by Ruth Eastham
– CHAPTER 14 –
THE CONCHIE
The village library. Thursday, 9:23 a.m. Begging and borrowing.
Hatty Kirby smiled at me over the library counter, and then she must have seen the look on my face because she stopped smiling.
“Whatever is the matter, Alex?”
I stood there panting and gripping a plastic bag and dripping water on to the library carpet from my saturated anorak. I’d run there all the way and my legs throbbed. I probably didn’t have much time.
Dad had looked at me suspiciously at breakfast when I’d said I was popping to the library, and said he might like to come too, seeing as he’d booked today and tomorrow off work. He said that our computer at home had some sort of virus and we couldn’t use it until it was fixed, so he’d come and do some reading in the library. He even invited Grandad, but he said he was too tired to go anywhere.
The truth was, Dad wanted to check up on me, I betted. Anyway, I’d downed my toast and got out of the house as fast as I could, before he had a chance to join me.
I really wished I’d kept hold of Grandma’s diary instead of getting spooked and tossing it down. I couldn’t risk going back in the forbidden room during the day to read it. Someone was bound to see me. Not that I was looking forward to rifling through Grandma’s private stuff, but I knew I’d have to waste a day and wait for dark before I tried again. I felt ill just thinking about going back. Something horrible had happened there. I could feel it. See it in the charred things.
Then I’d remembered Hatty. Grandma’s best friend. I remembered the pictures of her in the album, the photo on Grandma’s desk, what she’d said in her diary, and I figured, if anyone knew anything, Hatty Kirby would.
“I’ve got to talk to you,” I said.
“Tell me, love.”
I scanned the library. It was deserted, apart from a couple sitting by the Local History Research Room at the far end, and a woman and a little boy sitting on a beanbag in the kids’ section reading a picture book.
“Grandad has to go in a home,” I said. “The day after tomorrow.”
Miss Kirby looked shocked. “Because of his Alzheimer’s? Oh, love. I’m so sorry.”
I pulled the scrapbook out of my plastic bag and put it on the counter.
“I was making him this,” I said.
She leafed through. “I understand,” she said. “This is a wonderful idea, Alex, it really is.”
I swallowed hard. “Dad’s banned me from finishing it,” I said.
Miss Kirby nodded sadly. “I expect I can guess why.”
“Tommie,” I gasped. “I need to know … And about being a conchie … Grandad won’t tell me … And my grandma … I went in her room and …”
I could hardly get the words out, I was so wound up.
“I want to know what happened,” I told her. My hands were slapping the counter, I think, but I couldn’t seem to control them. “I have to know!”
Miss Kirby pressed her hands on mine. “It’s OK, love. Shhh.” She glanced around and wet her lips. “Look, Alex, it’s not my place to be telling you …”
“You have to tell me!” I heard my words pour out. My chest heaved. I felt like I was going to burst. “I need to know!” I felt my throat shudder. “It’s for Grandad. I promised him. I promised!”
Miss Kirby nodded and laid a hand on my shoulder as I gripped the edge of the counter.
Somebody came up with a book and I put my head down, pretending to read a flier about opening times. I tried to steady my breathing. My lungs felt like they were on fire.
I heard Miss Kirby say, “Well, you know me, I should have retired years ago!” I heard her stamp a book and snap it shut, and then we were alone again.
“You might find this one interesting.” She placed a small, thin book with a frayed spine on the counter and pushed it towards me. On the worn cover there was a soldier and he was crying and the title said, The Unknown Battle of Dunkirk.
“Thanks,” I said, picking it up. I eyed the library door. “But if Dad finds out I’ve been asking you stuff about Dunkirk …”
“You can trust me not to say anything, Alex.”
She sighed. “You wanted to know about your grandad being a conscientious objector. Well, a lot of people in the village were against your grandad at the time because of it.”
I nodded and she went on.
“In the Second World War, people were supposed to have freedom of choice as to whether they fought, not like the First World War, when men were shot if they refused to. But there were still plenty of people ready to hand out feathers. A white feather was a symbol of a coward.”
I nearly dropped the book. I remembered how Grandad had reacted in the Den when the pillow had burst open and the feathers spilt out.
“The thing was, your grandad actually did go to war,” Miss Kirby said. “My guess is he probably spent more time on the front line than a lot of soldiers.
“Then his brother was killed at Dunkirk, and there were all these terrible rumours …”
“Did you believe them?” I interrupted her. I felt my voice rise with emotion. I was so afraid she was going to tell me the one thing I didn’t want to hear. “I mean, you didn’t, did you? You don’t believe that Grandad could have done something like that, do you?”
She didn’t seem to have heard me. Either that or she had deliberately avoided my question.
“One night your grandad was beaten up by a gang. Boys restless to get to war? A gang of ignorant lads? They never did prove who did it. But he was badly hurt. In hospital for a while. It’s printed on my memory like, well, like it was yesterday. Then there were those government people hounding him …”
I stared. “Government people?”
She looked at me in amazement. “Don’t you know anything about that?”
I shook my head. “Did Mr Webb have anything to do with all that?”
