Secrets and Shadows (2 page)

U
ncle Freddie wasn’t funny, but unfortunately he thought he was. He was sitting at the breakfast table and imitating Mr Churchill, the British Prime Minister. Grace wanted to tell him that he didn’t sound a bit like the English leader, whom she had often seen on the Movietone News at the cinema. She bit her tongue. Ma had warned her not to complain about anything. Ma said that guests had to adapt to their hosts, not the other way round, and that they must be good house guests while they were staying with Granddad and his son, Uncle Freddie.

Grace loved Granddad, who was soft-spoken and kind. Even Uncle Freddie wasn’t too bad when he acted like the electrician that he was, instead of trying to be a comedian. To Grace’s relief he ended his impersonation of Mr Churchill, acknowledged their polite laughter, and returned to his breakfast porridge, slurping it slightly in a way that Grace found annoying.

‘More tea, anyone?’ said Ma.

‘Thanks, Nancy, don’t mind if I do,’ said Granddad.

‘Freddie?’

‘Sure a bird never flew on one wing, what?’ said Freddie, holding out his teacup for Ma to pour.

‘You might as well have a hot sup too, love,’ said Ma, and Grace nodded in agreement.

Like most twelve-year-olds she wasn’t particularly keen on tea, but because of the war it was rationed, so adults hated wasting it once a pot had been made.

They all drank up, and Grace thought how strange it was to be staying here. A week ago she had been living contentedly with Ma in their cottage. She wished that they could return there right this minute. But Ma had always taught her to be positive, so she stopped thinking about how they had been left homeless and tried to feel grateful for the roof over their heads.

‘Did I tell you I got three ounces of tobacco last night?’ said Uncle Freddie proudly, like this was a big achievement.

‘Really?’ answered Ma politely.

‘Leave it to Freddie, what?!’ her uncle continued, happily praising himself.

Great
, thought Grace,
now he’ll be smoking his smelly pipe even more.

‘How did you manage that?’ asked Granddad.

Granddad wasn’t a pipe smoker himself, but Grace had noticed that adults were usually intrigued when someone managed to get
extra supplies of the things that were scarce because of the war.

‘Oh now…’ said Freddie, as though he were some kind of man of mystery. Then he couldn’t resist boasting and he looked at Grace and winked. ‘You scratch my back,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.’

‘Right…’

Freddie turned to the others now, like a magician revealing a very clever trick.

‘Didn’t I wire the tobacconist’s house last year, and did him a few extra sockets. So I dropped into his shop last night and told him I was gummin’ for a smoke.’

‘Very subtle, Freddie,’ said Granddad with a grin.

‘Subtle gets you nowhere.
Ask and you shall receive
– amn’t I right, Nancy?’

‘I’m sure you are,’ said Ma agreeably.

Maybe I could ask him to stop slurping his porridge,
thought Grace –
though I know what I’d receive if I did!

‘What’s the joke?’ said Freddie.

Grace realised that she must have been smiling to herself. Freddie looked at her enquiringly, and she tried not to panic.

‘Eh…just…just thinking about a Mutt and Jeff cartoon,’ she answered. Mutt and Jeff were cartoon characters in the
Evening Herald
newspaper, and they were the first thing that came into her head.

‘Ah yeah, those lads would make a cat laugh, right enough,’ said
Freddie, and Grace felt relieved that he accepted her answer.

‘Talking about cats,’ said Freddie, ‘Did I tell you about the aul’ wan with the cats in Terenure?’

‘You did, yeah,’ said Granddad.

‘I didn’t tell you though, Nancy, did I?’

‘No,’ answered Ma, and Grace could see that even someone as good natured as Ma had to make an effort to seem eager for one of Freddie’s tales this early in the morning. ‘What was that, Freddie?’ she asked gamely.

Freddie put down his bowl of porridge and leaned forward. ‘It’s a good one, if I say so myself…’

Freddie began telling a long-winded story, and Grace followed Ma’s example, trying for an interested look on her face. Inside she felt differently.
Why do we have to be here?
, she thought, as she wished, with all her heart, that she was back home where she belonged.

Barry was worried. The class bully, Shay McGrath, had been picking on him during the three weeks that he had been attending his new school in Ireland. Going in the entrance gate a moment ago McGrath had suddenly pushed him for no reason, and Barry feared that today would be a bad day.

It had started off discouragingly when he saw the headline of the newspaper that was delivered to his grandma’s house each morning. The paper said that the Greek island of Crete had just
fallen to the Nazis, and Barry wondered how the Germans could be stopped as they swept across Europe. What hope was there of his Uncle George being set free from the prisoner of war camp where he was held, unless the Nazis were defeated? And Barry knew that his own father wouldn’t get to come home from the Royal Navy unless the Allies won the war and defeated Adolf Hitler.

It was now over eight months since Dad had been home on leave. It seemed like ages ago, and Barry wished they could be together again. He missed the funny songs that Dad sang to make him laugh, and going to football matches together at Anfield, and just having him around the house. But his father’s ship was still in action somewhere in the Mediterranean and there was no telling when they would see each other.

Barry missed his mother too, even though it was only three and a half weeks since she had sent him off to Dublin. After the night when they had brought the old woman to the underground shelter Mum had insisted that for safety’s sake he go and stay with his grandma in neutral Ireland. That night in Liverpool had been the worst of the war, and the devastation in the city centre the next day was horrific. Lewis’s, the famous department store, had taken a direct hit and was gutted, and a ship loaded with a cargo of bombs had exploded in Huskisson Dock, causing such a colossal blast that the two-ton ship’s anchor block landed outside Bootle Hospital, a mile and a half away.

