I look around for Old Crony, thinking he’ll be able to explain why we’re here. But the rest of the room stands empty. Old Crony is nowhere to be seen.
The nurse frowns, mistaking my silence for insolence.
“If you don’t leave now, I’ll have to call—”
But I don’t hear who the nurse is planning to call as another voice cuts across her.
“This is my great-granddaughter,” the old woman says, raising her head from the pillow. “I’ve been waiting a long time to see her again.”
The nurse looks down at her patient on the bed, then back to me before glancing at her watch with a tut.
“Just this one time,” she says finally. “But don’t go tiring yourself out – it’s only half past six in the morning and you need to rest after your fall.”
Fussing with the pillows, she helps the old woman up into a sitting position, her nightdress as white as the sheets that are drawn up to her chest.
“Ten minutes,” the nurse says, casting me a warning glance as she walks to the door. Then the door clicks shut behind her, leaving me alone with the old woman.
Sitting up in the bed, she beckons me closer.
“Don’t be afraid.”
I walk towards the woman, the polished floor still squeaking beneath my feet. I don’t feel scared, just completely confused. This can’t be my great-grandmother. Both of mine died before I was even born. On the bedside cabinet I see a get-well card standing open next to the envelope it came in. My heart skips a beat as I read the name on the front.
Charlotte Noon.
I look down at the old woman’s face. From underneath the bandage her long white hair fans around this like a halo of snow. Her pale skin seems shrivelled, dark spots and wrinkles marking it like an ancient map. But as I stare into the brightness of her sunken eyes, I see my own eyes staring back.
“You’re me,” I breathe.
The lines around the old woman’s mouth crease into a smile. The exact same smile I practise in the mirror every day.
“I was,” she says. “Or you will be. It’s like Old Crony says, it all depends on the place you are looking from.”
I can’t speak, my mind rebelling as I stare at the old woman’s face. This can’t be me.
“It’s OK,” the old woman says, reaching out to take my hand. “I always knew this moment would come because I remember it so vividly. But I realise it must be a shock for you now. I remember how shocked I felt then. It’s strange for me to see you with these eyes, when it seems like only yesterday I was standing there staring at me.”
As she holds my hand, I can feel the bones beneath her papery skin. They feel so fragile, like a small bird’s. But as I stare into her eyes, my mind starts to erase the lines I can see there, revealing my own face hidden underneath.
“These wrinkles are just a disguise,” the woman says, as though she can read my mind. With her other hand, she reaches up to tap the side of her head, the bandage there reminding me of the one that was wrapped around mine. “I’m still you inside here.”
Old Crony said there was someone that I had to meet, but I didn’t realise it was me.
“I remember every moment of that night so well,” Charlotte says. “Those moments seem so close to me now. Johnny chasing us through the woods dressed like some old scarecrow. Falling and hitting my head so hard that I thought my brains would fall out. I remember climbing to the top of the tree and swimming through the river. I can still feel the snow crunching beneath my feet as we walked endlessly through the trees. I thought we’d never get out of those woods.”
My eyes fill with tears as the memories come rushing in.
“I’m still lost in the woods.”
“I know,” Charlotte says, gently squeezing my hand. “I remember how lost I felt. Not just in the woods, but all the time back then.”
I see the tears sparkling in her eyes, a perfect reflection of mine.
“I know you just want Mum and Dad to stop arguing all the time. But it’s not your fault that they do. I remember sitting up in that tiny bedroom night after night, tapping out messages with Granddad’s Morse-code key. All I wanted was to get a message in reply telling me there was a way out. That life could be different somehow.”
I nod my head, remembering staring at the silent Morse key on my desk, waiting for a message that never came.
“When they brought me to this hospital after I fell and hit my head, I knew that the time had finally come,” Charlotte says, her voice cracking slightly under the strain. “That I’d get this one chance to see you now – to tell you that it will be.”
I feel her fingers tap against mine.
“There is a way out of the woods.”
Inside my head, my brain translates the Morse-code taps. Dot – dash – dot. Message received.
I remember what Old Crony told me as we stood in the clearing. The actions you take will change the world. That’s what I need to know now.
“What do I have to do?”
“You need to be brave, Charlie,” she says. “Braver than you even think you can be. There are dark times ahead – maybe even the darkest. Another war, even worse than the last. There will be times when you think all hope is gone, but never despair. The sun will rise in the end.” I feel her hand tighten around mine. “You can’t stop what’s coming, but you can help to shape it into something better. It’s like Old Crony said, you build the future with every action that you take, no matter how small. You’re good at solving puzzles, Charlie. Think about all these codes you’ve cracked tonight. Keep on helping Dad with his crossword. These moments all matter in the end.”
I stare at my older self, incredulous.
“Is that all you can tell me? That there’s a war coming and I have to keep on doing crosswords? How’s that going to help me change the world?”
