Kid Soldier

by Jennifer Maruno

  Once they got the all clear, Richard and Jack headed off to bed.

  The next day, the fog having barely lifted, Jack told Richard of his change in plans. “I think I’ll go to look up some of my relatives in Oxford,” he said. “You can come along if you want. Maybe we’ll get a Christmas dinner.”

  Long-lost relatives might be better than no family at all, Richard thought. He decided to try his own luck and head for Plumstead.

  “A twenty minute train ride,” he was told at Waterloo train station. “Just past Woolwich Arsenal.”

  Richard boarded a train. A Wren in her khaki uniform and snappy little hat, buying a ticket, made him think of Amy.

  Upon arrival in Plumstead, Richard headed for the police station.

  “Hello, soldier,” the policeman behind the desk greeted him. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m not sure if I’m on a wild goose chase,” Richard said with a shrug. “I might have some relatives in town. Do you know anyone by the name of William Fuller?”

  The desk sergeant leaned across the desk and looked him up and down.

  “Richard’s boy?” he asked. “I went to school with him, but heard he died.”

  Richard nodded, unable to speak for the lump in his throat. Meeting someone who had gone to school with his father made his dad somehow all the more real, all the more dead and all the more missed, all at once.

  “You’re looking for 18 Ceres Road,” the policeman said. “It’s just off High Street, behind the last church. It’s a good long walk.”

  —

  Richard pushed open the small gate of the low wooden fence at the end of the quiet cul-de-sac and followed the brick path that led to a dark green door. The lace curtains in the front window trembled in the lemon-coloured light of the late afternoon. Just as he was about to knock, the door flew open.

  “I’ve only just got in myself,” the pretty, plump woman said, putting her hand to her hair as if to tidy a fresh set. Richard noticed small grey hairs flecking the curly brown hair that framed her round smiling face. “Your Uncle William will be so happy to meet you. I expect the sergeant rang his factory as well,” she said. “He’ll leave work straight away. If we had known you were coming, we’d have met you at the train.”

  The pleasant woman took Richard by the arm into a tiny sitting room with a fire blazing behind a shiny black grate. Gleaming brass bells and china dogs stood along the dark mantelpiece. A massive roll-top desk filled most of the room. Newspaper clippings, accounts, bills, registration documents, and letters spilled across it. Beside it sat a basket filled with cloth pieces and a rag rug in process. The air in the house had a strong smell of cooked vegetables and furniture polish.

  “Sit, sit. I’m your Auntie Joyce. The police officer rang the rectory,” she said, arranging a pillow behind Richard’s back. “Everyone knows that’s where I am most mornings, being secretary of the parish council, but you can imagine my surprise when the minister came to say the police were on the line for me.” Her hands went to her heart. “My first thought was something had happened to William. We are all so jumpy these days what with the war on,” she explained. Then she gave a large smile and shook her head. “But why on earth am I telling a soldier there’s a war on?”

  So overwhelmed by the warm welcome and the news that he had an Aunt Joyce and an Uncle William, all Richard could do was sit and grin. He had no sooner felt the warmth of the fire when the front door banged open. Richard looked up to a much older, much more tired version of his father in a canvas work coat.

  “Eh lad,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “You do favour your dad.”

  Richard rose as the man strode towards him.

  The man placed a large calloused hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. Then he held it out for Richard to shake it. “I’m your Uncle Will,” he said. “I’ve still got the telegram your dad, God rest his soul, sent me the day you were born. I pictured you a bit younger, but here you are, right in front of me, old enough to serve the Commonwealth.” He slapped Richard on the back.

  “I told him we’d have met him at the train, if we’d known he was coming,” Joyce said. “He must have walked all over town.”

  “Soldiers are used to walking, aren’t you, lad?”

  Richard nodded, still unable to find his voice.

  “Not likely to get a chance to be one, myself,” his uncle said. He pulled a chair towards Richard and sat down. “I’ve got a ‘deferred’ occupation in the arsenal down the road.”

