The English Refugee: The Day It Happened Here

by Jonathan Pidduck

  "It's not working."

  Maybe they're all old batteries."

  "Well that's not much effing use, is it?"

  "Don't swear at me."

  Mum left the room. Dad looked at us. "Have you guys got any batteries?"

  "Nothing that would fit in something that old," Ben replied. "All my stuff charges up from the mains."

  Mum came back in with the remote control for the TV.

  "Is it working?" Dad asked, hope in his voice.

  She shook her head. "No. I'm just getting the batteries out."

  He took the remote control from her. I guess he felt that the radio was his idea, and he wanted to see it through himself. I used to be a bit like that with my Meccano set when I was younger, when Ben wanted to finish off the stuff I was building and I wouldn't let him.

  After a little more popping out of old batteries with the fork, the batteries from the remote control went into the radio and he switched it on. There was quiet static. He turned it up. There was loud static. He turned the dial. There was someone speaking French. He yelped in delight.

  "Got it!"

  Ben leaned in towards me. "If he wanted the radio, he should've told me. I've got a radio-app on my i-pad he could've used."

  "Probably best not to tell him that," I advised.

  There didn't seem to be many channels on the radio, and the ones there were all seemed to be in French. He kept trying, though. And then, all of a sudden, we heard a voice in English, repeating the same minute-long message over and over again. It made Mum cry. For a minute, I thought Dad was going to cry, too, but he stopped himself. I guess he was worried that Ben might start calling him "Mum" if he did.

  #

  The message said:

  "Last night, the Russian army landed in Ireland. All resistance there is at an end. It is expected that they will cross over to Wales and South West England this morning. Further landings are expected on the south coast today. They are anticipated to target all major British cities including London, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. Although Scotland was not involved in the fighting in Scandinavia, it is thought that they too are likely to face invasion.

  The expected invasion was proceeded by heavy bombing last night across England and Wales, focusing on densely populated areas, broadcasting and telecommunications centres, and ports which might be used for evacuation.

  The British Government is taking all possible steps to oppose the invasion, but contingency plans are being drawn up, including possible evacuation of children to France, the Netherlands and Belgium.

  Further bulletins will be issued on this channel as and when available. In the meantime, the Government has appealed for calm, and for all citizens to keep public order."

  #

  Mum couldn't stop crying. Dad hugged her. It was good to see that they were friends again.

  He sent us back to our bedroom. On our way up the stairs, we could hear him telling her, over and over again, that everything was going to be alright. He was using the same voice that he used when I fell off my bike last year and banged my head on a lamppost (I've had quite a few accidents, even though I'm much more careful than Ben and he hardly ever gets hurt at all). I didn't think she would believe him when he told her it was going to be alright (and I hadn't either).

  We were bored upstairs. Ben said the battery on his i-pad was getting low, and he wanted to save it in case we needed the radio app. I tried reading, but it was hard to concentrate when I could hear Mum sobbing downstairs. I wanted to go to her, give her a cuddle and tell her that I thought that everything was going to be alright, too, but I'm not sure she would have believed me either. Dad knew more about these things than me, so I thought it was better coming from him.

  He called us down after just ten minutes or so. Mum looked a little better. We had lunch. The gas cooker was as dead as the lights and the television so we couldn't have anything hot. We ate some of the sandwiches which Dad had made earlier. There were plenty to spare, as he'd made what looked like hundreds of them!

  Mum mentioned Nan again. If there was a war on, it was even more important that we go and visit her, she said.

  "I'm sorry, Love," Dad told her. "It's too dangerous. They said on the radio that they were bombing the cities."

  "Canterbury's not a city."

  "It's got a cathedral."

  "Okay, Mr Pedantic. But it's not a big city. Which ones did they say? London. Birmingham. Liverpool. Nothing the size of Canterbury."

  "They couldn't list them all, though, could they? Just the big ones, to show it's all over the country. If they bombed Ramsgate, there's no way they would've left Canterbury alone. Besides, we haven't got a car. How are we supposed to get there?"

