The English Refugee: The Day It Happened Here

by Jonathan Pidduck

  "He is, huh?"

  "He is. He'd deny it if you ask him - you know what he's like - but if I were you, I'd let him have a bit of a rest as soon as you can."

  I glanced over my shoulder. Ben was just a few yards behind me, talking to Mum. I hoped Dad wouldn't say anything to him. I thought I was probably in for a dead arm for refusing to walk earlier, and I didn't want a dead leg as well for blaming our next stop on him.

  "Shall I ask him if he can make it as far as the roundabout?" enquired Dad, still smiling.

  "No, that's okay. I think he can make it that far. I'll have a word with him, talk him round. Leave it to me."

  We walked on. I was getting more and more tired, and my knees were starting to hurt quite a bit. I tried running ahead so that I could have a sit-down while the others were catching me up, but Mum didn't want me going too far and if anything the running made things worse.

  We were just a few hundred metres from the roundabout, and I was ready to run ahead again so I could be the first one to have a rest, when this woman hurried over to Mum.

  "Holly? Oh my God, Holly!" (Holly's my Mum's name).

  "Daisy?"

  They hugged, really tightly (like women do, but men only do with their children). Dad put down his suitcase and sports bag, and waited patiently for them to finish. A man came over, with two children with him. The older one was a girl, maybe just a little older than Ben. The younger one was a boy about my age. The man stuck out his hand for Dad to shake. He shook it.

  "Ben," said the man.

  "Dave," said Dad. I expected him to say something else (maybe ask him how he was, or talk about the weather) but they had said all they needed to say.

  They waited for Mum and the lady to stop hugging.

  "Oh, this is awful," the woman exclaimed, when they'd finished. "Who would've thought it? Abroad, yes, but here? Here in England? I never thought I'd see the day."

  "Me neither," Mum agreed. "They only just missed our house last night. All the houses round the corner have gone. Nothing left but bricks. I was so scared. I keep thinking, that could have been us."

  "Me, too. You remember Debbie? Debbie from accounts? She lived just round the corner from me."

  "Lived? Don't tell me she's??"

  The woman nodded. She started crying. "Her whole family. Dave went over to see if there was anything to be done. There was nothing left but bricks, like you said. She was such a nice girl. I've known her for years."

  "She was at your wedding, wasn't she?"

  "She was. That dress she wore?"

  "I know! That's Debbie for you!"

  It occurred to me that this was the first time that Mum had told anyone that she had been frightened. I wondered why she hadn't told Dad. I looked at Dad to see if he would tell Dave that he had been frightened, but they just stood next to each other, looking slightly awkward, and said nothing. I'd noticed before that women tend to say things to each other that men wouldn't say, and I thought this was an important lesson for me. As a boy, I should try to keep things to myself a bit more, and only cry when I really had to.

  "Boys, this is Daisy," Mum told us. Daisy came over and gave us a cuddle, even though I don't remember having ever seen her before. Ben let her, so I did, too.

  "This is Dave," she went on, pointing to the man, who held up his hand and wriggled his fingers with a little smile. "And these are Rebecca and?"

  "Faye," corrected the woman.

  "Faye? Of course it is. Faye and Noah."

  "All right?" Faye asked.

  Ben put out his hand for her to shake, as her dad had done to my dad. I think he was trying to impress her by being grown-up. She looked at him as if he was a complete loser. He dropped his hand, looking very embarrassed. It made me smile a bit.

  "All right," I said, and felt as if I'd won a little victory over Ben when she said "all right" back (without her giving me the look she'd given him). Ben glared at me, as if I'd stabbed him in the back. I would definitely be getting that dead leg later.

  The lady - Daisy - was talking again. It turned out that she did a lot of that, and Mum talked a lot more now she had a friend to listen to her.

  "Are you going to Canterbury?"

  "We are. Mum's there. We're checking that she's okay."

  "And then what?"

  "We go back home."

  "You're very brave, going back, what with the bombing and all."

