A flare burst in the night sky, burning bright white for a few seconds before silently dying away. Rose stopped, her heart beating hard in her chest.

  What. Was. That?

  She waited for her heartbeat to go back to normal, then took a deep breath and tried to explain it to herself. It was nothing. Probably just fireworks or something.

  Fireworks? said another part of her. In February? Really?

  Well, what else could it be?

  A cat flashed across the road in front of her, pausing for a second to look at her with startled eyes before disappearing up a side alley. Rose was glad to see another living creature in this lonely place. Perhaps she should go back? It was getting colder, she could feel the chill seeping through her parka. That was probably why everyone was indoors. Because it wasn’t late, not even ten o’clock. And then:

  BOOM.

  It was a thud. A dull sound like the throb of a bass drum. It wasn’t loud or close but seemed to come from somewhere deep beneath the ground. Rose felt it vibrate inside her body as she stood there, listening to her own jagged breathing.

  It must be those fireworks again, she told herself.

  In February? repeated the other voice.

  An aeroplane, then. Traffic from a main road. Something like that.

  Rose had nearly convinced herself that the strange sound wasn’t strange at all when it happened again.

  BOOM.

  Again, she felt it rather than heard it, as if it was her own heart beating out that one dull thud.

  BOOM.

  Then, silence. She really would go back now, she decided, and turned to go the way she’d come.

  And stopped.

  Because it wasn’t the way she’d come.

  The brick of the buildings was dark and dirty-looking. Paint was peeling from doors and windows. There were broken cobblestones and potholes in the road and piles of rubbish in the gutters, rotting fruit and vegetables. And it didn’t just look different, it smelled different. The air was heavy with the stink of rubbish and drains and a background trace of smoke as if something somewhere was on fire.

  And it was cold now, really cold. An icy wind was stirring a faded advert on the wall. Rose huddled inside her parka and told herself not to be silly. She’d be back at the hotel in a few minutes and Grandad would laugh at her for being a scaredy cat. She’d sit in the warm restaurant with a hot chocolate in front of her and listen to Grandad and Muriel chatting together. It wasn’t far, she hadn’t been walking for long. She’d just take the first step and she’d be there in no time.

  And then she felt something nudge against her legs.

  Rose stood completely still, feeling that if she moved one inch the sky would shatter into a thousand pieces and come showering down on her in shards of blue-black glass.

  Count to three, Dad used to say. If something really scares you, close your eyes and count to three. Then take a deep breath, and you’re ready to face anything.

  One. Two. Three . . . deep breath. She looked down.

  It was the cat. The cat who’d run across the road a minute ago. He was entirely black, a small clot of darkness in the gloom, his yellow eyes blinking up at her as he wound around her legs, warm and soft and alive. Rose was so relieved she almost laughed. She bent down to stroke him, but before her fingers could make contact with his head something stopped her.

  A whimper of fear.

  Rose looked up to see a child, a little girl of about four, staring at her from the doorway of the café she’d passed. She had a grubby face and light brown hair, cut short and held back from her forehead with a green hair ribbon tied in a big bow, and she was wearing a long dress, white against the dark of the building, with a shawl around her shoulders.

  Maybe she’s ready for bed, thought Rose. It was late for such a little girl to be up. A flickering yellow light spilled out of the doorway behind her.

  ‘Is it your cat?’ said Rose, trying to smile. ‘Does he want to go inside?’

  The little girl didn’t reply. She just sort of shrank into herself and carried on staring at Rose, her eyes wide. And then Rose remembered: of course, the little girl was Belgian. She couldn’t understand English. She smiled again and shrugged in that theatrical way you do when you’re trying to make yourself understood.

  ‘Pussycat?’ Rose pointed at the cat. ‘Miaow?’

  She took a step forward and the little girl screamed.

  Rose stopped, horrified. What had she done to frighten the child so badly? Before she could move, a woman appeared from inside the café , speaking in rapid, angry sounding Flemish. She too was dressed strangely, in a long dark skirt and a shawl.

  ‘What’s the matter? What are you doing?’ she seemed to be saying to the child. ‘Come inside right now and—’

  The angry flow of words stopped as she followed her daughter’s gaze to where Rose was standing, the cat still winding around her legs.

  The woman’s eyes widened. It didn’t seem like she could actually see Rose, not properly. She was just staring at the space Rose was occupying, as if Rose – like the cat – was a clot of darkness, a Rose-shaped black hole in the night. The mother grabbed her child’s hand, her eyes never leaving the place where Rose was standing.

  Rose said, ‘I’m sorry. I frightened your little girl. I’m English. I didn’t mean—’

  The woman let loose another stream of furious, frightened words, then pulled the girl inside and slammed the door. The light above the door went out and all was quiet.

