The English Refugee: The Day It Happened Here

by Jonathan Pidduck

  I broke free of Dad and ran to meet her (Mum, not Daisy). I launched myself at her, and hugged her as hard as I could. She dropped to her knees and kept hugging me back. Ben caught up with me, and she hugged him as well, without letting go of me.

  Dad arrived. "Thank God you're okay. I was-"

  His voice cracked up, and he stopped talking.

  "Have you seen Dave and Noah?" asked Daisy.

  Dad pointed to the far side of the road. "They're over there. They're fine. Are you okay? What happened to your face?"

  "Tarmac from the road. It was going all over the place. Over there, did you say?"

  "Right there. No, there. Just to the left of that woman in the blue coat. Yeah, there. Do you see him?"

  She nodded and hurried off, towing Faye behind her. Ben tried to give Faye a brave smile as she went by, but she didn't notice.

  Mum stood up and cuddled Dad. That made me smile. I liked it when they weren't arguing.

  "Where's our bags?" she asked him.

  "Over there somewhere. I dropped them when the plane came over."

  She scowled. "I hope no-one's taken them. We'll need a change of clothes. And the boys' photos are in the suitcase."

  He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. "You're sure you're okay?"

  She shrugged. "I've been better. How about you? And the kids? They didn't get hit, did they?"

  "We're all fine."

  We went in search of our bags. There was no sign of them. Mum thought they had been stolen, but Dad pointed out that was a big crater in the road where he had dropped them, and that they had obviously been blown up. Mum didn't look happy. I think she was sad about the photo albums more than anything.

  Faye and Jack joined us, with their parents not far behind.

  "How could this happen here?" Mum asked Daisy. "In Kent of all places! It doesn't make any sense."

  "And where were our guys?" Daisy added. "How could they let that happen?"

  I was expecting Dad to say something, to explain things, as he always did. But Dave got there first. "During the War," he said, "Germany bombed our boys on the beaches, and all the soldiers complained that our planes were nowhere to be seen. But they were further inland, trying to stop their planes from getting through. There's no use trying to stop them when they've already reached their target; it's too late by then. You have to stop them before they get there, even if no-one can see them back there."

  "They didn't make a very good job of stopping that one," Dad put in, determined to have the last word, even if he had no hope of having the first one with Dave and Daisy around.

  "You don't know how many they shot down, though. Maybe that was the only one of dozens to get through."

  "One was all it took, though."

  "Quite."

  They were quiet for a while.

  "What now?" Mum asked. "The road's not safe. What do we do now?"

  She'd said this to Dave and Daisy. That was the moment that I knew that she and Dad were in big trouble. However much they had argued in recent weeks, he'd always been the one she'd turn to when she needed help. By the look on his face, I thought that he was thinking the same thing, too.

  "No point going back," Dave ruled. "Canterbury will be the safest place to go, I'm sure of it. The army's there. They'll have anti-aircraft guns and everything. It's the only place the planes can't get at us. We have to keep going."

  "Not on the main road, though," Dad said. I recognized the tone of voice. It was the one he used when Ben and I were being naughty, and he was giving us one last chance to behave ourselves. "We'll cut though Preston and get into Canterbury the back way. There's less chance of us being attacked by planes again if we do that."

  "What do you think?" Mum asked Dave! What was she thinking? Dad looked furious, as if he'd caught her kissing someone else or something.

  Dave shrugged. "Sounds like a plan."

  "That's definitely what we're doing," Dad told him. "Are you coming with us? Your choice. You can stick to the main road if you want."

  "No, your way sounds good. Besides, we'll have someone to blame that way if it all goes tits up." (Sorry; I should have said the T-word or something, but I'm not sure you'd know what I meant as there's a lot of words that start with "T").

  Dave laughed at his own joke. Daisy did, too. No-one else seemed to find it funny, not even his children (they seemed a bit embarrassed if anything). Dad looked like he wanted to punch him. I thought him saying a rude word was a bit funny, but I wasn't sure if it was sexist or not, so I didn't even smile, just in case Faye told me off.

