The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (14 page)

‘I don’t understand,’ said Valen. ‘What could we do?’

‘Anything, Valen!’ said Seth. ‘Like if we let on we know how the war ends. Or mention microwaves or TV or anything that hasn’t been invented yet. Stuff like that. We know loads of stuff that our 1939 selves wouldn’t and we have no way of knowing what would happen if we let something slip.’

They nodded then Ralf looked up at the darkening sky. ‘We ought to call it a day. The Sedleys will be wondering where you’ve got to, Alfie. It’s nearly dark.’

Leo sniffed the air. ‘Storm coming,’ he said. ‘Old Bill said there was one on the way.’

Old Bill proved to be right. There was a deep earthy tang on the breeze and storm clouds towered over them. They hurried back the way they’d come but soon it became difficult to see and they started tripping over each other.

‘Wait up,’ said Alfie. ‘I’ve got a torch here somewhere.’

The others didn’t stop immediately and were just approaching the edge of Tarzy Wood when they bumped into Miss. Brindle – literally. Val walked slap bang into the side of the woman, making her stagger and knocking something large and papery from her hands.

‘Who’s that?’ Brindle growled.

‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry Miss. Brindle!’ Val blinked in the circle of light from Brindle’s torch. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘I’d be very interested to know why, as I am standing here in plain view!’

‘Well, it’s dark and I wasn’t really expecting –’

‘That much is obvious!’ she snapped. ‘But it is not an explanation. Who’s with you?’

‘Me, Miss. Brindle,’ said Ralf stepping forward. Brindle’s flashlight illuminated him for a second then flicked to Alfie who was bent, retrieving something from the ground. Blinded by the glare he retaliated by shining his own torch straight back at her.

Brindle’s face was puce in the glow. ‘Get that torch out of my eyes, you blithering little idiot, I can’t see a thing!’

Ralf caught a glimpse of the smirk on Alfie’s face and couldn’t help smiling too until Brindle slapped the offending article out of his hands.

‘Hey!’ Alfie cried. He bent to retrieve it as Brindle’s torch moved on to Leo.

‘Oh, you’re here too are you? I couldn’t see you in the dark.’ She curled her lip but Leo stared stonily back at her and she turned her attention back to Ralf. ‘Playing in the woods? Have you paid no mind to what happened to Captain Keen? He was down that barrow for hours. Alone underground with only the worms for company!’ She seemed to relish the thought and smiled nastily. ‘Lucky to be alive and you all wandering about without a care in the world!’ Brindle turned her attention to Valen and huffed contemptuously, ‘Stepping out at night with boys, Valentine? At your age?’

‘Well, I –’

‘Do the Hatchers know where you are?’ Brindle asked. She was really enjoying herself now.

‘Well, no – I  – er – you see –’

‘Yes,’ said Brindle. There was just enough light to see the smile still on her thin lips. ‘I think I do see. I will be speaking to them on my way home, Valentine. I think they should know where you have been this evening and with whom you’ve been playing. I am sure they’ll agree that your choice of friends is hardly suitable!’

‘Miss Brindle,’ Ralf said. ‘We weren’t doing anything wrong, honestly. We really –’

‘That might possibly be the case with you, Osborne, but I am certain it is not for this one,’ she said, flicking the torch to Alfie, who stared back at her defiantly. ‘It saddens me to have to tell you this,’ she said, sounding quite the opposite. ‘But this boy is a thief!’

If looks could have killed then Alfie Lightfoot would, at that moment, have become wanted for murder.

‘My map if you please, Lightfoot!’ Miss. Brindle snapped.

Alfie, who was shaking with barely controlled rage, stepped forward in silence and handed over the map
he'd picked up. It was covered in circles, arrows and notes written in thick black pencil.  Brindle took it, folded it neatly and slipped it into her bag.

‘Come along, Valentine. I’ll walk you home.’ She whistled shrilly and her old mongrel limped from the trees. It gave Ralf’s hand a friendly lick but Brindle’s face flashed with anger.

