Stay Where You Are and Then Leave Read online

  * * *

  Alfie hadn’t seen the Janáčeks since the spring of 1915. By then the newspapers were talking about the war all the time, and a lot of the men from Damley Road, including Alfie’s dad, Georgie, were either training to be soldiers or were already fighting in Belgium or northern France. Some were too young yet but kept saying that they would sign up the minute they turned eighteen. Others were keeping their heads down and not talking about it at all because they didn’t want to go.

  Even Leonard Hopkins from number two, who everyone knew had a shoeshine stand at King’s Cross and almost never went to school, spending every penny he earned on girls and hair tonic, had signed up, and he had only just turned sixteen.

  “They didn’t ask any questions, that’s what I heard,” Granny Summerfield confided in Margie while Alfie was having his supper one evening. “But then, those recruiting sergeants don’t care, do they? They’ll take any lamb to the slaughter. Leonard hasn’t even started shaving yet. It’s a disgrace, if you ask me.”

  And then there was Joe Patience, the conchie from number sixteen—he wasn’t a conchie yet, of course—who said that the whole thing was nonsense: it was just about land and money and giving more to the rich and keeping the poor in their place, and he didn’t care what anyone said or did, he’d never lift a gun, he’d never wear a uniform, and he’d never wanted to see France anyway so he didn’t care if he never did.

  A lot of people got angry with Joe Patience, but back then, in 1915, they didn’t do anything more than shout at him when he started talking politics. It wasn’t until later that they did worse things.

  That February, the same day that Alfie got a letter from his dad telling him all about the training barracks at Aldershot, Margie called him into the kitchen where she was counting out change from her purse. Back then, she was still at home most of the time where she was knitting from morning till night, as were most of the women from Damley Road, and sending socks and jumpers over to the men at something she called “the Front.”

  “Run down to Mr. Janáček for me, will you, Alfie?” she asked. “I need a couple of apples, a bag of flour, and today’s newspaper. Make sure it’s the latest edition. There’ll be a penny left over for a few sweets.”

  Alfie’s face lit up as he grabbed the money and ran down the street to where Mr. Janáček was standing outside his shop, staring, trembling a little, his face pale. The windows had been smashed, there was glass everywhere on the road, and someone had scrawled three words in paint all over the front door: No Spies Here!

  “Who’s a spy?” asked Alfie, frowning. “And what happened to your windows? And do you have any apple drops in stock?”

  Mr. Janáček, who was always so friendly, stared down at him but didn’t smile. His shoes were as shiny as ever. “What do you need, Alfie?” he asked in a voice trembling with rage and fear.

  “A couple of apples, a bag of flour, and today’s newspaper. I’m supposed to make sure it’s the latest edition.”

  “You better go to the corner shop at Damley Park,” said Mr. Janáček. “I don’t think I’ll be open for business today. As you can see, my windows have all been broken.” My vindows have all been broken.

  “Who did this?” asked Alfie, feeling the soft crunch of the glass beneath his shoes.

  “I said go to Damley Park,” said Mr. Janáček, raising his voice a little. “I don’t have time for this right now.”

  Alfie sighed and turned away. He hated going to Mrs. Bessworth’s shop as she had a reputation for stealing children, baking them in pies, and eating them for her supper. (A friend of Alfie’s knew somebody whose cousin had a neighbor that this had happened to, so it was definitely true.)

  This wasn’t the last time that the shop windows were smashed, but every time it happened Mr. Janáček replaced them within a day or two. And then one evening, as Kalena was playing hopscotch on the street, the squares marked off in chalk on the pavement, and Alfie was sitting on the curb watching her, an army van appeared and pulled up outside number six; when Mr. Janáček opened the door they told him that he was to come with them immediately or there’d be trouble.

  “But I have done nothing wrong!” he protested.

  “You’re a German,” shouted Mrs. Milchin from number seven, whose two oldest boys had already been killed at Ypres and whose youngest son, Johnny, was about to turn eighteen. (No one had seen Johnny in weeks; the rumor was that Mrs. Milchin had sent him to her sister-in-law in the Outer Hebrides.)

