Stay Where You Are and Then Leave (3 page)

“Oh, I don't know,” said Margie. “He has an independent streak, that's all. I quite like that about him.”

“He's not a bad fellow, Joe Patience,” agreed Georgie.

“He's his own man,” repeated Old Bill Hemperton.

“He's lovely looking, despite everything,” Margie said. “Helena Morris is sweet on him.”

“She'd be ashamed,” insisted Granny Summerfield.

But other than that, the people on Damley Road always seemed to get along very well. They were neighbors and friends. And no one seemed more a part of that community than Kalena and her father.

*   *   *

Mr. Janá
č
ek ran the sweet shop at the end of the road. It wasn't just a sweet shop, of course—he also sold newspapers, string, notepads, pencils, birthday cards, apples, catapults, soccer balls, laces, boot polish, carbolic soap, tea, screwdrivers, purses, shoehorns, and lightbulbs—but as far as Alfie was concerned the most important thing he sold was sweets, so he called it the sweet shop. Behind the counter stood rows of tall clear-glass containers crammed full of sherbet lemons, apple and pear drops, bull's-eyes, licorice sticks, and caramel surprises, and whenever Alfie had a penny or two to spare he always went straight to Mr. Janá
č
ek, who let him stand there for as long as he liked while he made up his mind.

“Sometimes, Alfie,” he said, leaning over the counter and taking off his spectacles to clean them, “I think that you enjoy deciding what to spend your pennies on more than you do eating the sweets themselves.”

Mr. Janá
č
ek had a funny voice because he wasn't English. He was from Prague, and although he'd come to London ten years before, he had never lost his accent.
What
came out as
vat
.
Sweets
as
sveets
. Kalena didn't speak like him because she'd been born in their house at number six and had never been outside London in her life.

“You're the luckiest person I know,” Alfie told her one day as they sat together on the edge of the pavement, chewing on a licorice allsort and watching the coal man deliver a bag into Mrs. Scutworth's at number fifteen. The coal man's face and hands were completely black with soot, but he must have just rolled up his sleeves before he arrived because his forearms were pale white.

“Why do you say that?” asked Kalena, carefully peeling the skin off a banana.

“Because your dad runs a sweet shop,” he replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “There isn't
any
job in the world that's better than that. Except maybe working on the milk float.”

Kalena shook her head. “There's
lots
of jobs better than that,” she said. “I'm not going to run a sweet shop when I grow up.”

“Then what will you do?” asked Alfie, frowning.

“I'm going to be prime minister,” said Kalena.

Alfie didn't know what to say to that, but he thought it sounded very impressive. When he told his parents over tea that night, they both burst out laughing.

“Kalena Janá
č
ek? The prime minister?” said Georgie, shaking his head. “I've heard everything now. Pass me the carrots, love.”

“A prime minister's wife, more like,” said Margie, reaching for the dish.

“Well, I'd vote for her,” said Alfie, defending his friend. He didn't like the way they thought this was so funny.

“You'd be the only one,” said Georgie. “She wouldn't even be able to vote for herself, so how she thinks she can get the top job is beyond me. Bit chewy, these carrots, aren't they?”

“Why can't she vote for herself?” asked Alfie.

“Women can't vote, Alfie,” said Margie, cutting another slice of beef from the roast and putting it on his plate with an extra potato. (This was in the days when they were able to eat things like beef and potatoes for supper. Before the war broke out.)

“Why not?”

“It's the way things have always been.”

“But why?”

“Is a letter that comes between
x
and
z
,” said Margie. “Now eat your supper, Alfie, and stop asking so many questions. And there's nothing wrong with them carrots, Georgie Summerfield, so mind you eat them up too. I don't spend my afternoons cooking just to clear away a plate of leftovers.”