During a week of attacks over six hundred bombers had pounded the city, devastated the docks and wrecked the Custom
House, the Liverpool Museum, and many other local landmarks. Thousands of people had been killed and injured, with even more left homeless. But although the raids had been frightening, Barry still hadn’t wanted to leave his friends behind.

Mum couldn’t be talked out of it, though, and she had bought the ferry ticket and made all the arrangements. Barry had then argued that if Liverpool was that dangerous, she should come to Dublin too. But Mum was stubborn. She worked in a factory manufacturing aeroplane engines for the Royal Air Force, and she explained that she couldn’t shirk her part in the fight against Hitler while Dad was risking his life at sea, and Uncle George was locked up in a prison camp.

He remembered her wiping away her tears and trying to keep a smile on her face as she waved him off on the ferry from Liverpool to Dublin. His Grandma Peg, Dad’s Irish mother, had gone out of her way to make him feel welcome in Ireland. And he liked Dublin, and had often stayed in his grandma’s house in Arbour Hill during the summer holidays. But living here was different. Taken away from his old school and his old friends, he was suddenly the new boy – and an easy target for jeering with his different background and English accent.

He walked into the school yard, the sky overcast, and he nodded to several boys from his class who were gathering for the Tuesday morning drill session with their Polish instructor, Mr Pawlek. Not all the boys in his class were mean to him, and Barry’s ability to tell jokes had broken the ice with some of his classmates. But he
understood how schoolyards worked, and if a bully like McGrath decided he didn’t like someone, then McGrath’s gang would go along with it – as would other boys who didn’t want to get on the wrong side of a bully.

On Barry’s first day in the school McGrath had loudly asked was it not enough to have the English coming over to Ireland for 700 years – without another one of them moving into sixth class. Barry had kept his voice reasonable and answered that thousands of Irish people had been glad to go to England, people like his own dad, who as a young man couldn’t find work in Ireland.

McGrath had sneered and said, ‘Fine. Let’s do a swap. Your aul’ fella can come back to Ireland – and you go back to England!’

Some of the other boys had laughed, but Barry had shrugged it off, not wanting to get into a fight with a bigger, intimidating character like McGrath. The annoying thing was that he would have happily gone back to Liverpool in the morning. But he had no choice; his mother had insisted that he had to stay in Dublin.

So here he was, three weeks into his time in Brunner – St Paul’s Boys’ School in Brunswick Street – with almost four weeks to go before the term ended. He crossed the school yard, the air heavy with the smell from the nearby soap factory. Today was the first school day since the weekend air raid on Dublin’s North Strand, and many of the boys were talking about how the Germans had bombed the city, despite Ireland being a neutral country.

‘Did you hear the explosions at the weekend?’ asked Charlie Dawson, a slight but perky boy who was friendly to Barry when
McGrath wasn’t around.

‘Yes,’ answered Barry, ‘they woke us up.’

‘I heard the army were firing up green, white and orange flares – so the pilot would know he was over Ireland.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s what they’re saying,’ said Charlie. ‘Didn’t work though, did it?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘My da went down there the next day. Said the damage was desperate – he never saw anything like it.’

He should have seen Liverpool, thought Barry, though he was careful not to say it. Although the attack by one aeroplane on Dublin was tiny compared to the massive raids on his hometown, it was still terrible for the people who had been killed and injured at the North Strand.

‘All right, boys, form a line!’ said McGrath as he approached. He said it in imitation of the foreign accent of Mr Pawlek, and the other boys laughed at McGrath’s mimicry.

Even though he didn’t want to antagonise the class bully, Barry couldn’t bring himself to join in. For one thing Mr Pawlek was fair-minded and popular – and he had been particularly welcoming to Barry as a new boy. There was also the fact that Barry too had a different accent to the rest of the boys, so he wouldn’t make fun of the drill teacher’s grammatically correct but accented English.

McGrath approached Barry, aware that he wasn’t laughing. ‘No sense of humour, Malone?’

Barry wasn’t going to apologise for not going along with the joke, but neither did he want to provoke the bigger boy, so he said nothing.

‘Anyone ever tell you that?’ persisted McGrath.

Still Barry refused to be drawn, and now McGrath sneered and mimicked his Liverpool accent.

‘Anyone ever tell you there’s something wrong with the talking part of your brain?’ he said.

‘Anyone ever tell you you’re a pain?’ snapped Barry, unable to take any more goading.

Several of the other boys looked surprised, and Charlie Dawson said ‘That even rhymes!’

‘Yeah we get it, Dawson,’ said McGrath, aggressively turning on him.

‘I’m…I’m only saying,’ answered Charlie.

‘Well, don’t say. And you, Malone,’ said McGrath, turning to Barry. ‘Think you’re smart, don’t you?’

Barry racked his brains for an answer that wouldn’t sound like giving in, but that also wouldn’t make things worse.

‘Everything all right, boys?’ said a voice, then Mr Pawlek casually stepped between them. He was muscularly built, with sandy brown hair and clear blue eyes, and he moved with the ease of a natural athlete.

‘Everything is fine, sir,’ said Barry with relief.

Mr Pawlek looked enquiringly at McGrath, who held his gaze briefly, then nodded.

‘Yeah, fine, sir,’ he said.

‘Right, put aside your bags and form a line,’ said the drill teacher.

Barry turned away from McGrath without another word and placed his schoolbag against the wall. This time he had been saved by Mr Pawlek, and with luck the incident might blow over. But he sensed that his smart answer had made McGrath more of an enemy than ever, and he feared there would be trouble ahead.