Valentine Joe (2 page)

‘No thanks, Grandad, you're all right.'

He opened the box and Rose got a whiff of custard creams. Their sweet, dusty, old-people smell didn't fit with the glossy new-car scent of the train.

‘Please yourself. Look, we're about to go into the tunnel.'

Outside the windows the misty grey fields were now hidden by great blank walls going up on each side. Then there was a gentle
whoomp
and the pressure inside the compartment changed as the train entered the tunnel. The other passengers shifted in their seats and shared glances, as if something exciting was happening. Even the woman with the laptop, and the over-inflated businessman – who probably did the journey several times a week – looked up from their work to stare into the darkness outside the windows.

Rose could see her own face, ghostly in its cloud of dark hair, reflected in the darkness, as if another train were travelling alongside with another Rose on board. Was that train going to the same place, she wondered, or would it veer off somewhere else entirely when they left the tunnel? It was just like an ordinary train tunnel, actually. You'd never know you were going under the sea.
Dad would've enjoyed it though
, she thought. He'd have made up stories about mermaids being disturbed and swimming after the train, tails swishing angrily and hair streaming out behind them
like seaweed. She texted:

In tunnel on way to belgium with grandad to look at war graves?!?! x

There was no signal in the tunnel, of course, but she pressed ‘Send' anyway.

She was doing this for Grandad, this trip to Belgium. They were heading for a city called Ypres (you pronounced it ‘Eepra', Mum had told her before they left) to visit his uncle's grave. Grandad couldn't fill the hole that Dad had left, but he tried his best and Rose loved him for that. So when he'd suggested the trip, Rose had said she'd go, even though it would mean she might miss Grace's Valentine's Day party. She didn't mind too much about that, actually.

‘Have a look at this, Cabbage.' Grandad was rummaging in the old army surplus shoulder bag he always carried with him. His possessions soon covered the table: wallet, house keys (with keyring featuring photo of Rose aged seven looking embarrassed in primary school uniform), football whistle (Grandad coached a local boys' team), tube of stuff to rub on bad backs (smelling of old people), and then . . .

‘What's that, Grandad?'

It was an old photograph mounted on yellowing cardboard which looked like it had once been in a frame. As Grandad pushed it across the table towards her, Rose caught a musty smell like old library books. It smelled of the past.

‘It's my dad,' he said. ‘Your great-grandad.'

Dad's grandad
, thought Rose. Did they look alike? She looked at the young face in the photo, searching for similarities.

Grandad seemed to guess what she was thinking. Their eyes met for a second. Grandad was the first to look away.

‘And that's his brother.' He pointed to the other young man. ‘My uncle George.'

They were in uniform, the brothers, sitting on a bench in a photographer's studio with a potted palm behind them, gazing calmly out of the sepia-tinged past into Rose's eyes.

‘It was taken just before they left,' Grandad continued.

‘To the war?'

‘Yeah, the Front. Flanders, in Belgium, where we're headed.'

Rose looked at the faces of the two young men in the photograph and wished she could tell them not to go.

‘They look really young,' she said.

Grandad sighed. ‘They were, Cabbage. Dad was nineteen, George a couple of years older. Boys.' He stared at the photo. ‘Just boys.'

Rose fiddled with the silver chain round her neck. It had a tiny heart-shaped locket hanging from it, also silver. Mum and Dad had given it to her the Christmas before last. The locket opened up, but Rose hadn't yet found anything she wanted to put inside.

‘Your dad was wounded, wasn't he, Grandad?'

Grandad didn't seem to hear. He was still looking at the photo, lost in thought.

‘Grandad?'

‘What? Oh, yes, yes. That's right, wounded. Bit of shrapnel in his bum, gave him gyp for years. But he was lucky, got sent home before the war was over. Whereas Uncle George—'

‘He died, didn't he?' Rose had heard the story before.

Grandad nodded. ‘My dad never got over it, not really. Felt bad about it all his life.'

‘It wasn't his fault!'

Grandad sighed and gently touched the face of the young man in the photograph. ‘Not the point, Cabbage.'

‘But why should he feel bad? It doesn't make sense.'

‘I know, love,' he said. ‘I don't understand either. All I know is, Dad always wanted to go back to Belgium and find out where George was buried. Say goodbye, you know.'

Rose nodded. Goodbyes
were
important. She'd never had a chance to say goodbye to Dad. ‘Why didn't he?'

‘Life took over, I s'pose. He got married . . . then us lot came along.'

Grandad was the youngest of six boys. Rose had vague memories of two of them, Uncle Norman and Uncle Les. Big, laughing, jokey men who smelled of beer and cigarettes and the stuff they put on their hair and who let you walk around the room standing on their feet. Grandad was the little one of the family – an afterthought, he'd always said.

‘So now we're doing it for him,' said Rose. ‘Saying goodbye, I mean.'

‘Yeah.'

The look on Grandad's face as he put the photograph back in his bag made Rose glad she'd agreed to come.

Whoomp . . .

The pressure inside the carriage changed again and daylight streamed through the windows as the train came out of the tunnel. Now they were passing through a flat pale landscape under a bleached wintry sky. Rose looked out of the window, and to her amazement saw a field containing a single ostrich.

‘
Grandad!
'

Grandad's mouth fell open and his face took on an
expression of delighted astonishment. He looked like a little kid who'd just been given the most wonderful, unexpected, extraordinary Christmas present.

‘An
ostrich
?' he said. ‘In
Belgium
?'

‘Could be an emu,' said Rose, trying to keep a straight face.

‘An emu?!' shouted Grandad. Rose knew that would push his buttons. ‘That's never an emu! I know an emu when I see one, my girl! And that – that thing out there – is an ostrich!'

