by Jim Eldridge
The receptionist made a telephone call, and soon a nurse and a porter appeared pushing a trolley. They were both wearing masks of white gauze. The porter took Ann from Doctor Campbell and put her on the trolley, while the nurse handed a mask to the doctor.
“I’ll see you in a moment, Joe,” said Doctor Campbell, putting on the mask.
As I watched Ann’s small, still body disappear into the lift and the doors clang shut, I felt a lump in my throat. Was this going to be the last time I saw my sister alive?
CHAPTER
19
I had been sitting in the infirmary’s waiting room for almost three hours when Mam arrived. I was surrounded by anxious relatives like me, all hoping for good news. A few strings of tinsel and a small Christmas tree in the corner did little to cheer up the room. Because this flu was such a dangerous strain, the usual visiting hours had been cancelled. No one was allowed near the patients except the hospital staff. Maybe it was to stop people bringing flu germs into the hospital from outside. Maybe it was to stop visitors getting infected.
Mam put her hand on my arm.
“Any news?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“No news is good news,” I said, trying to sound hopeful.
She didn’t look convinced by that, but then I didn’t feel convinced by it either.
“I’ll take over,” she said. “You go home and take care of your dad. Mrs Graham’s checking on him at the minute.”
“I’m happy to stay here,” I said.
“Go home,” she said. “Your dad wants to talk to you.”
“What about?” I asked.
“Go home and you’ll find out.”
I looked at her, wondering how to explain my feelings. I didn’t want to end up in another row with Dad, especially when he was so weak.
“Go home and talk to your dad,” Mam repeated, firmer this time.
When I got home, Dad was sitting up in bed. He looked pale, but definitely seemed better.
“How’s Ann?” he asked.
“They didn’t tell me anything,” I said. “Do you want me to make you a cup of tea?”
He jerked his thumb to the glass of water on the bedside table.
“This’ll do me for the moment.” He looked at me. “Are you just going to stand there?”
Here we go, I thought with a sinking heart. He’s going to have a go at me. I was determined not to answer him back and get into a row. Not today, at least. I sat down.
“I was wrong,” he said.
I felt bewildered. Had I heard him right?
“Wrong about what?” I asked.
“You,” he said. “I was angry about you going off to war like that. Worrying your mother senseless.”
“I went to help end the war. To get you home…” I started to protest.
He waved his hand to tell me to be quiet, and I shut up.
“I ain’t got that much breath,” he said. “I don’t want to use it up arguing. What’s done is done. What I wanted to say is, I was wrong about you. You always were a good boy, and now you’re a good man.”
He stopped, panting. When he’d got his breath back, he spoke again.
“I’m proud of you, Joe.”
It was the last thing I’d expected to hear. In all my life, Dad had never admitted to being in the wrong.
I got up and went over to him, putting my hand gently on his shoulder. This didn’t seem like the right time for shaking hands.
“I was wrong too,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t have gone off like I did. I didn’t mean to hurt you and Mam.”
He looked at me, then nodded. That speech, the longest I think I’d ever heard him say, had taken a lot out of him, but I saw the look in his eyes. For the first time since I’d got back, I saw love and affection there.
“I’d like to move back in,” I said. “I’d like to come home.”
He nodded again.
“I’m glad,” he said and closed his eyes.
I sat beside him, reading the newspaper by his bed and fetching water when he asked for it. It felt good to be in the same room with my dad, peaceful and quiet for the first time in ages.
A couple of hours later, we heard the front door open and shut, and then footsteps coming up the stairs.
“That’s your mam,” said Dad. He tried to sit up, but he fell back on his pillows.
Mam came into the room, and I felt my stomach drop. Her face was wet with tears. I knew at once that it was all over. Ann was dead.
Then, through her tears, she smiled.
“She’s all right,” she burst out, starting to cry properly. “Her temperature is going down! Our girl’s going to be all right!”
CHAPTER
20
Because people were still falling ill, the hospital needed every bed, so after two days we were asked to take Ann home to finish getting better. Next morning I went to work and told George Potts about my sister.
