Blitz Next Door (11 page)

Alone for the first time since he’d been found in the cupboard, Pete held up the photograph of the flapper lady and the World War One veteran he remembered being shown by their daughter, Beth…

Wait a minute
.

…their daughter, Beth, who was dying in a hospital on the other side of the world and whose son was old enough to be her grandfather…

It was too much for Pete’s fuzzy, throbbing head. He hid the photograph amid the knick-knacks scattered about the sofa. Picked up a card with a love-heart on the front. Opened it, although he knew he probably shouldn’t.

To the prettiest little sis in the West. Missing you. Happy Valentines, love Hugh xxx

Pete recalled sniggering with Dunny over this card from Beth’s beloved big brother. Or one similar. It didn’t seem funny any more. Nothing seemed funny. The man who wrote it – the man who Hugh Winters-Smith was probably named after – was dead. These cards, thought Pete, were the lasting reminder of how fond he was of his little sister. And now she was dying too.

Pete was repacking the shoebox, trying to keep the contents in Beth’s mum’s 1941 order, when his own
mum came into the room and knelt beside him.

For a while neither of them spoke; Mum just watching until Pete folded the tissue over all Beth’s memories and replaced the lid. Mum carried the box to the sideboard.

“It’s weird, but this house feels different today.” She plumped up the pillow behind Pete’s head. “Brighter.” She smoothed his hair. “And listen to that.”

When Pete cocked his head and strained his ears, he was half-expecting the pipe of Beth’s recorder or the sound of her voice. But there was nothing but birdsong from the tree in the front garden. “What?”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Mum beamed back. “Our Jenny hasn’t cried for hours and she’s awake, happy, looking round, taking everything in. Smiling. Even smiled at
me
.”

Mum put her arm round Pete and hugged. “Just need to get you back on your feet and we can start this new start properly.”

Easier said than done.

Pete’s mum and dad wouldn’t let him up on his feet for the rest of the afternoon in case he burst his stitches. Nor would they let him eat or drink anything.

“In case your concussion gets worse and you need an anaesthetic, pet. Dr Hugh explained,” Mum explained again when Pete begged Lucozade. Again.

“Wish you
had
taken me into hospital,” he grumbled. “Letting me die of thirst’s child cruelty.”

Mum and Dad just laughed and told him to get some rest, and ignored his pleas to watch telly.

So Pete was beginning to think he must be in the early stages of death by boredom when Dunny was
ushered into the sitting room.

“Oi! Watcha, Nigel,” he greeted Pete with his best bad-Cockney, and then he realised his new pal wasn’t sprawled out on the sofa for a joke. “Jeezo, man? What’s the story?”

“Long story,” croaked Pete, “but mainly dehydration.”

“Here.” Dunny produced a bottle of Irn-Bru from his back pocket and offered it to Pete. “Ginger. Only had a coupla swigs. No grogs.”

Pete was so thirsty he blanked the mention of grogs and gulped till he was breathless.

“That was ace,” he gasped. “Though it wasn’t ginger.”

“Irn-Bru. That is ginger, numpty.”

“What?”

“Half-Scottish are you, Nigel?” Dunny shook his head as if Pete had let himself and his heritage down. “All fizzies are ginger up here: Cola, Fanta, Dr Pepper. Anyway,” he switched his attention to Pete’s leg. “What happened to you?”

Dunny’s eyes grew wider and wider as Pete told him what had happened since they’d last met. He only interrupted near the end of the story when Pete told him about the Milligans and Hugh Winters-Smith going to the memorial service at Dalnottar Cemetery.

“Those uncles of mine are buried up there. The ones who looked after my granny?” Dunny stroked the top of Beth’s box, although he didn’t open it. “Imagine your dad’s boss ignoring her all those years and Beth wanting this so much. She shoulda talked to Dunny
Dunn.” He poked his own chest. “I’d’ve helped her, no problemo.”

“And what about her growing old in New Zealand?”

“And her girl self turning up here?” Dunny was grinning. “Pure paranormal, man.”

“Except,” said Pete, “she was only coming back for a box of old… old…”
Junk. Bits and pieces
, he was thinking. “We could’ve been killed.” The words exploded before Pete realised he was going to say them. “For a load of old pictures and trinkets and letters. Thought there would be
jewellery
or something valuable at least.” Pete flung his arm out towards the box. “I mean, would you have crawled through a Blitz for
that?
”

Dunny didn’t seem to be listening. He had the lid of the box tipped open and was peeping inside.

“That smell,” he sniffed. “Ahhhh.” He inhaled exactly the same way Hugh Winters-Smith had done. Deep and thirsty.

“That’s my granny’s smell. It’s roses.”

“Granny’s smell? Bleuch. Crumbly old mould and wee,” sneered Pete, though he knew this was way off the mark. His London nana smelt of whisky and cigarettes and his Scottish gran smelt of the scones and bread she baked when she wasn’t running one of her half-marathons. But he was feeling crotchety and tired and Dunny’s ginger was making him queasy because he’d gulped it far too fast on an empty stomach.

