Stay Where You Are and Then Leave (23 page)

Alfie smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, it's a pretty good life, all told.”

They drove along in silence for a few minutes, and only when the dairy came into sight did Georgie speak again.

“I don't think … I don't think I've ever really thanked you, have I, Alfie?”

“For what?”

“For succeeding in your secret mission,” said Georgie with a smile. “For coming to find me in the hospital. For breaking me out.”

“It wasn't very sensible when I look back on it,” said Alfie.

“No, but it all came good in the end. And it meant everything to me to see you. To know the lengths you'd go to in order to get me back home again. That's what kept all of us alive in the trenches, you know. The idea that one day we'd get to go home again. And see our wives and our children. You're what kept me alive, even at the lowest points.”

Alfie turned away and watched as the houses passed by on the left-hand side. He didn't really like to talk about the old days; he was just happy they were behind them all and life had gotten back to normal. Or a new type of normal, anyway.

“I never knew what you had in mind,” said Georgie. “All the trouble you could have got into, all the chances you took, all that hard work with Mr. Janá
č
ek's shoeshine box. All the sacrifices you made. Taking trains on your own when you'd never been on a train in your life. Coming to find me, bringing me home, saving me. I never knew why you thought you should do it all.”

He turned in to the dairy and pulled Mr. Asquith to a halt. It was dark in here and he turned to look at his son, his Alfie, who was wondering whether he'd get to ride on the float with his dad again the following day.

“Tell me, son,” said Georgie. “Why did you go to so much trouble?”

Alfie turned and stared at his father. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. There were so many memories in his head—things that sometimes kept him awake at night, things that sometimes gave him nightmares just like Georgie's. The worry when his dad went missing. The stench of the hospital. The shaking and trembling of the patients. The way they spoke, the nonsense of it. These were things he would never forget, things that would influence the man he would one day become.

“Why, son?” repeated Georgie.

Alfie shook his head and turned away, shrugging his shoulders for the hundredth time that day. He couldn't tell his father the reason. Not just yet. Maybe when he was older he'd be able to say the words. He already knew them, after all. Mr. Janá
č
ek had said them to him a long time ago.

He'd done it for the best reason in the world. For love.

 

About the Author

JOHN BOYNE
is the author of eight novels for adults and four for children, including the much-acclaimed
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,
which was made into a Miramax feature film. His novels are published in more than forty languages. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. [
johnboyne.com
]

 

ALSO BY
JOHN BOYNE

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Noah Barleywater Runs Away

The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket

 

Copyright © 2013 by John Boyne

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Publishers since 1866

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®
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Boyne, John.

Stay where you are & then leave / John Boyne; illustrations by Oliver Jeffers. — First American edition.

pages cm

Summary: Four years after Alfie Summerfield's father left London to become a soldier in World War I he has not returned but Alfie, now nine, is shining shoes at King's Cross Station when he happens to learn that his father is at a nearby hospital being treated for shell shock.

ISBN 978-1-62779-031-4 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-62779-032-1 (e-book)

1.  World War, 1914–1918—England—Juvenile fiction.   [1.  World War, 1914–1918—England—Fiction.   2.  Fathers and sons—Fiction.   3.  Mental illness—Fiction.   4.  London (England)—History—20th century.   5.  Great Britain—History—George V, 1910–1936—Fiction.]   I.  Jeffers, Oliver, illustrator.   II.  Title.   III.  Title: Stay where you are and then leave.

PZ7.B69677St 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013043620

 

First published in 2013 in England by Doubleday Childrens

eISBN 9781627790321

 

First American hardcover edition 2014

eBook edition March 2014