“Words matter,” Charlotte replies. “They told us that at Bletchley Park. Finding the right words at the right time can help win a war. The codes you solve will save so many lives, Charlie. There’s so much I could tell you, but you need to discover it for yourself. Old Crony told me that time is like an ocean and I’ve swum from shore to shore. I have seen kindness and courage and beauty and wonder – oh, there is so much wonder in the world. There may be dark times ahead, but my life – your life – our life – is filled with so many moments of happiness. Dancing and laughter and long walks in the park.” She looks up at me with an impish smile. “There’s even some kissing too.”
I can’t stop myself from blushing and I see the same pinkness spreading across Charlotte’s cheeks. I look down at my future self, her long white hair drifting across the pillow and the words slip out of my lips before I even realise I’m asking the question out loud.
“Do I have to grow my hair?”
Charlotte’s smile widens into a grin.
“One day, maybe,” she says. “It’s up to you to choose. Everything is possible. You have all this ahead of you. The future is yours to write.”
She gives my hand a final squeeze and then lets it go.
“Could you open the curtains for me, Charlie?” she asks, her voice wavering slightly. “I think I’d like to watch the sun rise.”
I nod my head. Walking across to the window, I pull open the long curtains. The room looks out over darkened fields and in the distance I see a solid line of trees, faint smudges of pink starting to swell above the horizon.
I turn back towards Charlotte, her gaze fixed on these distant woods.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice even quieter than before.
Walking back to the bed, I take her hand in mine. My hand. Her breathing seems to slow as together we look out through the window.
The sun is rising above the trees, filling the sky with light. The colours change from pink to orange to a blinding golden glow. It’s all happening so fast it seems like time is speeding up.
How many times have I watched the sun rise?
I take a breath and exhale. I don’t know whose eyes
I’m looking through any more. But then I remember our eyes are the same. We’re the same person, caught in two moments in time. No. One moment. This moment. Now.
The world is getting lighter, a new day rising with the dawn.
I take another shallow breath, but the sunrise looks so beautiful I forget to take the next.
The light begins to bleed and I feel myself falling, falling like an arrow into the light.
And then the light is all that I can see.
The first thing I hear is a bird singing, the soft fluting notes of its song rising and falling in time with the beat of my heart. The melody sounds so simple at first, the same whistling refrain repeated over and over again. But then I hear another trilling song, a sweet high sound that swells to fill the spaces left behind by the first.
Then another bird starts to sing and another and another and another. Whistles and warbles, chirrups and tweets; flurries of notes falling like rain inside my brain. The sound seems to be coming from all around, every bird singing at once, their melodies twisting and twining until my mind is filled with an ocean of song.
Then I hear Dizzy’s voice calling out my name.
“Charlie!”
I open my eyes to see a brilliant light shining through the leaves.
“Wake up,” Dizzy says, gently shaking my arm before I slowly pull myself up into a sitting position. “Johnny thinks he’s found the way out.”
I look around. The room has gone, the old woman who was me nowhere to be seen. I’m sitting in the shade of a large oak tree, rays of light rippling across a wooded glade. There’s no snow on the ground, only a carpet of wildflowers that shine in this pale sunlight. Apart from Dizzy, the clearing is empty. No sign of Old Crony.
I’m back in the woods, but the night has ended.
It’s morning now.
“Come on,” Dizzy says, gesturing for me to follow him. “It’s this way.”
Clambering to my feet, I hurry to follow Dizzy as he leads us between the trees. Above our heads the birds are still singing in full voice, but when I glance up I can’t see a single bird – only glimpses of blue scattered across a sky of green. It seems almost impossible. Every tree is in full leaf, no sign of the storm that we lived through last night.
“Over here!”
Johnny is standing on top of a bank at the edge of the woods, the spaces between the trees offering a glimpse of the sun as it rises in the sky. Scrambling up the bank to join him there, I rest my hand against a tree trunk as I stare out at the world beyond the woods.
Beneath a brightening sky lies a patchwork quilt of fields, painted green and gold in the morning light. A farmhouse is set down in the middle of these fields, but beyond this I can see the village, the roofs of the shops and houses laid out on the horizon, while to the north the squat shape of the church tower rises above the trees.
Johnny and Dizzy scramble down the bank to reach the rutted track that leads the way back. Trying not to slip on the dew-soaked bluebells that carpet the slope, I follow them down, until the three of us are standing together in the sunlight.
We look at each other, almost unable to believe that we’ve made it out of the woods.
It’s Johnny who speaks first.
“We don’t say a word about what happened here,” he says, the tone in his voice brooking no argument. “Not to anyone. We just say we got lost in the woods and had to camp out all night.”
Dizzy nods.
“Nobody would believe us if we did. They’d just think we were making it all up. Or put us in the madhouse.”
The two boys turn towards me, waiting for my reply. I remember watching them walking away, retracing their steps in reverse before disappearing into the darkness. But we can’t go backwards now.
“What do you think, Charlie?” Dizzy asks.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say, squinting as I glance up at the rising sun. “Maybe we can’t tell anyone about what happened to us, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
I think about what Old Crony told me. Everything changes. And that means we can too.
“We don’t have to be like we were before,” I say. “We don’t have to be shy or frightened or angry or mean. We can be what we want to be.” I look up at Johnny, the sunlight slanting across his face. “We can be friends.”
