“Hello, Alfie,” said Mr. Janáček.
“Hello, Mr. Janáček,” said Alfie.
“What will it be today, then?” Vat vill it be today, zen?
Alfie shook his head. “Nothing, thanks,” he said. “I’ve no pocket money till Monday. I wanted to ask you a question, that’s all.”
Mr. Janáček nodded and came over to stand next to the boy, shrugging his shoulders. “Ask me anything you want.” Anysing you vant.
“Well, you’re not getting any younger, are you, Mr. Janáček?” said Alfie. This was a phrase he’d overheard Old Bill Hemperton say. Whenever he was asked to do anything to help out on the street, he said he couldn’t, that whatever it was was a young man’s game and that he wasn’t getting any younger.
Mr. Janáček laughed. “How old do you think I am, Alfie?”
Alfie thought about it. He knew from experience—after a particularly unpleasant conversation with Mrs. Tamorin from number twenty—that it was always best to guess younger than you really thought. “Sixty?” he said, hoping that he might be right. (He really thought that Mr. Janáček was about seventy-five.)
Mr. Janáček laughed and shook his head. “Close,” he said. “I’m twenty-nine. Only a few years older than your father.”
Alfie didn’t believe him for a moment, but he let it go.
“Well, one day you’ll be too old to run the shop, won’t you?” he asked.
“I suppose so,” he said. “Although not for a long time, I hope.”
“Because I was talking to Kalena,” continued Alfie. “And she said that she won’t work here when she’s grown up on account of the fact that she’s planning on becoming prime minister. And I thought that you’ll probably need someone else to help out then, won’t you? When you can’t move around like you used to and you’re not able to reach up for the things on the top shelves.”
Mr. Janáček considered this. “Perhaps,” he said. “But why do you ask, Alfie? Are you applying for the position?”
Alfie thought about it. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to commit himself fully. “I just think you might keep me in mind, that’s all,” he said. “I’m a hard worker, I’m honest, and I love sweets.”
“But we don’t just sell sweets, do we? You’d have to like everything else too.”
“I can’t imagine getting too excited about string or candles,” said Alfie. “But I’d do my best. And in the meantime, I could take over every week when you have your day off.”
Mr. Janáček raised an eyebrow. “What day do I have off?” he asked in surprise. “I work, I work, and I work. I have no rest!”
“But you always close on Friday evenings and don’t open again until Sunday morning,” said Alfie.
“Ah, but that is not a day off,” said Mr. Janáček. “That is Shabbat. The Jewish day of rest. There are blessings to be made on Friday night: Kalena lights our candles, prayers are offered. We do not work, but we keep busy. I could not open the shop on this day. But your offer is a generous one, Alfie, and be assured that I will keep you in mind when it is time for me to retire.”
Alfie smiled. That was good enough for him. He looked over behind Mr. Janáček at the flag that was pinned to the wall beside the cash register. It was quite complicated, with a red stripe across the top, a white one in the center, and red and green squares underneath. Two crowns stood side by side over two emblems.
“What’s that?” asked Alfie.
Mr. Janáček looked over to see what the boy was looking at. “Why, it’s a flag,” he said.
“It’s not a flag of England.”
“No, it’s the flag of my homeland. Where I was born and where I grew up. Prague is a very beautiful city,” he added, stroking his chin and staring off into the lemon twisters. “Perhaps the most beautiful in the world. The city of Mozart and Dvořák. The city where Figaro and Don Giovanni were first performed. And if you have not crossed the Charles Bridge over the Vltava as the sun drops behind the castle, then you have not lived, my friend. You will visit it one day, I am sure of it.”
Alfie frowned. He had understood almost nothing of what Mr. Janáček had just said.
“If Prague is so wonderful,” he asked, “then why did you move to London?”
Mr. Janáček’s face burst into a wide smile, and he looked as happy as Alfie had ever seen him. “For the best reason in the world,” he explained. “For love.”
Alfie jumped off the stool then, said his good-byes, and marched back outside. He had no interest in hearing about this. Love was something that grown-ups talked about and girls read about—although Kalena never discussed it; she said she couldn’t let herself be distracted by love or she might never become prime minister—but that Alfie had no interest in at all. He could tell that Mrs. Janáček was very pretty, for an old woman anyway, but he couldn’t imagine that he could ever fall in love with her.
Of course, Mrs. Janáček had died in 1913, the year before the war began. She got very sick and very thin, and soon she couldn’t leave the house. Margie went to call on her every day, and Alfie overheard her telling Georgie that she was “wasting away, poor woman,” and soon she was gone and Mr. Janáček and Kalena were left alone. Alfie tried to talk to his friend about what had happened but she said she didn’t want to discuss it, not just yet, so instead he simply took her out to play every day, even when she didn’t want to go. He told her all his worst jokes, one of which, three months after her mother died, made her laugh out loud, and everything seemed to be all right again after that.
* * *
Alfie hadn’t seen the Janáčeks since the spring of 1915. By then the newspapers were talking about the war all the time, and a lot of the men from Damley Road, including Alfie’s dad, Georgie, were either training to be soldiers or were already fighting in Belgium or northern France. Some were too young yet but kept saying that they would sign up the minute they turned eighteen. Others were keeping their heads down and not talking about it at all because they didn’t want to go.
Even Leonard Hopkins from number two, who everyone knew had a shoeshine stand at King’s Cross and almost never went to school, spending every penny he earned on girls and hair tonic, had signed up, and he had only just turned sixteen.
“They didn’t ask any questions, that’s what I heard,” Granny Summerfield confided in Margie while Alfie was having his supper one evening. “But then, those recruiting sergeants don’t care, do they? They’ll take any lamb to the slaughter. Leonard hasn’t even started shaving yet. It’s a disgrace, if you ask me.”
And then there was Joe Patience, the conchie from number sixteen—he wasn’t a conchie yet, of course—who said that the whole thing was nonsense: it was just about land and money and giving more to the rich and keeping the poor in their place, and he didn’t care what anyone said or did, he’d never lift a gun, he’d never wear a uniform, and he’d never wanted to see France anyway so he didn’t care if he never did.