  "Or we can stay at Mum's, if it's safer there. We haven't decided yet."

  Dad visibly stiffened. I saw Dave gave him a sympathetic look.

  "What about you?" Mum asked. "Aren't you coming back, then?"

  "Not until it's safe. You've got to think of the kids, haven't you? Dave suggested we go to Canterbury, see what's going on. There's the army barracks there. They'll know what to do. There'll be an evacuation programme, for the kids at least (hopefully for all of us), like there was during the war. They'll know what to do, where to go, won't they, Dave? We'll be safe by tonight, I'm sure of it."

  Dad looked doubtful, so I looked doubtful, too. He knew about these things.

  I glanced at Ben to see if he was looking as doubtful as Dad and I were, but he was just staring at Faye while she wasn't looking at him. I knew that boys got all soppy about girls when they went to big school, and I hoped that it wasn't happening to him. She was just a regular girl, as far as I could see, and she hadn't even spoken to him yet. There didn't seem anything special about her at all. She was quite skinny, so she'd have been rubbish at football, and she wouldn't be able to play rugby to save her life.

  "Shall we all go together?" Daisy asked.

  "Safety in numbers," Mum replied. She looked at Dad, who shrugged and nodded at the same time. Dave did much the same thing.

  I felt a bit sorry for Dad. He had been in charge up until now. He liked being in charge. But I could tell already that Daisy would be calling the shots from now on, with Mum as her second in command. He had fallen quite a long way down the pecking order. I had too, as I was the youngest (or maybe second youngest) of eight now instead of the youngest of four. I would see what Noah was like. If he was fun, I'd ask Mum if we could all stay together. If he was mean, I'd tell on him to Dad, and say that Ben wanted us to go our separate ways.

  #

  We stopped at the roundabout for a rest, as Dad had promised. Dave wanted us all to keep on walking, but Daisy said we had children with us, and of course we must have a break if we felt like we needed one. Dad had already put down his case and his bag, trying to stay in charge if he could, even though Dave and Daisy were still talking about whether we should stop or not. So Ben and I put down our carrier bags, too, to show him that we were still listening to him, even if no-one else was. I think that this may have helped everyone else decide to stop as well, as us three putting our bags down meant that it was a fate accomplished, or whatever it's called when something like that happens.

  As we sat by the side of the road near the roundabout, Mum and Daisy chatted away about old times, when they were still young. Dave offered Dad a cigarette, but he just looked at him as if he was trying to poison him. I didn't think that they were going to be best friends, as they were too different and both of them still wanted to be the boss (and they were both wrong as Daisy was more of a boss than both of them put together).

  Ben and I sat with Faye and Noah, and I tried to think of something to say which would make me sound cool and fun in front of our new friends.

  Ben was talking a lot, and everything he said was to make himself look big in front of Faye. It was all about music, and most of the groups he was talking about were ones I'd never even heard of before so I couldn't join in. She nodded from time to time, and didn't seem too interested, but it didn't seem to put him off. He just talked more and more. Every so often, he told her about the groups I like to try to make me look babyish, which was just nasty, and I wanted more and more to find something to say to show her that I wasn't the little boy he was making me out to be.

  And then
I had it. "We've been in a fight!" I told her, proudly.

  Noah looked interested. Faye did as well.

  Ben was less impressed that I had interrupted the list of the bands whose songs he was pretending he had downloaded during the summer. "No, we haven't."

  "We have! Outside the shop, where we get our newspapers from."

  "Dad got in a fight. You just stood there and watched like a baby."

  "You did, too!"

  "Only because you wanted me to stay with you. You were scared, so I stayed, when I should have been helping Dad."

  "I wasn't scared."

  "Not much! You were all like, oh no, they're fighting, let's stay over here in case we get hurt."

  "I didn't say that!"

  "You did. You were like a little girl."

  "That's really sexist," said Faye. She didn't sound pleased.

