Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 1) Page 11

  Because it was growing late, Mrs. Devenish decided to walk Alex and Hannah home. Alex happily chatted with Mrs. Devenish about the plants they passed on the way into town. She assumed that he didn’t recognize them because he was a city child. Hannah, still embarrassed to be in the woman’s company, trailed behind.

  As they arrived outside the Archers’ house, Mrs. Devenish said, “You know, I have an idea. My granddaughter is having a birthday party on Tuesday. Why don’t you two come along with Eric and me? It’s really not far, but I thought I might give my car a run to keep her working, and it’s a better excuse for using my petrol ration if there are four of us. I’m sure neither Verity nor her mother would mind my bringing you along. In fact, I rather think Verity and you, Hannah, would find you have a great deal in common. And Alexander, you simply must see the monkey puzzle tree in my daughter’s garden. It’s a real treat.”

  “Dinosaur food!” exclaimed Alex in delight. “Dinosaurs used to eat them,” he explained to an uninterested Hannah.

  When they knocked, Mrs. Archer opened the door and smiled at the children. But when she looked at Mrs. Devenish, her smile faltered. Mrs. Devenish stepped forward and offered a handshake.

  “Elizabeth Devenish,” she said.

  “Margaret Archer,” said Mrs. Archer primly. “Thank you for having them, and bringing them home. I hope they didn’t make a nuisance of themselves. Say thank you, children.”

  As Alex and Hannah did so, she quickly began to usher them into the house. But Mrs. Devenish wasn’t finished. “Just one more question I must ask you, Mrs. Archer, if you don’t mind?”

  Hannah could see that Mrs. Archer looked flustered, even afraid, and that Mrs. Devenish was puzzled, and a little thrown by her reaction.

  “Would it…ah…Would it be convenient if I were to drive the children to my granddaughter’s birthday party on Tuesday? If they will come to me after school, we shall leave from my house… I say, are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Mrs. Archer seemed to recover herself. “Quite all right, thank you. And yes… Yes, that would be fine. Good night.”

  After she closed the door, Mrs. Archer ordered Alex and Hannah into the living room, and told them to sit down. She remained standing. “Children, I will allow you to go to the party, but I must insist that you not discuss Mr. Archer’s and my affairs with that woman.”

  Alex and Hannah, sitting together on the sofa, looked at each other, baffled.

  Mrs. Archer shifted uneasily on the spot, and spoke in a voice that was both anxious and angry. “I didn’t hear her name properly when she rang me on the telephone, but I certainly recognized her. You mustn’t be fooled by her grand manner. That woman is a terrible gossip, and anything she hears from you will be repeated all over Balesworth. If you accompany her, then I must ask that you inform me immediately if she says anything at all about Mr. Archer or myself. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Hannah determinedly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Me neither,” piped up Alex. “She was really nice to both of us, especially after what happened with the…”

  Hannah kicked Alex hard, and the sentence ended with an ouch and a whimper.

  Mrs. Archer’s face hardened. “Very well, then, let me be plain. Whatever it is that you get up to around the Devenish woman, you will not be party to any gossip. If I even suspect otherwise, I shall punish you both, and you will not be allowed any further contact with her.”

  That, Hannah thought, would be bad. Mrs. Devenish, however difficult she was, was their best chance yet for finding Brandon.

  “I understand,” Hannah said calmly, “and I’ll make sure Alex does, too.”

  When Mrs. Archer had left, Hannah turned to Alex and said. “Sorry about that last thing I said. It’s just, I wanted to shut her up. This situation we’re in is getting seriously weird. I think we better speed up our research on Brandon.”

  Just then, Mrs. Archer returned. “By the way, I’ve washed your uniforms, so you can wear them to school tomorrow.”

  “School?” said Hannah blankly.

  “Balesworth Primary for Alexander, and it’ll be Balesworth Girls’ High for you.”

  As soon as she had left, the two kids looked at each other and grimaced.

  “Man, I forgot about that,” Hannah grumbled.

