And this was the moment when Alfie, without any warning, sneezed. He froze, grimacing, hoping against hope that they hadn’t heard him, but of course that was impossible. A moment later the doctor and nurse had come around to the front of the desk and were staring down at him.
“What on earth…?” asked the nurse.
“Who are you?” snapped the doctor, who looked furious to encounter a nine-year-old boy sitting on the floor.
“I got lost,” said Alfie.
“Lost? Lost how? What are you doing here anyway? Speak up, boy!”
Alfie said the first thing that came into his head. “My father’s the milkman,” he told them (which wasn’t entirely a lie). “I’ve been helping him with his rounds” (which was).
The pair stared at him, then at each other, then back at him.
“The supplies are delivered around the back of the hospital,” said the doctor, turning away. “As you should know by now. Go back out that way.” He indicated a side door that led to the grounds. “And don’t come back in here again, do you hear me? There are sick men in this hospital. They don’t need a child running around, spreading who knows what diseases. By God, you stink as well. You smell as if you’ve wet yourself. Don’t you ever bathe? Get out, for pity’s sake!”
Alfie turned on his heel and ran through the door, his heart beating wildly. His cap fell off and he ran back to retrieve it, and for a moment he thought that the nurse was looking at him as if she knew he was lying, but he didn’t dare say anything and so turned again and ran back outside.
* * *
It was a bright day, surprisingly warm for early November, and Alfie pulled his cap down low over his eyes to keep the sun out. His hands still stank of piss and he longed to wash them, so when he noticed a fountain in the center of the lawn, he ran toward it and thrust his hands in the stagnant water, telling himself that however bad they smelled when they came out, it couldn’t be any worse than they smelled now. Shaking them dry in the air, he considered the long gravel pathway that ran along the side of the hospital and decided to see where it led.
Arriving at a clump of trees, he stared around the grounds and sighed in frustration. If he turned to his left, he would be heading back toward the drive and the front gates, the train station and London, and his secret mission would end in failure. To his right was the hospital itself, filled with its terrible patients, and nothing in the world could have persuaded him to go back inside. He felt sorry for these wounded soldiers, but they didn’t seem human to him somehow; and he wondered why the doctors were not doing more to help them. There hadn’t even been a nurse in the ward, or a doctor to help the poor man who had been horrified by the whistle of the kettle. Didn’t anyone take care of them? Wasn’t it somebody’s job to look after them? Was this what it was like in Margie’s hospital? He couldn’t imagine that his mother would leave patients to suffer as badly as these unfortunate men. If his father really was here, then he would never leave him in such misery.
He wanted to be brave and keep searching, but he began to feel a sense of panic at being so far from home. He’d never ventured outside a few square miles of London before, and now he’d taken a train to another county more than two hours away. And the truth was, he felt terrified. He hated this hospital. He hated the building, the horrible smell, the terrible people, the awful groaning. He hated all of it, and just wanted to go home. For some reason, Joe Patience’s missing tooth and purple, green, and yellow eye came into his mind, and he wondered why he hadn’t cared about what had happened to his father’s oldest friend; why he hadn’t asked whether he was all right. Georgie would have stopped; Alfie had just kept on walking.
He turned around and was about to make his way back in the direction he had come from when he caught sight of an opening in the bushes to his left a couple of hundred yards away. The hedges were all as neatly trimmed as the grass, but there was a gap there the width of a doorway that led to another garden beyond, and something—a spirit of exploration, perhaps—made him want to know what it looked like in there.
The gap led to a corridor of hedges that twisted and turned like a maze. He walked along one, then back up the next, before heading down a third. Only when he reached the end did the hedges part completely, leading to a wonderful flower garden, laid out in formal blocks with paths separating the beds and a small pond at the end. And to his surprise and dismay there was another group of men out here—half a dozen of them, seated in large wheelchairs at some distance from each other, each one wearing a dressing gown and holding a heavy tartan blanket across his knees. One man was quite close to Alfie and the boy looked at him nervously; the farthest was some distance away, his back to him and a sun hat pulled down over his bowed head.
Alfie slipped back in among the hedges as a nurse walked between the men, saying a few words to each one before continuing on her way. She disappeared through another opening in the hedges farther along, and Alfie stepped out again. A small table stood in the corner; on it were some books, a couple of newspapers, a few apples, and a pitcher of water. He walked over and had a look. The front pages had been taken away from the papers so all that was left was some fairly insignificant news about problems with the miners and details of a new education bill that was going through Parliament. There was a picture of King George and Queen Mary at an exhibition, and another of the Prince of Wales giving a speech to a group of nurses. Alfie couldn’t help himself. He was thirsty. He took a clean glass, poured himself some water, and swallowed it down in one gulp, giving a satisfied “Aaaah!” when he was finished.
He turned and looked at the young man seated closest to him, who was watching him carefully. He had greasy black hair, which fell low over his forehead, and a stubbly beard. There was something about his face that made Alfie think that this was what Old Bill Hemperton might have looked like when he was Young Bill Hemperton.
“Wh-wh-wh-who are you?” the man asked, stuttering over the words, looking down at the ground as he said them.
“No one,” said Alfie.
“You must be s-s-s-someone,” he said.
Alfie thought about repeating the line about being the milkman’s son, but something made him not want to lie to this man, even though it wasn’t really a lie, only sort of a lie. “I’m just…,” he began. “I’m just looking for a patient, that’s all.”
The man nodded and beckoned him over. Alfie wasn’t sure. The man put his hand out and waved the fingers casually. “Come closer,” he said. This time Alfie stepped over carefully. “Closer,” repeated the man. Alfie came closer, and again the man said it, in a sort of singsong voice this time. “Closer!” By now Alfie’s face was almost beside the young man’s, and he twisted suddenly in his chair, grabbing the boy’s chin in his hand. “I won’t go, do you hear me?” he hissed, his voice low, spit flying from his lips and landing on Alfie’s face. “I won’t go. You can’t make me. Take one of the others. You can’t make me, do you hear?”
Alfie pulled away, gasping, and spun around, looking for the exit, but the hedges all seemed to have grown closer together now and the sun was shining down with such ferocity that he couldn’t see what he was doing. He turned around and began to feel dizzy, picking a direction and running. He had to get out. He had to get home. He couldn’t stay in this awful place any longer. He ran one way, certain that it would bring him back to where he had started—but no, it took him only to the end of the garden, to the man in the last seat with his head bowed low and the sun hat on. Alfie ran past him, looked ahead; there was no way out. He turned back, and this time he saw the exit in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief, glancing at the man in the wheelchair for only a moment as he passed him, but it was long enough for the shock of recognition to hit him, and he turned back and stared.