“Well
my
granny didn’t smelly crumbly. She was magic.” Dunny sounded as if he was trying to speak while his throat was being squeezed. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and turned back to the box to fill
his lungs with its smell once more. “See if I shut my eyes,” he said, “s’like I’m back in her house, opening all her drawers and cupboards, looking for treasure. Making a right mess. She never minded.”

Dunny jabbed his finger from the box to Pete. “How can you say this isn’t treasure, man? Cos imagine if your mum died? And you lost everything; not only her but the wee things you remembered about her. Just the wee things.”

“OK.” Pete wasn’t able to look Dunny in the eye. He didn’t like to think about any of the things Dunny was making him think about. But Dunny wasn’t done.

“Well, all those wee things remind you of loads of stuff. You’d never forget. Like how someone looked when they laughed. Their smell.” Dunny was replacing the shoebox lid. “See my granny,” he said, “died last year, right, and she was just… just…” When Dunny couldn’t seem to find the word he wanted, he glanced up at Pete’s ceiling and blinked very fast. “And I’ve this bag of stuff: a shell from where she came from in Ireland, a shiny green brooch I used to lick when I was a baby…” He chuckled. “Madman, eh? And a card she gave me on my First Communion. In her writing. My dad helped me choose stuff and…” Dunny shrugged, his voice wobbly. “Maybe you say it’s mince, but I say it’s treasure.”

“Fine.” Pete didn’t know what else to say. He had never heard anyone his own age speak to him about things like this before; teach him a lesson, really. Unable to look at Dunny, he stared at his bandaged leg instead, wishing he’d mentioned the noises through the wall as soon as they’d met.

“Hey, cheer up, Nigel.” Dunny was back to normal,
holding up his knuckle for a fist-bump. “Gotta go. Footie training. You should come, meet everyone,” he added as he left. “We’ll stick you in goals. On the other side. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!”

Pete was hobbling about, his bad leg complaining if he put his full weight on it. His forehead was throbbing too, especially if he moved too quickly. But otherwise he was on the mend when he opened the door to the Milligans and Hugh Winters-Smith that evening. The visitors bore gifts. There were flowers and house-warming champagne for Pete’s mum and dad, a rag doll for Jenny.

“And as for you, Pete, you deserve to start your musical education with the good stuff and the best equipment to play it.” Mr Milligan handed Pete a cardboard box. Inside Pete found a turntable and a pile of vinyl albums.

“Original rock and rock!” Dad couldn’t keep his hands off them. “Are you sure, Steve? These are collectable.”

“And collecting dust in my flat. Pete can blast these in that big room. Let The King drown out that bally recorder if your mum decides to come back and torture us all again, Hugh.”

“Oh, I’d say she’s done coming home.” Hugh Winters raised a glass to Pete. “I emailed my sister Carla a picture of the photograph Mum’s been waiting for since the war. Mum’s been propped up in bed just staring at it.”

“God love her,” chimed old Mrs Milligan, as if Beth was years her senior instead of the other way round.

Pete was only half listening. His focus was locked on the cover of Elvis Presley, the first studio album, flipping it over: ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, Track One.

Wait till I show Dunny THIS treasure
… he was just planning the lecture he’d give his pal about old music when the back door was chapped.

“Just checking how you’re feeling now, Nigel.” Dunny grinned.

And so that evening became the Smeatons’ unofficial house-warming party. Everyone squashed round the kitchen table, fighting for turns of cuddling Jenny. Elvis and Buddy Holly played in the background, so Mr Milligan and Hugh Winters-Smith kept breaking off their conversations to become finger-clicking backing singers on a chorus or two. When Dad nipped round to Dunny’s to ask if his mum could lend them a few extra chairs, he brought her back with him. Plus Wee Stookie, who showed off the cartoon on his plaster by that girl with the plait he’d met in the garden.

The conversation could have turned to the events of the previous night, or the memorial service, but instead everyone seemed to be talking about the future: the school Pete would start after the Easter break; whether Wee Stookie would always be so accident prone (as he stood on a fork); how Dunny’s mum would introduce Pete’s mum to her book-group chums; and wouldn’t it be bally marvellous if Mr Milligan could arrange for some of Beth Winters’ art to be displayed in the new Clydebank Shopping Complex (or St Bewildered’s).

The kitchen smelt of Bolognese and coffee, felt warmed by cooking and friendly chatter: different accents, different generations. Pete closed his eyes, comfortable and dozy. If he hadn’t been so disturbed by the sound of Dunny serenading Jenny with ‘Love Me Tender’ in a Munchkin voice, he might have drifted off to sleep.

“Bearing up, young man?” Hugh Winters-Smith jerked Pete back to himself. “Fancy testing out that war wound with a turn in the garden so I know your eyes are droopy from lack of sleep and nothing more serious?”