  "We could walk."

  "Walk? With the kids? No way. It's thirty five miles return."

  "We only need to go one way, though. We could stay at Mum's until the roads are mended and then get a taxi back."

  "The roads aren't going to be mended, are they? We're being invaded. It's safest to stay here. Maybe the phones will be back on later. If we're walking to Canterbury, your Mum might try and get through and there will be no-one here to take her call."

  "Why would they mend the phones and not the roads?"

  "He mentioned telecommunications on the radio. They're important. The government will want to make sure people can phone each other to stop them panicking and roaming around the countryside to see relatives who are probably much safer than we are. Your Mum's a tough old bird. It would take more than a few bombs to rattle her. She's fine, I know she is. She'd want you to stay here anyway, I know she would."

  "We've got to go."

  "Tomorrow, then." Dad had resorted to stalling, I could see that straightaway. He could see that nothing he could say would change Mum's mind about going, and stalling was the next best thing. "We stay here tonight, we listen to the radio - no turning it on for music or anything guys, it only goes on for the news bulletins, okay? - and we see if they mention Canterbury. If, from what they say, it sounds safe where Nan lives, then we stay here; it's not worth making the journey if there's been no bombing there. If there has been bombing, then of course we must go. I wouldn't want her to be on her own at a time like this."

  "You've never liked my mother."

  "Agreed? One more night, and then we go and find her if she needs our help?"

  Mum reluctantly nodded, but she didn't look at all sure about it. If I knew he was stalling, then I'm sure she must have known, too.

  "One more night," Dad repeated, as if she was simple.

  "We might as well finish the sandwiches for tea," Mum replied, which seemed like she was changing the subject to me. "If we've got no fridge, they'll be disgusting by tomorrow. We don't all want sickness and diarrhoea if we're walking to Canterbury."

  "I thought we'd save some, just in case. It's the only cold food we've got in the house except cheese and breakfast cereal. The cheese will probably be off by now."

  "We've got 2 packets of crisps left," I pointed out, to be helpful, but everyone ignored me.

  "I'm going to Tesco's," Dad decided. "To stock up. And get some money out, in case we need it later on."

  "Don't they close at four on a Sunday?" Mum asked.

  "That's just the big one. They're open until late down the road. I'll go now. It might get busy. You know what people are like with their panic-buying. I'll get there first and buy as much as I can before some other bugger does."

  I could have said the "B-word" then, by the way, but I don't think that bugger is as bad as the "F-word" so I left it in. Maybe I should have changed it, to be on the safe side. I will next time. I'm not sure whether you can hear me or not, but I wouldn't want to upset you with bad swear words if you can.

  "I'm coming with you," Ben told Dad.

  "And me," I said, not wanting to be left out.

  "No. I'm going on my own."

  "We'll all go," Mum put in. "You always stray off the list when you see somet
hing on special offer, so I need to be there to make sure you don't come back with ten loaves of out of date bread, and a bagful of cat-food that was on special offer."

  "We haven't got a cat," I pointed out. It had died (like Grandad).

  "That's kind of my point. Come on, get your coats on. I'm going to go mad if I have to be stuck in this house all day. The exercise will do us good."

  "It might be dangerous," Dad protested. "The buildings might not be stable. You saw the one that collapsed in the road."

  "Then we'll have to be very careful, won't we? I'm not staying here, no matter what you say. There's only so much (B-word) Monopoly you can play in one day."

  Dad went to get his coat. He knew the tone in Mum's voice; there was no arguing with her when she used it. He had won the important victory over putting off our trip to see Nan in Canterbury, and I think he must have decided that a family trip to Tesco's was a small price to pay for it.

  But he was wrong.

  #

  As it turned out, our trip to Tesco's was a lot worse than the bombing.

