Shadow of a Hero (31 page)

Downstairs the front door slammed. A moment later Momma’s voice called up, ‘Van! Van! Is he back? Where are you?’

‘Left my knapsack in the hall,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’

‘I want to know how you got out. And everything else.’

‘OK. I’ll be back.’

He eased himself onto his feet and limped to the door, but turned with his hand on the handle.

‘Must be tea-time,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a memorial banquet. Got any crumpets?’

Next morning, because it was the first day of term, Letta left early. The postman was coming up the steps as she opened the front door.

‘One for you,’ he said. ‘Fancy stamp, too.’

It was from Parvla. Letta opened it as she walked up the hill. Several sheets of the slanting, dutifully
looped
handwriting. (Parvla thought Letta’s neat italic very odd and tricky to read.) A photograph, a bit out of focus, gaudy colours, flowers, brown bits, a white cross with writing on it, nothing making sense. Of course not, she’d got it upside down.

She turned it and it became a mound, a grave, dug out of sun-parched soil among yellow tussocks of grass which she could hardly see because all the space around was covered with wreaths and sheaves of gladioli, carnations, and gaudy daisy-shaped things. The photograph must have been taken the day after Van had been there, because the flowers were already shrivelling with the heat. The cross was not on the mound but a bit to one side. It didn’t look official, and Van hadn’t mentioned it. Somebody had nailed two bits of wood together, driven the upright into the ground and written three words on the cross-piece, one middling, one short and one long. Because the focus was slightly blurred, Letta wouldn’t have been able to read them if she hadn’t known what they must be.

Restaur Vax. Anastrondaitu
.

Why that? What did it mean? Somebody wishing Grandad had been forgotten? Surely not, unless . . . yes, perhaps, for his sake at least, that he’d been left in peace, to die in peace, far away in Winchester. That’s how Momma would have read it, anyway.

Or perhaps it wasn’t about Grandad at all, but about his name, and the other Restaur Vax, and everything that went with them, the whole marvellous, bitter, deceitful past. That? Only last night there’d been a programme about Croatia, smashed towns, refugees, lives that had lost their
meaning
, all because of things that had been said and done long, long ago. And not just Croatia. All round the world the same. If only this, or that, or that, had not been remembered!

Did she think so too, Letta, in safe England, walking up the hill to start a new term at the same old school? No past at all? No memories? No Field, no Formal, no dancing the
sundilla
? No Legends, no ‘Stream at Urya’, no songs about boastful shepherds, no
dumbris
, not even the word itself on Grandad’s grave?

No. Somehow it still had to be worth it. You can’t have everybody the same. That was what Ceau
ş
escu had wanted, wasn’t it? So somehow it had to be worth it.

But
anastrondaitu
.

It pierced her to the heart.

THE END

About the Author

Peter Dickinson was born in Africa, but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of
Punch
, and since then has earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for adults and children.

Amongst many other awards, Peter Dickinson has been nine times short-listed for the prestigious Carnegie medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice. His books for children have also been published in many languages throughout the world. His latest collection of short stories,
Earth and Air
, was published by Small Beer Press.

Peter Dickinson was the first author to win the Crime-Writers Golden Dagger for two books running:
Skin Deep
(1968), and
A Pride of Heroes
(1969). He has written twenty-one crime and mystery novels, which have been published in several languages.

He has been chairman of the Society of Authors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2009.

Also by Peter Dickinson

Eva

A Bone From A Dry Sea

Tulku

Chuck and Danielle

SHADOW OF A HERO
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17262 7

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
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This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright © Peter Dickinson, 1996

First Published in Great Britain

Corgi Childrens 1996

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