  “You’ll stay for your tea,” said Joyce.

  “He’ll be staying longer than that, I hope,” Will boomed. “How many days leave?”

  “Three left,” Richard replied.

  “Then take off your boots,” his uncle told him with a hearty laugh.

  Tea turned out to be much more than a cup from a pot. Joyce served him a small piece of fatty beef, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and a great slab of Yorkshire pudding covered with gravy. Will poured out a shot of whiskey and passed it across the table to him. Richard shook his head in refusal. Will shrugged, took it back, and downed it in one gulp.

  After eating, Richard and his uncle retired to the sitting room. From the kitchen came the rattle of cups and tinkle of glass. Will took out an old briar pipe and tattered tobacco pouch from his waistcoat pocket.

  “How’s your mother?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Richard said.

  “Is she still at the same address?” he asked, packing the pipe with tobacco.

  “Yes,” Richard said, hoping his statement to be true when he got back.

  “Never remarried?”

  “Nope,” Richard said.

  “Fifteen years is a long time to be alone,” William said as he reached for the twist of paper that lay across the mantle and held it against the glowing coals until it flamed.

  “Longer than that,” Richard mumbled, casting his eyes to the ground, hoping to keep up the pretense of his age.

  William lit his pipe and sank into one of the overstuffed armchairs. “Your mother certainly won my brother’s heart,” he said with a great sigh. “He was head over heels in love with her.”

  “Every girl was in love with Richard,” Aunt Joyce added as she rolled in a wooden cart set with a china teapot, matching cups, and a glass cake stand with a clear dome. Under it were three digestive biscuits.

  “Except for you,” Uncle Will teased.

  “Except for me,” she repeated as she looked at Richard. “Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t try to make them fall in love. They just couldn’t help it, when they looked into those merry blue eyes beneath that blonde hair.” She paused, smiled and said, “Eyes just like yours.”

  “Do you have a telephone at home?” Will asked.

  “No, we don’t,” Richard responded. He thought of Mrs. Black taking orders on the phone as they spoke. “Family up the street has one, though.”

  “Damn noisy things,” his Uncle Will said. “They go off at all hours in the factory office. You have to shout your head off to make yourself heard.”

  “Without it, we would have missed his visit,” Joyce said handing him a cup and saucer.

  “My brother’s son wouldn’t be the kind of lad that would have only called around once,” Will replied. “Isn’t that so,” he said, his eyes sparkling.

  “That’s right sir,” Richard said, taking his tea from his aunt. “Thanks.”

  A chunk of soot fell from the chimney into the flames with a thud.

  “That chimney needs sweeping,” Joyce announced. “I’ve no idea when it was done last, with all the young lads gone.”

  Richard put down his cup. “I’ll do it for you, Aunt Joyce,” he said. “Just put out the dustpan and broom in the morning.”

  Joyce smiled at him over the rim of the cup then turned to her husband. “On your way to the allotment tomorrow, find me a chimney sweep,” she said. She turned to Richard. “I’ve given you the first room on the left,” his aunt said, “and put a pair of w
ellies by the back door so you don’t have to put your boots back on when you pay your visit.”

  “Our smallest room in the house is in the back garden,” Uncle Will said with a wink, “for when you have to see a man about a dog.”

  —

  The tiny red brick outhouse had a strong box-type seat. A wooden toilet seat covered the large round hole in the centre. A few old magazines sat beside it and roll of paper stuck out from the nail on the wall across from it.

  Having no choice, Richard settled himself as best he could and gazed upward. A tin bath hung above his head, suspended by a ceiling rope. Two dining chairs hung from wooden pegs on the wall farther down. The third wooden peg suggested to Richard that the chair he sat on at the table had been there shortly before he arrived. He studied the outdated family portraits on the wall facing him, searching for a family resemblance.

  Chapter 15

  The Aunties

  “You take this,” Joyce said, handing Richard a wicker basket the next morning after a breakfast of porridge and tea. “William will empty the earth closet. We take everything down to the garden patch at our allotment.”

