“Are you a reader, Alfie?” he asked.
“I like Robinson Crusoe,” he replied. “Mr. Janáček gave me a copy for my fifth birthday. I couldn’t read it very well then, but I’ve read it three times since. It’s the best book ever written.”
“It’s a good book, certainly,” said Joe Patience. “But until you’ve read a lot more, you should reserve judgment. What other books have you read?”
Alfie shook his head. “Just storybooks at school. None of them are as good as Robinson Crusoe. Have you read all these books?” he asked, wondering how many there were. He leaned back and looked down the corridor, which was also lined with books on both walls, and into the kitchen, where he could see another row above the range. Joe’s clarinet was propped up against the kitchen table. He used to play it outside, of course, before the war. The whole street could hear him. Now he only ever played indoors, in private.
“Most of them. There’s not much else for me to do these days. Now, are you going to tell me what you’re doing here or do I have to guess?”
Alfie stared at Joe, wondering how best to phrase this. He was only the same age as Georgie—thirty-one—but he looked much older. He had heavy bags under his eyes, maybe from reading too much, maybe from a lack of sleep, and a scar running along one of his cheeks. Above his left temple was a piece of very smooth skin where his hair didn’t grow. It looked as if he’d been burned badly.
“You know my dad,” said Alfie finally.
“Of course I do,” replied Joe with a quick laugh. “We grew up together. You know that.”
“And you know the war?”
Joe paused for a moment but then nodded. “I do,” he repeated.
“Well, when my dad went to the war we used to get letters from him all the time, and it seemed like he was having a great time,” said Alfie, feeling the words start to pour out of him now, tumbling over each other as he tried to tell Joe everything he knew. “Only then the letters stopped coming, or I thought they stopped coming, but actually Mum was keeping them to herself and not letting me see them, but I found them anyway—she kept them under her mattress—and I read them and they didn’t make a lot of sense, most of them; or they did at the start, when he was telling us about all the terrible things that were happening, but then after a while he stopped talking about those things and everything just got confused.”
“Slow down, slow down,” said Joe, holding a hand up in the air. “Your dad went to the war, I got that part. If you’re worried that he hasn’t been in touch—well, the soldiers can’t always write. They’re fighting, of course, and—”
“My dad’s not fighting,” said Alfie, shaking his head.
“He’s not?” asked Joe, turning his head away, and Alfie gasped in surprise.
“You know, don’t you?” he asked. “You know about my dad!”
“Know what?”
“You know!”
“Alfie, you’re not making any sense.”
“My dad’s in hospital. A couple of hours from here. He’s been there for … well, I don’t know how long.”
“Ah,” said Joe Patience.
“Only I’m not supposed to know that.”
“So how did you find out?”
“I’m clever,” said Alfie. “I worked it out. But you knew, didn’t you? I can see it in your face.”
Joe nodded his head. “I did, yes,” he said. “Well, have you been to see him, Alfie?”
“Yes.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“Eventually. But it wasn’t like it was before. He knew me, and then he didn’t know me. And then the nurses came out so I had to scamper. But before I did, he shouted something out. The nurses didn’t pay any attention, but I did. I heard that word, and I know he was shouting it to me.”
“What did he say?” asked Joe.
“Home.”
Joe raised an eyebrow, then reached for his cigarettes and lit one up. Alfie had noticed that whenever grown-ups wanted a good think, that’s what they did. They reached for the tobacco and their matches.
“Have you been to see him?” asked Alfie after a moment.
Joe nodded, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “I’ve been once a week, every week,” he said. “Well, since I got out of prison, that is.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Your mum asked me not to. But I suppose since you know now, there’s no point lying about it. What does Margie say about all this?”
“She doesn’t know,” admitted Alfie. “I haven’t told her.”
Joe nodded; this didn’t seem to surprise him in the least.
“Can I ask you something?” asked Alfie after a long silence.
“Sure,” said Joe with a shrug. “Ask me anything you want.”
“Why do they call you the conchie from number sixteen?”
Joe frowned. “Because that’s where I live,” he said.
“No,” said Alfie, shaking his head. “I understand that part. It’s the first bit I don’t get. What’s a conchie?”
Joe smiled a little. “You don’t know what the word means?”
“No.”
Joe nodded. “It’s not really a word,” he said. “It’s a shortened version of a word. Like Old Bill Hemperton, everyone calls him Bill but his real name is William. Or like saying kids instead of children.”
“So what’s conchie short for, then?” asked Alfie.
“Conscientious objector,” said Joe. “It means someone who doesn’t want to fight in the war for humanitarian, religious, or political reasons.”
Alfie frowned and stared down at the carpet, noticing the loops of the pattern and how they intersected with each other. There were a lot of words in that sentence that he didn’t understand. He looked up, puzzled.
“At the start,” explained Joe, “before conscription, men signed up of their own accord. To fight, I mean. Your dad signed up that first day, remember?” Alfie nodded. “I can see him now, walking down Damley Road in his uniform, looking pleased as punch with himself. I was outside washing my windows. ‘Georgie,’ I said. ‘You’ve not gone and signed up, have you? Tell me you haven’t.’
“‘Fighting for king and country, aren’t I?’ he told me.
“‘For what? What’s the king ever done for you?’
“‘Nothing so you’d notice. But a man’s gotta do…’ and all that rubbish.
“I remember staring at him, Alfie, as if he’d lost his mind. Lost control of his reason entirely. ‘You must be mad,’ I told him.
“‘You say that now, Joe, but your time will come. Watch, you’ll have signed up too by the end of the week.’
“‘Pigs will be flying over the Houses of Parliament when that day comes, Georgie,’ I told him. ‘I’m not signing up to go killing people. What have the Germans ever done to me anyway? Nothing so as you’d notice.’
“But your dad just laughed and shook his head and said my time would come. I watched him as he went into your house, and I wondered what was going on in there. What your mum thought. What you thought.”