“Peter Webb? No, I don’t think so. Not on that occasion …”
Not on that occasion? So was there some other occasion? I didn’t have time to ask her about that, though, because I’d had a thought. The writing on the back of the photograph that Grandad had torn up. The one from the old album. The man with the cigarette between his teeth.
What if what I’d thought had been a loopy L was really a P, and the V a W?
I took out the photo from the back of the scrapbook and showed it to her.
“Yes, that’s him,” said Miss Kirby. “He’s changed a bit, hasn’t he? He wouldn’t give your grandad a minute’s peace. But I thought he’d stopped all that.”
“Grandad never talked about being beaten up,” I said. “Is that how he got the scars on his hands?”
“Oh, Alex. No.” She shook her head and sighed. “Families shouldn’t have secrets like that. I always assumed you knew.
“The scars on his hands …” Miss Kirby trailed off. “But surely you know the story, Alex?”
She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and rubbed her eyes.
“It really isn’t my place to be telling you. I’d rather not say any more.”
“Please,” I pleaded. “I need to know about Tommie. About how Grandma died. You must know where she’s buried.”
Miss Kirby didn’t reply. She picked up the date stamp from the counter and fiddled with it. She looked past me, and her eyebrows raised in alarm. When I turned to see what she was looking at, I could see, through the window, Dad and Leonard coming down the path.
Miss Kirby nodded her head towards the Research Room, and then stamped the book with a date and snapped the cover shut.
I grabbed it off the counter and bundled it into my plastic bag. Dad and Leonard were at the door, shaking the water off their umbrellas.
“Morning, Miss Kirby,” Dad said. “Lovely weather we’re having!”
He was still smiling when he turned to speak to me, but his voice had an edge of tension. “What’s that you’ve got there, Alex?”
Before I could say anything,
Leonard had yanked my bag out of my hand. He pulled the book out, looked at it and then held it up to Dad, smirking. I desperately tried to get a story together. Slipped in by mistake? School project? Light bedtime reading? I fumbled around with all the rubbish excuses that were racing into my head right then.
“Fossils of the South Coast,” Leonard said with a sneer. “Sad or what?”
I snatched it back off him and stared at the cover. Instead of a soldier’s face, there was an ammonite fossil on the front. I shot Miss Kirby a grateful look, but her face gave nothing away. Grandad’s scrapbook was nowhere to be seen. She must have slipped it under the counter when she saw Dad outside, as well as switching books.
“So you’re a boring geek now, as well as ugly!” Leonard muttered in my ear.
I tried to catch Miss Kirby’s eye again, to thank her. She looked at me, then at the book, then towards the Research Room, then back at the book, then back at me.
She did it so quickly that only I could have seen. Obviously she was trying to tell me something. Trouble is, I had no idea what.
I left Dad chatting to her and sat on a comfy chair near the newspapers. I saw Leonard glance at me from the counter and I opened the fossil book.
The due date had smudged a bit on the first page because of the speed Miss Kirby had stamped it.
Hang on!
I blinked and looked again.
The 13th of May 1941?
I stared over at Miss Kirby. She was nodding at something Dad was saying, but she was looking straight at me.
My head whirred. The 13th of May 1941. That date, it seemed familiar.
I flicked a few pages of my fossil book and watched Dad and Leonard sit at a table with their backs to me, bent over a copy of some car magazine. Miss Kirby was busy with other customers.
I calculated what to do. I wouldn’t be able to use the internet at home because of our computer being down. Lia was out with her dad all morning so I couldn’t go round to hers and use it. I looked towards the Research Room. I’d have to go for that. But if one of them came in and saw what I was doing …
I’d have to risk it. Miss Kirby had given me a clue, and I had to follow it.
With a final glance at Dad and Leonard, I slunk out of my chair and headed for the Research Room.
I had to know what happened on the 13th of May 1941.
– CHAPTER 15 –
MAY 13TH 1941
The Library Research Room. 9:37 a.m. Digging up the past.
Our ancient village library didn’t stretch to computers. Instead, the Research Room had lots of books on shelves, and a row of old-fashioned microfiche machines that you could look at news paper reports on. You got a little piece of plastic of the date you wanted from a set of drawers and then put it in the slot and the article would be magnified on to a lit screen and you could turn a handle to scroll through it.
Despite the lack of technology, it didn’t take me too long to find what I was looking for. I turned the handle, and there it was. A front-page headline from the East Kent Herald, dated May 13th 1941.
TRAGIC FIRE CLAIMS LIFE
A young woman died early this morning in a dramatic blaze that has left the small community of Doverham reeling in shock.
The fire started in the early hours of the morning in an outbuilding being used as a photographic darkroom next to the house, and quickly spread to an attic bedroom and into the thatched roof.
The victim, nineteen-year-old Freda Smith, is thought to have died from smoke inhalation. Her six-month-old baby son, Richard, was rescued unharmed by her husband, William Smith.
I gasped, then kept on reading.
Mr Smith, a controversial war-photographer in the village, suffered serious burns to his hands when he attempted to enter the room and rescue his injured wife.
