Stay Where You Are and Then Leave (6 page)

Alfie Summerfield was the man of the house now, after all. And he had a living to earn.

 

CHAPTER 4

YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT YOU

The shoeshine box was made of dark-brown mahogany. It was twice as long as it was wide, with a gold-colored clasp to unlock the lid from the base that, when opened, revealed three compartments within.

The first contained two horsehair brushes—one black, one brown—with corrugated grips on the handles; the second revealed a set of four gray shining cloths and a pair of sponge daubers; the third held two tins of polish that had been almost full when Alfie found the box. Carved into the side was the word
Holzknecht
and an emblem that displayed an eagle soaring above a mountain, wild-eyed and dangerous. Secured to the underside of the lid was a footrest that could be taken out and attached to the top of the sealed box through a pair of thin grooves etched into the side. This was where a customer laid his foot when he was having his shoes shined.

When Alfie first brought the box back to his own bedroom, he had stared at it for a long time, running his fingers across the elegant woodwork and taking careful sniffs of the polish, which sent an irritating tickle up his nose. He had seen boxes like this before, of course, although none as beautifully designed and well cared for as Mr. Janá
č
ek's. A few days after signing up, his father had taken him to King's Cross—he'd said they were going there to look at the trains, but that wasn't the real reason—and Alfie had seen Leonard Hopkins from number two shining shoes in a corner by the ticket counter and charging a penny a shine. It seemed to take him a long time to finish each shoe, though, for every time a pretty girl walked by, Leonard's eyes followed her as if he had become hypnotized, and only when his customer tapped him on the head did he turn back again.

The last anyone had heard, Leonard was stationed just outside Bruges. He'd been in a field hospital for three months before being sent back on active duty. He wasn't even seventeen yet.

He'd mentioned Leonard's job to Mr. Janá
č
ek one evening, and Kalena's father had laughed and said that the problem with the English was that they always wanted someone else to serve them. The rich had their valets and footmen, their housekeepers and maids; the poor couldn't afford such luxuries so it made them feel good to have someone else shine their shoes for them instead. It gave them a sense of importance.

“But there are some things that we can all do for ourselves, Alfie,” Mr. Janá
č
ek had declared, lifting a shoe in one hand and a brush in the other. “And this, my young friend, is one of them.”

Carefully examining the shoeshine box, Alfie felt certain that it had been in Mr. Janá
č
ek's family for a long time, a family heirloom, and that he had brought it with him to London when he left Prague, for the best reason in the world: for love. Maybe he'd even used it himself to earn money before he'd opened his sweet shop. Or maybe he'd simply held on to it to shine his shoes. It was true that Mr. Janá
č
ek was always very well turned out; he was famous on Damley Road for his dapper appearance.

“It's his European blood,” Margie said to Mrs. Milchin and Mrs. Welton one afternoon when she was finishing some ironing for Mrs. Gawdley-Smith, who lived in one of the posh houses just off Henley Square and whose washing Margie had started to take in for tuppence a load. (“Every basket I get through, Alfie, is another meal on the table for us.”) “On the continent, men take pride in their appearance.”

“Oh, if I was twenty years younger and Fred was looking the other way,” said Mrs. Welton with a laugh, and Mrs. Milchin shook her head and pulled a face like she'd just drunk a mouthful of sour milk.

“I don't like to see a man so tidy,” she said. “If you ask me, that Mr. Janá
č
ek is not to be trusted.” But then, Mrs. Milchin had taken against him long ago on account of his accent. That was just who she was. She didn't like foreigners.

Alfie didn't like to think that he was stealing the shoeshine box; he preferred to think of it as borrowing. He knew that stealing was a bad thing—David Candlemas from number thirteen had nearly gone to jail for stealing coal from the shed at the back of the Scutworths' house, a scandal that had set Damley Road aflame for weeks—but he was sure that Mr. Janá
č
ek would approve of what he was doing, and he promised himself that he would return it when the war was over and Kalena and her father finally returned to number six.