  We set back off again, walking close to the road, but not actually on it, just in case the plane came back and we had to run away again.

  I tried not to stare at the dead bodies as we walked, but there were too many of them to ignore. There would be an awful lot more before my journey had finished.

  #

  We only made it a further hour or so before we had to stop. My knees were hurting a lot. They do that if I walk too far (because of my hypermobility syndrome), and I'd never had to walk that far in all my life. Sometimes they dislocate, but I've got quite good at banging them back into place myself. Ben used to tell me how brave I was when that happened. It always took me by surprise when he was nice to me.

  "We're half way there," Dad said. "Can't you go a bit further?"

  "He's only eight," Mum pointed out. "He's done really well already."

  "My boy Noah's still going strong," said Dave, which I didn't think was very helpful at all.

  "It hurts," I told them. "I want to keep going. I want to get to Canterbury to see Nan. But it really hurts."

  I looked at Mum. She was my best bet. Dad had never seen my knees dislocate before, and I don't think he knew quite how much trouble I had with them. Mum knew. She'd seen them when they were dislocated, and it always really freaked her out. She'd look after me.

  "How about another hour or so?" Dave suggested. "Then we can have another rest, and then finish off the journey before it gets dark."

  I started crying. I couldn't walk any more. If it was just me and my family, I knew I could talk my parents round, make them see that I really was in too much pain to walk any more, but I was worried that Dave might talk them into keep going.

  Dad looked in two minds. I could see how much he wanted to get to Canterbury before it got dark. I could see him tensing up every time we stopped for a break. But the more Dave kept saying we should keep walking, the more Dad looked like he might say we should stop and rest, just to be difficult. I don't think he liked him very much.

  Fortunately, Daisy came to my rescue anyway. "It's been a long day for him. For all of us. It can't hurt to have another break, just for a little while."

  "I don't want to be out here after dark," Dave protested. "They might start bombing again. The army can't protect us out here."

  "We're staying," Dad ruled. "Just for a little while, like Daisy said. You can go ahead, if you like. We wouldn't want to hold you back."

  "I wouldn't hear of it," Daisy told him, although Dave didn't look so sure. "We're staying here with you. I expect we're all hungry by now, anyway. Have you brought any food with you?"

  "It was in the sports' bag," Mum told her. "All our food. Ben dropped it when the plane came over."

  "I was looking after the boy," he protested.

  "You could have taken it with you."

  "Not to worry," Daisy interrupted, as anxious as I was to avoid another argument starting. "You can share ours, can't they Dave?"

  Dave nodded. "A tenner a sandwich, does that sound fair?"

  Daisy punched him playfully in the arm. "What are you like?"

  We ate. It wasn't tuna. The grown-ups sat together, as did us children. Quite a lot of people walked past us, although less people than before now we had left the main road. A few of them had dogs on leads, as if they were just taking them out for walks (although they had their bags and suitcases with them). Did I tell you that I like do
gs, but we've never had one? One lady had a cage with a towel over it, and I could hear a cat meowing inside. We used to have a cat, before he got run over (like Grandad). His name was Michael, which is a funny name for a cat. I'm not sure why he was called that.

  Ben sat next to Faye. I think she rolled her eyes when he sat down, but I wasn't sure. I don't know why she didn't like him. Everyone liked my brother as far as I could tell. He was always telling me how many friends he had at school.

  "Why are they doing this to us?" I asked Faye. None of the grown-ups would tell me what was going on, but she seemed like a girl who would know things. "Why are they bombing us?"

  "They're Russians," Ben said. "They don't need a reason. It's just what they do."

  "How old are you?" she asked him.

  "Eleven." He looked pleased that she was talking to him.

  "You don't know much for an eleven year old, do you? I bet you don't even read the newspapers."

  "I do!"

  "The sports pages, right?" (She was right).

  "And the news on TV." He didn't, as that was on after bedtime.

  "Well that's all right then. That makes you clever enough to comment on world affairs, doesn't it?"

  I felt sorry for Ben. She sounded like a grown-up when she argued. He didn't have a chance.