‘Down Astrid!’ she yelled, slapping the dog’s nose. Come!’ Both Valen and the mongrel flinched then followed her towards the Hatcher’s. Valen cast an anguished look back in Ralf’s direction, but there was nothing he could do.

‘Old bag!’ Ralf muttered. ‘Don’t worry about it
, Alf. She’s vile to everyone.’

‘She’s
broken the torch, you know!’ Alfie raged. ‘The casing’s all cracked.’

‘You’ll have to tape it,’ said Leo sympathetically.

‘Yeah,’ Alfie nodded. ‘Next time I’ll jack the map and hope she gets lost on the way home.’

‘Unlikely,’ said Ralf. ‘She only lives down there.’

‘Why does she have to be so hateful?’ said Leo. ‘What she said about Alfie was bang out of order.’

‘It’s true,’ said Alfie quietly.

‘True?’ repeated Ralf in surprise. ‘Burrowes said you were a bit of a bad boy but I thought he must’ve been exaggerating.’

Alfie shook his head. ‘In this life I’m one of fourteen kids who live in a three
room terrace by the docks. My dad’s one ambition is that I grow up to be as big and bad a crook as he is. I’ll tell you true, this self honestly felt like throwing a party when he found out he was gonna be evacuated. But it’s still better than my life in our time. That is a nightmare!’

‘Alfie! We didn’t know,’ cried Leo.

‘Why should ya?’ Alfie replied. ‘Just saying. Anyway, it’s all right,’ he assured them. ‘I’d never nick off you.’

Leo paused on the road. ‘Going straight, then?’ he said, trying to lighten things up a bit.

‘Nah!’ Alfie pointed the torch up at his own dirty, impish face, ‘I cased all your stuff when we arrived – you cheapskates got nothin’ worth nicking.’

They were still laughing as they neared the end of the lane but stopped abruptly as they saw a ragged looking figure emerge from the side of Brindle’s cottage.

‘It’s Urk!’ said Alfie, as the first drops of rain began to fall. ‘What’s he doing up here at this time?’

‘Something…’ said Leo, frowning. ‘Something secret.’

From the furtive way Urk was moving, Ralf had a feeling Leo might be right. They watched the old man shuffle across the field then hurried on. As they passed Brindle’s cottage they heard whining. A fierce scratching sound was coming from a cramped kennel in the garden.

‘Poor dog,’ said Leo. ‘Brindle must have locked Astrid in before taking Valen home.’

The heavens opened then and the noise was drowned by their footsteps and the drumming of the rain.

That night Ralf’s dreams changed for the first time in over a year. He was in a dank, cramped tunnel, deep underground. He was not alone in the dark. Gadd and Oyler Munton leered at him and old Urk Fitch grabbed at his shirt with soil-encrusted nails. Ralf tried to explain that he was lost, but no one seemed to be listening. Captain Keen appeared but when Ralf asked for help he just shrieked with laughter, a high unnatural sound that echoed off moist, crawling walls. Then Brindle came. She shoved Ralf aside, her stubby fingers reaching for something. He tried to speak to her too, but when he saw what she was groping for, the words died on his lips. At the end of the tunnel, inches from Brindle’s searching fingers loomed a vast black door. Behind it, something was scratching to get out. Ralf’s mouth opened in a terrified, silent scream.

CHAPTER TEN

School

The black door was still looming in Ralf’s head the next morning as he began his journey to school but he pushed the feeling of dread to the back of his mind when he saw Seth waiting for him at the station. It was just a dream, he told himself. His first day in a 1939 Public School might prove to be just as frightening.