If that day ever came.

*   *   *

Not long after this, Margie came home wearing a troubled expression on her face and told him that she had something important to say. They went into the parlor, where Alfie sat opposite her, his hands on his knees, leaning forward in expectation.

“Alfie,” she said, not looking directly at him but staring into the fireplace instead. She didn't say anything for a long time, but Alfie decided he wouldn't speak until she did. He was afraid of what she was going to tell him and could already feel the tears beginning to brew at the back of his eyes. “I have a bit of news for you,” she said finally.

“Is it good news?” asked Alfie.

“Well, it's not bad news,” she replied. “It's just news, that's all. Information.”

“Is it about Dad?”

She turned quickly and looked at him now, and their eyes met. It had been almost three years since Georgie had stepped into that same room in his soldier's uniform and Margie had run crying from the room and Granny Summerfield had declared that they were finished, they were all finished.

“It's not about your father,” said Margie, shaking her head. “Alfie, we've had this conversation before. He's on a secret mission for the government, I told you that. That's why he can't get in touch with us anymore. It's why he doesn't write and why we can't write to him.”

Dad's dead,
thought Alfie.

“I thought you understood all about that?” continued Margie, her voice rising a little as Alfie set his jaw and felt his teeth grinding against each other.
Dad's dead.
He closed his eyes, and in his head he heard the sound of a train pulling into a station, the noise of its engines drowning out everything that his mother was saying …
dead-Dad's-dead-Dad's-dead-Dad's-dead
 … Her lips were still moving; she was still talking, he knew she was, but he couldn't hear her. He was blocking out every sound and could only hear those two words repeated over and over in his head.

“Alfie, stop it!” cried Margie, pulling his hands away from his ears, and he opened his eyes now and swallowed hard. “What's the matter with you, anyway?”

“I was thinking about something, that's all.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Dad.”

Margie sighed. “Alfie, if you want to talk about your father, we can talk about your father. Is that what you want?”

“Tell me the truth about him.”

“I've told you the truth.”

“I'm not a baby,” insisted Alfie. “Tell me the truth.”

Margie hesitated; for a moment it looked as if she really
was
going to tell him the truth, but the sound of Mr. Asquith's hooves passing down Damley Road, his head turning automatically as he passed number twelve, pulled them both out of the moment and Alfie knew that there was no point in asking.

“Tell me your news, then,” he said at last.

Margie shook her head. “Oh, Alfie,” she said with a sigh. “I don't know that I have the energy now.”

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“I've got a job,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “At the hospital. I'm to be a Queen's Nurse.”

“What's that?” asked Alfie, frowning.

“You read the paper. I know you do,” she said, not knowing that Alfie only looked at the newspaper every day to read the numbers.

14278.

“There are so many soldiers coming back from the front with terrible injuries,” continued Margie. “And they need more nurses to look after them. I have to do my bit, Alfie. You can see that, can't you? I've always wanted to find something I might be good at. Maybe this is it. I think about your dad and—” She stopped speaking for a moment and bit her lip, then shook her head, changing tack. “I can be of use, Alfie. You understand that, don't you? The more people who are of use, the quicker the war will come to an end.”

“The war will
never
come to an end,” shouted Alfie, leaning forward in his seat now. “It's going to go on
forever.
”

“That's not true,” said Margie. “It has to end one day. Wars always do. The new ones can't start if the old ones don't end,” she added, smiling a little, but Alfie wasn't in the mood for jokes. “Anyway, I've been offered six weeks' training at the hospital and then a job after that—shift work unfortunately, so there'll be a few changes around here for a while. You're going to have look after yourself a bit more. You can do that, can't you? Granny Summerfield is only across the road anyway if you want to go over there.”