  Rose was alone with the cat. He blinked at her again, then turned and stalked off down the alleyway, tail in the air as if he’d accomplished something important. Somewhere, a dog started to bark. Then, almost imperceptibly, a faint sound of music filtered through the blue-black darkness. It was a band Rose recognised, a reassuringly familiar noise that sounded as if it was coming from a bar. The night was coming back into focus. Rose felt drizzle on her face and could make out the outline of the Cloth Hall tower pointing up against the sky.

  She set off, back the way she’d come, putting one foot in front of the other, refusing to let herself h
urry. The street was familiar now. She saw a concert poster she’d passed before, and a scrawl of graffiti. A plastic carrier bag blew in the wind. As the sights and sounds of the familiar world seeped back through the darkness, she forced herself to walk normally.

  But as she got closer to the hotel and could see the glow of the lights in the not-square square, she started to run. Whatever had happened in that little side street was behind her. And she wanted it to stay that way.

  By the time Rose burst into the hotel, her cheeks were hot and she was seriously out of breath. Grandad made a big show of looking at his watch.

  ‘Fourteen and a half minutes precisely,’ he said. ‘You just made it.’

  He and Muriel were sitting at a table at the back of the empty restaurant, drinking something out of tiny glasses, and soon Rose was with them, a hot chocolate in front of her, just as she’d imagined, listening to their gentle laughter. What had happened out there in the night – the light in the sky, the boom, the strange street, the terrified little girl – it all seemed like it had happened to someone else.

  Maybe it hadn’t happened at all.

  Grandad was watching her over the top of his glasses. ‘You all right, Cabbage? You look a bit hot and bothered. Not coming down with something, I hope?’

  Rose brought her hands up to her cheeks. They felt like they were on fire. ‘I’m fine, Grandad. I ran part of the way back, that’s all.’

  ‘Why? Was someone chasing you?’ They all laughed.

  ‘I told you, Brian,’ said Muriel. ‘Ieper is a very safe place.’

  Then it was bedtime. They said their goodnights and went up the stairs. Rose was reassured by the sight of her bright neat bedroom at the top of the building. Her face in the mirror as she cleaned her teeth was the same old face: dark eyes, straight nose with a sprinkle of freckles, frizzy hair which she’d straighten again tomorrow. Nothing had changed.

  She got out her phone to text Dad, then stopped, staring at the screen. She still didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell him about what had just happened. It was too weird, too confusing. So she just plugged her phone into the charger and got into bed.

  Even with the bedside light off the room wasn’t completely dark. Rose closed her eyes. And slept . . .

  She never knew whether it was hours or just minutes later that she woke. But she did know one thing: she heard them first in a dream. Weary male voices, singing in time with marching feet.

  ‘I wonder who’s kissing her now . . .’

  The dream didn’t stop when Rose opened her eyes. Everything looked the same, but the voices were still there. In the room with her. She reached for the bedside light, wondering if she was still dreaming. The room sprang into light, bright and modern and clean. But she could still hear the voices and the tramp of boots on stone, each step sounding like an effort.

  ‘One, two, three, four . . . One, two, three, four . . .’

  And then Rose realised: they weren’t in the room, how could they be?

  They were outside in the square.

  She got out of bed. Her bare feet felt freezing in spite of the carpet and a bit of grit got stuck to the bottom of one of them. Why is it so cold? she wondered. Of course, the heating must’ve been turned off for the night.

  She moved over to the window and looked out.

  The square was deserted. It looked just the same as it did before: modern street lights, a few parked cars, the cobblestones wet with rain . . .

  And it was silent. The song had stopped.

  It all looked so utterly ordinary in the orange glow of the street lights that Rose wondered if she’d imagined it all: the girl’s voice in her room; the photo that disappeared from her phone; the flares and booms in the night sky; the terrified child – and now this. The men singing, the tramp of their marching feet . . .

  She stared out at the empty square. And then, just as she’d decided to forget it and go back to bed, something scratched at the door.

  Scratch. Scratch. Scratch-scratch-scratch.

  Every drop of blood in Rose’s body seemed to freeze. She tried to turn but found she couldn’t move.

  Scratch. Scratch-scratch. Scratch-scratch.

  Whatever was out there really wanted to come in.

  One. Two. Three.

  Deep breath.

  Slowly, very slowly, she turned and walked across the room. The floor felt like a trampoline beneath her feet. She grasped the handle, the metal chilly beneath her fingers, and opened the door.

  It was the dog. The dog who’d been waiting for them when they arrived at the station, and then at the hotel, was standing outside the door, wagging his tail and looking just as normal and cheerful and doggy as ever. Rose didn’t care how he’d got into the hotel, or what he was doing there. She was just pleased to see him.