The woman with the laptop and the over-inflated businessman were both looking at them. Rose was beginning to feel sorry she'd pointed it out.

‘Oh, I've seen it all, now,' said Grandad, sitting back in his seat with a sigh. ‘An ostrich in Belgium. I can die happy.'

He took another biscuit and Rose carried on looking out of the window. They were passing a farmhouse now. With its clean white walls and pitched red roof, it looked like an illustration in a children's book. Next to it was a barn, a field with a donkey in it, and a pond, almost completely round, with two cheerful-looking white ducks.

‘Shell hole,' said Grandad, through a mouthful of biscuit.

Rose didn't understand. ‘What?'

‘That pond. Made by a shell in the war. That's why it's so round. Boom!' he added, unnecessarily, showering Rose with crumbs.

Rose looked back at the pretty round pond with its two happy ducks and imagined earth, trees, soldiers being thrown up into the air by the explosion, leaving the pond-shaped hole behind. She felt sick. How could something so pretty, so normal, so
nice
have come from something so
horrible? It wasn't right.

Grandad was looking concerned. ‘You OK, love?'

Rose forced a little smile. ‘Yeah,' she said, even though she wasn't.

‘Sure?'

‘Sure.'

He put his head on one side, looking at her more closely. ‘Surey-sure?'

‘Surey-sure, Grandad.'

This was a game they'd played since she was little but Rose felt she was getting a bit old for it now.

‘Surey-surey sure-sure?'

‘Grandad!'

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose saw that the woman had stopped working on her laptop and was listening with a smile.

Grandad grimaced. ‘Sorry, love. I just wouldn't want—'

‘I'm fine, Grandad. Really.'

Grandad opened his mouth to speak again, but Rose got there first. ‘And, no – I'm also sure I don't want a biscuit!'

He grinned. ‘I'm glad you came with me, Cabbage. It wouldn't be the same on me own.'

‘I'm doing it in history at school, you know – World War One.'

‘History? Tuh!' Grandad made a dismissive sound with his false teeth. ‘It's not proper history. Not if there's people you know in it.'

Rose thought that was silly. ‘You didn't know your uncle George.'

‘Not the point. History should be about strangers – kings, prime ministers, people no one cares about. This is too close!'

Grandad was having one of his rants. Getting up on his high hobby horse, Dad always used to say. Rose glanced over at the woman with the laptop but she looked engrossed in her work.

‘World War One's not history!' Grandad went on. ‘It's life!'

Rose wasn't sure. It didn't feel much like life to her. It felt like it had happened a very long time ago to people with funny haircuts and old-fashioned names like Albert and Walter and Sidney.

‘If you ask me,' Grandad was saying, ‘you should be doing more long-ago history. The Wars of the Roses' – he made them sound all silly and pompous – ‘that sort of stuff. Proper history.'

Rose wasn't listening. They'd just passed another of those perfectly round ponds. She shivered. It was as if this neat, pretty landscape was hiding something horrible, like a bright new carpet covering a filthy old floor.

‘Heads up!' Grandad was checking his watch. ‘It's getting on for lunchtime. We'll be coming into Brussels soon.'

Rose pulled her eyes away from the window. ‘What happens at Brussels, Grandad?'

‘We have a sandwich!' he replied, triumphantly.

‘And then?'

‘We get on another train. To Wipers.'

‘Wipers?'

‘That's what the soldiers called it, the Tommies,' he said. ‘Easier to say than Ypres, y'see. Unless you're French, obviously.'

Ypres.
Eepra.
That name again. It sounded like a little scream.

Fields were giving way to streets and houses now. As the train entered the city and began to slow down, the people in the carriage fell silent. The woman closed her laptop and stared into space, her fingers twiddling her wedding ring. The over-inflated businessman put his phone away and sighed. For a moment he looked so sad Rose thought he was going to cry. The backpackers had stopped whispering to each other and were looking out of the windows on opposite sides of the carriage, each lost in thoughts of their own. The only sounds were the rhythm of the wheels and the hum of the air conditioning.

‘Angel passing over.'

It was what Grandad always said at these strange moments when everyone fell silent at the same time. Rose looked around at the faces of their fellow passengers, frozen in that one brief moment in time, and she thought,
Is it an angel? Or is it something else?

As the train pulled into the station, the silence hung in the air like dust.

I
eper.

That's what it said on the station platform sign. Not Ypres. Ieper.

‘Grandad?' Rose pointed to the sign as they got off the train. ‘Are you sure this is the right stop?'

‘Yup,' said Grandad. He landed his suitcase with a bump and slammed the train door. ‘This is it all right.'

Rose followed him as he set off down the platform, dragging her case behind her. A few people had got off at the same time: a couple with a little boy who looked at Rose solemnly from under his fringe; a young woman with a briefcase; an elderly lady with an invisible cat yowling in a basket. They all hurried off to wherever they were going, leaving Rose and Grandad behind.

‘Why doesn't it say Ypres?' said Rose. ‘I can't even read that word.'

‘It's the Flemish name,' said Grandad. ‘Ieper. That's what they call it now. Ypres is the old name, the French
name.'

So this city's got three names
, thought Rose. She repeated them to herself in her head –
Ieper, Ypres, Wipers
– and wondered which one it liked best. Then she felt a bit silly. Cities didn't have feelings, did they?

‘This way!' Grandad had spotted the exit. ‘Follow me!'

Outside the station was a car park where Rose saw the lady with the cat basket climbing on to a bus. It was grey and cold and flat, and the wind seemed to blow right through Rose's new parka, the one Mum had bought her for Christmas. It was very dark green with fur round the hood and she knew it had cost more than Mum could afford. Rose huddled down inside it, wishing she'd brought some gloves.