“The war will never come to an end,” shouted Alfie, leaning forward in his seat now. “It’s going to go on forever.”
“That’s not true,” said Margie. “It has to end one day. Wars always do. The new ones can’t start if the old ones don’t end,” she added, smiling a little, but Alfie wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “Anyway, I’ve been offered six weeks’ training at the hospital and then a job after that—shift work unfortunately, so there’ll be a few changes around here for a while. You’re going to have look after yourself a bit more. You can do that, can’t you? Granny Summerfield is only across the road anyway if you want to go over there.”
Alfie thought about it. He didn’t much like the idea of looking after himself. He wanted things to be back the way they used to be, when Georgie and Margie were looking after him, and Granny Summerfield was always stopping by for a bit of a gossip, and Old Bill Hemperton next door would rat-a-tat-tat on the door and give Alfie a ha’penny to go and fetch his paper for him, and Kalena Janáček was still his best friend and not a person of special interest and hadn’t been taken away for internment.
“We need the money, Alfie, that’s the truth of it,” said Margie when he didn’t say anything.
“But you’re already taking in washing,” said Alfie.
“Don’t remind me. I’ll have to do all that in the middle of the day, between shifts.”
“And when will you sleep?”
“Oh, I’ll sleep when I’m—” She stopped herself suddenly, her cheeks flushing scarlet. “I don’t have any choice, Alfie. Times are tight, you know that.” She hesitated and raised her voice in exasperation. “We don’t have any money, Alfie! We’re barely getting by as it is. Granny Summerfield has said we can go and live with her, but I won’t do that. This is our home, and while I have breath in my body I won’t take it away from you when you’ve already lost so many other things. Anyway, how am I supposed to keep you in sweets if I don’t work?” She smiled, hoping that he’d smile back.
“I don’t need sweets,” said Alfie. “I can give them up. There aren’t as many now anyway. Almost none of the shops stock them.”
“We need food,” she said then. “Alfie, we’re perilously close to penury. Perilously close.”
Alfie opened his eyes wide. He had no idea what perilously close to penury meant, but it didn’t sound good.
“If I go out to work, and take in Mrs. Gawdley-Smith’s washing, and maybe take a few extra night shifts, then we can eat. If I don’t, then we can’t. It’s as simple as that. Food doesn’t grow on trees, you know.”
“It does actually,” said Alfie. “Some of it. The rest grows in the ground.”
Margie smiled and even laughed a little, which made Alfie happy. It had been a long time since he’d made his mother laugh. “Well, that’s true,” she said. “But you know what I mean.”
In the end, they’d had a long talk about the hospital and the hours she would have to work, and Alfie promised that he wouldn’t get into any trouble and that he’d go to school every day, which Margie said was a sign that he was growing up.
“You’ll be a fine man one day, Alfie Summerfield,” she told him, kissing him on the top of his forehead. “Just like your father. He’d be proud of you if he were here with us now.”
But he wasn’t with them, of course. He didn’t write, he didn’t send telegrams; he didn’t come home on leave like Jack Tamorin from number twenty or Arthur Morris from number eighteen. Margie insisted that his dad’s secret mission would bring the war to an end more quickly, but Alfie didn’t believe a word of it.
He knew that his father was dead.
* * *
Alfie stole Mr. Janáček’s shoeshine box for one reason only: so that he could go out to work like Leonard Hopkins had and help his mother out. She was doing her bit; it was time he did his bit too.
The next morning was a Wednesday so there was no need to go to school. (It wasn’t reading or history that day, after all.) Alfie waited until Margie left for her first week’s training at the hospital and then took the box out of the wardrobe, opened it to make sure that everything was still in place, had a wash, got dressed, ate some breakfast, and left the house.
Damley Road was only a short walk from King’s Cross, and Alfie made his way along the familiar streets, switching the box from his right hand to his left whenever it grew too heavy. He felt like a man of the world, a working man just like his dad had once been, getting up early to ride the milk float. When he passed other working men on the street, he felt an urge to tip his cap to them, but didn’t do so in case it made him look stupid.
As he stepped inside the station, he felt a great wave of emotion overtake him. The last time he’d been here—the only time he’d been here—was when Georgie had taken him a few days after he’d signed up. The station had been very busy then. Newspaper boys were everywhere—it was said that during July 1914, circulation increased sixfold as everyone wanted to find out what might happen to them next—and there were hundreds of people boarding and leaving the trains. The noise of the steam engines was deafening and the station itself was filled with a smog as bad as any of the London pea-soupers. Georgie wasn’t wearing his soldier’s uniform that day. It was hanging in his wardrobe at home. He hadn’t put it on again since he’d stepped into the front parlor and surprised them all.
“Do you know,” said Georgie, standing in the concourse and looking around at the platforms, staring at the height of the station ceiling and listening to the sound of the conductors’ whistles, “I used to think I might like to be a train driver. I tried for a job on the London-to-Edinburgh line, but I didn’t get it.”
“Why not?” asked Alfie, looking up at his dad.
“They said I wasn’t a good fit,” he replied with a shrug. “Whatever that meant. They’re a posh old lot, them train drivers. They think they’re better than everyone else on account of how they get to wear a uniform all the time. But they’re not.”
“You’re going to wear a uniform now too,” said Alfie, and Georgie laughed a little and tousled the boy’s hair even though Alfie hadn’t meant it as a joke.
“Yes, I expect I am,” he said. “Hold on now—since we’re here there’s a bit of business I need to take care of.”
They walked over toward the ticket counter, where lots of people were queuing up for tickets, but at the end of the row were three desks lined up on the platform without railings in front of them, each one manned by an officer, leaning over ledgers and making notes alongside some of the entries.
“Afternoon,” said Georgie, lighting up a cigarette and taking a drag from it as he approached the man at the center table, who was about ten years older than he was and had dark-black hair, parted neatly at the side and with so much hair cream in it that his comb had left teeth marks like a freshly plowed field. Alfie heard a wolf whistle and turned around to see Leonard Hopkins, kneeling by his shoeshine box, leering at a girl who turned in surprise and smiled before being dragged away by her mother.