When Alfie first brought the box back to his own bedroom, he had stared at it for a long time, running his fingers across the elegant woodwork and taking careful sniffs of the polish, which sent an irritating tickle up his nose. He had seen boxes like this before, of course, although none as beautifully designed and well cared for as Mr. Janáček’s. A few days after signing up, his father had taken him to King’s Cross—he’d said they were going there to look at the trains, but that wasn’t the real reason—and Alfie had seen Leonard Hopkins from number two shining shoes in a corner by the ticket counter and charging a penny a shine. It seemed to take him a long time to finish each shoe, though, for every time a pretty girl walked by, Leonard’s eyes followed her as if he had become hypnotized, and only when his customer tapped him on the head did he turn back again.
The last anyone had heard, Leonard was stationed just outside Bruges. He’d been in a field hospital for three months before being sent back on active duty. He wasn’t even seventeen yet.
He’d mentioned Leonard’s job to Mr. Janáček one evening, and Kalena’s father had laughed and said that the problem with the English was that they always wanted someone else to serve them. The rich had their valets and footmen, their housekeepers and maids; the poor couldn’t afford such luxuries so it made them feel good to have someone else shine their shoes for them instead. It gave them a sense of importance.
“But there are some things that we can all do for ourselves, Alfie,” Mr. Janáček had declared, lifting a shoe in one hand and a brush in the other. “And this, my young friend, is one of them.”
Carefully examining the shoeshine box, Alfie felt certain that it had been in Mr. Janáček’s family for a long time, a family heirloom, and that he had brought it with him to London when he left Prague, for the best reason in the world: for love. Maybe he’d even used it himself to earn money before he’d opened his sweet shop. Or maybe he’d simply held on to it to shine his shoes. It was true that Mr. Janáček was always very well turned out; he was famous on Damley Road for his dapper appearance.
“It’s his European blood,” Margie said to Mrs. Milchin and Mrs. Welton one afternoon when she was finishing some ironing for Mrs. Gawdley-Smith, who lived in one of the posh houses just off Henley Square and whose washing Margie had started to take in for tuppence a load. (“Every basket I get through, Alfie, is another meal on the table for us.”) “On the continent, men take pride in their appearance.”
“Oh, if I was twenty years younger and Fred was looking the other way,” said Mrs. Welton with a laugh, and Mrs. Milchin shook her head and pulled a face like she’d just drunk a mouthful of sour milk.
“I don’t like to see a man so tidy,” she said. “If you ask me, that Mr. Janáček is not to be trusted.” But then, Mrs. Milchin had taken against him long ago on account of his accent. That was just who she was. She didn’t like foreigners.
Alfie didn’t like to think that he was stealing the shoeshine box; he preferred to think of it as borrowing. He knew that stealing was a bad thing—David Candlemas from number thirteen had nearly gone to jail for stealing coal from the shed at the back of the Scutworths’ house, a scandal that had set Damley Road aflame for weeks—but he was sure that Mr. Janáček would approve of what he was doing, and he promised himself that he would return it when the war was over and Kalena and her father finally returned to number six.
If that day ever came.
* * *
Not long after this, Margie came home wearing a troubled expression on her face and told him that she had something important to say. They went into the parlor, where Alfie sat opposite her, his hands on his knees, leaning forward in expectation.
“Alfie,” she said, not looking directly at him but staring into the fireplace instead. She didn’t say anything for a long time, but Alfie decided he wouldn’t speak until she did. He was afraid of what she was going to tell him and could already feel the tears beginning to brew at the back of his eyes. “I have a bit of news for you,” she said finally.
“Is it good news?” asked Alfie.
“Well, it’s not bad news,” she replied. “It’s just news, that’s all. Information.”
“Is it about Dad?”
She turned quickly and looked at him now, and their eyes met. It had been almost three years since Georgie had stepped into that same room in his soldier’s uniform and Margie had run crying from the room and Granny Summerfield had declared that they were finished, they were all finished.
“It’s not about your father,” said Margie, shaking her head. “Alfie, we’ve had this conversation before. He’s on a secret mission for the government, I told you that. That’s why he can’t get in touch with us anymore. It’s why he doesn’t write and why we can’t write to him.”
Dad’s dead, thought Alfie.
“I thought you understood all about that?” continued Margie, her voice rising a little as Alfie set his jaw and felt his teeth grinding against each other. Dad’s dead. He closed his eyes, and in his head he heard the sound of a train pulling into a station, the noise of its engines drowning out everything that his mother was saying … dead-Dad’s-dead-Dad’s-dead-Dad’s-dead … Her lips were still moving; she was still talking, he knew she was, but he couldn’t hear her. He was blocking out every sound and could only hear those two words repeated over and over in his head.
“Alfie, stop it!” cried Margie, pulling his hands away from his ears, and he opened his eyes now and swallowed hard. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
“I was thinking about something, that’s all.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Dad.”
Margie sighed. “Alfie, if you want to talk about your father, we can talk about your father. Is that what you want?”
“Tell me the truth about him.”
“I’ve told you the truth.”
“I’m not a baby,” insisted Alfie. “Tell me the truth.”
Margie hesitated; for a moment it looked as if she really was going to tell him the truth, but the sound of Mr. Asquith’s hooves passing down Damley Road, his head turning automatically as he passed number twelve, pulled them both out of the moment and Alfie knew that there was no point in asking.
“Tell me your news, then,” he said at last.
Margie shook her head. “Oh, Alfie,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t know that I have the energy now.”
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“I’ve got a job,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “At the hospital. I’m to be a Queen’s Nurse.”
“What’s that?” asked Alfie, frowning.
“You read the paper. I know you do,” she said, not knowing that Alfie only looked at the newspaper every day to read the numbers.
14278.
“There are so many soldiers coming back from the front with terrible injuries,” continued Margie. “And they need more nurses to look after them. I have to do my bit, Alfie. You can see that, can’t you? I’ve always wanted to find something I might be good at. Maybe this is it. I think about your dad and—” She stopped speaking for a moment and bit her lip, then shook her head, changing tack. “I can be of use, Alfie. You understand that, don’t you? The more people who are of use, the quicker the war will come to an end.”