Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 1) Page 6

  Brandon looked at Smedley, and then at the official, who, judging by the expression on his face, was uncomfortable. However, Brandon realized, he wasn’t showing any sign that he would overrule Smedley.

  Suddenly, Brandon’s legs made a decision for him. He sprang forward, straight between the two men, and hurtled through the door. Emerging onto the street, he looked about him quickly, then sprinted down the sidewalk to his right. Swearing under his breath, Smedley gave chase, but he slowed to a halt as he saw Brandon dashing down Church Lane, a narrow road behind the High Street.

  “Off you go then, Sunny Jim,” he muttered, panting. “But a colored boy won’t get far round here.” He smiled thinly to himself, lit a cigarette, and returned to the church hall.

  Alex and Hannah, sitting with their backs to the door in the busy hall, never saw any of this drama. They waited in silence, expecting Brandon’s return at any moment, as the clock ticked by.

  After about half an hour, a tall, grey-haired woman approached them. Hannah immediately thought to herself that the lady would probably look quite a bit younger if she wore makeup, dyed her hair, and got her wrinkles ironed out with Botox. Actually, a complete facelift wouldn’t hurt, and she might want to consider getting her teeth straightened and bleached, too…

  Like Miss Tatchell, this woman was wearing some kind of uniform, with a patch on her sleeve and a pin on her hat that both read WVS. Hannah thought that whatever WVS meant, this version of its uniform was much less frumpy than Miss Tatchell’s dress. It was a green skirt suit, with a burgundy shirt buttoned up to the throat. The woman’s brimmed grey-green hat was rather stylish, too.

  “Nice outfit,” Hannah said. “Who’s the designer?”

  The woman looked taken aback, and then mildly amused. “Mr. Norman Hartnell,” she said, “Her Majesty the Queen’s dressmaker. He designed this uniform for us. I trust that it meets with your approval?”

  “Way cool,” said Hannah admiringly. “Much cooler than that dress that other lady from your group was wearing. That kind of looked like a sack…”

  The woman’s expression instantly turned frosty. “That will do,” she said sharply. “It is extremely rude of you to criticize someone else’s appearance, and especially that of a grown-up. Now, come and have something to eat, both of you.”

  She escorted the kids to a long table, on which sat an enormous metal tea urn that was piping steam, and a large jug from which she poured them glasses of something that looked like punch, but which she called orange squash. She offered them sausage rolls, which seemed to be thin slivers of grey meat wrapped thickly in pie crust, and “currant buns”, which resembled small bread rolls studded with raisins. Hannah refused the food with a shake of her head. The WVS lady asked if she was unwell, but Hannah told her bluntly that she just didn’t want any.

  “Don’t be fussy,” the woman chided. “You’ll go hungry, and it’s not just a sin, but a crime to waste food. And where on earth are your manners, young woman?”

  “I’ll never be that hungry,” Hannah muttered to Alex as she sat down. The woman had insisted she take a glass of squash and a sausage roll, both of which she now passed off to her brother.

  He took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully. “It’s pretty good,” he said through a mouthful of crumbs. “Just kind of heavy. This crust would bounce if I tossed it at the wall.”

  “You can say that again,” said a thin blonde girl sitting behind them. Hannah and Alex turned around in their seats to look at her. “My mum says she reckons they’ve started putting sawdust in the pastry since the war started. Where are you two from, then?” she asked brightly.

  Before Hannah could shush him, Alex piped up, “California.”

  The girl looked puzzled.

  “In the United States,” Alex added helpfully.

  Now she looked dubious. “How come you don’t sound like they do in Hollywood films, then?”

  Alex and Hannah glanced at each other, then looked back at her. Hannah said quickly, “Oh, we only lived there for a short while. And we’ve been living in…in London for years.”

  “Whereabouts in London?”

  “Oh, nowhere you would know, I’m guessing.”

  But the girl said, “It says Cricklewood on your label. I know where that is.”