  Richard watched his uncle open a small door on the rear wall of the outhouse, pull out a tin bucket, and fasten it with a lid.

  “There’s not much to see in town,” his aunt told him. “You can stay here if you like.”

  “Don’t worry, Auntie Joyce,” Richard called back as they headed out the back gate, his uncle carrying the bucket. “It’ll be a lot more interesting than being in the barracks.”

  She smiled and waved her tea towel.

  Along the way, Richard’s uncle explained. “Every scrap of food goes down that hole, along with tea leaves, sweepings from the floor, lawn clippings, and soot.” Richard’s eyebrows shot up when he heard him say, “Your aunt even breaks the bones with a hammer.”

  Their first stop was the village shop. Will left the bucket on the step and pushed open the door. The small brass bell over the frame jingled.

  “Good morning, Will,” the shopkeeper said, “and you too, soldier.”

  Richard smiled at the stout man in the green-bibbed apron. His round face, beneath a head of thin blond hair, appeared flushed.

  “I heard you were Richard’s boy,” he said. “I always liked your dad. You know, he never had a bad word to say about anyone.” He turned to Will. “Anything in particular?”

  “We need a chimney sweep,” Will told the shopkeeper as Richard moved to a rack of assorted postcards. “Anyone left in town that can do it?”

  “Old Tom Shanks is your man,” the shopkeeper told him. “He’s out on his rounds just the now. When I see his missus, I’ll tell her you need an appointment.”

  “I’ll take this,” Richard said, placing the sepia postcard of Plumstead’s main street on the counter. He fished into his uniform pocket for some change.

  “Can’t sell you that I’m afraid,” the shopkeeper said.

  Richard looked at the man with a puzzled face.

  The shopkeeper picked it up and handed it to Richard. “But I can give it to you,” he said. “It’s the least I can do for a boy who came across the ocean to protect his father’s homeland.”

  “Thanks,” Richard said, placing the card in his inner pocket.

  “He really does favour his dad,” the shopkeeper said to Will as they headed for the door. “Do his aunties know that he is in town?”

  “They will,” his Uncle Will assured him. “Believe me, they will.”

  Will took him down the road toward a large country home, Richard taking his turn at carrying the pail. The ivy-covered stone mansion with a blue slate roof overlooked sweeping well-kept lawns. A formal front garden of interestingly shaped shrubs separated the house from the road.

  “Nice place,” Richard commented as they made their way to the back of the estate. To his surprise, the vast back lawn was nothing more than a small central patch of withered grass. The owner had divided his entire property into rectangular garden plots.

  Clumps of harvested parsnips and stalks of Brussels sprouts lay on top of Will’s rectangular patch of soil. He tossed a few vegetables into the basket.

  “Won’t they freeze like that?” Richard asked.

  “The frost sweetens them,” Uncle Will replied. “Everyone will pick up a few for their Christmas dinner.”

  “Who is everyone?” Richard asked.

  “Everyone in the allotment,” Uncle Will explained, as he emptied the contents of the covered pail into a small wooden box. “We all share.”

  “Are there chickens in there?” Richard asked, as he pointed to a small brick house surrounded by cement blocks.

  “We are when we go in,” Will said with a hearty laugh. “That’s the estate bomb shelter.”

  Richard looked up at the cold blue sky. He had forgotten about the Luftwaffe.

  Will pointed to one of the wooden sheds across the way. “One fella uses that to raise rabbits. We’ve eaten so many rabbits this year, every time a dog barks we run.”

  Richard grinned and sauntered over to have a look at the pens.

  “The owner lets everyone help themselves to windfalls,” William said, picking a few small apples from the ground around the bordering orchard. “This is a Cox’s Orange Pippin,” he said. “They don’t keep past December. Most people celebrate Christmas with an apple tart.”

