Shrapnel (18 page)

He told Dad something else while Mum, Gran and I were in the kitchen, brewing tea and searching for a biscuit to offer him. He said if it
was any consolation, Raymond would probably have been hanged: a man had been shot dead, and although my brother hadn't actually fired the gun, he'd been with the man who had. Dad told us later, and I suppose it
did
console us in a way. Better the Heinkel than sitting in a condemned cell, ticking off those last, ghastly hours.

Months later, after I'd turned fourteen, said goodbye to Foundry Street School and gone to work with Dad at Beresford's, we learned that Dad was to get a George Medal, while I would be presented with an illuminated testimonial on parchment. I wasn't at all sure we deserved these honours. Well, we didn't go into that burning building to rescue Constable Whitfield – we went to get Raymond out. The rescue was really a sort of accident. It wasn't till years later that I realized lots of gallant acts are probably accidental in one way or another – rushes of blood to the head, perhaps. In my view, something Dicky Deadman did one day in our final term was far braver than my effort.

We were doing English with Thrasher Waxman, who was mad keen on poetry. He'd written these lines on the blackboard:

What was he doing, the great god Pan,

Down in the reeds by the river?

when he was summoned to go see old Hinkley. While he was out of the room, Dicky went up to the board and scrawled,

having a pee probably

underneath. Crude and silly, yes, but suicidally brave against a teacher who wasn't called Thrasher for nothing. Deadman was never a chum of mine, but he earned a gong that day.

Funny thing though, heroism. If you believe the papers, our enemies are never heroes, they're mad fanatics. Why should all the heroes be on our side?

ANYTHING ELSE? OH
yes – what happened afterwards.

Well, my brother had dodged justice in a way, but others didn't. To my amazement, Contour Lines was among those arrested, along with the caretaker. They'd played supporting roles in Raymond's sleazy drama – most of my so-called orders had come through them. The young assistant at Carters was in it as well, and all three went to prison.

I got off scot-free, but I think it's only fair to admit that I hadn't been totally innocent myself in the matter of the black market. I'd been willing
enough to eat my share of Sarah's goodies, and without people like me the spivs would have had no customers.

I turned seventeen and a half (old enough to join up) one month after Japan surrendered. I'd missed the war, but I enlisted in the RAF anyway. They turned me down for pilot training – my trig wasn't good enough – so I mustered as an air gunner. I did five years, mostly boring patrols over the Baltic. Then I went back to Beresford's to work with Dad.

My best chum Norman joined the RAF too, but not until he'd qualified as a doctor. He enlisted just as I completed my five, and we kept in touch by post while he served at Nocton Hall RAF hospital near Nottingham, and at Wegberg in Germany. He's a GP now, like his father, who discovered in 1948 how we'd vandalized his aluminium car, and didn't care: he was far too busy helping to operate the brand new National Health Service.

Dicky Deadman did nine years in the Navy, then set up as an estate agent. I bought my house from him and it was fine, so he never did become a spiv.

The last I heard of Walter Linfoot, he was a long-distance lorry driver.

Poor Linton Barker died at 36 from lung cancer, to nobody's surprise.

Herbert and Florrie Anderson retired to Skegness.

P.C. Whitfield recovered from his burns – he's a Chief Inspector in the Met.

Oh, I nearly forgot the best bit. When Dad and I got home from hospital that day in 1941, Michael Myers's bike was leaning on the shed. My note was still taped to the saddle, but somebody had scribbled out the second part so that it read:

This is a hero's bike.

ROBERT SWINDELLS left school at fifteen to work on a local newspaper. At seventeen, he joined the RAF for three years, then trained and worked as a teacher. Now a full-time writer, he is the author of a number of bestselling titles for the Random House children's list. In 1994 he won the Carnegie Medal for
Stone Cold
(Hamish Hamilton), a teenage novel about a serial killer.

Ruby Tanya
won the Salford Children's Book Award 2005.

Abomination

Blitzed

In the Nick of Time

Nightmare Stairs

Room 13
and
Inside the Worm
(omnibus edition)

The Shade of Hettie Daynes

Timesnatch

SHRAPNEL

AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 407 04793 5

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an imprint of Random House Children's Publishers UK

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This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright © Robert Swindells, 2009

First Published in Great Britain

Corgi Childrens 2009

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