  “But I’m not!” protested Mr. Janáček. “I am from Prague. You are aware of this!” You are avare of zis! “I have never even been to Germany!”

  Kalena ran to her father and he threw his arms around her. “You’re not taking us,” he shouted.

  “Come on now,” said the army men. “It’ll be easier for you if you come peacefully.”

  “That’s right, take him away. He’s a spy!” shouted Mrs. Milchin, and now Margie was out on the street too, looking aghast at what was taking place.

  “Leave him be,” she shouted, running down and jumping in between the Janáčeks and the soldiers. “He just told you that he’s not German, and anyway, he’s lived here for years. Kalena was born on this street. They’re no threat to anyone.”

  “Step aside, missus,” said the army man, signaling to one of his colleagues to open the back doors of the van.

  “You’re a traitor, Margie Summerfield!” cried Mrs. Milchin. “Cozying up to the enemy! You ought to be ashamed!”

  “But he hasn’t done anything! My husband’s a soldier,” she added, as if this would help.

  “Step aside, missus,” repeated the army man, “or you’ll be taken into custody too.”

  A lot of fighting happened then, and it took almost twenty minutes for the Janáčeks to be loaded into the van. They weren’t allowed to go back into their house or to take anything with them. Mr. Janáček pleaded to be permitted to take a picture of his wife, but he was told that they could take the clothes they were standing up in and nothing else. Kalena ran to Alfie’s mum and threw her arms around her, and one of the soldiers had to drag her away as the little girl screamed and wept. The last Alfie saw of them was Mr. Janáček weeping in the back of the van while Kalena stared out of the window behind her at Alfie, waving silently. She looked very brave, and Alfie knew there and then that she would become prime minister one day, and when she did, she would make sure that nothing like this ever happened again.

  Later that night, Margie explained what had happened. “Persons of special interest, that’s what they call them,” she told him. “Anyone German. Anyone Russian. Anyone from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, if I have it right. And that’s where the Janáčeks come from. Maybe it’s for the best.”

  “But it’s not fair,” said Alfie.

  “No, but they’ll be kept safe while the war is on. A few months on the Isle of Man, it’s not so bad when you think about it. Think of all the damage that has been done to their shop, after all. It was only a matter of time before those vandals turned their attentions to Mr. Janáček himself.”

  The house at number six had remained empty ever since. No one else came to live there and no one ever went inside. Until one day, when Margie was sitting in the front room counting the pennies from her purse and deciding whether she should pay the rent, the coal man, or the grocer that week—it couldn’t possibly be all three; it probably couldn’t even be two—Alfie had an idea.

  He ran out of the back door and made his way down the alley toward number six, jumped over the wall into the Janáčeks’ backyard, and broke the kitchen window with a stone he found near the door. Reaching in, he opened the latch and pulled it up, climbed inside and looked around, searching for the one thing that he thought might save his family from homelessness or starvation.

  He found it in the corner of the parlor, sitting on the floor next to a rocking chair.

  Mr. Janáček’s shoeshine box.

  When Alfie left, it was the only thing that he took wit
h him.

  CHAPTER 3

  KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING

  They said it would be over by Christmas, but four Christmases had already come and gone, a fifth was on the way, and the war showed no sign of coming to an end.

  Alfie was nine years old now, and six mornings a week, his mum shook him awake when she was leaving for work. He still got a shock when he opened his eyes to see her standing there in the half-light, the white dress uniform of a Queen’s Nurse gathered close around her neck and waist, the pleated cap settled neatly on her head as her tight blond curls peeped out from underneath.

  “Alfie,” she said, her face pale and tired from another night with so little sleep. “Alfie, wake up. It’s six o’clock.”