  The dog seemed pleased to see Rose too. He gave a polite little wuff of recognition, then turned and ran off down the dark landing, his claws clicking against the floorboards.

  The floorboards.

  But the floor on the landing was carpeted, like her bedroom. Wasn’t it?

  She looked down. Beneath her bare feet was dark polished wood, like the floor downstairs in the lobby.

  ‘Wuff!’

  The dog waited till she looked up at him and then ran off up the stairs.

  Up. The stairs.

  Up . . .

  Rose’s room was on the top floor. There were no stairs going up. She was at the top of the building. But there they were. The stairs, a narrow flight, uncarpeted, with a wooden handrail, heading up.

  To where? Where did they go?

  Rose ducked back into her room, shoved her feet into her boots, and then ran after the dog up the stairs that didn’t exist into the darkness at the top. She could just see him waiting for her on the landing, looking expectantly at a closed door. It was clear he wanted to go in.

  She put a hand on the doorknob. It was wooden, not cold to the touch like the metal one downstairs. The door swung open and Rose followed the dog inside.

  It was a small room, smaller even than Rose’s, full of disorder and moonlight. The single bed was unmade and there was a half-packed suitcase open on the floor. Clothes were spilling out of a small chest of drawers against the wall. A pair of lace-up boots had been left lying by the bed, and a long dark coat hung on a hook on the back of the door.

  For a moment, Rose just stood there, trying to take it all in. What was this place? What was going on?

  She bent down to pick up a picture that had fallen off the chest and was lying face down on the floor. The face of a young man in uniform stared back at her from behind the broken glass. Another of those sad-eyed wartime faces. She placed the picture carefully back on the chest and shivered. It was freezing – and no wonder. The window was wide open, the curtains blowing in an icy wind, and there was snow on the floor.

  And then she heard them again:

  ‘I wonder who’s kissing her now . . .’

  The men’s voices swelled, filling the darkness. The singing was louder up here. More real.

  Rose moved across the room as if an invisible thread was pulling her to the window. She seemed to have no choice.

  The square was familiar in the moonlight, but the misty drizzle had disappeared and now snowflakes were swirling through the darkness and whitening the cobblestones.

  But that wasn’t all. Because they were there. The soldiers. A hundred of them, maybe two hundred, marching four abreast, hunched in their khaki uniforms, packs on their backs, rifles over their shoulders, tramping through the snow, singing their bittersweet song of longing and regret.

  Rose stared. For one mad moment she thought it was maybe some parade, a historical re-enactment, a film was being made . . .

  And then she thought, In the middle of the night? With no one else there? And what about the snow? And the fact that I’m watching from a room that doesn’t actually exist?

  As Rose watched them, it felt like she and the soldiers were the only people in t
he world. Yet none of them saw her. Not a single one looked up. They just marched on, eyes front, weary, focused on getting wherever they had to be. To them, Rose didn’t exist.

  And then she saw him, at the very back of the line. He was smaller than the others, skinny and marching slightly out of time with a little skip in his step. And in his buttonhole was a bunch of yellow flowers, like the ones she’d picked from the bank of the canal. What did Grandad say they were called? Celandines, that was it. She’d left some on the boy soldier’s grave.

  And then he looked up.

  He did.

  He looked up and he saw Rose. Their eyes met, and for a brief moment everything seemed to stop. The snowflakes froze in the air and the stars held their breath. Then the boy grinned, a cheeky, familiar grin as if he’d known her all his life, and the picture broke up and time moved on. The boy touched his cap with one finger in a little salute and hurried after the others, with his strange skipping march.

  For a second, Rose just stood there. Something had happened. She didn’t know what it was, but she had to find out. She grabbed the coat from behind the door and ran out of the room, pausing only to look back at the dog.

  ‘Coming?’ she said.

  ‘Wuff!’ He wagged his tail and followed her down the stairs, his claws clicking on the floorboards.

  It was dark on the staircase, so dark that Rose had to inch her way down, putting out one foot at a time to feel for the next step and keeping tight hold of the banister. She could feel her heart thudding in her ears, but it was more from excitement than fear. What was she going to find when she reached the square? Who were those men?

  Who was that boy?

  When she reached the first landing, Rose felt around for a light switch. The wall was rough under her hand and she couldn’t find a switch. It was probably just as well, she thought, she didn’t want to wake anyone. She made it to the bottom at last, reassured by the clicking of the dog’s claws on the stairs behind her. It wasn’t quite so dark down here. Moonlight was shining though the semi-circular window above the front door, filling the room with greyness and shadows and, as Rose stumbled to the door, she could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the dark.