We tried to interview Mr Smith, but he was too distraught to comment.
I remembered Grandad’s words. “It was on fire. It was all on fire. I was on my way home. Saw the smoke … My Freda and the baby were in there!”
I scrolled down fast to read more.
All Mr Smith’s film and photographs were completely destroyed in the blaze.
Captain Bentley of the Dover Fire Service explained how the flames spread.
“A large tree growing close to the house caught light,” he told us. “The fire then spread into the thatch. The attic room itself actually suffered only partial damage, but the victim, who is thought to have badly twisted her ankle in her hurry to get to her child, was overcome by smoke and died at the scene.
No bombers from the Channel were reported at the time and we are currently treating the blaze as suspicious.
My mind whirred. I had to read the whole thing a couple of times to let everything sink in. The article was implying the fire had been started deliberately. But by who? I scrolled through more newspaper reports but found nothing about any later trials, or anyone being charged.
As I stared at the article again, it came to me where I’d seen the date already. It was crazy that I hadn’t realized before! May 13th 1941.
It was the date from the vandalized headstone.
WINIFRED ALICE SMITH
Winifred Smith … Wait!
It came to me. Like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle turned this way and that way and then clicking into place.
Winifred. Wini – fred … Fred. Freda!
I felt my spine tingle.
The vandalized headstone.
It was the headstone of my grandma’s grave.
She was killed in 1941. What had Grandad said? Grandma had married him in January. By May she was dead.
PRIVATE SAMUEL THOMAS SMITH (1920–1940)
Thomas Smith … Tommie!
Great-Uncle Tommie must have been known by his middle name.
I heard a movement by the door of the Research Room, and in a panic spun the handle of the microfiche machine to lose the article.
I heard a voice by my shoulder. It was Miss Kirby. “We can’t talk now,” she said. “Your dad’s looking for you.”
She slipped the scrapbook into my bag, hiding it inside the fossil book, and then held out the Dunkirk book to me, her finger pointing at a name on the cover.
I opened my mouth to speak, but then the book had been whipped away again and Dad was at the door, saying, “There you are, Alex! It’ll be lunchtime in a while, and your mum and I want us all to eat together today.”
But I’d had time to read the name on the Dunkirk book before Miss Kirby had hidden it. The name on the cover.
Smith, it had said. Photography by W.G. Smith.
– CHAPTER 16 –
WAR CRIMES
The kitchen. Lunchtime. Water, water everywhere.
Grandad was standing by the window when I went in, looking out at the garden, a smudge of purple under his bad eye, one finger resting against the glass as the rain streamed down. Everyone else was at the table. Mum was serving up steaming potatoes and lamb chops and green beans on to seven plates. The news droned from the little portable telly on top of the fridge.
“The rain is set to continue …”
Dad stared at it from his place. Victoria sat reading a fashion magazine. Leonard was hunched over one about cars. Sophie was dressed as a fairy and perched on a pile of cushions waving her spoon around.
All I could think about was what I’d found out at the library. Grandad rescuing Dad. Grandma’s grave, the missing letters all filled in.
“Have you all washed your hands?” asked Mum. She sounded tense. She slapped down the plates in front of us and started to cut Sophie’s meat into little bits.
At some point while we ate, were we going to get told about Grandad’s Big Move on Saturday? They’d have to say something soon, surely? Was that why Mum was so on edge?
When were they thinking of making their Little Family Announcement? I wondered. While we were tucking into our chops? Between the main course and pudding? Or with an after-dinner mint and a nice cup of tea?
Or was Grandad
going to be whisked away to avoid a scene? Here one minute, gone the next. Done and dusted.
“There are flood warnings across the county …”
“The river will be bursting its banks by tomorrow if this keeps up,” Dad muttered, picking up the salt.
“It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring,” chanted Sophie. “He went to bed, and bumped his head, and couldn’t get up in the morning!”
“Your father and I thought we could spend some time at the beach on Saturday morning,” Mum announced cheerfully. I stared at her. “Have a nice family picnic all together.”
All together one last time, you mean.
“Pic-nic! Pic-nic!” shrieked Sophie, dancing about.
Leonard snorted and looked at Mum like she was mad. Victoria ignored her totally and carried on reading.
I saw Mum elbow Dad.
“We’ve looked at the forecast,” he said loudly. “More heavy rain today and tomorrow, and then it’ll be clearing up.”
“What do you think, Alex?” Mum looked at me. There was a sort of pleading look in her eyes.
I shrugged and speared a green bean with my fork. I wasn’t going to say anything to help ease her guilt complex. I wished that they’d just come out and tell us if they were going to. Get it over with.
But if they didn’t say anything? I leaned over to put some butter on to Grandad’s potatoes. I willed him to sit down and start to eat. If only we could get through lunch without them saying anything. I could still have time to finish the scrapbook. I could still have time to change their minds.
If Leonard hadn’t grassed on me and Grandad by now, maybe he never would.
Eat! I shouted in my head. Take a bite, for God’s sake!
Grandad came away from the window and stood over the kettle. “Who wants tea?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” chorused Mum and Dad.