Stay Where You Are and Then Leave (14 page)

“Dad!” cried Alfie, putting his hands on his father's shoulders, which had lost some of the muscle that had been there before. Georgie used to have such strong shoulders from lifting the milk churns. “Dad, don't you know me? It's me, Alfie!”

Georgie glanced up again but showed no sign of recognition. He smiled and looked back down, seemed as if he was about to start talking again but thought better of it and said nothing at all, sitting there immobile, saying nothing, doing nothing, looking at nothing.

“Dad, please,” whispered Alfie. “I've come all this way to find you. To save you!”

But Georgie simply sighed. It was as if he couldn't hear him. Alfie stood up and looked around in despair. He studied the other men, but none of them could help him. He'd found his father; he'd come all this way and he'd found him. He wasn't on a secret mission for the government—that had been a lie. And everyone knew it except him. But what did it matter? Georgie didn't even recognize him anymore. He didn't know his own son.

“Dad,” he pleaded.

No response.

“Dad!”

He could feel tears forming in his eyes but was determined not to cry. Instead, he stayed rooted to the spot, watching the men rocking back and forth, some of them mumbling to themselves, others not, and then noticed the table with the papers and the water on it once again and had an idea. He ran over, picked up one of the newspapers, folded it in half, and reached into his pocket. Walking back across the garden, he stood in front of his father with the folded newspaper before him, and Georgie looked at the boy, staring at the newspaper and then back up at his son with a curious expression on his face.

“Look what I've got for you,” said Alfie, opening the paper and showing him the apple drop, the single apple drop that Marian Bancroft had given him in the railway carriage that he'd put in his pocket for later.

Georgie stared at it, his eyes focusing on this little sphere of green, yellow, and red, before the signs of recognition appeared slowly on his face. He swallowed and looked up at his son.

“Alfie,” he said.

 

CHAPTER 9

OH! IT'S A LOVELY WAR!

Alfie rolled his eyes in frustration as he waited for the speech to end. So many people had been crowded together at King's Cross over the last hour that it had become almost impossible to shine any shoes. He was barely even able to keep his usual position between the platforms, the ticket counter, and the tea shop with all the pushing and shoving that was going on around him. The crowds were listening to a man standing on a tea chest insisting that the war would be coming to an end soon, that no one should give up hope, and that it would all be over by Christmas. Most of his audience cheered him on; a few shouted abuse, but they in turn were shouted down by the people standing around them.

Christmas
, thought Alfie, shaking his head and grabbing one of his horsehair brushes off the ground before an overweight man in a black suit could stand on it and crush it.
It's always going to be over by Christmas.
But what was it Georgie had said in one of his letters?
They just didn't say which Christmas.

He pulled his copy of
Robinson Crusoe
out of his pocket and started to read, trying to block out the sounds of the ovations and the jeers that seemed to be coming in equal parts from all around him.

“I tell you now,” roared the man on the tea chest, “that the sacrifice that all of you have made, that your loved ones have made, will be remembered forever!” His voice rose on “forever,” and everyone cheered wildly. “We will win this war with honor and bring our boys home!” Another cheer, more jostling in the crowd, and this time a woman nearly fell on top of him; she had the rudeness to place both her hands on his head to steady herself. Alfie felt outraged, absolutely outraged. “Together we will go forward!” continued the man. “United against tyranny! Firm in our resolve! Victory is within our grasp—the end is nigh—keep steady hearts and minds and we shall bring this conflict to an end without any more loss of blood. Thank you, all!”

Everyone whooped and threw their hats in the air—except for one man standing nearby who was shaking his head. He turned and noticed Alfie watching him and said, “The end is nigh all right.” But Alfie looked away and was pleased to notice that the crowd was finally starting to disperse. He glanced up at the enormous clock over the ticket booth. A quarter past two. There was still time to earn a little money if luck was on his side.

“Shoeshine!” he shouted, trying his best to get as much strength and resolve into his voice as the speaker had so he might be heard over the dispersing crowds. “Get your shoeshine here!”

“I believe I'll get my shoes shined, young man,” said a voice behind him, and he turned around to see the speech maker himself standing there, looking down at him with a smile on his face. He was a tall, thin man with a heavy mustache and thick dark hair parted at the side. He looked tired, as if he hadn't had a good night's sleep in a few years, but there was a steely expression in his eyes. He spoke with a strange accent that Alfie didn't fully recognize. “I have time, don't I?” he asked another man with a briefcase standing next to him, who glanced up at the clock for a moment before nodding.

“A little time,” he said. “But we need to be at the palace by three.”

“Plenty of time, then. Plenty of time,” he replied, sitting down opposite Alfie on the customers' chair. “You go get yourself a cup of tea, Rhodhri, and leave me and the boy to our chat. It's not often I get to speak to one of the young people. What's your name, lad?”

“Alfie,” said Alfie.

“That's a fine name, that is,” said the man, nodding his head wisely. “I had a friend called Alfie when I was a boy. He had six spaniels, and he called them Alfie the First, Alfie the Second, Alfie the Third, and so on, as if they were kings.”

“Hmm,” said Alfie, thinking this was rather ridiculous. There had only been one King Alfred, as far as he knew. Alfred the Great. He liked the sound of that.
Alfie the Great!

“Anyway, down to business, lad,” said the man. “A nice shiny tip, if you please, take the dust off the sides, and something to get rid of the scuffs on the heels. Don't be shy with the polish either.”

Alfie nodded and took out his brushes and jars, settling the man's left shoe on the footrest.

“Perhaps I shouldn't ask this,” the man said after a moment, “but shouldn't you be in school today? Or maybe all the London schools have closed down and no one has had the good grace to tell me!”

“I was sick, sir,” said Alfie.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I mean, my teacher was sick. So we were given a half-day's holiday.”