  Hannah changed the subject. “Is there a restroom in here somewhere?” The girl gestured to the back of the hall. Alex saw that Hannah looked surprised by her answer, but he couldn’t imagine why. As Hannah got up, she motioned to Alex to follow her.

  Once they were near the back of the hall, Hannah whispered urgently to her brother, “Did you notice? She doesn’t think we have American accents. And she understood when I said restroom.”

  “So?” asked Alex. “I don’t understand.”

  “Alex, the English don’t say the word restroom. That’s one thing I remember Mom telling me one time, when we used to watch all those British shows on PBS. They say toilet, or loo, or something. It’s like everything we say here is going through some kind of filter so they can understand us. Too bad it doesn’t work the other way, because I feel like they’re not even speaking English to us half the time.”

  “Hey, you know what I’ve noticed?” Alex said.

  “What?”

  “Everyone here is white except Brandon. I wonder if they can see that he’s black? And anyway, where the heck is Brandon?”

  At that moment, a large middle-aged woman in a hat and long coat with a folded umbrella, together with a heavily-built older man in a moustache, suit, and brimmed black homburg hat, carrying a raincoat still dripping with rain, paused in front of Alex and Hannah. “Are you two together?” the woman asked.

  Brandon, rain dripping through his hair, into his eyes, down his nose, and in a small trickle along his spine, watched the door of the parish hall from the corner of a row of shops across the street. He had been stationed there for an hour.

  Running off may have been a bad idea, he thought. He had realized that he stood out as probably the only black kid in town. And where was he going to go? He didn’t dare risk being separated from Hannah and Alex. He felt in his jacket pocket, and his fingers closed around his identity card. He pulled it out, and read it again. What had happened to the real George Braithwaite, he wondered? And why was he taking his place, if that was what was happening to him? Did George Braithwaite even exist?

  Brandon replaced the card in his damp jacket pocket, and returned to his vigil, monitoring the doorway of the church hall. For some time, a parade of adults had arrived at the hall on foot. After a short while, each left again with a kid or two in tow. But there was no sign of Alex and Hannah. Brandon knew, however, that they would eventually emerge, and then he could follow them home, because none of the adults seemed to have cars. Maybe, he thought in a burst of optimism, he could get their foster family to take him in, too.

  The latest adult arrivals, a stout couple, walked briskly into the hall, the man pulling off his raincoat, and the woman closing her umbrella.

  As they crossed the threshold, Smedley brushed past them on his way out. He paused, lit a cigarette, and tossed the match into the gutter. He crossed the street almost at a run, but he didn’t spot Brandon, who pressed himself against the wall to avoid being seen.

  After a few minutes, Brandon heard voices from the direction of the church hall, and he peered cautiously around the corner. The heavy couple he had spied earlier had returned outside, and the man was putting on his hat. They were trailed by Alex and Hannah, who were carrying their cases, and looking around desperately, as if searching for Brandon.

  As Brandon saw them all turn a corner and out of sight, he realized he would have to take a chance and follow. He poked his head out to check the coast was clear, and all he saw was an old man pushing an old bike up the street, an old dog with grey whiskers walking alongside him.

  Quickly, Brandon jogged down the street, in the direction of Alex and Hannah. He did not spot Smedley emerging from the newsagents’ shop with h
is cigarettes and newspaper, but Smedley immediately caught sight of him.

  “Oi, you!” he yelled. Brandon, startled, looked back, saw him, and immediately took off at a run. But this time, Smedley gave serious chase, and he moved much faster than Brandon would have expected from a man of his age. He was gaining on him.

  Desperately, Brandon ran down an alley, and, in the most amazing athletic feat of his life, jumped the first fence he saw into a back yard. He looked around frantically for somewhere to hide, but almost the whole garden was planted with vegetables. Just then, he caught sight of a small, steep grass-covered hill in the middle of the vegetable patch, and he dashed for it as fast as he had ever run. Rounding the front of the hill, he recognized it. “It’s an air raid shelter!” he gasped to himself as he saw the corrugated iron front. Immediately, he hurled himself through the small piece of sacking covering the entrance. Inside were two sets of bunkbeds, a tiny table, and little else. Silently, he climbed into an upper bunk, and prepared to wait out Smedley.

