by Pete Johnson
He sprang up. He’d torn the letter into such tiny pieces that it looked like confetti. ‘Four rotten lines, that’s all he wrote to me. He said he hoped I was well and enjoying the wartime experience, and every word was so dead and cold, as if he was writing to someone he hardly knew.’
‘Is that from your dad?’ I asked softly.
He nodded and sniffed, all at the same time.
‘Well, you can’t tell me anything about dads,’ I began, and then I said, ‘But perhaps another better letter is on its way to you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Zac firmly. He got up. ‘I suppose I’d better put these bits in the bin.’ Tears were still pouring down his face.
‘No, I’ll do that, won’t take a second.’ I scooped them up. Then I asked, ‘But what about your mum? I bet she’ll write you a decent letter.’
His voice dipped, becoming so soft I could hardly hear him. ‘I’m afraid my mum passed away the week before Easter.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A New Home
Zac
MUM HAD BEEN away in London at a conference. Meanwhile Dad and I had been busy tidying up the house for her return. I’d helped him do some decorating too, and it looked really good. We couldn’t wait for Mum to see it.
But she never did, as on the way home her car was in a very bad accident.
It was horrible going into a house that should have had three people in it, but now it only had two. No wonder it seemed far too big for just Dad and me. In fact, it didn’t even seem to belong to us any more.
Then at the funeral this woman started whispering that she didn’t know how Dad would cope, as Mum had meant everything to him. Right away I rushed over to him. He was standing looking out of the window and I knew he was crying inside, which is the worst kind of crying really. I so badly wanted to say something to him.
But nothing I could think of seemed big enough somehow. Not that Dad could have heard me anyway. He was far away from everyone that afternoon.
And then Dad’s sister, Aunt Sara, invited us for Easter. We hadn’t seen much of her for years, even though she only lived a couple of miles away. But then she and Uncle Paul had split up, leaving her with the twins to bring up. And just before Mum died I’m pretty certain Dad lent Aunt Sara some money. But I don’t think he really liked her that much. He was helping her out of duty.
I’m certain she invited us round for Easter for the same reason – duty. And I couldn’t wait to go home again. Only we never did. Dad went on giving Aunt Sara money, so she was happy. And Dad was hardly there, because he went back to work almost right away, even taking on extra weekend work. Soon he was working longer hours than he had when Mum had been alive. While the weeks at Aunt Sara’s stretched into months, I thought: One day Dad will see how I hate every particle of every day here. My old dad would have spotted that right away. But he seemed to have vanished the day Mum died. And that four-line letter he’d just sent me showed he wasn’t coming back.
Not ever.
And my new dad just couldn’t be bothered with me. I was only a big nuisance to him now. In fact, if he could, I bet he’d like to pay Aunt Sara a bit more money and dump me on her permanently. Then he could go and start a brand-new life somewhere else and forget all about me.
After I’d torn up his apology of a note, Izzy insisted on putting the bits away in the bin. And when she came back she started asking me about my mum. I know Izzy was trying to be kind, but I really didn’t want to talk about Mum just then. So I told her I was going to see Farmer Benson.
He was outside and I asked him if there were any extra little chores he wanted doing. I often asked him that and he always looked pleased. ‘Now, what would I do without my star helper?’ he said. ‘You never stop working on a farm. There aren’t very exciting chores though, just helping me carry—’
‘I’ll do anything,’ I said eagerly.
And I worked away even more keenly than usual. Then we stopped for a tasteless cup of tea and I asked Farmer Benson if he had any children. He told me he’d got one daughter who’s at university and doing really well, but she had absolutely no interest in farming at all. Then he went on to say that I’ve worked so hard he doesn’t know how he’ll manage after I’ve gone.
And that’s when I had my dazzling brainwave.
Up to now, me staying on here had just been like a game of ‘Let’s pretend’. But now I saw how it actually could come true.
Dad wants rid of me, and Farmer Benson doesn’t know how he’ll manage without me. Well, he won’t have to any more. I’ll stay on here after the TV show is over.