Johnny stares at me before glancing across at Dizzy. Then he spits on his palm and holds his hand out for mine.
“Friends,” he nods. “All of us.”
I shake his hand and then watch as Dizzy does the same.
We grin at each other. The world changed in a moment.
“Come on,” Dizzy says. “It’s time to go home.”
The birds are still singing as we start walking down the track. In the distance the village begins to sharpen into view, and if I squint I think I can even make out the roof of my house, my attic window glinting in the sunlight.
I think about Mum and Dad waiting for me there and the mountain of trouble that I’m in, but the funny thing is I don’t feel scared any more. I’ve decided to be brave instead.
Glancing down at the track, I catch sight of a newspaper, folded in half and left by the wayside. It must’ve been dropped by the paperboy who delivers to Jukes’s farm.
I stoop down to pick it up. It’s a copy of The Times, the front page filled with the usual boring list of births, marriages and deaths.
“What’ve you got there?” Dizzy asks.
“Today’s paper,” I reply, pointing to the date at the top of the masthead.
Tuesday, May 16th 1933.
“I wonder if there’s anything in there about us?” Johnny asks. “Three kids missing in the woods?”
I flick through the pages of newsprint, reading the headlines as they flutter past. LEAGUE OF NATIONS RESOLUTIONS. ANTI-GERMAN BOYCOTT IN AMERICA. THE TENSION IN EUROPE.
Inside my mind, I hear the echo of my own voice telling me there are dark times ahead. I think about what we saw, back there in the woods. Moments in time, but this time is ours. Here and now.
“No,” I say, folding the paper back in two. “But there will be. We made it through the woods. We can do anything now. We can change the world.”
Tucking the paper beneath my arm, I smile at my friends and we keep walking into the future.
Corporal Johnny Baines of the Royal Army Medical Corps served as a medical orderly with the British Expeditionary Force sent to defend France against German attack at the outbreak of the Second World War. When German forces invaded in May 1940, Johnny’s unit was forced to retreat to Dunkirk, a port in the north of France, joining the thousands of Allied troops stranded there. Completely surrounded and coming under heavy attack, more than 300,000 soldiers were eventually rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk by a hastily-assembled fleet of nearly a thousand boats and ships. As this evacuation took place, Johnny was one of the brave volunteers who remained behind to care for the wounded and the dying, but on the evening of Sunday 2nd June he was ordered to leave his post and join the evacuation. He was picked up by a small fishing boat, but this vessel came under attack on the voyage back to Britain, forcing the crew overboard. As the fishing boat sank, Johnny was caught in its nets and drowned. He was eighteen years old.
In September 1940, Dylan “Dizzy” Heron began studying under a scholarship at the Hornsey School of Arts and Crafts in Crouch End, London, but on the evening of 7th September the Blitz began. This name came from the German word blitzkrieg, meaning “lightning war”, with London bombed every day and night for the next eleven weeks, destroying one third of the city and leaving thousands dead and injured. Dizzy volunteered as an Air Raid Warden, helping people to shelters and patrolling the local area to watch out for falling bombs. He was awarded the George Medal for his brave actions on the evening of Sunday 13th October when he rescued an entire family from a house that had suffered a direct hit. Hearing screams, Dizzy ran into the bombed house and dragged three people to safety, before returning to the collapsing building to save a ba
by who’d been buried beneath the wreckage. After the war, Dizzy worked as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, with his best-known novel, The Nightingale in the Woods, telling the story of a girl who discovers a magical world. He was awarded an MBE for his services to children’s literature and spent the last years of his life campaigning to save the woods near his home, which lay in the path of a planned road scheme.
Charlotte Noon won first prize in a cryptic crossword competition set by the Daily Telegraph newspaper in January 1942 and subsequently received a letter from a high-ranking officer in the British Army inviting her to London to discuss a matter of national importance. After signing the Official Secrets Act, she was recruited to the Government Code and Cypher School and sent to work at Bletchley Park. There, a host of top mathematicians and problem-solvers had been assembled to crack the enemy’s secret codes. The Axis powers used the Enigma machine to encrypt their communications, a device that resembled a typewriter which turned the text of messages into a series of seemingly random letters, allowing them to be transmitted in Morse code without fear of detection by the Allied forces. When these encrypted messages were received, an Enigma machine could also be used to decode the messages back into readable text. At Bletchley Park, Charlotte joined the team in Hut 8, who were tasked with cracking the Enigma code. Working long hours to decipher enemy messages, their work saved countless lives. From predicting which cities German bombers would target in the Blitz to protecting the Atlantic convoys bringing in vital supplies from U-boat attack, the cracking of the Enigma code changed the course of the Second World War. After the war, Charlotte worked for the Met Office, developing mathematical models and computer programs to produce more accurate weather forecasts. In the later part of her career, she pioneered research into climate change, travelling the world with her family in the course of her work. She died at the age of ninety-six after a short illness following a fall at home. Her friends always called her Charlie.
The Longest Night of Charlie Noon Page 10
