Shrapnel (16 page)

‘It . . . wasn't
crime
, sir, it was work for the Government. Raymond was an agent. He was helping the Government get an army together. A secret army, to fight the enemy after the ordinary army has been defeated and the Germans are here in England.'

Dad snorted. Grant looked at me.

‘And do you think that'll happen, Gordon – an invasion, I mean?'

‘I don't know, sir – it's what my brother told me. I suppose we have to be ready in case it does.'

Dad broke in. ‘The boy's
plane
, Inspector – where does
that
fit in?'

Grant sighed. ‘The Skymaster was used on three occasions to get industrial diamonds out of Manley's bonded premises, sir.' He gazed at Dad. ‘You're an engineer, you don't need me to tell you how essential such diamonds are to the war effort.'

‘And you're saying . . . you think my lad –
both
my lads – have been involved in
stealing industrial diamonds
?' Dad's tone was incredulous.

‘I'm afraid so, sir,' said the inspector, ‘though Gordon here obviously didn't know what was happening, having been told a story by his older brother.'

Mum burst into tears. Grant motioned to Sergeant Dinsdale, who helped her stand and steered her towards the door. Dad made to follow, but the inspector shook his head.

‘There's more, Mr Price. It's probably best your wife hears it a bit later on, from you.'

Dad swallowed. ‘
More?
What can there be more? First we learn that our son is dead, then that he was a thief. What else is there, for pity's sake?'

Grant spoke softly. ‘We have reason to believe your son is alive, sir.'

‘
What?
' Dad stared. ‘What're you
talking
about, man? Raymond's
dead
, they showed us his watch.'

‘I
saw
him, Dad,' I burst out. ‘Last week, biking home late from Norman's.' I
wanted
it to be true, wanted it so much I didn't think before I spoke.

Dad turned on me. ‘You
saw
your brother and didn't tell your mother and me? When you
knew
how we were grieving?'

‘I . . . I wasn't sure,' I stammered. ‘It was dark. Linton Barker thought he saw him weeks ago as well, driving a car, but it could all have been a mistake, I didn't want to . . . you know . . . get Mum's hopes up.'

‘
Hopes?
' Dad laughed harshly. ‘If what we've heard here tonight is true, I'd rather he
was
dead.' He turned to Grant. ‘Is that everything, Inspector, or do you have
more
revelations about my family? Perhaps my wife's been signalling to U-boats?'

I don't remember much after Mum and the U-boats. I was frightened, tired, confused. I thought Dad was being serious and it must've been too much for my brain, because it switched itself off.

THE INSPECTOR SENT
me to join Mum and a policewoman in another room. I was given a mug of tea. I don't suppose the Gestapo dishes out mugs of tea. Mum's eyes were red but she'd stopped crying. She said something to me, I don't know what, and I didn't reply. There was a stain on the lino shaped like a rhinoceros. I stared at it, warming my hands on the mug.

In the interview room, Dad was having to listen to stuff about Raymond that was even worse than what we'd heard. He broke it to Mum when Sergeant Dinsdale had driven us home. I'd
gone straight to bed and out like a light, and neither of them ever told me. I picked it up bit by bit from things they said to each other: perhaps I was meant to.

Raymond never worked for the Government. He wasn't an agent, he was a spiv. In fact he was
worse
than a spiv. He was in a gang that stole scarce things,
rationed
things – petrol, tyres, cloth, industrial diamonds – and sold them on the black market. They pinched stuff like tea and sardines and silk stockings as well, and passed them to spivs who offered them on the street at outrageous prices. The gang carried guns, and at least one person had been shot by them.

And that wasn't the worst. The worst was, my brother and his friends – the chaps who
don't mess around
– robbed the dead. In the blackout they'd hurry to places where people had been killed by bombs, and steal their identity cards and ration books. They took rings and watches and cash too, but what they wanted most was the cards and ration books, because with those they could swap identities, leaving their own cards on the bodies so the police would think
they
'd been killed. Inspector Grant told Dad he thought
Raymond had swapped identities with a man called Stanton Lander, which is why the Army had stopped looking for him. We'd buried Lander with my brother's watch on his wrist and my brother's papers in his wallet. Raymond was alive and at large, only everybody thought his name was Stanton Lander.

