comin 2 gt u Page 3

  I had a chilling vision of Alex cowering behind the sofa during the more disturbing moments of High School Musical. ‘Cheer up; your dad’ll soon get fed up with her.’

  ‘Nah,’ he said gloomily, ‘this one’s different.’

  I tried hard not to laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘He reckons he loves her,’ said Alex, his texting thumb going into overdrive.

  ‘If you ask me, it’ll all be over by Christmas.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t, did I?’

  It was no good trying to reason with him when he was like that. Lex could be quite unreasonable when he made his mind up about something. So, I turned up the volume of ‘It Aint What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It)’ and tried to remember what I was supposed to be getting for Granddad. With any luck, he might even let me in on that secret of his.

  I was feeling much more like my old self. The incident in the canteen would be a funny story to tell Granddad, and I’d not had another text message since PSHE. Perhaps it was all over.

  It had only just begun.

  Two minutes before my stop, a paper aeroplane floated overhead and crash-landed at my feet. I was about to lob it back when, there on the fuselage, in tiny red letters, I saw the words, Roses are red, violets are blue, but chickenboyz stink, and we hate you.

  Luv Ollyg78 and The Emperor.

  4.05 p.m.

  Granddad called it The Departure Lounge, but the sign said Lavender Lodge. It didn’t smell of lavender though, just boiled cabbage and disinfectant.

  ‘Hello Sam,’ said Petal, Granddad’s favourite care assistant. ‘Why don’t you come down to the kitchen and I’ll fix you a nice drink and a Kit Kat?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, not having the heart to tell her I didn’t really like orange squash any more, and Mum said I wasn’t allowed to eat Nestlé. (It was something to do with flogging powdered babies’ milk to poor people, but as soon as she’d mentioned breast-feeding, I’d decided to take her word for it.)

  We passed through a guard of honour of tartan-blanketed old ladies in high-backed chairs, dozing in front of Countdown. ‘I don’t know what’s got into that granddad of yours. Tap, tap, tapping away all night he was. Lucky everyone in here’s so deaf.’

  ‘What’s he up to then?’

  Petal shrugged and led me into the kitchen. ‘I wish I knew. I’ve tried torture and everything, but he won’t spill the beans.’

  My polite smile came out as more of a worried frown.

  ‘Are you all right, Sam? she said, staring hard at me and stroking her double chin. ‘You seem a bit . . . subdued.’

  ‘I’m fine, just . . .’

  ‘You can tell me, you know. I won’t bite.’

  I felt in my trouser pocket for the remains of the scrunched-up paper aeroplane. ‘No . . . it’s OK.’

  She handed me a plastic tumbler of pale orange liquid and two fingers of Kit Kat on a stripy saucer. ‘Full of secrets your family, aren’t they?’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Look, if you can’t tell me, maybe you should talk to your granddad. He thinks the world of you, you know. Why don’t you tell him what’s on your mind?’

  Granddad was staring at the empty park bench below his window. He’d got that mad look in his eyes. ‘He’s out there. I know he is!’

  ‘Not this again.’

  ‘Have a quick gander for me, there’s a good boy. Now, be honest, is someone watching me?’

  I took a quick peek, just to keep him happy. ‘No Granddad, no one’s watching you.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Quick as a flash he was back to the old granddad I knew and loved. ‘Now, what have you got for me?’

  ‘You’re lucky, it was the last one.’

  ‘Good lad. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’

  We shook hands. Granddad didn’t approve of the ‘twenty-first century mania for public displays of male affection’. He used to totally crush me, but ever since his ‘funny turn’ in Specsavers, his grip had been much gentler. ‘How are you feeling, Granddad?’

  ‘Oh you know, ’ he said, hobbling over to the bookcase for cutlery, ‘still sitting up and taking punishment.’

  He was about twenty years older than Alex’s granddad, but even though he was practically prehistoric, we still found plenty to talk about. I spotted his old-fashioned typewriter on the dressing table and the wastepaper basket overflowing with rolled-up sheets of A4. ‘You been writing to the paper again, Granddad?’