  Brandon was quite enjoying the hospital, even though sharing a ward with twenty other men and boys had its downside, as did struggling to eat the food, which was mostly mystery meat stews and boiled potatoes with cabbage. He read and re-read his history book, and chatted with the nurses, who doted on him. Not a bad way to spend his day, he thought. His stay certainly gave him time to absorb the atmosphere of the new year in which he had found himself.

  But suddenly, Brandon’s unusual vacation came to a rude ending, when a nurse abruptly dumped a suitcase on the end of his bed.

  “Your belongings, George,” she said. “Sister said you can put your clothes on. You’re being discharged. We can’t have malingerers like you taking beds from our brave soldiers now, can we?”

  Brandon opened the case. Inside were his 1915 clothes, and an envelope that read, “Open this NOW.” The envelope contained coins and a note: “Don’t forget to take the history book with you!” He immediately dropped the book into the case, and began to dress.

  On his way out of the hospital, Brandon passed another ward, and casually glanced in. What he saw shocked him. The room was full of men with bandaged eyes and missing limbs. One man seemed to have lost all but one leg. Some of the injured soldiers were playing cards, some reading, but most were lying in bed, staring into space.

  Catching sight of Brandon, a nurse marched right up to him. “Stop staring,” she hissed. “They’re just back from the Front, and the last thing they need is people gawping at them. Now be off with you.”

  Brandon didn’t need telling twice. He hurried down the hall, and through the swinging wooden doors, which banged shut behind him.

  Brandon found himself on a busy street. The steady clopping of horses’ hooves and the heavy fall of footsteps filled his ears, along with the shouts of street vendors, and the occasional putt-putt of a car engine. He reached in his pocket for money, and felt a card, which he pulled out.

  It was a postcard on which someone had written, “You are now George Clark.”

  “Good deal!” he said aloud. He had dreaded being asked to spell Braithwaite, and it was nice to have at least one of his real names back again. But what did his new name mean? He looked again, and there was an address, too: “Go to 57, High Street, Balesworth, Herts.,” he read aloud.

  Now that, he thought, is very interesting. He asked a passing man in a bowler hat to direct him to the nearest Tube station.

  Chapter 8

  Meetings and Messages

  As they walked home from their first day at school, Hannah asked Alex, “How was it?”

  “Not bad,” he said. “Kind of strict. But our teacher is pretty nice. At least we had no stupid worksheets or textbooks. We got to go into town, and sketch an old pub, and we learned a song, and I got to write a story.”

  “What did you write about?” she asked, curious.

  “The future,” he said. “I wrote about computer games, cell phones, iPods. Stuff like that. My teacher liked it. She said it was very imaginative, and she read it to the class.”

  “You’re lucky,” grimaced Hannah. “My school is all girls, and all the teachers are women, too, but I haven’t met any nice ones. They have a million rules, and they yell at you every time you break one. Like, you have to walk on the left in the hall, and you aren’t allowed to move in class.”

  “Like walk around? Come on, Hannah, we weren’t even allowed to do that in our school at home.”

  “No,” said Hannah, “I mean move a muscle. My math teacher was totally mean. She kept on telling me to stop fidgeting, like it was a big deal because I was playing with these stupid things.” She tugged at on
e of her braids, which Mrs. Archer had helped her to plait that morning.

  “Did you tell her it wasn’t a big deal?” Alex asked.

  Hannah stopped short and narrowed her eyes at her brother. “Do I look like I have a death wish? She made one girl cry just because she forgot to bring her homework, and she told me the only reason she didn’t send me to the headmistress for looking at her the wrong way was that I’m a ‘new girl.’ One of the others told me that she once picked a girl up by her hair. Listen, I’m just keeping my head down until we get out of here. The good news is it’s totally overcrowded, because they have another girls’ school from London billeted there. So we’re going to have to take turns using the building. Starting tomorrow, I only have to go to school in the morning.”

  “Sweet,” said Alex. “Hey, did you find out anything about Brandon?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing. I talked to some of the girls, but nobody knew anything about a black kid. How about you?”