And I bet Mrs Benson won’t mind either. In fact, only yesterday when she saw my clean plate she said I was an absolute pleasure to feed. Well, that pleasure lies ahead of her for years now.
It was a fantastic solution.
Especially as for months and months now I’d had the feeling that bad things just kept on happening to me. And I couldn’t do anything about them.
Now at last I could do something, starting with me living on this farm as a new evacuee. Not that I’d tell anyone just yet. But still, I knew all about it, so it was a bit like having a secret identity, like being Batman or someone.
I sailed off to the evacuees’ reunion, happier than I’d felt for months.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Reunion – and a Warning
Zac
TWO MINUTES TO four at the village hall.
The tables were laden with wartime food and tea urns, behind which sat women from the village, all dressed in the clothes their grandmothers would have worn. Flags streamed across the room, and wartime posters too, urging people to Dig for Victory and warning them that Careless Talk Cost Lives.
And Mr Wallack had just given us our briefing. ‘Remember, this afternoon is about celebrating the real-life evacuees. I shall walk amongst them, encouraging them to tell me their stories. As will Miss Weed and Farmer Benson. Your job is just to offer our guests food: nothing else. You are certainly not here to enjoy yourselves. There are about thirty guest evacuees expected, so on no account are you to touch the food. None of it is for you.’
Then he and Miss Weed gave us a masterclass on the correct way to hold a tray and address our guests. But for once I was hardly listening. I was too busy imagining those evacuees returning to the village hall they’d first walked into seventy years ago. And especially Victor and Dennis. I kept studying their pictures.
‘They’ll have changed a tiny bit, you know,’ said Leo.
‘Or maybe they won’t,’ said Barney. ‘Maybe they’ll look exactly as they did in 1939. Wouldn’t that be spooky?’
The doors opened and two people appeared: a woman in red tinted glasses and with two ribbons in her hair, and a bald man, leaning heavily on a stick. The woman announced to no one in particular, ‘I knew we’d be the first.’
‘Better than being late,’ said the man. ‘Being early shows respect.’
Leo whispered to me, ‘So is he Victor or Dennis?’
‘Don’t think so,’ I said firmly. ‘Well, he’s too small to be Victor, who’s over six feet.’
‘Old people shrink though,’ said Barney.
‘No, they don’t,’ cried Izzy.
‘Yes, they do,’ cried Barney. ‘It’s a known medical fact.’
Izzy cried, ‘So one morning they just wake up two inches shorter and find none of their trousers fit them any more?’
‘No, it happens very gradually,’ said Barney.
‘So if you’re very, very old you’re going to be a midget,’ said Izzy.
‘What about me?’ I cried. ‘I’m a midget already.’ They all laughed at that. Then Harriet rushed over to the couple with her tray of wartime food.
‘Trust her to get in first,’ murmured Izzy.
But a couple of minutes later Harriet sped over to me. ‘Now, that was incredible. That woman, Nora, said she hadn’t been back here since 1941 when she was called home. And her last memory is of being in this very hall, w
atching a Christmas panto of Pinocchio. She said that seeing us all dressed up took her right back. And she could remember again how much she missed her family and home. She said the pain was like a toothache that never went away. She missed them every single day.’
Harriet stopped. She was really moved by what Nora had told her. It was genuine, I could tell. And despite what the other evacuees said, I still liked her. In fact, I felt – although Leo would laugh if I said this aloud – that Harriet was looking out for me.
Then another evacuee strode in. He was wearing a sort of half-cape round his shoulders, had a heavy-jowled face and one of those voices which carried. Leo looked at me; I shook my head. He was tall, but he didn’t look at all how I’d imagined Victor.
Leo rushed over to him with a tray of food. He refused the Spam sandwiches: ‘I couldn’t stand Spam then – and certainly have no intention of eating it now.’ Then in answer to Leo’s question his voice rang across the room: ‘I lived above a sweet shop with some charming people – not amongst the world’s brightest, but they meant very well.’
Leo grinned at me and mouthed, ‘You’re right, he’s not Victor.’
Then the man who wasn’t Victor turned to Nora and the guy with the stick and proclaimed, ‘Well, here are two more people who aren’t dead yet then. Should I know you at all?’
Moments later another man came in quite shyly. He was tall and wearing a tweed jacket which looked quite old and probably didn’t fit him as well as it once did. He had blue eyes, a wispy grey moustache and quite thick white hair. And right then I knew, I just knew, this was Victor.
I charged over to him, the sandwiches on my tray jumping about excitedly. ‘Hello there,’ I said, and smiled eagerly at him.
He stared blankly at me for a moment, then inclined his face in my direction and cupped his ear. ‘Excuse me leaning towards you in this rather sinister fashion, but I’ve forgotten my hearing aid. Well, it keeps singing, you see, and I really don’t like that.’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘This is a television programme, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Strictly Evacuees,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘That explains why you’re done up like that.’ He sounded disapproving. ‘I suppose there are television cameras beaming down on us at this very moment.’ I nodded and he went on, ‘Too much surveillance today, cameras everywhere. Whatever happened to our right to privacy?’
He looked positively gloomy now. So to brighten things up I said, ‘Why don’t you kindly help yourself to a sandwich, Victor?’
His name just slipped out. But he heard that all right. ‘Now, how on earth do you know what my name is?’
‘Well, actually,’ I said, ‘I’m your successor.’
‘My what?’ he said, leaning towards me again. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to bellow.’
‘I’m one of the new evacuees.’
He still looked puzzled.
‘There are five of us staying at exactly the same farm as you did. That’s why I call us the new evacuees. And it’s a total honour to be following in your footsteps.’ Then I added, ‘I’ve been looking at some pictures of you actually.’
‘Of me?’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes. Would you care at all to see one?’
He smiled faintly. ‘I think I can stand the shock.’
Then I started searching through my pockets for the photo, which is not easy to do when you’re also balancing a tray of sandwiches. So Victor very kindly offered to hold the tray for me. I found it right away then.
‘Forgot my glasses too,’ he said, holding the picture up to the end of his nose. Then he just stared and stared at it. Finally he took a deep breath, like a diver who’d come up from the very bottom of the sea. ‘Now, my memory is awful these days, but you know, I really can remember every detail of when that picture was taken.’
‘That’s incredible,’ I said. ‘The other boy is called Dennis, isn’t he?’
‘That’s right, great chap – although he could be a little terror. Well, we both could and neither of us really understood what evacuation was all about at first. I even packed my bucket; I thought I was going to the seaside.’
I grinned.
Victor went on, ‘We were piled onto this train – thousands and thousands of us children – each given a green carrier bag containing our rations for forty-eight hours. There was a tin of meat, I remember, a bar of chocolate and two whole packets of biscuits. Then Dennis and I were billeted on the farm, scared out of our wits by the sight of cows at first. Well, we were both city boys. But we were spoiled to blazes on that farm. Had a glorious time until Dennis got called back; his father had died in action and his mum wanted him home.’
‘You must have missed him,’ I said.
‘I should say I did,’ replied Victor. ‘We wrote letters for a bit, but then we lost touch.’
‘That’s a shame,’ I said.
‘You’ve got to remember, it was much harder to keep in contact way back then. No emails or even phones for most of us. I’ve never forgotten him, though. In fact, he’s the only reason I’m here tonight. I’d give anything to clap eyes on him again.’
‘Well, he has certainly been invited,’ I said.
Victor beamed hopefully at me. And suddenly we were both so excited, and the war seemed incredibly close to me. I mean, it was there in the history books, impossibly far away. Yet it was here right in this room too. That was such a strange feeling.
‘I’ve so many questions . . .’ I began.
Suddenly a harsh, angry voice cut through our conversation. ‘Zac, what on earth are you doing?’ It was Mr Wallack, his voice positively shaking with fury. ‘How dare you ask one of our guests to hold the tray for you.’