  "I was just saying. They don't care what they do. They don't have a reason for doing this. They're just doing it because they can."

  "So how do you think China fits into all this? Any thoughts on that, Einstein?"

  "China?"

  "China."

  "They don't. This has got nothing to do with China. It's Russia that's bombing us. What are you going on about China for?"

  "Go and ask your Mummy, little boy."

  Ben opened his mouth to answer her back, thought better of it, and closed it again. He reminded me of Dad when he did that. He got up. He gave me a look to see if I was going to walk away with him as a sign of solidarity (that means that you do something to show that you're friends with someone else, even if you don't really want to do it), but I was afraid that I would look stupid, too, so I stayed where I was. He went over and sat with Dad. Every so often, he glared over at Faye. I didn't think he liked her any more.

  "What's China got to do with it?" I asked her, hoping she wouldn't be as nasty to me as she was to Ben, but I needed to know what was going on. Somehow, I thought that if I could understand it a bit better, it might not be so bad.

  "Ask your Mum," she replied. "She'll know."

  "I'm not sure she will. Dad will, though."

  "Why would he know more than her? Because she's a woman, is that it?"

  I shook my head as hard as I could. "No, it's not that. Not at all. It's just that she reads magazines all the time. She doesn't like newspapers. She says they're too depressing."

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "Nothing. Magazines are good. I'm just saying, that's all."

  I was puzzled. She had just been having a go at Ben for not reading the newspaper, but now she was having a go at me for suggesting that Mum should have been reading them (which wasn't actually what I was trying to say anyway). Sometimes, I was quite glad that I was still at primary school, as girls were usually a lot easier to understand when they were my age.

  I looked at Noah. He was smirking. I wasn't going to get any help there.

  "I have to go and ask Mum something," I told Faye. I nearly said Dad, but thought she would be happier if I said Mum. I didn't want to be sexist, like Ben had been.

  "You're fine where you are," Faye replied, waving me back down as I started to stand up. "Stay there and rest your knees. We'll probably be off again soon."

  "I don't think I can walk yet."

  She shrugged, "Whatever. Rest anyway."

  I tried smiling at her. That usually worked when I didn't know what to say. She smiled back. "You're cuter than your brother," she told me.

  "I know," I replied, which made her laugh.

  #

  Dad was upset that his sports bag had been blown up by the plane. His radio had been in it, and he really wanted to listen to it while we were sitting there waiting for my knees to feel better.

  "Faye's got her i-pad with her," Dave told him.

  "We need a radio," Dad said, as if Dave was a bit simple. "I need to hear the announcements they've been making; see what's been happening."

  "We can listen to the radio on the i-pad," Dave replied, as if Dad was more simple still. "I do it all the time."

  Dad's never had an i-pad so he doesn't know what they can do. By now, we were all sitting in one group (I had made an excuse that I needed the toilet so that I could leave Faye and Noah to go and sit with my family, and they had come over to join us soon afterwards). Dad looked at me to see if Dave was right about the radio app. I nodded, trying not to let anyone else see that I was helping him. I hoped that he wouldn't tell Ben off for not telling him about his i-pad when we were back at home, looking for batteries.

  "I do, too," Dad said to Dave, trying to stop himself looking silly (a bit like Ben had done earlier with Faye). "I just like my old radio, that's all. It's retro."

  He looked quite proud of himself for using a word like "retro" (grown-ups always look proud when they use a word that children don't understand). Dave didn't look so sure, though. He smiled with his lips turned in, as if he was trying not to laugh. I didn't like that. It was okay for Faye to tease Ben, but I didn't want anyone laughing at my parents.

  Daisy fetched the i-pad from her bag (their bags hadn't been lost or blown up when the plane had shot at us, like ours had). She turned it on, and found the radio for Dad. Dad complained that there was no "long-wave", which made Dave smile again. Daisy skipped through the channels, as we stood around her to listen, but everything was in French so we didn't know what they were saying. Most of it was music, which was weird. It seemed strange to me that the whole world was going wrong, but in France they were still playing records on the radio. They weren't very good records, either.