Alfie didn't think any of these answers explained anything, but he thought it was a good thing that Kalena was ambitious. Later that night, he lay in bed and thought about all the things he could do when he grew up. He could be a train driver. Or a policeman. He could be a schoolteacher or a fireman. He could go to work on the milk float with his dad or be a bus conductor like Mr. Welton. He could be an explorer like Ernest Shackleton, who was always in the papers these days. They all seemed like good jobs—but then inspiration struck and he nearly jumped out of bed in excitement at the idea.

The following afternoon, he marched into Mr. Janá
č
ek's sweet shop and waited until Mr. Candlemas from number thirteen had counted out a handful of change for his tobacco before sitting down on the high stool next to the counter and staring up at the jars of sweets.

“Hello, Alfie,” said Mr. Janá
č
ek.

“Hello, Mr. Janá
č
ek,” said Alfie.

“What will it be today, then?”
Vat vill it be today, zen?

Alfie shook his head. “Nothing, thanks,” he said. “I've no pocket money till Monday. I wanted to ask you a question, that's all.”

Mr. Janá
č
ek nodded and came over to stand next to the boy, shrugging his shoulders. “Ask me anything you want.”
Anysing you vant
.

“Well, you're not getting any younger, are you, Mr. Janá
č
ek?” said Alfie. This was a phrase he'd overheard Old Bill Hemperton say. Whenever he was asked to do anything to help out on the street, he said he couldn't, that whatever it was was a young man's game and that he wasn't getting any younger.

Mr. Janá
č
ek laughed. “How old do you think I am, Alfie?”

Alfie thought about it. He knew from experience—after a particularly unpleasant conversation with Mrs. Tamorin from number twenty—that it was always best to guess younger than you really thought. “Sixty?” he said, hoping that he might be right. (He really thought that Mr. Janá
č
ek was about seventy-five.)

Mr. Janá
č
ek laughed and shook his head. “Close,” he said. “I'm twenty-nine. Only a few years older than your father.”

Alfie didn't believe him for a moment, but he let it go.

“Well, one day you'll be too old to run the shop, won't you?” he asked.

“I suppose so,” he said. “Although not for a long time, I hope.”

“Because I was talking to Kalena,” continued Alfie. “And she said that she won't work here when she's grown up on account of the fact that she's planning on becoming prime minister. And I thought that you'll probably need someone else to help out then, won't you? When you can't move around like you used to and you're not able to reach up for the things on the top shelves.”

Mr. Janá
č
ek considered this. “Perhaps,” he said. “But why do you ask, Alfie? Are you applying for the position?”

Alfie thought about it. He wasn't sure if he wanted to commit himself fully. “I just think you might keep me in mind, that's all,” he said. “I'm a hard worker, I'm honest, and I love sweets.”

“But we don't just sell sweets, do we? You'd have to like everything else too.”

“I can't imagine getting too excited about string or candles,” said Alfie. “But I'd do my best. And in the meantime, I could take over every week when you have your day off.”

Mr. Janá
č
ek raised an eyebrow. “What day do I have off?” he asked in surprise. “I work, I work, and I work. I have no rest!”

“But you always close on Friday evenings and don't open again until Sunday morning,” said Alfie.

“Ah, but that is not a day off,” said Mr. Janá
č
ek. “That is Shabbat. The Jewish day of rest. There are blessings to be made on Friday night: Kalena lights our candles, prayers are offered. We do not work, but we keep busy. I could not open the shop on this day. But your offer is a generous one, Alfie, and be assured that I will keep you in mind when it is time for me to retire.”

Alfie smiled. That was good enough for him. He looked over behind Mr. Janá
č
ek at the flag that was pinned to the wall beside the cash register. It was quite complicated, with a red stripe across the top, a white one in the center, and red and green squares underneath. Two crowns stood side by side over two emblems.

“What's that?” asked Alfie.

Mr. Janá
č
ek looked over to see what the boy was looking at. “Why, it's a flag,” he said.

“It's not a flag of England.”