The two boys got on the train in silence, both wondering how the others were faring where they were. Leo and Valen were off to High School in Dark Ferry. Alfie was to go to King’s Hadow Primary on the edge of the village. It was hard being apart but Seth had been adamant they must change the past as little as possible and going off to their different schools was part of the bargain. As the fields drifted past their compartment window, Ralf couldn’t help but think he and Seth had got the worst deal. They had the dubious honour of atte
nding St. Crispin’s School for Boys, a sombre institution with a reputation for ‘Discipline’ and ‘Endeavour’, located further down the line at Short Face Cross.

Seth was keen for as much information as possible about school but Ralf didn’t want to make him more nervous than he already was, so stuck to talking about the habits
and mannerisms of the various masters. He knew Hilda thought he’d been incredibly lucky to win the Crispin’s scholarship but, with the exception of Winters’ History lessons, Ralf thought school was the worst thing his 1939 self had to endure.

Despite the return of his King’s Hadow memories, he found the work strange and the lessons dull. Partly this was because people didn’t muck about at Crispin’s so there weren’t the distractions Ralf’s
twenty-first century self was used to, but mostly it was to do with the lessons themselves. These mainly involved writing down what the masters said or copying from books – hadn’t they heard of group work in 1939? Everything had to be done quickly, neatly and preferably in silence, and the slightest mistake had dire consequences, which was a real issue for Ralf because he seemed to be making a lot of them. By half past ten he was in deep trouble with the Latin Master.

‘OSBORNE!’ Mr Asinus brayed in front of the entire class. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ He held up Ralf’s work between two fingers as if it were a snotty handkerchief.

‘S-Sir?’ Ralf stuttered.

‘You were writing word perfect translations before the summer holidays, Osborne, and now you expect me to mark this?’

Ralf blanched. He was sure he’d done a pretty good job. ‘What’s wrong with it, sir?’

‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong with it? I don’t know where to begin! Suffice it to say that the Latin on this sheet of paper is like the English you speak boy. It is colloquial, simplistic and just plain awful!’

Ralf looked enviously over at Seth who had his head down and was scribbling furiously. ‘But it is right, though, sir?’

The m
aster spluttered at him in indignation. ‘Well, yes – technically – the vocab is correct but the grammar, Osborne! Latin is the language of poetry and philosophy. It has music, Boy! Can’t you see that? What you’ve written here sounds like Mozart playing the harmonica! It’s like the language of Shakespeare being read by a barrow boy!’

He had similar problems with the French Master who took great delight that afternoon in reading out chunks of Ralf’s compositions for the amusement of the other boys. Apparently, Ralf’s French was not
colloquial, just old fashioned.

‘Abominable, Osborne! People haven’t spoken French like this since Agincourt!’

Finally, lunchtime came and, uncomfortable in their stiff collars, he and Seth made their way into a central, panelled hall where boys sat in their Form classes, devouring thick lamb stew and cabbage. Paintings of old Headmasters glared down at them, sepia faces in rugby team photos smirked and even the black edged memorial to old boys killed in the Great War denounced them as impostors. They all seemed to whisper the same thing –
You do not belong here
. Few of the other boys spoke to them, which as far as Ralf could remember, was normal. He was the only village boy in his year and was used to being left to himself. Seth, being an evacuee and ‘foreign’ to boot, was treated as a complete outsider. Within a short time the other boys had cleared their plates and moved away.

‘What the heck d’you think you’re playing at?’ Seth demanded as soon as they were alone.

Ralf, who’d been soaking up his gravy with a slice of bread, looked up in surprise. ‘What?’

‘In Latin? French? ‘But it is right, isn’t it sir?’’ Seth
whined in what was a fairly good imitation of Ralf’s earlier pleading. ‘You’ve got to get into character, Ralf, or this could get really messy for all of us!’

‘What do you mean, ‘g
et into character?’ I’m doing my best!’

‘No. You’re not!’ Seth snapped. ‘If you’d been concentrating you’d have handed in work that was exactly the same standard as the stuff your other self was doing before we arrived! Compartmentalise, Ralf. That’s the key.’