  “Same,” said Alex. “I guess we’re going to have to keep on at Mrs. Devenish to help us out.”

  “Great. My buddy,” said Hannah mirthlessly, kicking at a stone that got in her way on the road.

  “Oh, get over it, Hannah,” Alex shot back. “I don’t know why you can’t believe that she was cheesed off. I think she’s pretty cool.”

  “Shut up,” shouted Hannah, and she walked more quickly so she wouldn’t have to walk next to him.

  As Mrs. Devenish’s black Austin Seven car careened along the perilously narrow country lane on the short journey to her daughter’s house, Hannah enjoyed the luxury of sitting in the front seat. Still, she was a little alarmed at having no seatbelt, especially when Mrs. Devenish sped around blind corners along the single-track road, sounding her horn to warn any traffic that might be headed straight at them. Alex loved sitting in the back of the old car with Eric. He loved how the back doors opened backwards, and how the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and the fact that he didn’t have to wear a seatbelt, because there wasn’t one. He was entertained to hear Mrs. Devenish call the car “Maisy,” and refer to it as “she”, as if it were a person.

  A tall and cheerful girl with bobbed dark brown hair answered the door, dressed in her best white party dress with a sash around the waist.

  “Hallo, Granny, hallo, Eric. Hallo, who’s this?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Verity, do let us in, and then we can have proper introductions,” Mrs. Devenish grumbled as she barged through the door, thrusting an awkwardly-wrapped birthday present at her granddaughter, who took it with an excited cry.

  Just then, Mrs. Devenish’s daughter, a tall, elegant woman in her early thirties who looked like a younger version of her mother, came to greet them. Mrs. Devenish said simply, and very formally to the kids’ ears, “Good evening, Edwina.”

  “Hallo, Mother, hallo, Eric. And you must be the evacuees. Alexander and Hannah, isn’t it? I’m Verity’s mother, Mrs. Powell. Go through to the drawing room, children. We’re just starting a game of pass the parcel.”

  Alex paused, however, and said to Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Devenish, “Hey, I have a question, you guys. How come you don’t hug when you see each other? You’re family, right?”

  He heard Mrs. Powell exclaim disapprovingly, “What an extraordinary little boy…” just as Hannah dragged him off, growling, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, got it?” Alex opened his mouth to say that, no, he didn’t get it, but Hannah was already walking ahead of him.

  Verity introduced them to everyone. Hannah felt awkward and underdressed in her school uniform. Verity and the other girls were all in fancy dresses. The only boys at the party were Alex and Eric. Eric had suspected as much beforehand, and had griped in the car about having to go to a girls’ party, until Mrs. Devenish had silenced him with a look.

  But soon, all the children were happily playing a round of Pass the Parcel. Mrs. Powell provided the music on an old-fashioned record player, as the children sat in a circle, passing around a newspaper-wrapped package. Every time Mrs. Powell paused the music, whichever kid was holding the parcel could unwrap one layer of newspaper. Finally, Alex unwrapped the last layer, and found a home-made wooden toy car inside. Hannah was afraid he might blow it by comparing his prize unfavorably with the dozens of mass-produced cars he had at home, but fortunately, he was thrilled to be the winner.

  Afterward, Verity dashed up to Hannah with a friendly smile. “Hannah, Granny says that you’re even more of a pest than I am.”

  Hannah looked sour. “I’m guessing that’s her idea of a compliment, right?”

  Verity laughed sympathetically. “Oh, dear. I see you already know her quite well. I hope she’s not been too hard on you. She is a bit of a dragon, isn’t she?”

  Hannah immediately warmed to Verity, who continued, “Still, she does seem to have taken rather a shine to you two, so you can’t have blotted your copybooks too badly. You know, she doesn’t let on, but I think she quite likes the company of us young ‘uns. She nags Eric dreadfully, but she is quite dotty about him, and he’s virtually one of the family now. None of us had ever met a proper East Ender before. That’s the funny thing about this war, isn’t it? Class doesn’t matter quite so much, does it? I can’t believe I share so many experiences with Eric, considering the differences in our class backgrounds.”