“No, it's the flag of my homeland. Where I was born and where I grew up. Prague is a very beautiful city,” he added, stroking his chin and staring off into the lemon twisters. “Perhaps the most beautiful in the world. The city of Mozart and Dvo
ř
ák. The city where
Figaro
and
Don Giovanni
were first performed. And if you have not crossed the Charles Bridge over the Vltava as the sun drops behind the castle, then you have not lived, my friend. You will visit it one day, I am sure of it.”

Alfie frowned. He had understood almost nothing of what Mr. Janá
č
ek had just said.

“If Prague is so wonderful,” he asked, “then why did you move to London?”

Mr. Janá
č
ek's face burst into a wide smile, and he looked as happy as Alfie had ever seen him. “For the best reason in the world,” he explained. “For love.”

Alfie jumped off the stool then, said his good-byes, and marched back outside. He had no interest in hearing about this. Love was something that grown-ups talked about and girls read about—although Kalena never discussed it; she said she couldn't let herself be distracted by love or she might never become prime minister—but that Alfie had no interest in at all. He could tell that Mrs. Janá
č
ek was very pretty, for an old woman anyway, but he couldn't imagine that he could ever fall in love with her.

Of course, Mrs. Janá
č
ek had died in 1913, the year before the war began. She got very sick and very thin, and soon she couldn't leave the house. Margie went to call on her every day, and Alfie overheard her telling Georgie that she was “wasting away, poor woman,” and soon she was gone and Mr. Janá
č
ek and Kalena were left alone. Alfie tried to talk to his friend about what had happened but she said she didn't want to discuss it, not just yet, so instead he simply took her out to play every day, even when she didn't want to go. He told her all his worst jokes, one of which, three months after her mother died, made her laugh out loud, and everything seemed to be all right again after that.

*   *   *

Alfie hadn't seen the Janá
č
eks since the spring of 1915. By then the newspapers were talking about the war all the time, and a lot of the men from Damley Road, including Alfie's dad, Georgie, were either training to be soldiers or were already fighting in Belgium or northern France. Some were too young yet but kept saying that they would sign up the minute they turned eighteen. Others were keeping their heads down and not talking about it at all because they didn't want to go.

Even Leonard Hopkins from number two, who everyone knew had a shoeshine stand at King's Cross and almost never went to school, spending every penny he earned on girls and hair tonic, had signed up, and he had only just turned sixteen.

“They didn't ask any questions, that's what I heard,” Granny Summerfield confided in Margie while Alfie was having his supper one evening. “But then, those recruiting sergeants don't care, do they? They'll take any lamb to the slaughter. Leonard hasn't even started shaving yet. It's a disgrace, if you ask me.”

And then there was Joe Patience, the conchie from number sixteen—he wasn't a conchie yet, of course—who said that the whole thing was nonsense: it was just about land and money and giving more to the rich and keeping the poor in their place, and he didn't care what anyone said or did, he'd never lift a gun, he'd never wear a uniform, and he'd never wanted to see France anyway so he didn't care if he never did.

A lot of people got angry with Joe Patience, but back then, in 1915, they didn't do anything more than shout at him when he started talking politics. It wasn't until later that they did worse things.

That February, the same day that Alfie got a letter from his dad telling him all about the training barracks at Aldershot, Margie called him into the kitchen where she was counting out change from her purse. Back then, she was still at home most of the time where she was knitting from morning till night, as were most of the women from Damley Road, and sending socks and jumpers over to the men at something she called “the Front.”

“Run down to Mr. Janá
č
ek for me, will you, Alfie?” she asked. “I need a couple of apples, a bag of flour, and today's newspaper. Make sure it's the latest edition. There'll be a penny left over for a few sweets.”

Alfie's face lit up as he grabbed the money and ran down the street to where Mr. Janá
č
ek was standing outside his shop, staring, trembling a little, his face pale. The windows had been smashed, there was glass everywhere on the road, and someone had scrawled three words in paint all over the front door:
No Spies Here!