The man looked up, and Alfie gasped.
“Dad!” he said.
Georgie Summerfield was sitting in the wheelchair, biting his nails as he looked at his son, his eyes narrowing slightly as if he was uncertain of who he was, before shaking his head and looking down, staring at his slippers. He was thinner than Alfie remembered. His cheekbones were more pronounced, his eyes seemed enormous, and his lips were very white, with little flakes of dryness crusted upon them.
“Dad, it’s me,” he cried, rushing forward. “It’s Alfie!”
Georgie didn’t seem to know him and kept staring at his slippers while shaking his head. He started to mumble, but Alfie couldn’t hear the words. He leaned close, but none of it made any sense to him.
“… in the last one of course, where they kept the tin pots, who was it, it was Humberside, he was always the best of them, no, maybe not, there was Petey too, they got him in the end, he went down with a ship, that’s what I heard, while the rest of us were there doing God knows what. Stay where you are and then leave, that’s what they told us, over and over—what sense does that make anyway? There was a—what was it? A grapefruit? No, of course not, there weren’t any grapefruits there, I’m mistaken—”
“Dad!” cried Alfie, putting his hands on his father’s shoulders, which had lost some of the muscle that had been there before. Georgie used to have such strong shoulders from lifting the milk churns. “Dad, don’t you know me? It’s me, Alfie!”
Georgie glanced up again but showed no sign of recognition. He smiled and looked back down, seemed as if he was about to start talking again but thought better of it and said nothing at all, sitting there immobile, saying nothing, doing nothing, looking at nothing.
“Dad, please,” whispered Alfie. “I’ve come all this way to find you. To save you!”
But Georgie simply sighed. It was as if he couldn’t hear him. Alfie stood up and looked around in despair. He studied the other men, but none of them could help him. He’d found his father; he’d come all this way and he’d found him. He wasn’t on a secret mission for the government—that had been a lie. And everyone knew it except him. But what did it matter? Georgie didn’t even recognize him anymore. He didn’t know his own son.
“Dad,” he pleaded.
No response.
“Dad!”
He could feel tears forming in his eyes but was determined not to cry. Instead, he stayed rooted to the spot, watching the men rocking back and forth, some of them mumbling to themselves, others not, and then noticed the table with the papers and the water on it once again and had an idea. He ran over, picked up one of the newspapers, folded it in half, and reached into his pocket. Walking back across the garden, he stood in front of his father with the folded newspaper before him, and Georgie looked at the boy, staring at the newspaper and then back up at his son with a curious expression on his face.
“Look what I’ve got for you,” said Alfie, opening the paper and showing him the apple drop, the single apple drop that Marian Bancroft had given him in the railway carriage that he’d put in his pocket for later.
Georgie stared at it, his eyes focusing on this little sphere of green, yellow, and red, before the signs of recognition appeared slowly on his face. He swallowed and looked up at his son.
“Alfie,” he said.
CHAPTER 9
OH! IT’S A LOVELY WAR!
Alfie rolled his eyes in frustration as he waited for the speech to end. So many people had been crowded together at King’s Cross over the last hour that it had become almost impossible to shine any shoes. He was barely even able to keep his usual position between the platforms, the ticket counter, and the tea shop with all the pushing and shoving that was going on around him. The crowds were listening to a man standing on a tea chest insisting that the war would be coming to an end soon, that no one should give up hope, and that it would all be over by Christmas. Most of his audience cheered him on; a few shouted abuse, but they in turn were shouted down by the people standing around them.
Christmas, thought Alfie, shaking his head and grabbing one of his horsehair brushes off the ground before an overweight man in a black suit could stand on it and crush it. It’s always going to be over by Christmas. But what was it Georgie had said in one of his letters? They just didn’t say which Christmas.
He pulled his copy of Robinson Crusoe out of his pocket and started to read, trying to block out the sounds of the ovations and the jeers that seemed to be coming in equal parts from all around him.
“I tell you now,” roared the man on the tea chest, “that the sacrifice that all of you have made, that your loved ones have made, will be remembered forever!” His voice rose on “forever,” and everyone cheered wildly. “We will win this war with honor and bring our boys home!” Another cheer, more jostling in the crowd, and this time a woman nearly fell on top of him; she had the rudeness to place both her hands on his head to steady herself. Alfie felt outraged, absolutely outraged. “Together we will go forward!” continued the man. “United against tyranny! Firm in our resolve! Victory is within our grasp—the end is nigh—keep steady hearts and minds and we shall bring this conflict to an end without any more loss of blood. Thank you, all!”
Everyone whooped and threw their hats in the air—except for one man standing nearby who was shaking his head. He turned and noticed Alfie watching him and said, “The end is nigh all right.” But Alfie looked away and was pleased to notice that the crowd was finally starting to disperse. He glanced up at the enormous clock over the ticket booth. A quarter past two. There was still time to earn a little money if luck was on his side.
“Shoeshine!” he shouted, trying his best to get as much strength and resolve into his voice as the speaker had so he might be heard over the dispersing crowds. “Get your shoeshine here!”
“I believe I’ll get my shoes shined, young man,” said a voice behind him, and he turned around to see the speech maker himself standing there, looking down at him with a smile on his face. He was a tall, thin man with a heavy mustache and thick dark hair parted at the side. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a few years, but there was a steely expression in his eyes. He spoke with a strange accent that Alfie didn’t fully recognize. “I have time, don’t I?” he asked another man with a briefcase standing next to him, who glanced up at the clock for a moment before nodding.
“A little time,” he said. “But we need to be at the palace by three.”
“Plenty of time, then. Plenty of time,” he replied, sitting down opposite Alfie on the customers’ chair. “You go get yourself a cup of tea, Rhodhri, and leave me and the boy to our chat. It’s not often I get to speak to one of the young people. What’s your name, lad?”
“Alfie,” said Alfie.
“That’s a fine name, that is,” said the man, nodding his head wisely. “I had a friend called Alfie when I was a boy. He had six spaniels, and he called them Alfie the First, Alfie the Second, Alfie the Third, and so on, as if they were kings.”
“Hmm,” said Alfie, thinking this was rather ridiculous. There had only been one King Alfred, as far as he knew. Alfred the Great. He liked the sound of that. Alfie the Great!