“Come on, Margie,” Georgie said, standing behind her and rubbing her neck. “There’s nothing to cry about, is there? Remember what everyone said—it’ll all be over by Christmas. I’ll be back here in time to help stuff the goose.”
“And you believe that, do you?” Margie said, looking up at him, her eyes red-rimmed with tears. “You believe what they tell you?”
“What else can we do but believe?” said Georgie. “We have to hope for the best.”
“Promise me, Georgie Summerfield,” said Margie. “Promise me you won’t sign up.”
There was a long pause before Alfie’s dad spoke again. “You heard what Old Bill said, love. It might be easier on me in the long term if—”
“And what about me? And Alfie? Will it be easier on us? Promise me, Georgie!”
“All right, love. Let’s just see what happens, shall we? All them politicians might wake up tomorrow morning and change their minds about the whole thing anyway. We could be worrying over nothing.”
Alfie wasn’t supposed to eavesdrop on his parents’ private conversations—this was something that had got him into trouble once or twice in the past—but that night, the night he turned five, he sat on the staircase where he knew they couldn’t see him and stared at his toes as he listened in. He hadn’t intended to sit there for quite so long—he had only come down for a glass of water and a bit of leftover tongue that he’d had his eye on—but their conversation sounded so serious that it seemed like it might be a mistake to walk away from it. He gave a deep, resounding yawn—it had been a very long day, after all, as birthdays always are—and closed his eyes for a moment, laid his head on the step behind him, and before he knew it he was having a dream where someone was lifting him up and carrying him to a warm, comfortable place. The next thing he knew, he was opening his eyes again, only to find himself lying in his own little bed with the sun pouring through the thin curtains—the ones with the pale-yellow flowers on them that Alfie said were meant for a girl’s room, not a boy’s.
* * *
The morning after his fifth birthday party, Alfie came downstairs to find his mother in her wash-day clothes with her hair tied up on her head, boiling water in every pot on the range, looking just as unhappy as she had the night before, and not just the normal unhappiness she felt every wash day, which usually lasted from seven in the morning until seven at night. She looked up when she saw him but didn’t seem to recognize him for a moment; when she did, she just offered him a dejected smile.
“Alfie,” she said. “I thought I’d let you sleep in. You had a big day yesterday. Bring your sheets down to me, will you? There’s a good boy.”
“Where’s Dad?” asked Alfie.
“He’s gone out.”
“Gone out where?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, unable to look him in the eye. “You know your dad never tells me anything.”
Which Alfie knew wasn’t true, because every afternoon when his father came home from the dairy, he told Margie every single detail of his day from start to finish, and they sat there laughing while he explained how Bonzo Daly had left half a dozen churns outside in the yard without the lids on and the birds had got at them and spoiled the milk. Or how Petey Staples had cheeked the boss and been told that if he continued to complain he could just go and find another job where they put up with guff like that. Or how Mr. Asquith had done the poo to end all poos outside Mrs. Fairfax from number four’s house and her a direct descendant (she claimed) of the last Plantagenet King of England and meant for better places than Damley Road. If Alfie knew one thing about his father, it was that he told his mother everything.
An hour later, he was sitting in the front parlor drawing in his new sketchbook while Margie took a rest from the washing, and Granny Summerfield, who’d come around for what she called a bit of a gossip—although it was really to bring her sheets for Margie to wash too—held the newspaper up to her face and squinted at the print, complaining over and over about why they made it so small.
“I can’t read it, Margie,” she was saying. “Are they trying to drive us all blind? Is that their plan?”
“Do you think Dad will take me on the float with him tomorrow?” asked Alfie.
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes, but he said I couldn’t until I was older.”
“Well, then,” said Margie.
“But I’ll be older tomorrow than I was yesterday,” said Alfie.
Before Margie could answer, the door opened, and to Alfie’s astonishment a soldier marched in. He was tall and well built, the same size and shape as Alfie’s dad, but he looked a little sheepish as he glanced around the room. Alfie couldn’t help but be impressed by the uniform: a khaki-colored jacket with five brass buttons down the center, a pair of shoulder straps, trousers that tucked into knee socks, and big black boots. But why would a soldier just walk into their living room? he wondered. He hadn’t even knocked on the front door! But then the soldier took his hat off and placed it under his arm, and Alfie realized that this wasn’t just any soldier and it wasn’t a stranger either.
It was Georgie Summerfield.
It was his dad.
And that was when Margie dropped her knitting on the floor, put both hands to her mouth, and held them there for a few moments before running from the room and up the stairs while Georgie looked at his son and mother and shrugged his shoulders.
“I had to,” he said finally. “You can see that, Mum, can’t you? I had to.”
“We’re finished,” said Granny Summerfield, putting the newspaper down and turning away from her son as she looked out of the window, where more young men were walking through their own front doors, wearing uniforms just like Georgie’s. “We’re all finished.”
And that was everything that Alfie remembered about turning five.
CHAPTER 2
IF YOU WERE THE ONLY BOCHE IN THE TRENCH
The Janáčeks had already been gone for almost two years when Alfie stole the shoeshine box.
They had lived three doors down from the Summerfields for as long as he could remember, and Kalena, who was six weeks older than he was, had been his best friend since they were babies. Whenever Alfie was in her house in the evening, Mr. Janáček could be found sitting at the kitchen table with the shoeshine box laid out before him, shining his shoes for the next day.
“I believe a man should always present himself to the world with elegance and grace,” he told Alfie. “It is what marks us out from the animals.”
All the people on Damley Road were friends, or they had been before the war began. There were twelve terraced houses on either side of the street, each one attached to the next by a thin wall that carried muffled conversations through to the neighbors. Some of the houses had window boxes outside, some didn’t, but everyone made an effort to keep the place tidy. Alfie and Kalena lived on the side with all the even numbers; Granny Summerfield lived opposite, with all the odd ones, which Margie said was particularly appropriate. Each house had one window facing onto the street from the front parlor, with two more up top, and every door was painted the same color: yellow. Alfie remembered the day Joe Patience, the conchie from number sixteen, painted his door red, and all the women came out on the street to watch him, shaking their heads and whispering to each other in outrage. Joe was political—everyone knew that. Old Bill said he was “his own man,” whatever that meant. He was out on strike more often than he was at work and was forever handing out leaflets about workers’ rights. He said that women should have the vote, and not even all the women agreed with him about that. (Granny Summerfield said she’d rather have the plague.) He owned a beautiful old clarinet too, and sometimes he sat outside his front door playing it; when he did, Helena Morris from number eighteen would stand in her doorway and stare down the street at him until her mother came out and told her to stop making a show of herself.