  Smedley had lost sight of Brandon, but he knew the boy could not have got far on a dead-end street, and this time, he was determined to catch him. He walked slowly up and down the lane. Spotting a woman wearing a headscarf and apron who was weeding her garden, he cleared his throat. She looked up.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, madam. My name’s Smedley, Ministry of Health. I’m looking for a runaway, a small colored boy, just ran past here.”

  “Colored boy, you say?” she said with surprise. “Don’t get many colored people round here.”

  “Yes, madam. A Negro. Boy’s an evacuee from London.”

  She was just shaking her head when Smedley heard someone whistle from behind him. A second woman, also with her hair wrapped in a headscarf, was leaning from an open upstairs window, a few houses back, near the entrance to the alley. As he came closer, she stabbed a finger at the air raid shelter and mouthed clearly, “In There.” Smedley acknowledged her help with a wave, and quickly put his finger to his lips.

  Quietly, he retraced his steps, carefully levered himself over the back gate, and slowly padded through the rows of carrots and cabbages to the front of the shelter. Leaning down, he called inside, “All right, Braithwaite, out you come.”

  Brandon sat up suddenly, dinging his head on the shelter’s ceiling. He hadn’t hurt himself badly, but rubbing at his head gave him time to think of a strategy. Perhaps, he thought desperately, he could make another run for it. Smedley had straightened up, and the curtain had dropped back into place over the shelter entrance. Brandon tried to estimate the height of the step up from the shelter door to the garden. As quietly as he could, he lowered himself to the ground, bent down, looked again at the entrance and then charged head first. But he had miscalculated: As he tried to jump through, he tripped on the step up, and fell flat on his face.

  Smedley, who had been standing to one side of the entrance, grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet. He drew back his free hand, and clouted Brandon hard across the back of the head. Now Brandon’s ears really began to ring.

  “Don’t you play bloody games with me, sonny,” Smedley spat, as he grabbed a dazed Brandon by the ear, and marched him toward the back gate. “I don’t know how you managed to run off the first time, but I’d better not catch you doing it again.”

  Chapter 6

  Leaving

  Mr. and Mrs. Archer were heavy, but they didn’t waddle or show any lack of energy. In fact, Alex and Hannah struggled to keep pace with the adults as they strode purposefully down the sidewalk. They showed no sign of stopping.

  “Where’s your car? Is it far?” asked Alex, puffing.

  Mr. Archer laughed. “Car? Whatever gave you that idea?” Then he turned back to the children, and asked curiously, “Does your father have a car?”

  “Yes,” said Alex, “and so did my mom.” He almost added, when she was alive, but, as usual, he found it too hard to say.

  “Goodness,” Mrs. Archer said with astonishment. “Did you hear that, Geoffrey? Two cars.” Then, to the kids, “Your family must be very well-to-do.” Neither Alex nor Hannah knew what to say, so they let it pass.

  Hannah quickened her pace to draw even with the Archers. “Our friend that we mentioned,” she said. “Can you help us find him? Please?”

  “We’ll do what we can, dear,” Mr. Archer said. “I’m sure you’ll see him at school.”

  “I guess,” Hannah said, “But it’s so, like, weird that he just took off like that. Something must have scared him. He never said anything to us, we just thought he was going to use the…loo.”

  Hannah had used a British word for toilet that she remembered from the British sitcoms on PBS she had watched with her mom. She was quite proud to have used a word in a foreign language, but the Archers looked slightly shocked.

  “That’s a rather common expression,” Mrs. Archer said. “Do your parents approve of you saying that?”

  Hannah didn’t know how to answer, and a silence fell. She didn’t remember “loo” being a shocking word for the English, but apparently it was. Or maybe it just was in 1940?