Ralf pushed aside the remains of his meal. ‘Okay. I’ll try harder. But it can’t make that much of a difference to anything can it? Aren’t you being a bit over the top?’

‘You just don’t get it
, do you?’ Seth’s voice had risen and he controlled it with difficulty. ‘We shouldn’t be here. We’re in the wrong time. Even something that seems minor might set off a chain reaction that could alter history!’ Seth pointed at him with his spoon. ‘Stop and think before you do or say anything!’

By the time the final bell rang, the sheer effort involved in trying to act ‘normally’ had worn Ralf and Seth out. They gratefully flopped into the last remaining seats on the school train, only to discover they were facing the one person Ralf had hoped to avoid.

King had obviously visited the barbers at some point because his dark hair had been cut fashionably, and in clear contravention of school rules, to fall foppishly in front of his eyes. Looking at him now, surrounded by fawning cronies, Ralf couldn’t believe he’d ever liked him.
He was such an arrogant git.

Extracting books from their satchels, Ralf and Seth tried to focus on their Latin prep. They couldn’t help but hear, though, the conversation opposite.

‘…He probably just stopped off somewhere and forgot to tell anybody,’ said a rat-faced first year Ralf didn’t know.

‘He motored from London in a brand new Bentley and then just left it at the side of the road? I hardly think so,’ said Aston, the boy from the bridge.

‘Who knows what these actor chaps get up to?’

‘Oh, but my father does know Charles Hart, didn’t I say?’ King announced triumphantly.

‘
The
Charles Hart, King?’ asked rat-face.

‘Of course
The
Charles Hart, Simpson – I’d scarcely mention it otherwise! Fearfully nice chap. Hart’s a stage name, obviously – his real name’s Button or Buckle or something ghastly. He was Father’s Batman at the Somme. His elder brother was there too.’

‘What does the brother do now, Julian?’ asked the smaller boy.

There was an awkward silence as the gaggle of boys waited to see how King would react to this use of his first name. They treated King, Ralf noticed, in exactly the same way one would a bird of prey – with soft voices and a certain amount of nervousness. King raised his head and smiled dangerously. ‘Didn’t catch that, Simpson, what did you say?’

‘S-Sorry, K-King,’ Simpson stuttered ingratiatingly. ‘I was just asking what became of Hart Major.’

‘Dreadful shame, actually,’ said King, pausing for dramatic effect. ‘He bought it on the last day of fighting.’ Cue another awkward silence. ‘Still,’ said King, jovial once again, ‘Father’s looked out for Charles since then. In fact, if it wasn’t for Pater, Hart would never have got the part in ‘How Still the Night’ in ‘26.’

Ralf couldn’t help snorting. Couldn’t they see what a fake King was?

Ignoring the noise, King ruffled Simpson Minor’s hair in a big brotherly gesture that would have got him a thump in the twenty-first century. ‘I could get you an autograph when he shows up. He’s bound to pop down to tell us all about it. Would that do you, Miles?’

‘Rath–
er, King!’ the little boy gushed. ‘Thanks awfully!’

King gave Ralf a saccharine smile.
‘I could get one for you too if you like, Osborne.’ The smile turned into a sneer. ‘Oh, I forgot, the flicks aren’t really your thing are they? Too busy talking to Winters about burial grounds. You really are the most dreadful suck up.’

‘Yeah, whatever, Julian,’ said Ralf, deliberately using his first name.

‘ “Whatever?” What kind of talk is that? You must stop hanging about with all those evacuees. It's making you sound even more common than normal. I would have thought Winters would have gone for a better class of evacuee myself,’ King went on, looking at Seth disdainfully. ‘Still, he’s not been quite himself,’ he finished with a slow smile at his friends.

‘Did you see him in Church?’ rat-face said and did a passable imitation of Winters’ Sunday behaviour, complete with vacant eyes, twitching and pointing arm.

‘Shut up!’ Seth lurched to his feet and loomed over him angrily. ‘Don’t you dare talk about him like zat. Blöder Esel!’