  Our apples are so much bigger, Richard thought. Everything in Canada seems to be bigger than it is in England. Cars are bigger, milk bottles are bigger, even the robins are bigger. It made him wonder why Hitler was going to invade England instead of Canada.

  “Have you a garden at home?” Will asked.

  “Not really,” Richard said. He didn’t want to explain that their backyard held nothing but clothes lines. It would be a good place for a rabbit hutch, he thought. It wouldn’t take much to build one. There’s still wood from Mr. Black’s garage and it wouldn’t be hard to find an old piece of screening. They wouldn’t eat the rabbits though, Amy would have a fit.

  “We’ve got a cherry tree,” Richard said, continuing the conversation.

  “Good tasting?”

  “You bet,” Richard said. “Best Bings on the street.”

  —

  “We’re in the dining room,” Joyce called out on their return. “Have a good wash.”

  Joyce sat at the table with two women as thin as knitting needles in matching pink cardigans and pearl necklaces. Both had brown hair, pale complexions, and gold spectacles over brown eyes.

  One appeared as fussy as old hen, straightening the buttons of her sweater and adjusting the cuffs of her blouse.

  The black bobby pins on the sides of the other’s head gave her look of a little girl.

  “Hello Edith,” Will boomed out, extending his hand, “or is it Emily?”

  The woman smiled. “You are correct,” she said in a prim voice. “I am Edith.”

  Her twin peeked at Richard over the edge of the lace handkerchief she held to her nose.

  Will drew Richard forward. “Let me introduce you, lad,” he said. “This is your Aunt Edith and your Aunt Emily, on your mother’s side.”

  “That would make you my mother’s sisters,” Richard said, extending his hand to Edith. “I am pleased to meet you.”

  Edith shook his hand.

  Emily waved her fingers as her handkerchief inched up to her lower lashes.

  “Handsome, isn’t he?” Will said, giving Richard such a great slap on the back, he fell into his seat. “We’ve brought everyone parsnips and Brussels sprouts.”

  “Thank you,” Edith said, with a small upward nod of approval. She took a delicate sip from her china cup. “I suppose you expect us to invite you for Christmas dinner, Richard.”

  Before Richard could answer, Joyce passed him a plate of treacled bread. “I was thinking of having you and Emily here for dinner,” she said with a smile. “That way we could all enjoy his company. What do you think, Richard?”

  “Is there a re
staurant in town?” Richard asked.

  “Only one,” William said, “along with a few cafes. Why?”

  Richard reached into his pocket, pulled out the remainder of his five pounds and his ration card, and spread it all out in front of them. “Let me treat all of you to Christmas dinner,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t hear of it,” Joyce said, bringing her teacup down with a clunk. “Edith, bring along what you have and we’ll cobble it all together.”

  Emily lowered her handkerchief into her lap. She reached across the table and pushed the coins off of the pound notes. “There is the pantomime,” she said, turning to Edith.

  “My sister prefers to spend money on something frivolous like a pantomime or the cinema,” Edith said, with a roll of her eyes.

  Emily looked a Richard and blinked. “Edith would buy a book instead of a loaf of bread.”

  “Do you read, Richard?” Edith asked.

  He thought for a minute. “I read The Wizard of Oz.”

  Edith lifted her brows to her hairline and looked at her sister. Richard knew it was the signal for a poor excuse for a book.

  “A friend of mine gave it to me,” he added in defense.

  “Your mother wasn’t much of a reader,” Edith said, “but she was good at numbers.” She looked at Joyce and sniffed. “I can’t imagine spending my life with someone who didn’t read.”

  Richard’s Aunt Joyce fixed a smile to her face and put down her cup. “Did you find any windfalls for chutney?” she asked her husband.

  “Chutney,” Richard repeated. “What’s that?”

  “Chutney,” Edith stated, as if she were dictating a lesson, “is a relish made from fruit, spices, sugar, and vinegar.”

  “I love strawberry jam, especially on scones with clotted cream,” Emily said, tilting her head from one side to the other as she spoke. “It’s been so long since we’ve had clotted cream.”