“I don't believe a word of it. But we won't fall out over a little white lie. At least you're here earning a living for your family and not wasting your time on the streets doing nothing. You do give your earnings to your mother, I hope?”

“I do, sir, yes,” replied Alfie, neglecting to mention that he had kept some of it back for his secret mission and was keeping even more back now for secret mission part two, which was going to take even more planning than the first one but was infinitely more important. And considerably more dangerous.

“Good boy. You give a quality shine too, I'll give you that,” the man added, looking down at the way Alfie's hands moved quickly over his shoes, adding just the right amount of polish here, clearing a bit of dirt away there, the dusters and brushes moving as if independent of his hands. “You must have been at this awhile. A right little professional, aren't you?”

“Thank you, sir,” said Alfie, tapping the tip of the left shoe with his fingers to indicate that it was done. The man took his foot down and replaced it with the other one, and Alfie got to work again.

“My cousin Thomas used to shine shoes at the train station in Llanystumdwy,” said the man, taking a pipe from his pocket and lighting it up, waiting a moment to allow the flame from the match to connect with the tobacco in the bowl. “Funny fellow, he was. Wouldn't get a haircut on account of the fact that he was afraid of the barber's scissors. Believed he had nerve endings in his hair, see. That was a long time ago now, of course. It's pleasant just to sit here, though. I don't get a lot of time to sit around doing nothing.”

“You have a job then, sir?” asked Alfie, who assumed the man was unemployed if he could afford to stand around train stations in the middle of the day, making a show of himself.

“Oh, I do, I do,” said the man.

“Giving speeches?” asked Alfie.

“Amongst other things. Politics should be about doing things, though, not just
talking
about doing things, don't you agree? But if you don't get out among the people, then they start to think that you've forgotten them and they look around to see whether someone else might do a better job. Do you know who told me that?”

“No, sir.”

“The king,” he replied with a smile. “He makes the occasional remark that's worth remembering. There was one last year too. I wrote it down somewhere. He's due another any day now. We live in hope, anyway.”

Alfie stopped what he was doing and looked up in astonishment. “Have you really met the king?” he asked.

“Of course. Many times. I see him two or three afternoons a week at least. I have a meeting with him in about half an hour, as it happens.”

Alfie smiled and shook his head. He came across all sorts of strange folk in this job, and even though the man seemed respectable enough, he was obviously mad or delusional or both. He glanced over toward the station entrance, where a group of men in suits were all standing, smoking, and chatting, and then, to his horror, he saw a woman stepping through the center of them and looking around the station as if she were lost.

The very last person Alfie expected to see today.

His mum, Margie.

“Work here every day, do you, lad?” asked the man, and Alfie looked back up at him and blinked.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” he asked.

“I wondered whether you work here every day. You can tell me the truth. I won't be reporting back to the cabinet on it.”

“Four days a week,” said Alfie, who felt somehow that he could trust him not to report him to the headmaster. “Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. I go to school on Mondays and Thursdays.”

“And Sundays?”

“I take a rest on Sundays,” said Alfie. He glanced around again and watched as his mother searched in her bag for something; when she looked up, he picked his cap up off the ground, emptied his earnings into the bottom of Mr. Janá
č
ek's shoeshine box, and pulled it low over his head so there was less chance of his being seen.

“You're not the first to do that,” said the man. “What I wouldn't give for a rest on a Sunday! I would think all my Christmases had come together.”

Alfie dared to look around once more; now his mother was standing in the center of the concourse staring up at the information board before turning her head to glance at the clock over the ticket booth. And then, before he could look away, she stared in his direction. He looked down quickly, pulling the cap lower still as he continued with his shining. Peering around only a little, his heart sank when he realized that Margie was walking directly toward him, looking as if she couldn't quite believe the evidence of her own eyes. Alfie shook his head, devastated, and waited. He'd been caught. Everything would come out now.

He would never get to complete his secret mission part two.

Georgie would be condemned to that horrible place forever.

“I don't believe it,” said Margie, standing over him now. “I saw you over here and wondered whether my eyes were playing tricks on me.”

Alfie reached up to take his cap off, but before he could do so, the man had spoken.

“If you are wondering whether I am who you think I am,” he said, “then yes, I am.”

“I thought as much,” said Margie. “I recognize you from the newspapers.”

“David Lloyd George,” said the man, extending his hand.

“Margie Summerfield,” said Margie.

“It's a pleasure, madam.”

Alfie held his breath. Could it be that she had not seen him after all? She was standing right over him, but his cap was pulled well down over his face. She wasn't even looking at the shoeshine boy.

“I wouldn't have thought that the prime minister could sit around having his shoes shined in the middle of the afternoon,” said Margie. “You do know there's a war going on, don't you?”

“I do, Mrs. Summerfield, yes,” said the man, his voice growing a little deeper now. “But even prime ministers are allowed a few minutes to themselves.”

Alfie could scarcely believe his ears.
The prime minister?

“I'm sorry,” said Margie. “That was rude of me.”

“It's quite all right.”

“I'm just so tired.”

“Please,” he insisted. “I took no offense. We live in stressful times.”

“May I ask you something?”

“You may.”

Margie didn't hesitate. “When will this blessed war be over? And please don't say by Christmas. Give me an honest answer. Even if it's not the one I want to hear.”

There was a long pause, and finally Mr. Lloyd George simply sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know,” he said. “Soon, I hope. Very soon. Can I be absolutely honest with you?”

“Yes.”

“It will be over within the week or it will drag on interminably. It depends on various issues which are being resolved at the moment. But I am hopeful, Mrs. Summerfield. I remain hopeful. You have a husband fighting over there?”

Margie shook her head. “Not anymore,” she said.