“Finally some good news,” said George. “Don’t worry about hanging around this afternoon, Joe. Go and help your family bring your sister back from hospital.”
“Thanks, George,” I said. “I promise I’ll be back at work tomorrow morning.”
“Not here, you won’t,” said George, chuckling.
“Why?” I asked.
“Have you forgotten what day tomorrow is?”
I looked at him, puzzled, and then it suddenly hit me.
“Christmas Day!” I burst out.
George grinned. “How could you forget something like that?”
What with all the rows with my dad, and then Ann getting ill, I hadn’t been thinking about Christmas at all. And somehow it had snuck up… Now it was tomorrow! I hadn’t got any presents for Mam or Dad or Tim or Ann. I hadn’t even got a card for them…
I’d arranged to meet Mam at the infirmary at one o’clock. She was already there, waiting for me when I arrived.
“They’re getting Ann dressed now,” she said. “Will you be able to carry her to the bus?”
“We’re not getting the bus,” I said. “We’ll get a taxi.”
Mam looked doubtful.
“Taxis cost money,” she said.
“I have a job now,” I told her. “We can afford it. We’re getting a taxi.”
When we got home I carried Ann up to her room and Mam made her comfortable in her bed. Dad and Tim followed us up the stairs, and we all made a fusssed over her and tucked her in..
“Do you want anything, love?” Mam asked. “A drink? Some soup?”
“A story,” said Ann, making us all laugh.
“Which one?” asked Mam.
“The one about the elves and the shoemaker.”
Mam took Ann’s book of fairy tales off the shelf and settled down to read. Dad, Tim and I went back downstairs, and Tim showed me the paper chains he’d been putting up around the house that afternoon under Dad’s direction.
“For Christmas!” he said.
“I meant to get a tree,” said Dad. “But then, the flu…”
“I’ll get one,” I said.
“There won’t be many left,” said Dad doubtfully.
“I’ll find one,” I promised.
I left Dad and Tim to carry on putting up decorations. We’d put up the same paper garlands, candles and cards on Christmas Eve every year since I could remember.
I put on my coat and scarf, and set off to find a tree. The paths were icy, and I had to be careful not to slip. There were no trees at the Jones’s farm, where we normally bought them, but I found a man with a few small trees in the town square. I agreed a price and handed over the money, before slinging it over my shoulder, wincing as the needles prickled my cheek.
There were a couple of Christmas market stalls in the square too, and I used the last of my wages to pick up a few small presents for my family. It wasn’t much, but it would be something for each of them to open tomorrow morning. Weighed down by the tree, with the presents tucked awkwardly in a paper bag under my arm, the walk hom
e wasn’t much fun. But when Tim opened the front door, the size of his grin let me know it had been worth the effort. Most of my wages had gone, but at least the money had been spent on a good cause – bringing happiness to our home. After the long stretch of trouble we’d all had, we needed something to feel cheerful about.
“Happy Christmas!” we all chorused, clinking our glasses together.
Me, Mam, Dad, Tim, Arthur, Mrs Graham and even Ann were all sat round our dining-room table, paper crowns on our heads.
Everyone had liked the presents I’d bought – a comic annual for Tim, a bear glove puppet for Ann, some knitting patterns for Mam and a book about trains for Dad. Mam and Dad gave me a new jumper, along with a pair of thick leather gloves, which would be brilliant for when I was working on the roads.
We’d had a delicious roast dinner followed by a wonderful Christmas pudding, and were all feeling happy and full.
“Walter, could you say a few words?” asked Mam. “A special toast for Christmas.”
We all turned to Dad, who sat looking uncertain for a moment.
“As you know, I don’t really do speeches, so I’ll keep it short. Let’s raise a glass to the war being over. And coming home.”
After we drank the toast, he turned to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. “And now you, Joe. Let’s have a toast from you.”
I stared at him, taken aback that he’d handed the honour over to me. I lifted my glass in the air. “To no more wars,” I said firmly.
Everyone raised their glasses too, and echoed my words.
“No more wars.”
HISTORICAL NOTE :
THE PEOPLE
Joe and his family are fictitious, but their experiences are based on historical accounts of people who experienced life in England, shortly after the World War One Armistice.