  He shook his head and set about dividing the pork pie that I’d just bought him into triangles. ‘Not this time, m’boy.’

  He’d always got a letter in the County Times. The last one was to complain about the Five Items or Less sign in the supermarket (. . . when, as every schoolboy knows, it should read, Five Items or Fewer).

  ‘Petal says you were typing all night.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this,’ he said, savouring the first mouthful. ‘The food in here is worse than Pompey Barracks.’

  ‘It’s not something to do with that . . . thing you were going to tell me is it?’

  ‘Shhh . . . someone might hear you.’

  ‘So it is then?’

  ‘Can’t a man enjoy a pork pie in peace for once? Now why don’t you take a seat, and as soon as I’ve consumed this magnificent delicacy, I might just think about enlightening you.’

  Granddad’s lumpy bed squealed with pain as I sank into the patchwork quilt that Nanny had made during her last stay in hospital. Sometimes I played a mental game of I-Spy, trying to spot stuff from their old house in Brighton: the African figures that Granddad got from the Ju-ju man,

  Nanny’s collection of miniature teapots, a picture of Dad when he still had hair, and that painting of the Palace Pier which had hung over the fireplace in the little back bedroom that I’d slept in when I went to visit.

  Granddad belched contently and heaved himself to his feet. ‘It’s something I’ve never told anyone, Sam, not even your grandmother.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  His old bones creaked terribly as he bent down in front of the dressing table and pulled open the bottom drawer. ‘I didn’t think I’d be able to tell you without . . . ’ He took out a tatty, blue ring-binder and tried to kick the drawer closed with his carpet slippers. ‘That is, I thought you might understand better if I wrote it all down.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  He collapsed onto his chair, letting out a wheeze of relief. ‘Here, you’d better take this before I change my mind.’

  Sellotaped to the front of the folder was a fading photograph of three men in white sailors’ uniforms. And underneath the title, Sliding Off the Edge of the World, a short note beginning Dear Sam in Granddad’s spidery handwriting.

  ‘Who are those guys?’ I said, noticing that there were at least twenty pages and wondering if he was expecting me to read them all.

  ‘That handsome devil on the left is yours truly.’

  ‘But where’s your war wound?’ (Granddad had a cool Action Man scar below his left eye.)

  ‘This picture was taken in Alexandria. A couple of days before we . . . before we . . . ’

  Sometimes he got all choked up when he talked about the war.

  ‘What about the other two?’

  ‘That’s Sharky Beal,’ he said, his finger trembling above the bushy-eyed sailor with a sad look in his eyes. ‘He had a bit of a temper on him, if you know what I mean. And the one in the middle, that’s my old oppo Tommy, Tommy Riley.’

  ‘Old oppo?’

  ‘It’s the naval term for best mate. Tommy was a Norwich lad. We hit it off from the start. ’Course, it probably helped that the very first time we met he saved me from a thrashing.’

  The man in the middle had a shy smile and sticky-out ears. ‘He looks really wicked.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Granddad, not even bothering to tell me off for saying ‘wicked’. ‘I didn’t deserve a friend like Tommy.’

  Either his
eyes were watering more than usual or that was a tear sliding off the edge of his face. I had this strange vision of Dad warning him not to cry on his first day at the old people’s home.

  ‘How come it’s such a big secret, Granddad?’

  ‘I think you’d better be the judge of that, m’boy. All I want is to set the record straight.’

  ‘But why now? I don’t understand.’

  ‘They’ve called my flight, Sam.’

  ‘What do you . . . ?’ And then I realised what he meant. ‘No, Granddad . . . No, it’s not true, it can’t be!’

  He nodded gravely. ‘I don’t need some quack to tell me I’m on the way out. As soon as I started dreaming about him again, I knew my number was up.’

  ‘Dreaming about who?’

  ‘Never mind that; just read the damned thing, just read it before it’s too late.’

  Mum had warned me that old people could suddenly go ‘doolally’ without any warning.

  ‘You’ve got to tell Dad about this. He worries about you, you know. Why not give him a ring on that phone he gave you?’