  We'd been there a thousand times before (Dad tells me off for exaggerating, but if it wasn't a thousand times it must have been pretty close). Mum would get the groceries, and quite often Ben and I would get a magazine or some sweets if we pestered her enough. Sometimes it got a bit boring while she wandered round the aisles trying to find the baking powder or the aspirins, but the magazine made it worth going all the same. This time, though, I wished I had stayed at home.

  It wasn't too bad getting there. We had to climb over the rubble at the end of the road which had stopped us driving to Canterbury. It had looked pretty solid from the car, but it was actually all loose bricks and twisted metal. Mum tripped over a half-melted television and cut herself on both elbows as she fell, but Ben and I are really good at climbing so we were okay. Mum went really, really slowly after she fell, and Dad held her shoulders to support her, and we made it across without any further accidents. I wondered whether it might be harder getting back when we were carrying shopping bags, but I didn't say anything as I didn't want to worry anyone.

  When we came round the corner, Tesco's was just a couple of hundred yards further along the road. Dad groaned as we were walking towards it. It was closed. The glass in the automatic doors was shattered, as if someone had thrown a brick at it. That's called vandalism, and you can go to prison for it for a very long time.

  We walked up to the garage nearby, where Dad stops for petrol. There was more rubble in the road on the way. If we had made it out of our street in the car, we wouldn't have got much further. I started to think again how lucky we were that our house hadn't been hit by a bomb, because a lot of other people had been.

  Someone was sitting on the rubble of one house, with their head in their hands, sobbing quietly to themselves. Ben started to go over to see if they were alright (he's very grown up like that) but Dad took his hand and kept on walking. I think he was keen to get bread so he could make up some more sandwiches, and didn't want anything to slow him down.

  The garage was closed, too. There were a couple of teenagers cupping their hands to the window, looking inside. Mum said they looked like they were up to no good, so maybe they were the ones who'd smashed the glass-door at Tesco's. We went back down the road before we could find out whether she was right.

  When we got back to Tesco's, there were a couple of people at the cash-point. Dad queued up behind them, his card at the ready, while we waited for him nearby so the other people didn't think we were trying to look at their secret numbers. The person at the front took ages. She took her card and stomped off, without saying anything to anyone. The lady behind her took ages, too. She got her card back, said something to Dad, and left. As it was just Dad left, we went to find out what was going on.

  "She says it's out of order," Dad told Mum, "but it doesn't say so on the screen. I'll give it a go, see what happens."

  He put his card in. He put in his secret code (I could see what it was, but I'm not allowed to tell you). He waited. His card came back out. The message on the screen said "Error." He tried again. The same thing happened.

  "At least they've got electricity here. Try it again," urged Mum. "We're going to need money."

  "I'm worried it might keep my card if I do it three times," Dad replied. "I'll try another machine later."

  We continued in our hunt for groceries. There was a newsagents about five minutes' walk away, just the far side of the recreation ground with the swings and slides in it. There were more bombed houses. Every so often, we passed a person or a family walking in the opposite direction, but we never said anything to any of them and they didn't say anything to us either. At the traffic lights, there was more rubble in the road, and a car was sitting on top of it. It must have tried to drive over the rubble and got stuck. It was only a little car. I was surprised that it made it as far up the rubble as it did. It was a shame they didn't have a four by four, like Ben's friend, as they could then have driven over it easily.

  Within a few minutes, we were at the newsagents. Dad groaned again. This time, the shop was open, but the queue outside was massive. I won't say how many people were in it, because you'll think I'm exaggerating again, but it was three houses long.

  We took our place at the end of the queue. People were coming out of the shop with arms full of stuff. Dad looked worried.

  "I can't see any bread or milk," he said, having closely checked out the groceries as they walked by. "I bet they've run out of essentials."

  "It's only a little shop," Mum agreed. "Maybe we should try somewhere else?"

  "Not now we're in the queue."

