Alfie shook his head.
“Irony,” replied Joe, smiling a little but not looking very happy as he did so. “That’s what they call irony. Read something other than Robinson Crusoe and you’ll find that word pops up from time to time.”
“And the bruises on your face?” asked Alfie. “The recent ones?”
“My own fault,” said Joe with a bitter smile. “I shouldn’t open my door at night. The drunks. They come after the pubs close.”
Alfie thought about this long and hard. He could hear himself breathing through his nose as he considered everything that Joe had told him, and through all this, Joe said nothing, just waited for him to speak.
“Don’t you want to leave here?” said Alfie finally. “People have been so horrible to you. Don’t you want to go somewhere else?”
“Where would I go? This is my home.”
“Somewhere you could start again. You could get married, have children of your own.”
Joe smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think any woman would put up with me.”
“Why not? I read in the papers that all the girls are looking for husbands now. There’s a death of young men in London now, that’s what they say.”
“A dearth,” said Joe.
“And Helena Morris was sweet on you, everyone knows that. You could marry her.”
“I’d rather bore a hole to the center of the earth with my tongue,” said Joe, tapping a hand on his knee and looking anxious. “Some men were built for sweethearts, Alfie. Like your dad. I remember when he met your mum. I never saw a man so much in love! And she fell for him too. It was all so easy. So unfair. Some of us … well, we don’t get that kind of luck.”
“Do you think my dad was wrong?” asked Alfie, uncertain what Joe was talking about but sure that it had something to do with the beliefs that had got him in so much trouble. “To go to the war, I mean? Do you think he should have stayed at home and been a conchie like you?”
Joe Patience shook his head. “I don’t tell other people what to do,” he said. “I don’t tell them what they should think and what they shouldn’t think. I just live my own life. Your dad is a brave man, and he did what he thought was right. But I’m a brave man too. You might not believe that, Alfie, and those women in Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus and strolling down Regent Street like they understand something about bravery might not believe it. But I am.”
“I want to bring him home,” said Alfie.
“Bring who home?”
“My dad.”
Joe frowned. “But he’s in the hospital.”
“He’s not getting any better there. And it’s a terrible place. It stinks and there’s blood everywhere and all the patients are crying or going mad. I can’t leave him there. If I bring him home, then Mum and me can help him get better. We’ll fix him instead.”
Joe walked over to the window and looked out at the street. Mrs. Milchin from number seven was walking by, and as she passed Joe’s door she spat at it.
“You need to speak to your mum about this,” said Joe finally.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“After I discovered him I came straight home to tell Mum,” said Alfie. “I thought perhaps she really believed that he was on a secret mission for the government. But that evening she’d already gone to the hospital for a night shift, and when she came back again, I was already asleep. And then, when she went to work the next day, I went to King’s Cross to shine shoes—”
“To do what?”
“To shine shoes,” he repeated. “I do that to help Mum out. There might be a war going on, but a lot of people want to have clean shoes. I’m doing my bit, aren’t I? And I saw her board a train to Ipswich. So she knows what it’s like there, and she’s still decided to leave him. She doesn’t understand that it would be better to bring him home.”
Joe walked around the room a couple of times, agitated now. “She’s probably right then, Alfie,” he said. “The hospital’s the best place for him. I know it’s rotten in there, but we have to believe that the doctors know what they’re doing. They’ll look after him. They’ll make him better.”
“But he barely recognized me!” shouted Alfie, standing up. “He’s not getting better. They won’t fix him there. I can fix him. If he’s back here where he belongs.”
“Alfie, why are you here?” asked Joe, throwing his hands up in the air. “Why did you come to me with this?”
“Because Old Bill Hemperton said that you were your own man and my dad’s your oldest friend, so I came here to ask you to help me.”
“To help you do what?”
“Break him out.”
Joe’s eyes opened wide. “Break him out?” he asked. “You want to break your father out of hospital?”
“And bring him home. I can’t do it alone. I thought you could help me.”
Joe shook his head. “I can’t do that, Alfie,” he said. “You think you’re helping him, but you might only make him worse.”
“No,” cried Alfie.
“You have to speak to your mum. Or your granny! Tell them what you know. Maybe you can all go there together. He might like a visit from the three people he loves the most in the—”
“No,” insisted Alfie. “You have to help me. There’s no one else I can trust.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” said Joe, shaking his head. “But I can’t.”
Alfie turned his hands into fists and thumped the sofa in frustration. One of the pillows burst and all the stuffing flew out of it. He stared at the feathers as they floated in the air in front of him before grabbing one, a white one, and running across to press it against Joe’s chest.
Joe stared at it blankly as he held it in his hands. “Oh, Alfie,” he said with a deep sigh filled with pain—more pain than Alfie thought he had ever heard in a man’s voice before; and the moment he said his name, Alfie ran out into the corridor, threw open the front door, and charged outside, running down Damley Road as fast as he could, wanting to put everyone from the street as far behind him as he possibly could.
CHAPTER 11
PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES IN YOUR OLD KIT BAG
Alfie took an early train to the hospital, stepping into King’s Cross Station just after ten o’clock in the morning. It was a Monday, and normally he would have been in school on a Monday—which was history day—but he had different plans for this Monday, the day he was planning on saving his father’s life by breaking him out of the hospital.
Carrying a duffel bag over his shoulder, he bought himself a round-trip ticket from London to Ipswich and another single ticket from Ipswich to London. (Georgie wouldn’t be going back there, after all.) This time he found his platform without difficulty and settled into the corner of a carriage, talking to no one and trying to lose himself in Robinson Crusoe.
Arriving close to where he and Marian had alighted the previous week, he looked around, wondering whether anyone else might be getting off here, and when it seemed as if he were the only one, he began to worry that the train wouldn’t stop at all. But a few minutes later, to his relief, he felt the engines beginning to slow down and the train screeched to a halt as he hopped off, making his way down the narrow lane, toward the crossroads, and along the path that led to the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital.