Alfie said nothing; simply stared up at the man, open-mouthed. He couldn’t find any words to answer. There were too many things running through his brain.
“What’s the matter with you?” the man asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
And still Alfie remained silent. The man raised an eyebrow and shook his head, as if to suggest that he didn’t have time for any more of this nonsense before saying, “We’ll call it a penny, shall we?” He tossed a coin into Alfie’s hat, picked up his briefcase, and turned away before stopping and looking back once again.
“Are you quite all right, boy?” he asked, his tone a little more sympathetic now. “It’s just that I’m a doctor, you see. And you look as if you’ve had a funny turn. If there’s anything wrong, you can tell me. I might be able to help.”
Alfie shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, the words coming out in a croak, the way they did whenever Margie woke him too early in the morning.
“All right then,” said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders and turning away. “Thanks for the shine.”
Slowly Alfie made his way back over to his shoeshine box and sat down on the customers’ seat. He picked up all his cloths and brushes and polishes and put them away, removed the footrest from the top and replaced it under the lid before snapping the entire thing shut with the gold catch. Then, standing up, he made his way out of King’s Cross and began to walk home.
And all the way there he thought of the single line that had jumped out at him from the East Suffolk & Ipswich Hospital document.
A simple phrase written halfway down the page, on the left-hand side.
Summerfield, George, it had said.
DOB: 3/5/1887.
Serial no.: 14278.
CHAPTER 6
FOR ME AND MY GIRL
On the way back from the station, Alfie remembered the day his father left; how he wouldn’t allow anyone to come to Liverpool Street to see him off.
“I know what it’ll be like down there,” he said, shaking his head. “All those wives and mothers crying into their hankies, making a spectacle of themselves. Let’s just say our good-byes here and be done with it. It’s not like I’ll be gone long anyway. It’ll all be over by Christmas.”
He was leaving for Aldershot Barracks to begin basic training, and Alfie could tell that he was both excited and nervous to be going. After he signed up, Margie refused to speak to him for two days and came around only when it was clear that his mind was made up and there was nothing she could do about it. Even Granny Summerfield stopped declaring that they were finished, they were all finished, and started telling everyone on Damley Road how proud she was of her son, for he was one of the first to enlist, to answer the call of king and country, and he would surely be kept safe on account of his bravery.
As he left number twelve, Margie threw her arms around his neck and whispered into his ear something that made him bite his lip and hug her even closer. The neighbors came out of their houses to see him off, and Joe Patience pressed a packet of Golden Virginia tobacco into Georgie’s hand and wished him luck.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said, which made Alfie’s dad laugh and shake his head.
“You won’t be far behind him, I suppose,” said Granny Summerfield, looking back and forth between her son in his uniform and Joe in a pair of trousers and a working man’s shirt. “You and Georgie were always thick as thieves. I’m surprised you didn’t sign up together.” There was a note of hostility in her voice, and Joe couldn’t meet her eye.
“There are plenty of ways to help the war effort,” he said. “I’m not sure that killing people is the most productive.”
“Well, you might not have any choice,” she replied. “It’s all volunteers now, but if things don’t go our way, then—”
“There’s always a choice, Mrs. Summerfield,” insisted Joe, a little more steel entering his voice now. “I make up my own mind about things, you know that.”
Granny Summerfield’s face grew red with anger, but Georgie said that this wasn’t a morning for politics, that he just wanted to shake hands with his friends and hug his family, and reluctantly she stopped talking. But it was obvious that she had a lot more to say.
The last person Georgie said good-bye to was Alfie, who was standing in the street with his back pressed up against the front parlor window.
“You’re the man of the house now,” he said, looking him directly in the eye, and Alfie felt his stomach sink at the idea of so much responsibility. “You’ll watch out for your mother while I’m away, won’t you? And your granny?”
“Yes,” said Alfie. “But you’ll come home again, won’t you?”
“Before you’ve even noticed that I’ve gone.”
And with that, he strolled down the street with his kit bag on his back as if he were simply going to the dairy for a day’s work, before stopping and turning, lifting a hand in the air to wave good-bye, and then disappearing around the corner. But that was nearly four years ago now, and Alfie hadn’t laid eyes on his father since then.
There were letters, of course. The first came from Aldershot: he told his family that the train journey had been great fun and that everyone was excited about what was ahead of them. Most of the new recruits were from London, but there were a couple of boys from Norwich and Ipswich, and even a Plymouth lad who’d only moved to Clapham six months earlier to take up a job on the buses. A fellow called Sergeant Clayton was in charge, and he made them line up in the courtyard and tell him their names. He played the tartar something awful, Georgie said, shouting at anyone who didn’t say Yes, sir; No, sir; Three bags full, sir. He had two corporals with him, Wells and Moody, standing on either side, saying very little.
The barracks have two rows of ten beds each. I’m near the door with a boy called Mitchell on one side of me—Arsenal supporter, but I won’t hold that against him—and another called Jonesy on the other. And you won’t believe this, Alfie, but Jonesy only has a copy of that book that Mr. Janáček gave you for your birthday. Robinson Crusoe! I nearly laughed when I saw it, I swear I did.
Margie kept Georgie’s letters safe and didn’t like Alfie to handle them in case they got dirty. When Granny Summerfield was holding one up to her eyes so she could see it better, he could see his mum watching nervously, wishing that she’d just let her read it aloud to her like she’d offered to do at the start.
“He makes it sound like it’s just a big game,” said Granny Summerfield when she had finished one of the early letters, and Margie took it back quickly and placed it between the pages of her Bible. “I thought I brought him up to be smarter than that.”
“If he was smart, then he wouldn’t have signed up in the first place,” said Margie.
Of course, things were different now that Alfie was nine. No one was volunteering anymore. There was conscription. You reached the age of eighteen and that was it. You had to go to the war. Alfie spent a lot of time thinking that if they didn’t sort things out in the next nine years, then he’d be going to the war too, an idea that frightened him. It didn’t matter anymore if you were married, so there was no point in taking your sweetheart to the church to get out of serving. Even if you did, you’d be going off to France on your honeymoon alone.