  A family of four walked by, a bit like ours but with two girls instead of two boys. Considering they had about ten carrier bags of groceries between them (they must have brought their own bags as everyone else was carrying their stuff in their arms), they didn't seem very happy. The Mum looked the crossest of the lot. "Two hundred and forty quid just for that?" she complained. "It's disgusting, putting his prices up like that. I'm never going there again."

  Mum (our Mum) looked at Dad.

  "How much money have you got?"

  "About thirty quid."

  "Thirty quid? That's not going to get us much!"

  "I was going to get some at the cash-point. So how much have you got?"

  "I haven't brought my purse. I thought we were going to stick it on the credit card."

  "They don't do credit cards in here."

  "But I thought we were going to Tesco's. They take credit cards in Tesco's."

  There was the sound of arguing from the front of the queue. Mum stepped out of the queue to see what was going on. She came back within seconds. "Someone's trying to push in at the front."

  I could hear shouting. And arguing. And then people weren't queueing up anymore, and everyone was trying to pile into the shop at the same time. Two men started fighting in the road. A woman was shouting "get off him, get off him," at them, but I don't know which of the men she was talking to. Someone pushed past us, nearly knocking me over. Ben grabbed my arm and pulled me to one side. An old man with a hat tried to walk over him, but he fended him off. He's quite strong for his age, although I'd never tell him that because he'd get all big-headed about it.

  "Wait there," Mum called out to us. And then she and Dad were in the crowd of people fighting to get into the shop. Dad was using his elbows to push through the people around him. Mum tried the burrowing method. She's thin enough and small enough to squeeze through gaps that Dad wouldn't have even thought about (I know I said earlier that Mum said she couldn't go on slides because her bottom was too big, but she was only joking about that and I think she could have got on some of the slides we went on, even though she was a grown-up).

  It was just a little shop, like Mum had said. There was just a normal door, which was held open by the bodies trying to get through it; none of your double automatic doors stuff like you get in supermarkets. Other people were trying to fi
ght their way out at the same time, which made things worse. Someone tried to grab a bag from one of the people who had already done their shopping, and a fight broke out in the doorway, which didn't help anyone at all.

  Dad was four or five people back from the doorway, and Mum was a little further back. I lost sight of her for a while, and I was worried that she had been trampled to the ground. But then she was there again, closer to the doorway than Dad. She looked like she was enjoying herself. Dad really wasn't, though.

  Ben looked worried. "I'm going in after them," he told me.

  "Mum said wait here."

  "Look at that, though! All those people, pushing and shoving. They should be queueing!"

  "You sound like Dad." And he did.

  Dad was being swept backwards. He wasn't as tough as Mum, even though he was a lot bigger than her. I think that he was still worried about upsetting people by being too rough, but she didn't mind about that at all. More people were joining the scrum all the time, coming in from the side rather than the back. If it had been rugby, they'd have been yellow-carded for an off-side like that.

  Mum disappeared again.

  "I'm going in," Ben repeated.

  "If you do, I'm coming with you." I was bluffing. I was just saying it to stop him going. There was no way I was going anywhere near all those people. I'd be trampled to pieces. He would be, too, though. I didn't want the blame for letting him go without saying something. I had to do my best to keep him there.

  He looked at me with narrowed eyes, trying to work out if I meant it. He took a few steps back towards the shop. I did, too. He stopped.

  "I'll only be a minute," he pleaded.

  "Me, too," I bluffed.

  I must have sounded like I meant it, as he made a cross little strangled noise (he did that sometimes when people were stopping him doing what he wanted to do), and stepped back to where we had been standing. I followed him. I caught sight of Mum. She had reached the door. She was lifted up in the air a little, like in a line-out (sorry; rugby again, but you're not allowed to do that in football). She was shouting at the people around her, but they didn't seem to care. Dad was trying to force his way to her, his arms raised in the air towards her, but she was too far away for him to help.

  The shopkeeper appeared behind her. He was trying to close the door. His customers were having none of it. Someone punched him. The crowd of people pushed him back inside the shop, but he didn't go far as there were too many people trying to get out behind him, blocking his way.