  Now they arrived at a small wooden gate, between two hedges. Behind the hedges sat a house that was joined to its identical neighbor by a common wall. The first floor was of brick, but the upper story was whitewashed, with oak beams crisscrossing it. “This house must be really old!” exclaimed Alex.

  “Not at all, young fellow,” said Mr. Archer. “It was only built two years ago. It’s what we call Mock Tudor. It looks old, but it’s very modern indeed.”

  “So the Tudor Tea Room, is that new too?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mr. Archer as he unlocked the door. “That’s the real McCoy. You can tell by the crooked beams, you see. You notice that ours are rather straighter.”

  “What are the white lines on the windows?” asked Alex.

  “Surely you know what that is? It’s tape, in case of a bomb blast,” said Mr. Archer. “It would stop shattered glass from coming in the house. At least I hope it would. Luckily, I don’t think the Germans are terribly interested in bombing Balesworth. It’s London they’re after. But we still have to have blackout curtains, just in case their pilots see our lights at night, and decide to have a go at us.” He gestured upward, and Alex now noticed that this and every house had at least some of its windows blacked out with paint, drapes, or some other material.

  As soon as they entered, Hannah asked to use the restroom. “The lavatory is upstairs, the first door on the right,” Mrs. Archer told her. Hannah found the bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the toilet with a sigh. She began to pull toilet paper from the roll. Suddenly, she stopped, and stared at the crinkly paper in her hand. It looked and felt like wax paper. “What,” she said aloud in disgust, “am I supposed to do with this?” And it took her six tries pulling on the long chain that hung from the high-up cistern to get the toilet to flush. Even then, some of the paper floated.

  Smedley, with his briefcase in one hand and two tiny thick cardboard railway tickets in the other, stood on the platform at Balesworth Station with Brandon at his side, as the London train, puffing and hissing in a cloud of coal smoke, pulled up in front of them. The train stopped, and let out a terrific burst of steam. Smedley pushed Brandon ahead of him toward a carriage with the word SMOKING painted in the window.

  After the departing passengers had disembarked from the compartment, Smedley and Brandon climbed aboard. Brandon noticed that the only doors were the one through which they had entered, and another facing it on the other side. There was no access from the compartment to the rest of the train, and so, Brandon thought, it was a good thing he didn’t need to use the restroom. Two long seats ran across the compartment, and there were luggage racks overhead. As another man boarded and settled into a seat, Smedley removed his newspaper from his briefcase. He threw his briefcase, raincoat and Brandon’s case into a rack, before sitting down next to the window. He pointed gravely to the seat opposite him, and Brandon sat
down.

  Smedley reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out cigarettes and matches. As the last few carriage doors banged shut, the guard’s whistle sounded sharply from the platform. The engine began to chuff, and a cloud of dark coal smoke floated past the carriage windows. Brandon could smell it, even though the window was closed. Although the smell was acrid, he quite liked it. He could not say the same for the cloud of smoke that was coming from Smedley.

  Brandon coughed, stood up and tried to open the window.

  “Sit down!” barked Smedley.

  “I just need some fresh…”

  “…and be quiet,” Smedley growled with the cigarette between his lips, returning to his newspaper.

  “I have asthma.” Brandon said flatly. Actually, it was his brother who had asthma, but it was the best excuse he could think of. Smedley looked at him over his paper, and Brandon added quickly, “If I get an attack, I could pass out.”

  “It’s all in your head,” Smedley grumbled.

  But then the other passenger in the compartment, a suited man in his mid-thirties, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, who was himself smoking a pipe, said quietly to Smedley, “I really wouldn’t object if the boy opened the window a little.” He tapped out his pipe.

  Smedley glowered at Brandon, then jerked his head toward the window. But when Brandon tried to pull it up, no matter how hard he tugged, it wouldn’t budge. The kindly man rose to his feet and came to the rescue, pulling the window downward by a few inches. He smiled at Brandon and said, “Not been on a lot of trains, eh?”

  “Evacuee,” interjected Smedley, as if that explained everything.