  He groaned and rolled over, pulling the scratchy blanket over his head even though it meant his feet would stick out the other end, and tried to go back to sleep. He’d asked Margie for a new blanket, a longer and heavier one, but she said they couldn’t afford one, that times were too tough now for unnecessary expenses. Alfie had been having a dream where he set sail for North Africa but his ship was destroyed in a storm. He’d managed to swim to a deserted island, where he was living off coconuts and fish and having any number of adventures. He always had this dream whenever he read Robinson Crusoe, and he was halfway through it again, for the fourth time. He’d stopped reading the night before just as Crusoe and Friday were watching the cannibals arrive in canoes with three prisoners ready for the pot. A big fight was about to break out; it was one of his favorite parts.

  “Alfie, I don’t have time for this,” said Margie. “Wake up. I can’t leave the house until you’re out of bed.”

  Her voice was unforgiving; one thing that Alfie noticed about the way his mother had changed over the last four years was how harsh she’d become. She never played with him anymore—she was always too tired for that. She didn’t read to him before bed; she couldn’t, as she had to be back in the hospital by eight o’clock for the night shift. She talked about money all the time, or the lack of it. And she shouted at him for no reason and then looked as if she wanted to burst into tears for losing her temper.

  “Alfie, please,” she said, pulling the sheets back so the cold got to him. “You have to get up. Can’t you just do this one thing for me?”

  He knew he didn’t have any choice, so he rolled over onto his back once again, opened his eyes, and gave a tremendous yawn and stretch before climbing slowly out of bed. Only when his feet were both planted on the floor did Margie stand up straight and nod, satisfied.

  “Finally,” she said. “Honestly, Alfie, I don’t know why we have to go through this every day. You’re nine years old now. A little cooperation is all I ask for. Now get some breakfast into you, have a wash, and go to school. I’ll be back around two o’clock, so I’ll cook us something nice for our supper. What do you fancy?”

  “Sausages, beans, and chips,” said Alfie.

  “Chance would be a fine thing,” said Margie, making a laughing sound that wasn’t really a laugh at all. (She didn’t laugh very much anymore. Not in the way she used to when she said she’d run off with the postman.) “Tripe and onions, I’m afraid. That’s all we can afford.”

  Alfie wondered why she asked what he fancied when it didn’t seem to matter what his answer was. Still, he felt pleased that she would already be home when he finished school. It was usually much later before she got back from work.

  “We’ll have a bit of tea together,” she said, softening slightly. “But I’m on a night shift again I’m afraid, so you’ll have to look after yourself this evening or you can pop over to Granny Summerfield’s if you like. You won’t get into any trouble, will you?”

  Alfie shook his head. He’d tried talking her out of night shifts before but he never had any luck; she got a quarter extra in her pay packet when she worked after eight o’clock at night, and that quarter, she told him, could be the difference between them keeping a roof over their heads and not. He knew better than to bother trying anymore. Margie stared at him for a moment, her hand reaching out and smoothing down his hair, and her expression changed a little. She didn’t seem angry now. It was as if she were remembering the way things used to be. She sat down on the bed next to him and put her arm around his shoulders, and he cuddled into her, closing his eyes, feeling sleep returning.

  After a moment he looked up and followed the direction of his mother’s eyes until he found himself staring at the framed portrait of his father, Georgie, that stood on the table next to his bed. He wasn’t wearing a soldier’s uniform in it; instead he was standing in the yard at the dairy with a very young Alfie sitting on his shoulders, a big smile spread across his face, and Mr. Asquith standing next to both of them, looking at the camera with an expression that suggested that this was an indignity he could do without. (Alfie always said that Mr. Asquith was a very proud horse.) He couldn’t remember when it had been taken, but it had been standing on the table by his bed since the day Georgie had left for Aldershot Barracks four years earlier. Granny Summerfield had put it there that same evening.

  “Oh, Alfie,” said Margie, kissing him on his head as she stood up and made her way toward the door. “I do my best for you. You know that, don’t you?”

