Ghostscape
Page 5
“Aisha, you’re a great girl and I’m really grateful to you…”
I grabbed his hand and yanked it hard. “I’ve got to save you, Richard. You mean such a lot to me.”
He winced, then flexed his fingers gingerly as though I’d really hurt him.
“I’ll have a chat with my grandad cos I can see this is important to you. But to be honest, I doubt I’ll even be able to wake him. He can sleep through anything. Maybe in the morning things will look different.”
This was just not going as I’d planned. I was desperately thinking of a way to make him see sense when he raised his hand again and touched the side of my face.
“I’ll talk to him, Aisha. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
I reached out to him once more but I suddenly felt the weirdest sensation. We were drifting apart. I felt weightless, like a leaf on a river. I could see Richard standing before me, but he was getting smaller and smaller as though he was at the opening of a tunnel and I was falling backwards down it, slowly but steadily, like Alice down the rabbit hole on her way to Wonderland.
“Please save yourself!” I called back to him.
But my voice was just a tiny, wispy thing like the head of a dandelion when it’s turned to seed.
I tried to shout once more and felt something damp and cool press down on my forehead.
“I think she’s trying to talk,” said a voice I didn’t recognise.
I opened one eye. Everything was white: the sheets, the pillows, the curtain round the bed.
“You’ve been in a coma,” said my mother.
A PREMONITION
It didn’t take too long for me to get back on my feet, but I wasn’t allowed out of the hospital until I’d had about a million tests. My mum was with me all the time and for once that didn’t feel suffocating: it felt good. I thought about what Father Mackenzie, the priest, had said about fixing things with her and I could see it starting to happen already.
Mum told me that Jan the lollipop lady had visited me while I’d been unconscious. This was nice to know in one way, but really annoying in another. It seemed I was destined not to talk to her. Of course, I was still burning with questions about the bombing of the old school and I still had this weird feeling she would be able to tell me about Richard’s fate.
At last, I was well enough to go and visit her. My teacher Miss Brown, who’d been really concerned about me, had rung to fix everything.
I went round to Jan’s house on a wet, blustery day, not unlike the one when I’d had my accident. I took a bunch of flowers with me, lilies, which Miss Brown said were classy and which she loved to receive herself.
The house looked well cared for and the front gate, unlike most of the ones on the street wasn’t hanging off its hinges. I clicked it shut behind me and walked up the path. When I pressed the bell, it played a cheerful tune and within seconds Jan was at the door, all smiles and welcomes and blonde hair scraped back in a ponytail.
“Look who it is,” she said. “How’re you feeling now, darling?”
She showed me in to a small lounge with a TV in one corner and a table with a pretty red and white tablecloth by the door to the kitchen.
“These lilies are gorgeous. My favourite,” she confided as she disappeared into the kitchen in search of a vase.
I sat down on one of the chairs at the table and we chatted through the doorway about the accident and the blow to my head. I told her that I might have been killed if she hadn’t screamed at me to go back. She said it was best not to think about such things and to try and put them behind you. To tell the truth, I was feeling a bit awkward because I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. I just wanted to quiz her about the war and Trentham School.
Finally, she brought up the subject herself. “Miss Brown tells me you’re really interested in the history of the Blitz and that?” she said, placing the lilies on the table between us. Their scent was almost overpowering.
“I really am,” I said. “Specially the bombing of the school.”
Jan nodded. “A terrible tragedy. And it nearly meant that I was never born.”
“Why’s that?” I asked politely, but inside I was thinking, What could it possibly have to do with you?
“It’s quite a story,” she said, standing up again. “Do you want a drink? I was just making a tea for myself when you arrived. I’ve got a coke, or a juice if you like.”
I told her I was fine and listened impatiently to the clatter of the mug and the spoon, and the clunk of the fridge door as she busied herself in the kitchen. Finally the kettle whistled, she made her tea and came back in to the lounge frowning slightly.
“Now where was I?”
“You were saying the tragedy at the school nearly meant that you weren’t born.”
“Well,” she said. “My dad and his grandad were sheltering there because they’d been bombed out of their house. But my dad had a premonition that they should get out of there sharpish. They tried to get the other people to go too, but everyone thought they were mad. In the end the two of them were sleeping under an old railway arch when the bomb finally dropped on Trentham.”
“So they were OK? They survived?” My heart was pounding hard and I felt faint. I moved further away from the lilies and their sickly smell.
“Yeah, they survived. And like I say, if my dad had stayed I wouldn’t have been born.
She raised her eyebrows as though to say, Imagine that!
“What sort of a premonition was it?” I asked. “Did he ever say?”
She shook her head slowly and rolled her lower lip. “I don’t know. He was always very cagey about that. Partly I suppose because he felt guilty he’d been spared when so many others died.” She leaned across the table and grabbed a tissue from a box. “Are you alright, love?”
I was crying now. I could see she thought I must still be suffering from the accident. I blew my nose on the tissue she’d handed me.
‘D’you mind if I ask your dad’s name? It wasn’t Richard, was it?’
She looked stunned. “How d’you know that?”
Wiping the tears away I carried on. “And did he have a happy life after the war?”
“Yeah, I would say so.” Jan leant back in her chair. “But you don’t have to take my word for it. If you hang on a few minutes you can ask him yourself. He’s out walking the dog.”
***
The clock ticked loudly on the wall as though it was linked to some package that was about to blow up. Finally I heard claws scratching against the front door. Then I heard a key in the lock. The door creaked open and I could hear a man stamping his feet on the mat and talking sweetly to the dog as he took off its lead.
He entered the room and I knew at once that it was Richard. He still had those spaghetti curls piled up on his head and those smiling eyes. He actually looked a lot like his wild old grandad.
“Well, who have we got here then?” he asked.
“Dad,” Jan said. “I’d like you to meet Aisha.”
He looked quite shocked for a moment, but he composed himself quickly.
“Aisha,” he said, as though it was a name he’d known all his life. “Aisha from Somalia.”
ABOUT THE STORY
Many people ask me about the real events that inspired Ghostscape. They want to know if I’ve taught Somali girls like Aisha in the schools where I’ve worked, and if Richard is based on my dad, who was growing up in the East End of London during the Second World War. Most of all, they ask if there really was a school like Trentham, destroyed during The Blitz and later rebuilt. The answer is yes.
On the night of 10th September 1940 several hundred people, made homeless by the bombs, were taking shelter in an East London school called South Hallsville. The school suffered a direct hit and at least 73 people – most of them children – were killed. Locals believe many more died but were never found in the rubble. A later bombing raid killed my dad’s aunt and the four young cousins he played with, Patrick, Sheila, John and Roberta. Th
ese events have stayed with me, and they’ve made me remember that whenever there is war – in Britain, Somalia, wherever – children will be among the victims.
JOE LAYBURN has spent most of his life in East London. His dad thought it would be fantastic for Joe and his three brothers to grow up surrounded by the fresh air and green fields of the country but Joe missed London and moved back as soon as he could.
Joe was a TV reporter and journalist for 15 years before becoming a teacher. He has always loved writing stories. He based Aisha on the vibrant and fascinating Somali children he worked with in East London. Richard is based on Joe’s father who lived in the East End for much of the Second World War, despite his aunt and cousins being killed in a bombing raid in 1942.
Joe lives in East London with his wife Marianne and three sons, Richie, Charlie, and Hal. Joe and his sons are season-ticket holders at West Ham football club. This is his first novel.
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