  ‘He knows where I am,’ said Granddad, sounding as on the ball as ever. ‘He should do,’ he added bitterly. ‘After all, he’s the one who put me here.’

  ‘Yes but what if —?’

  ‘Just read it, Sam. Then you’ll know who I really am.’

  ‘But I love you as you are, Granddad.’

  ‘All secrets are lies – you know that, don’t you? They gnaw away at your insides, like cancer, until you can’t stand it any longer. And this one’s been playing havoc with my guts for the last sixty years. You will read it, won’t you, m’boy?’

  I stuffed the blue ring-binder into my rucksack. ‘’Course I will, Granddad.’

  He smiled and gave me a naval salute. ‘Good lad. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s probably time you were buggering off. I don’t know how many episodes of The Weakest Link I’ve got left, and your mother will be expecting you.’

  ‘I’ll see you next week then,’ I said, slinging my rucksack over my shoulder. Halfway to the door, another question popped into my head. ‘Why me, Granddad?’

  ‘Because we share the same genes,’ he said, scrabbling around in the bottom of his armchair (just like I did) looking for the remote, ‘because I’ll always be a part of you. Your father grew up thinking I was a bit of a hero. Perhaps when you know the truth about me, Sam, you’ll be able to understand yourself a bit better.’

  It sounded like the sort of thing Mum would say to one of her ‘clients’. But I was more concerned about that other thing he’d said – that thing about all secrets being lies. I so should have told him, I know that now. But what would a man with a war wound, a man who’d fought for his country, a man who’d looked death in the face and survived, what would he have thought of me if I’d told him I was totally terrified about going back to school on Monday? So I decided to leave him with a joke instead.

  ‘Hey Granddad, did you know diarrhoea is hereditary?’

  7.28 p.m.

  ‘Mind if I ask you something, Britney?’ I said, holding her tightly so she couldn’t wriggle. ‘Do you ever feel like someone’s watching you?’

  She cackled gently and nodded.

  ‘What a stupid question. Of course you do. Are you still having nightmares about that rotten F-O-X?’

  I knew that chickens couldn’t spell, but they’re sensitive creatures and Britney had never been the same since Mother Theresa was savaged by the fox. Miss Piggy, Tracey (Beaker) and Madonna hardly noticed the old bird had gone. It was only Britney who seemed to take it to heart. That’s why she was my favourite. I could talk to Britney.

  ‘You won’t believe what a terrible day I’ve had. Listen to this. It’s been running round my head ever since I read it: Roses are red, violets are blue, but chickenboyz stink, and we hate you. Horrible isn’t it? They sent me a text too. What do they want, Britney? What are they trying to do?’

  I placed her back on the perch and started the disgusting process of scraping chicken poo from the droppings tray and collecting it in Mum’s compost bin. Turning Dad’s shed into a chicken coop had sounded like a bit of a laugh until she told me who was expected to clean it out every week. I was supposed to do it after school on Tuesday, but Lex and I had been to that new LaserQuest in town, and I thought Mum had forgotten about it until I saw the dreaded rubber gloves on the kitchen table.

  ‘Even Granddad’s acting all strange. He keeps saying he’s dying. That can’t be right, can it?’

  I was expected to check the poo to make sure it was healthy (it should be brown with a little white cap) but to tell you the truth, it smelled so terrible I always closed my eyes and held my breath.

  ‘And he’s given me this story thingy to read. What’s up with him, do you think? I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to Granddad. He’s about the best friend I’ve got at the moment – apart from you, of course, Britney.’

  I snapped closed the compost bin and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Right, I’ll just check the nesting boxes and I’m out of here.’

  That was strange. It wasn’t unusual for one of them to stop laying for a day or so, but it was quite unheard of for all four of them not to produce a single egg. ‘What’s the matter, girls, not on strike, are we?’

  I rooted around in the cosy little nesting boxes, sinking my hand into the tepid straw, just in case I’d missed one. I hadn’t of course; they were as empty as Callum Corcoran’s homework diary. It was what Granddad would have called ‘one of life’s little mysteries’. So why was I as jittery as Britney? Why did it feel like even the chickens had it in for me?

  7.40 p.m.