I know it's a horrible thing to say, but I wasn't glad my brother was alive. He'd told me wicked lies and made a criminal of me, pretending he was making me a hero. Pretending he was a hero.

So no, I wasn't glad, and I wondered if that meant I was as bad as him.

THEY DIDN'T SEND
me to school next day, but I crept there on Wednesday in a blue funk, recalling Whitfield's terrible indictment of the spiv.
Parasite . . . black marketeer . . . stealing goods that belong to the whole nation . . . helping the enemy . . . a traitor. . . . the lowest of the low . . . sell his mother if he could get half a crown for her . . .

I didn't take the bike. It had been a hero's bike – I wasn't fit to clean it, let alone ride it.

As it turned out, nothing much happened at school. Linton Barker asked what the police had
wanted, and I lied. Well, lying's nothing compared to the stuff I'd done already. I told him they'd found my model plane and I had to identify it. Daft story, but Linton believed it – goes to show nicotine rots the brain.

I don't know how much Hinkley knew, but he didn't expel me or even send for me. None of the teachers said anything either. That was a relief, I can tell you. Not that this was the end of it – I knew there'd be the devil to pay when the police caught up with Raymond, which sooner or later they would. It'd be in the papers then, and I'd have to kill myself.

If school wasn't so bad, home was horrible. Dad just about managed to drag himself off to work every morning, but Mum moped and wept and finally took to her bed. Gran had to move across from Hastley to look after us all.

I was scared stiff all the time, wondering how many years I'd get for stealing three lots of diamonds, and what prison would be like. I could hardly sleep at night for worrying about it. When I mentioned it to Gran she said, ‘They won't send you to prison, sweetheart, you're too young. And anyway they know you didn't mean to steal – you
were tricked into it by that useless brother of yours.'

It's funny, but even now I didn't like to hear Raymond slandered. I hated him, but every evening when Dad put up my brother's blackout boards, I found myself wondering where he was, what he was doing. I hoped he wasn't shooting anybody, because they'd hang him if he was.

I was missing Norman, but shame prevented my calling on the Robinsons. I'd have to avoid mentioning the nightmare my brother's activities had plunged us into. Either that or tell them everything. I knew they'd be sympathetic if I did, but my parents would be mortified: those particular beans weren't really mine to spill.

November gave way to December. There hadn't been a raid for weeks, but a few nights before Christmas there was a heavy one. It was a Thursday. Mum refused to get up to go to the shelter, so neither Dad nor Gran would go either. They made
me
go, so it was just me and the Andersons. It was a long night.

No bombs fell anywhere near us, but something awful happened just the same. First assembly after the hols, Hinkley stood on the
platform and told us about a pupil called Betty Farfield.

The Farfields lived a few streets away from us. The night of the raid, Betty had gone with her mum, dad, sister and kitten to their shelter. At the height of the raid, the kitten panicked and leaped out. Before her parents knew what was happening, the girl went after it. She was crossing their lawn when a piece of shrapnel from our ack-ack struck her on the head. Her dad ran to her but she was dead.

AND THAT'S THE
thing about war. Betty Farfield died, but the Germans didn't kill her. Thousands were killed in training accidents, and civilians died of hunger and disease far away from any fighting. And then there were those like Betty's parents and my mum, who didn't actually die, but something inside them did, so that they were never the same afterwards. War is a sort of invisible shrapnel that rips through people's lives. It hit me, but I was lucky – it didn't find a vital spot and my wound healed, though not straight away.

Not straight away. On Christmas Eve I wheeled Michael Myers's bike all the way to Hastley like a sad Santa, and left it propped against his parents' house with a note taped to the saddle:

This is a hero's bike: spivs keep off.

Talk about cheesed off. The real Santa brought me a wizard kit to build a Dornier 17, but it failed to lift my spirits. And no – I
don't
believe in him. How would he cope with barrage balloons? With shrapnel?

MY BROTHER CAME
home on New Year's Eve, but nobody sang ‘Auld Lang Syne'. It was ten o'clock, and a filthy night. The wind roared round the house, flinging ice flack at the windows. We didn't plan to see the new year in, but Mum was downstairs for the first time in weeks, which is why I was still up.