The night beyond the kitchen was cold and clear with a nip of late frost in the air. Dunny joined Pete and the doctor, flashing a pathway through the garden with Mr Smeaton’s torch. Pete found, once he was outside on uneven grass, that he was glad to lean on the arm Hugh Winters-Smith offered him.
Just like old Mrs Milligan leaned on me
, he thought as he made slower than normal progress towards the shelter.

“What was it like at the memorial?” Dunny asked.

Beth’s son sucked in a sharp breath before he replied, “Moving.” Pete thought that was all he was going to say, but then he added, “Especially this year, because of Mum. I felt she was there.”

Hugh Winters-Smith was inside the shelter now, walking around it, paddling his fingers along the wooden benches.

“We saw her in here.” Pete’s voice seemed to bounce back to him off the walls, hollow and strange.

“Think she liked playing with my footie figures.”
Dunny flashed the torch over his plastic tubs. Then he flashed it at the wall. “And she did this.” He held the light on Beth’s drawings, her Hitler cartoon.

“Would you look at that?” Hugh Winters-Smith had his mobile phone out. “She was always drawing wee cartoons like that of us. Now is my camera good enough to pick this up? I wonder if she’ll remember.”

Dunny was nudging Pete while Hugh Winters-Smith clicked his photographs. “Where’s your phone?” He mimed that he and Pete should be doing the same.

“Where’s yours?” Pete whispered. He didn’t like to admit he wasn’t allowed one.

“Still confiscated because I called Wee Stookie a jessie for skipping round the garden.” Dunny shrugged. “Serves me right.”

“Too bad,” said Pete, though in a funny way he was glad that neither of them could film or text anything about their time with Beth. If he’d been able to summon Mum or Dad to the tunnel or the shelter, maybe he wouldn’t have been forced to take the initiative and help her himself. And if he’d snapped photos, posted them online then spent his time pinging responses to the people in cyberspace who saw them, instead of spending time with the actual person
in
them… well, who knows? Maybe he wouldn’t have been available when Beth called to him from the last millennium.

Dunny was reading Hugh Winters-Smith the lines Beth had scrawled on the wall.

“When you are here and I am far away,

Think me back and I will make my thoughts fly home,

To be there with you.”

No daft voice this time, though.

“
For Mummy and Daddy, with love from Beth
.” Hugh Winters-Smith stooped to read his mother’s dedication at the end of the message. Then he filmed the wall on his phone, sweeping round to include Pete and Dunny.

“Hiya from Clydebank, Beth,” Dunny obliged with a double thumbs-up and a cheery grin. “I hope you’re feeling alright in the hospice, and I hope you’re happy to have your box after all this time. Over to the boy who found it!”

Pete was always camera-shy. “Hello,” was the best he could manage. A wooden wave. An even more wooden smile.

“That was drivel, man,” said Dunny.

“Away, Mum’ll be delighted just to see you again. And all this…” Hugh Winters-Smith swept his arm in an arc above his head. “Although I don’t think her mind was ever far away from it.”

Or her body
. Pete almost told Hugh Winters-Smith he’d been seeing the grown-up Beth as well as the girl. But the doctor had taken a seat and was resting his head against the wall, his eyes closed.

“Poor Mum never recovered from giving up her life here and losing her own mother. And I didn’t know him but I think my grandfather was one of those men, you know…” Hugh rolled his head against the wall behind him. “‘
The past is another country… Put it behind you. Move on
.’ Stiff upper lip…”

Pete wondered if Hugh Winters-Smith was so lost in memories he’d forgotten about him and Dunny, but then he opened his eyes. He raised his index
finger and jabbed it at the lines Beth had written on the wall.

“Nowadays, kids like Mum are counselled for what they went through. PTSD. If they’re lucky,” he added. “And live in the right part of the world.”

Pete must have been looking puzzled because Dunny chipped in, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? My Uncle Scott caught that fighting in Afghanistan.”

“I think Mum caught it from missing
her
mum. Never cured. No wonder. I’m going to miss mine for the rest of my life. Big Jamie’s a lucky man to have time still left with his.” Hugh Winters-Smith shook his head, slow and sad. He held up his phone. “Question is, will I manage to get over to New Zealand in time for Mum to see all this?”

“You could phone her and tell her,” suggested Pete.

“Now?” Hugh looked at his watch.

“It’s about 8.30 am, New Zealand time.” Dunny shrugged. He must have felt Pete and Hugh Winters-Smith staring at him because he shrugged again. “I like to know the time wherever Dad’s working. So are you going to phone her?
I
would.”

Dunny was standing over Hugh Winters-Smith, training the torchlight on the mobile in his hand.

“You should tell her about the notebook as well.”

“What notebook?”

Pete took the torch from Dunny and left it on the bench.

“We’ll bring it down to you,” he said, cocking his head for Dunny to follow him out the shelter. “And
I
think you should phone your mum too,” he advised the doctor.