Alfie thought about it. He didn't much like the idea of looking after himself. He wanted things to be back the way they used to be, when Georgie and Margie were looking after him, and Granny Summerfield was always stopping by for a bit of a gossip, and Old Bill Hemperton next door would
rat-a-tat-tat
on the door and give Alfie a ha'penny to go and fetch his paper for him, and Kalena Janá
č
ek was still his best friend and not a person of special interest and hadn't been taken away for internment.

“We need the money, Alfie, that's the truth of it,” said Margie when he didn't say anything.

“But you're already taking in washing,” said Alfie.

“Don't remind me. I'll have to do all that in the middle of the day, between shifts.”

“And when will you sleep?”

“Oh, I'll sleep when I'm—” She stopped herself suddenly, her cheeks flushing scarlet. “I don't have any choice, Alfie. Times are tight, you know that.” She hesitated and raised her voice in exasperation. “We don't have any money, Alfie! We're barely getting by as it is. Granny Summerfield has said we can go and live with her, but I won't do that. This is our home, and while I have breath in my body I won't take it away from you when you've already lost so many other things. Anyway, how am I supposed to keep you in sweets if I don't work?” She smiled, hoping that he'd smile back.

“I don't need sweets,” said Alfie. “I can give them up. There aren't as many now anyway. Almost none of the shops stock them.”

“We need food,” she said then. “Alfie, we're perilously close to penury. Perilously close.”

Alfie opened his eyes wide. He had no idea what
perilously close to penury
meant, but it didn't sound good.

“If I go out to work, and take in Mrs. Gawdley-Smith's washing, and maybe take a few extra night shifts, then we can eat. If I don't, then we can't. It's as simple as that. Food doesn't grow on trees, you know.”

“It does actually,” said Alfie. “Some of it. The rest grows in the ground.”

Margie smiled and even laughed a little, which made Alfie happy. It had been a long time since he'd made his mother laugh. “Well, that's true,” she said. “But you know what I mean.”

In the end, they'd had a long talk about the hospital and the hours she would have to work, and Alfie promised that he wouldn't get into any trouble and that he'd go to school every day, which Margie said was a sign that he was growing up.

“You'll be a fine man one day, Alfie Summerfield,” she told him, kissing him on the top of his forehead. “Just like your father. He'd be proud of you if he were here with us now.”

But he wasn't with them, of course. He didn't write, he didn't send telegrams; he didn't come home on leave like Jack Tamorin from number twenty or Arthur Morris from number eighteen. Margie insisted that his dad's secret mission would bring the war to an end more quickly, but Alfie didn't believe a word of it.

He knew that his father was dead.

*   *   *

Alfie stole Mr. Janá
č
ek's shoeshine box for one reason only: so that he could go out to work like Leonard Hopkins had and help his mother out. She was doing her bit; it was time he did his bit too.

The next morning was a Wednesday so there was no need to go to school. (It wasn't reading or history that day, after all.) Alfie waited until Margie left for her first week's training at the hospital and then took the box out of the wardrobe, opened it to make sure that everything was still in place, had a wash, got dressed, ate some breakfast, and left the house.

Damley Road was only a short walk from King's Cross, and Alfie made his way along the familiar streets, switching the box from his right hand to his left whenever it grew too heavy. He felt like a man of the world, a working man just like his dad had once been, getting up early to ride the milk float. When he passed other working men on the street, he felt an urge to tip his cap to them, but didn't do so in case it made him look stupid.

As he stepped inside the station, he felt a great wave of emotion overtake him. The last time he'd been here—the
only
time he'd been here—was when Georgie had taken him a few days after he'd signed up. The station had been very busy then. Newspaper boys were everywhere—it was said that during July 1914, circulation increased sixfold as everyone wanted to find out what might happen to them next—and there were hundreds of people boarding and leaving the trains. The noise of the steam engines was deafening and the station itself was filled with a smog as bad as any of the London pea-soupers. Georgie wasn't wearing his soldier's uniform that day. It was hanging in his wardrobe at home. He hadn't put it on again since he'd stepped into the front parlor and surprised them all.