  Ben looked at her in panic. "What?" he asked. I could see that he knew very well what she had accused him of, but he was playing for time to think of an excuse. It made me smile, because he was the one who was being given a hard time now.

  "Sexist. Are you deaf as well as stupid? Why would he be like a girl, just because he was frightened?"

  "I wasn't frightened," I put in, but she ignored me. It wasn't my battle any more.

  "Girls are just as brave as boys. Braver, I'd say. You don't have to have babies like we do."

  "You don't either," Ben pointed out. "You're only twelve."

  "I'm thirteen, fourteen in three months, and that's not the point. The point is that you're being disrespectful to women. You should stop being sexist, and apologise right now."

  He blushed. I'd never seen anyone other than our parents have a go at him before. I thought he was really good at arguing (he always told me he was), but he didn't seem to be very good at it at all. He decided to surrender.

  "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that, though. I was just saying that he was frightened, that's all."

  "And why were you having a go at your little brother anyway? Of course he'd be scared if he saw your Dad in a fight. Anyone with a shred of humanity would be."

  "I wasn't scared," I said again, but quieter this time as I was beginning to think that being scared was a good thing after all. Still, I didn't know Noah's thoughts on the subject yet, so I decided it was best to keep my options open.

  "Of course you were," Faye contradicted me. I wasn't going to argue with her; she'd used the words "shred of humanity" when she was having a go at Ben, and anyone who could use words like that in an argument was going to win hands down every time. You say "hands down" when the other person hasn't got any chance of beating you, by the way.

  "I stayed with him when he asked me to," Ben replied. "I looked after him."

  "He did," I confirmed. I was tempted to stay quiet and leave him to it, but I was starting to feel a little sorry for him. He was my brother after all.

  Faye gave him a look, as if there was a lot more she wanted to say, and she was deciding whether to go for it or not. He looked uncomfortable. She bit her tongue. I wasn't sure if she felt sorry for him, too, or whether she just decided that he wasn't worth the bother.

  I looked over to where all the parents were sitting, just a few metres away. Daisy was looking over towards us. She looked proud, as if her daughter had said something important, rather than just having a go at my brother for being nasty to me. Dad was looking uncomfortable, maybe because he is always protective towards Ben or maybe he was worrying in case Dave offered us cigarettes later on (because he's always going on about how bad for you they are). Mum and Dave were chatting away, which surprised me as when he was standing with Dad he had hardly said a word.

  It was time to move on. Us children walked ahead, and we paired off. Ben chose to walk with me, which was a bit annoying as I wanted to talk to Noah to find out if he was nice or not. Our parents followed along just behind us.

  We'd got as far as the Minster roundabout when we saw the plane heading towards us.

  #

  "Is it one of ours?" Dave asked Dad, as they looked up at the plane.

  Dad stared at it really hard, like he would know the difference if he watched it closely enough. "I'm not sure. It's too far away to tell."

  And then it was firing at us.

  When you see these things on the TV, there are little chips of cement (or whatever roads are made of) flying up where the bullets have hit it, but this wasn't like that. It wasn't like that at all. There were great big chunks of cement and people being flung up into the air as the plane ripped the road to pieces. I couldn't see why they'd need bombs when bullets did so much damage.

  I'd never seen anyone die before. I'd heard about it from the policeman who knocked at our door when Grandad got run over. That made me cry as Grandad was really nice and he gave me sweets and biscuits all the time. But this was different. This was people being torn in half right in front of me.

  Everything was happening so quickly. One minute, we were staring at the plane, the next minute we were watching as the people on the road ahead of us were being blown in half.

  Dad left his bags behind, and grabbed me in his arms. "Run!" he screamed. Dad doesn't normally scream - he's got quite a deep voice - but this really was a scream. It made me even more frightened, knowing he was that scared. He started running off the road on to the grass. "Ben, run!"

  Mum was screaming, too. Everyone was screaming.

  When Dad saw that Ben was following us, he didn't look back again. He kept running, as far from the road as he could. I could hear the road getting churned up behind us, as the plane roared overhead, still high up in the sky.