  Hannah thought this was a bit patronizing, but she let it go. She very much wanted Verity as a friend and ally.

  “Class?” said Alex, who, along with Eric, had suddenly popped up next to the girls. “Like math class?”

  “No, silly,” laughed Verity, “Working-class people like Eric, because he comes from the East End of London, and middle-class people like you and me.

  “I say, you go to the grammar school, don’t you? I’m at St. Edward’s myself, it’s mostly a boarding school, but I’m a day girl, because Mummy wants me at home. Honestly, though, I think it would be more fun to board. Oh, before I forget, do tell me about this missing friend of yours. Granny says that he’s a Negro.”

  Hannah tried not to look shocked. What a thing to say, she thought, and then had to remind herself of Brandon’s advice to her, about doing as the Romans do when in Rome. “Well, yes, he is black,” she said hesitantly, “but that’s not the most important thing about him.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s not,” said Verity, hurriedly. “I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’ve never met a colored person.”

  Eric said, “Come on then, give us the whole story about this mate of yours. From the beginning.”

  Verity looked sideways at Eric. “Don’t mind Eric. He spends far too much time at the pictures, watching American detective films. He fancies himself as Humphrey Bogart.”

  “Shut your face, birthday girl,” said Eric, elbowing Verity in the ribs.

  “Our friend’s name is Br…Braithwaite. George Braithwaite,” said Hannah. “He ran off, so he could be anywhere. Your Grandma says she’s going to talk with the billeting officer, but she hasn’t got ahold of him yet. Anything you guys hear, could you let us know?”

  “Well, there’s always the Ghost Evacuee,” Eric laughed.

  “Oh, that,” said Verity, rolling her eyes. To Hannah she said, “It’s a stupid tale that somebody made up to scare the evacuees. The story goes that when some boy was evacuated to Balesworth last year, an evil couple threw him into a dungeon in their house, and that they still keep him there in chains.”

  “Just a story, you reckon?” said Eric. “Fink again. My mate Fred says he heard him crying one day, when he was walking to school.”

  “Your mate Fred,” said Verity coolly, “is an absolute idiot.”

  “It’s an urban legend,” said Hannah. The others looked confused, so she explained. “That means it’s a story that people swear is true, but nobody ever knows it first-hand.”

  “Fred says he does,” said Eric, stubbornly.

  “Oh, shut up, Eric,” said Verity, hitting him on the arm.

  “Well, I gotta a
dmit, that doesn’t sound like much of a lead,” Hannah said.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Verity, “Let’s ask everyone we can if they have seen a colored boy, and we’ll see what we come up with. And meanwhile, I’ll see if I can’t persuade Granny to get a move on with her enquiries. She can’t refuse. It is my birthday, after all.”

  Brandon stepped from the train at Balesworth, and was surprised to see how little the station had changed from 1940. But walking into town was a strangely disorienting experience. Balesworth in 1915 was even more sleepy than it would be a quarter-century in the future. Brandon distinctly remembered a row of houses in 1940 that had apparently not yet been built in 1915, and the auto mechanic’s shop was now a blacksmith’s shop that also sold bicycles. A few stores certainly looked smarter than they would during World War II: They boasted gleaming paint and elaborate displays of goods in the windows. The pubs were unchanged, but when he walked to the Tudor Tea Rooms in search of a snack, he found that it was not yet a café. It was two separate adjoined cottages in which families lived.

  Brandon noticed that people stared hard at him, more than in London, and even more than in Balesworth in 1940. But then he remembered from the book he had read at the hospital that black people were more unusual in England in 1915 than they would be later. As Brandon stood on the sidewalk, a horse and cart rumbled by, carrying great churns of milk, and a delivery boy on a bicycle rattled past him, headed in the opposite direction on the road. Looking at the boy, Brandon thought to himself of the mysterious George Braithwaite. It was time, he decided, to check out the address on the postcard in his pocket.