I’d been so intent on what Victor was saying, I’d completely forgotten he was still holding the tray of sandwiches. I’d just stopped seeing it – and I think Victor had too.
‘I’m very sorry,’ I began, stepping forward to take the tray.
But then, to my total amazement, Victor yanked the tray away from me and thrust it at Mr Wallack. ‘How about if you make yourself useful and hand round some sandwiches for five minutes, while I carry on talking to this young man here? We were having a very interesting conversation actually, which unfortunately you’ve just interrupted.’
Mr Wallack’s face actually spun with shock. I don’t think anyone had ever spoken to him like that before in his life. But he didn’t say another word. Instead, he walked away, still holding the tray very gingerly, as if expecting it to explode at any second.
I watched all this open-mouthed. But Leo rushed over. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said to Victor, ‘but may I shake you by the hand as you’ve just made me very happy.’
Victor, grinning a little, shook hands with Leo. ‘Well, when I was a lad,’ he said, ‘I got so weary of being ordered about by teachers – and we had some right tartars too. I had to put up with it then – but not now.’
‘Good for you,’ grinned Leo.
Then I told Leo who Victor was, though Leo said he’d sort of guessed already. And Farmer Benson also came over. He said he was absolutely delighted to meet Victor. But when we asked about Dennis, Farmer Benson’s face darkened, and he said, ‘Let us all sit down over here,’ including me in the invitation – and pointed to some chairs by the long table of food.
The room was filling up now, but we were the only ones sitting down. And I had a feeling from Farmer Benson’s face that it wasn’t good news about Dennis.
And it wasn’t.
His wife had rung up to say that Dennis had died in 2003.
Victor sat very still for a few moments. ‘I should have tried to get in touch with him before – meant to, so many times.’ He blew his nose and then apologized for being ‘very silly’.
Farmer Benson said gently, ‘Dennis’s wife told me that he had often spoken of you, and very warmly. She’d love to speak to you, so if you’d care to give her a call . . .? I have her number here.’
‘Yes, I would,’ said Victor. ‘T
hank you.’ And then he added sadly, ‘Well, he’ll just have to go on living in my memory.’
For the rest of the time I didn’t hand round another sandwich. I spent all the time talking to Victor. It was a bit naughty of me really. But neither Mr Wallack nor Miss Weed came near us. Victor was just brimming with stories. And he was amazed by my knowledge of the Second World War.
Leo, overhearing all this as he whirled past, said, ‘Oh, Zac here would like to bypass the present and live in the war years, wouldn’t you?’
‘I certainly would,’ I said.
‘In fact, if there was a train taking people to 1939, Zac would be the first one aboard – and he’d never want to come back,’ said Leo.
As Leo went off again Victor said, ‘But surely you’d want to return to your family.’
‘Actually, I wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I’d much rather live here, in the war.’
‘Sounds to me as if you’re trying to escape from something,’ said Victor.
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘It’s just I don’t like my current life very much, so I’ve gone off and discovered a much better one here instead. So I’m a new evacuee, although not experiencing any of the awful hardships you had, of course.’
‘Actually,’ said Victor, ‘I’d say every age has its own special hardships for children. Today you all seem to take so many exams, which feels like a terrible burden to me. And why have children got to be assessed and graded every second of their lives anyway? Weighing a pig frequently doesn’t make it any fatter.’
‘Victor for Prime Minister,’ grinned Leo, who’d overheard the last bit. ‘I’d vote for you.’
‘And so would I,’ I cried.
As Victor was leaving, Farmer Benson rushed up and invited him round for tea on Wednesday.
‘Say yes,’ I urged.
Victor grinned and said, ‘Well, why not?’ Then he said how this had been a very sad day hearing about his old friend, but a happy one too, as he’d made a new friend.
And so had I.
The original evacuees were streaming out when one sneaked over to Leo and me. She said softly, ‘Are there cameras round here?’