  Dad sighed. "There was a channel before with news bulletins on it. I think it was on long wave, though. So much for modern technology."

  "This isn't modern technology, Ben," Dave contradicted him. "This has been around since the twentieth century."

  "Not in my house, it hasn't," Dad said, as if that made all the difference. I think he'd forgotten that he'd just told Dave that he listened to the radio on the i-pad all the time. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed for him. I thought that Dad would be in charge, no matter who we met on the road, but Dave was clearly better than him at arguing, and whoever is the best arguer always ends up as the boss in the end.

  "I'll go back to one of the French "talk" channels," Daisy said. "I can speak French."

  "You can?" Dad asked. He sounded surprised. I could see Faye was giving him a look. I think she thought that Dad was suggesting that women weren't good at foreign languages, but it wasn't that at all. Dad was always surprised that anyone could speak French. We'd gone to Disneyworld in Paris when I was six, had made friends with another family in the hotel, and he wouldn't shut up for weeks about how good the father had been at French, just because he could "hello", "goodbye", "please", "thank you" and "can you tell me the way to the toilets?" in another language.

  "I spent three years working in Paris when I was younger," Daisy told him. "No-one spoke any English, so I had to pick it up pretty quickly."

  "You spent three years in Paris?"

  Dad was just repeating what she was saying now. I could see that Faye was getting more and more cross, and it was only a matter of time before she said something (the only thing which was stopping her from saying something already was that he was a grown-up). Then it would be three against one (her and her parents against Dad) which wouldn't be fair at all. I could try and help him, but I knew I wouldn't be much good in an argument.

  "Before I had the kids. You've got to do these things while you can, haven't you? Have your adventures before you settle down.
"

  Mum was nodding her head to show how much she agreed. She looked a little sad. Dad nodded his head, too, but you could tell he was only doing that as everyone else was. He wouldn't have liked going to Paris for three years. He kept saying how nice it was to get home when we came back on the train from Disneyworld, and we had only been there for a week. He always does that, wherever we go. He doesn't like fun very much.

  Daisy had found one of the talk-channels. Everyone watched her as she listened to it. She frowned.

  "What is it?" Dad asked. "Is it bad news?"

  "You don't make a chocolate brownie like that!" Daisy replied. "For a nation which prides themselves on their cooking, they have some funny ideas about baking sometimes!"

  "Cooking?" said Dad, still repeating what she was saying.

  She nodded. Her fingers slid over the i-pad screen and the voice changed two or three times.

  "That's better. This might help."

  "What are they saying?" Dad asked.

  "Can I make a suggestion? You lot leave me alone to listen to it for a while, and then I'll give you a summary later. If I try and give you a running commentary, I'm not going to hear half of what they're saying."

  "Interpreters can do that. Talk and listen at the same time."

  "And very clever they are to. Sorry, Ben, but I'm not a professional interpreter. I'm just a woman who's spent some time in France. Why don't you go and talk amongst yourselves for a bit and I'll be over as soon as I've found out what they've got to say. Go on. I won't be long."

  "Can I stay with you, Mum?" asked Faye. "I'll be quiet."

  "Of course you can, Darling. Maybe you can help me. Your French is pretty good now."

  "She learns it at school," Dave put in. "She's picked it up really quickly. And Chinese. That might be useful soon, don't you think! We're very proud of her."

  "Ben does French at school, too, don't you, Ben?" I put in. I thought I was being nice, talking him up, but the look he gave me told me that I was not. Maybe he was worried that Faye would challenge him to a French-speaking competition and beat him. He wouldn't have liked that. Girls are often better in class, as they listen more, but they're rubbish at football so it all evens out in the end.

  We sat in a group, far enough away from Daisy so that we wouldn't drown out the radio if we talked, but not so far that she might feel lonely. The grown-ups said things from time to time, but no-one seemed to want a proper chat. Everyone kept looking over at Daisy, to see if she was giving any clues about whether the news was good or bad. I was expecting her to look either happy or sad, but if anything she just looked angry. She talked to Faye a little, to tell her the bits which were making her most cross, but we couldn't hear anything she was saying.