  I thought Dad would stop when we were off the road, but he kept going, running at right angles to the direction we had come from (a right angle is ninety degrees). I tried to peer past his arm to see if Mum was following us, but I couldn't see her. People were running around all over the place. I shouted out for her, but I couldn't hear her shout back.

  Ben was jogging at Dad's side. Dad is a faster runner, but he was carrying me and I was slowing him down. I shouted out for Mum again. I was scared that something would happen to her; that something might have happened already. I didn't want her to be dead. I started crying, even though Ben could see me and would probably tease me about it later.

  Dad was still running. I told him to stop, to go back for Mum, but he ignored me. I told him again.

  I could hear the plane make a different noise. It had shot way past us, but if I craned my neck backwards and to one side I could see that it was changing direction, turning back round.

  Ben was watching it, too. "It's coming back, Dad." As if there was something Dad could do about it.

  Dad nodded as he ran, but said nothing. He kept on jogging.

  I called out for Mum again, but quietly this time. I was frightened. It's silly thinking about it now, but it was almost as if shouting too loud would draw attention to me, Dad and Ben, even though there was no way the man in the plane could ever have heard me over all the noise everyone was making.

  People were still shouting, screaming, crying. It was hard to think straight with all that noise going on. They'd run in all directions. Some were heading the same way as us, others back the way we had come, others were on the far side of the road. I could see big chunks of concrete had been thrown up from the road, bodies mixed up with them, and I prayed that Mum was not squashed up beneath one of the chunks.

  The plane came down again. This time, it was at an angle to the road rather than directly above it. We've not done angles at school yet, except for right angles, but I know what one is. The guns started firing again, and the earth in the field on the far side of the road exploded into the air. I could see people change direction, trying to get out of the way, but it was going so fast they didn't have time. More men and women died, though less than before as they were more spread out now. I couldn't stop myself crying seeing it all and knowing than Mum might be one of them.

  I was worried that the bullets
were heading for us. Dad still had his back to the plane so he couldn't see it coming. He could hear it, I'm sure, but not see it. I saw the road torn up again, just for a second, and then the bullets were in our field, coming in our direction. I wanted to tell him, but my voice wouldn't work. I covered my face with my arms. I knew it wouldn't protect me. But I couldn't bear to watch if we were going to be killed. I remember thinking how sad Mum would be if she was still alive and she saw us die like that.

  I couldn't see what was going on any more (because I was covering my face), but I could still hear the bullets, the explosions of earth, and the screaming carried on the whole time.

  And then the plane was going. The engine grew quieter, and I looked around again. Dad stopped running, and watched as the plane grew smaller and smaller in the sky. Ben stopped, too.

  "Where's Mum?" Ben asked.

  Dad looked around. I could see he was worried. "I don't know. I thought she was behind me. Jack, did you see where she went?"

  "No, Dad. Do you think she's safe?"

  I wanted him to say "yes", but he just carried on looking worried, which meant that I was worried, too.

  "Is Mum alright?" I asked again.

  He nodded. "I'm sure she is. Let's go and find her."

  He put me down.

  We went in search of Mum. I had a bad feeling in my tummy, as if something was wrong. I hoped that if anyone had died it would be Daisy or Dave, as I didn't know them very well, and I couldn't bear it to be my mum as I loved her too much.

  #

  We found Dave first. He was with Noah. They were looking for Faye and Daisy. They were worried as well. Dad nodded at them, but didn't stop to talk.

  "Tell Daisy I'm looking for her over here, if you find her before I do," Dave called after us. Dad said nothing, so I called back that we would. I needed to make myself useful.

  The road had been busy when the plane had struck. Ramsgate had been quiet, but once we were on the open road there had been people everywhere. Hundreds of them, all walking along in the same direction as us (and some on bikes). There were a lot less now, though.

  Ben was the first one to spot Mum. She and Daisy were walking towards us. Daisy was holding Faye's hand. Daisy had blood on her face and her clothes.