The compartment was abruptly silent. Everyone was staring.

King’s question was a horrified whisper. ‘
What
did you just say?’

Ralf, who’d jumped up a moment after Seth, grabbed their bags and with a swift look back at the circle of appalled faces, hustled a white-faced Seth from the carriage.

Seth was still white twenty minutes later. They were standing by the war memorial on the Village Green waiting for the others in tense silence.

‘It just slipped out!’ Seth blurted, finally.

‘Compartmentalise. Think before you say anything!’ Ralf mimicked. He stopped, though, when he saw the despair on Seth’s face. ‘Sorry.’

‘How could I have been such an idiot?’

‘Bound to happen sooner or later,’ said Ralf, resigned.

‘Oh, that’s great, thanks!’

‘No I didn’t mean – I only meant that you’ve got double the amount to remember. You can’t tell anyone you’re from the future and you’re also dealing with being a German in a country that’s just declared war on Germany. What got you so worked up, anyway?’

‘Winters,’ Seth explained. ‘You know why he shakes like that, don’t you?’ He sighed when Ralf didn’t respond. ‘Shell shock. From the First World War. Poor bloke saw most of his men blown up and has been seeing them in his dreams ever since.’

‘I did wonder when he said that stuff about it usually being people he knew,’ said Ralf. ‘You were right to stick up for him. Anyway, you’re a German evacuee, not a card carrying Nazi – that should make them feel sorry for you.’

‘No. King’ll make me pay for what I said, just you wait,’ said Seth gloomily.

‘Trying first day?’ called a voice from the road.

It was Captain Keen. He strode towards them across the Green with a parcel under his good arm and a broad grin on his face. ‘I say, we are allowed to walk on the grass, I suppose?’

Ralf shrugged. Seth seemed too lost in his own dejection to respond.

Keen chuckled. ‘Quite right. Nothing like breaking a few rules is there?’ He gave a slight cough. ‘Get to the point, Keen, get to the point. I was just walking back from the Post Office and I couldn’t help but notice our young friend here was looking a bit mug. I thought to myself: First day at a new school. Bit of an outsider. Trying to make friends. All jolly awkward. Been through it myself. Anyhoo, I’ve just had a parcel and you look like you could do with a boost, what!’

He struggled with the package for a second and eventually extracted a large bar of chocolate, which he handed to Seth with a sympathetic smile. ‘I’ve got
a fearfully sweet tooth myself, but, well – your need is greater than mine.’

‘Th – thanks Captain,’ Seth spluttered. ‘If you’re sure you can spare it?’

‘Absolutely!’ He gave Seth a friendly slap on the shoulder and after an awkward pause adjusted his parcel and clicked his heels together. ‘Right, well, must be off. Jobs to do. Toodle pip.’

‘Goodbye sir and thanks again!’ they called as Keen marched away.

The Captain winked over his shoulder. ‘Just be yourself, lad,’ he called back. ‘Be yourself. That’s the ticket!’

Seth held the chocolate tightly. ‘But which self?’ he whispered.

Ralf was wondering what to reply when he heard voices. Leo, Valen and Alfie were pounding up the High Street. Alfie was still wearing the tam o’ shanter which, offset by his shorts, knee socks and gas mask box, looked even more ridiculous. The other two were in striped school ties, Leo in grey short trousers and Valen in a shockingly ugly gymslip. By the sound of things, they were in mid argument.

‘They’re a bunch of gormless airheads and I couldn’t care less how much trouble I get in!’ Valen shouted.

Ralf winced and he saw Alfie do the same. Leo, though, was not to be put off. ‘If I can handle it, you can,’ he said firmly as they joined them on the Green. ‘Tell her Ralf!’

One look at Valen’s face told Ralf this might be a long (and loud) conversation and he suggested they go for a walk. The lane towards King’s Meadow was quiet and they wouldn’t be overheard.