  ‘Done it,’ I shouted, chucking my rubber gloves in the kitchen sink and walking into the lounge.

  ‘Did you remember to put out some new grit?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘And what’s my compost like?’

  ‘Smelly.’

  ‘Good. How many eggs were there?’

  I flopped down next to her on the sofa. ‘There weren’t any.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I double-checked and everything.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mum, spreading her papers across the coffee table. ‘Maybe that wretched fox is back.’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  ‘Well, that’s a double first then.’ She smiled. ‘No eggs and you haven’t dashed straight upstairs to commune with your beloved computer. What’s got into you?’

  ‘Nothing, I just thought I’d stay down here and keep you company.’

  ‘You haven’t broken something, have you?’

  She still hadn’t forgiven Alex and me for using her bra to fire tennis balls at next-door’s cat.

  ‘No, Mum.’

  ‘OK then,’ she said, pulling me towards her and pressing her face into my hair. ‘But we’re not having the goggle box on – not until Midsomer Murders anyway. I’ve got work to do. There’s something about this child I’m seeing that doesn’t quite add up. When you’ve been doing the job as long as I have, you begin to develop a sort of sixth sense.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mum. I’m going to read some of Granddad’s thing.’

  ‘What is it anyway?’

  ‘Dunno really, but from the way he was talking, you’d think it was a matter of life or death.’

  ‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ She studied the photo on the front cover. ‘That’s him there, isn’t it? Ah, doesn’t he look like your dad – except with more hair of course!’ She stared wistfully at the picture of the three sailors, but I knew who she was really thinking about. Dad had been on the Hardman tour for four weeks, three days, five hours and twenty minutes, and although she kept on saying, ‘If you love someone, let them go,’ I reckon she was missing him even more than I was. ‘Anyway . . . let’s get on, shall we?’

  Granddad’s story was full of pencil markings and underlinings, and spattered with that white stuff that he used to cover up mistakes. And I was pretty sure that was a marmal
ade stain. I slid up the sofa towards Mum until our legs were touching, and started reading.

  Dear Sam,

  Time is a notorious thief. Everything I want to tell you about actually happened, but you must forgive me if, after more than sixty years, my memory fails me on a few of the finer details. Should you come across any schoolboy howlers, I hope it will bring you as much satisfaction as I have gleaned from spotting historical inaccuracies in BBC costume dramas (never enough horse dung on the streets).

  Please don’t judge me too harshly. Believe me, I have already done that myself.

  ‘Illegitimi nil carborundum.’

  Your loving Granddad

  Sliding Off

  the Edge of the World

  PADDINGTON STATION, MAY 1943

  Two days before my eighteenth birthday my tearful mother presented me with a brown envelope marked ON HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE OFFICIAL PAID. Inside was a one-way railway voucher, a postal order for two shillings, a letter instructing me to report to HMS Raleigh, the naval training base in Plymouth, and a stern warning that failure to do so would result in my being classed as a deserter.

  A week later, I was sitting in a jam-packed, third-class railway compartment, along with half a dozen snoring squaddies (they’d even commandeered the luggage rack as a makeshift hammock), a couple of Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service) and a few nervous youngsters in civvies, like me.

  I was already pining for Mum’s Yorkshire pudding when the train juddered forward and a cheery face appeared at the open window. A fellow with thick bushy eyebrows and a green canvas suitcase was trotting down the platform alongside me.

  ‘Oi, mate,’ he said. ‘This one going to Plymouth, is it?’

  I told him it was.

  This was wartime remember, Sam. No one turned a hair when a green suitcase flew through the window followed by the outstretched figure of its owner screaming, ‘Geronimo!’

  He dusted himself down and squeezed in next to me. ‘Sharky Beal’s the name. Sharky from Shoreditch, pleased to meet yer.’

  We soon established we were both bound for HMS Raleigh and, for a while at least, the journey passed pleasantly enough. I’m not sure what we talked about, but I do recall being somewhat surprised by his almost unnatural enthusiasm for the battles to come. ‘All I want’s to see some action,’ he kept on saying. ‘Make my family proud.’