  * * *

  After she left for work, Alfie went downstairs, ran outside for the scoop that sat behind the back door, and filled it with ashes from the base of the kitchen range. Then he ran down to the privy at the end of the garden as quickly as he could, trying not to feel the ice in the air or spill any of the precious cinders. He hated going there first thing in the morning, particularly now, in late October, when it was still so dark and the air was so frosty, but there was no way around it.

  It was freezing inside, seven different spiders and something that looked like an overfed beetle crawled over his feet as he sat there. He could hear the scurrying of rats behind the woodwork, and he groaned when he remembered that he’d forgotten the squares of yesterday’s newspaper that he meticulously cut up every night before going to bed—but fortunately Margie had taken them outside earlier, pinned a hole through their center, and hung them from a piece of string off the hook, so he didn’t need to go back indoors.

  When he had finished his business, he poured the ashes down the toilet and hoped that the compost heap around the back of the outhouse—the worst place he had ever seen in his entire life—would not get clogged up again. It had happened a few months before, and Margie had to pay the night-soil men two shillings to clear it all away; afterward, uncertain whether they would have enough money for the rent, she had sat down in the broken armchair in front of the fireplace and cried her eyes out, whispering Georgie’s name under her breath over and over again as if he might be able to come back and save them from possible eviction.

  Alfie ran back inside, washed his hands, and sat down at the kitchen table, where Margie had cut two slices of bread for him and left them on a plate next to a small scraping of butter and, to his astonishment, a tiny pot of jam with a muslin lid held in place by a piece of string. Alfie stared at it and blinked a couple of times. It had been months since he’d tasted jam. He picked it up and read the label. It was handwritten and contained only one word, written with a thick black pen.

  Gooseberry.

  Sometimes the parents of the soldiers in the hospital brought in a little something for the Queen’s Nurses, and when they did, it was usually a treat like this: something they’d made themselves from the fruit they grew in their gardens or allotments. That must have been where Margie had got it. Alfie wondered whether his mother had eaten some herself or whether she’d kept it specially for him. He stood up and went over to the sink, where his mother’s breakfast things were sitting, still unwashed, a small pool of cold brown tea sitting at the base of her mug. In the old days, before the war, Margie would never have left things like this; she would have rinsed them out and turned them upside down on the draining board for Georgie to dry later. He picked up the plate and examined it. There
were a few crumbs on the side and a trace of condensation from where the heat of the toast had clashed with the coldness of the porcelain. He looked at the knife. It was almost clean. He gave it a sniff. It didn’t smell of butter and there wasn’t a trace of jam on it. If she’d used any, it would have left a bit behind.

  She’d saved it all for him.

  Alfie filled the kettle, put it on the range, threw a few sticks on top of the still-red embers inside, and waited for the whistle before making himself a cup of tea. He always felt like a grown-up waiting for the leaves to brew. He didn’t much like the taste of it, but it made him feel important to sit at the table in the morning with a steaming mug and a slice of toast before him, the newspaper propped up against the milk jug. It was how Georgie had always done things. Before he went away.

  Charlie Slipton from number twenty-one didn’t deliver the papers anymore. He’d left for the war in 1917 and been killed a few months later. Alfie had written the name of the place where he died in his notebook but still couldn’t pronounce it correctly. Passchendaele. Now the papers were delivered by Charlie’s youngest brother, Jack, who had just turned ten and never spoke to anyone. Alfie had tried to make friends with him but eventually gave up when it became clear that he preferred to be left alone.

  Looking at the newspaper now made him think of that horrible day a year ago when they’d heard about Charlie’s death. It was a Sunday morning, so both he and Margie had been at home when there was a knock at the door. Margie, who had been baking bread, looked up in surprise, running the back of her hand against her forehead and leaving a white streak of flour behind. They didn’t have many callers. Granny Summerfield had her own key and usually came straight in without so much as a by-your-leave. Old Bill next door always did a sort of rat-a-tat-tat on the woodwork so they’d know it was him. And of course Mr. Janáček and Kalena had been taken away to the Isle of Man. Alfie didn’t like to think about what had happened to them there.