THE ARMISTICE
4th October 1918: The German government formally asked President Wilson of the USA for a ceasefire. Wilson put forward a fourteen-point peace programme, which the Germans were prepared to consider, but the British and French were unwilling to accept some of the proposals. When Wilson threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with Germany, the British and French agreed to talk terms.
4th November: The Battle of the Sambre (Belgium) was the last major attack of the Allied offensive on the Western Front. It involved the British First, Third and Fourth Divisions, and the French First Division. There were 10,000 German prisoners taken in one day. Along with the continuing US–French offensive at Meuse-Argonne in the south, this convinced the German Supreme Command that the war was lost, and they sought an armistice.
Despite this, some German units continued to mount a defence and the actual fighting continued in some areas.
5th November: Germany was informed of the Allies’ Supreme War Council’s agreement to an armistice based on the German acceptance of the terms of surrender.
7th November: The German delegation crossed the front line in five cars and were then escorted for ten hours across northern France to a railway train, arriving at the train in the morning of 8th November. This train took them to a railway siding in the Forest of Compeigne. There they boarded a private railway carriage owned by the French military leader, Marshal Foch, to discuss terms for the Armistice.
9th November: Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated the German throne and fled to Holland.
10th November: Armistice talks continued. The Germans were presented with the terms of surrender for them to sign. They were informed there would be no negotiations.
THOSE TAKING PART IN THE TALKS:
For the Allies:
Marshal Foch (French military commander); General Weygand (French military commander); First Sea Lord Wemyss (British navy officer); Deputy First Sea Lord Hope (British navy officer); Captain Marryat (British navy officer).
For Germany:
Matthias Erzberger (politician); Count Oberndorff (foreign minister); Major General Detlev von Winterfeldt (army officer); Captain Vanselow (navy officer).
The document was signed at 5 a.m. on 11th November, to take effect at 11 a.m. on that day (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month).
In many areas, the fighting continued up to the last moment. The last British fatality in action was a cavalryman from the Irish Lancers, shot by a sniper at Mons on 11th November.
In the immediate aftermath of the Armistice, peaceful evacuation of German-occupied territories on the Western Front was required within fourteen days. The Armistice initially ran for thirty-six days. It was formally renewed on a regular basis, with the proviso that German deviation from the terms could bring a resumption of hostilities at forty-eight hours notice.
This led to the Paris Peace Conference (18th January 1919), and finally to the Treaty of Versailles on 28th June 1919.
THE INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC OF 1918
The flu epidemic that started during the last year of the Great War, and continued afterwards, caused more deaths than the Great War itself.
The total number of deaths during the Great War (military and civilian, and those resulting from illnesses caused by the war) are estimated at 18 million.
It is estimated that the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919 killed between 50 and 80 million people (four per cent of the world’s population at that time).
It was called the Spanish flu, but it is now believed to have started in the Middle East battle zones during the spring of 1918, before spreading. In the days before antibiotics such as penicillin, flu could be fatal, especially for those with weakened respiratory systems. Sadly, many of the home cures people tried (such as vinegar) didn’t work.
This flu was particularly strong, and twenty per cent of the people who caught it died. Up to that time with a flu epidemic, the death rate was only 0.1 per cent. Many young and otherwise healthy people died from the flu, because they hadn’t had time to build up immunity to the virus, having not lived through previous flu epidemics.
ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH
by Wilfred Owen, 1917
What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now and for them, no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmer of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen was born in Shropshire in 1893. He taught in France from 1912, then joined the British Army in 1915. He was wounded on the Somme in 1916 and invalided back to Britain. He returned to France in 1918, and won the Military Cross for bravery. He was killed at the Battle of the Sambre just one week before the Armistice. He is considered one of the greatest war poets.
While this book is based on real characters and actual historical events, some situations and people are fictional, created by the author.
Scholastic Children’s Books,
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2018
This electronic edition published 2018
Text © Jim Eldridge, 2018
Cover artwork © Two Dots
eISBN 9781407193113
The right of Catherine Johnson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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