“I do wish that blasted charlady would keep it down!” said Grandpa.
“I HEARD THAT!” came the woman’s voice from the other side of the door.
After a game of cards in the ‘officers’ mess’ by torchlight, the old man made his way over to the bedroom window. He looked up at the empty sky. Only a faint sprinkling of stars could be seen twinkling through the dark.
“What are you doing, sir?” asked the boy.
“I am listening for enemy aircraft, old boy.”
“Can you hear any?” said Jack excitedly. He was now sat cross-legged on the top bunk, his model planes dangling around his head.
“Shush…” shushed Grandpa. “Sometimes the Luftwaffe pilots switch off their engines and just let their planes glide. The enemy’s chief weapon is surprise. All that gives them away is the sound of the wind whistling past the wings. Listen…”
Jack cleared his mind of thoughts and concentrated hard on listening. It was absurd, if you thought about it. Here they were in 1983, listening out for planes that hadn’t flown over the British Isles for nearly half a century. But it was so real in Grandpa’s mind, Jack couldn’t help but believe it too.
“They would have been here by now, if they were coming tonight. We must doss down for the night. There is every chance the enemy are planning a dawn bombing raid.”
“Yes, Wing Commander,” said Jack, saluting his grandfather, not sure whether bedtime was the appropriate time to salute.
Grandpa closed the window, and shuffled over to the bottom bunk. “Well, goodnight, old boy,” he said as he turned out the light. “I hope you don’t snore. I can’t abide snorers!”
With that, the old man fell instantly asleep and started snoring as loudly as a bull elephant.
“ZZZZZZ… ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.”
The ends of his moustache fluttered like a butterfly’s wings.
Jack lay there on the top bunk, wide awake. Despite the deafening sound of the snoring, he couldn’t be happier. He had saved his grandfather from being sent to Twilight Towers. Now that the whole family was under one roof, the boy had a warm fuzzy feeling in his tummy.
Jack’s head rested on his pillow. Underneath it he had hidden the key to his room. The boy had promised his parents that the old man wouldn’t go walkies in the middle of the night again, so while Grandpa was looking the other way he had locked the bedroom door.
The boy stared up at his model planes, spinning in the dark. If only they were real, he thought. Jack closed his eyes and began imagining he was in the cockpit of a World War II fighter plane, flying high above the clouds. Before long he was fast asleep.
16
Empty Bunk
DDDRRRIIINGGG!!! The next thing Jack knew, his alarm was going off, as it did every weekday morning at seven o’clock. As he lay on the top bunk in his bedroom, his hand groped for his old tin wind-up RAF clock, and he turned it off. With his eyes still closed, the boy suddenly remembered that his grandfather had gone to sleep on the bottom bunk. He lay there for a moment, listening out for the old man’s snoring. That’s strange, thought Jack. He couldn’t hear a thing. Yet he could feel the key still safely hidden under his pillow. The door must still be locked. There was no way Grandpa could have got out.
All of a sudden Jack realised he was cold. Painfully cold. The top of his blanket felt icy. The model planes above his head were lightly dusted with frost. It had to be the same temperature inside as it was out.
At that moment the winter wind whipped up… making his curtains flap. The window must be open! For a moment Jack couldn’t bear to look below to the bottom bunk. Slowly he summoned all his courage. He took a deep breath, before peeping down.
The bottom bunk was empty.
The bed was so neatly made, it was as if it had never been slept in. That was very Grandpa. Despite making a daring escape in the middle of the night, he couldn’t leave the bed unmade. His time in the RAF had made him a stickler for everything being spick and span.
Leaping down from the bunk bed, Jack dashed to the window. He looked along the row of frosted gardens for some sign of the old man. Next his eyes searched all the trees, roofs and even lampposts, in case his grandfather had climbed up one of them. Nothing. Beyond the gardens sat the park. It was still early and empty of people. The wide expanse of grass was covered with a thick layer of frost and Jack couldn’t make out any footprints.
Grandpa was long gone.
17
Nothing
Days and nights went by with no sign of the old man. The townsfolk formed search parties, the police were called out, and Jack even made a tearful appeal for his safe return on the local news.
Nothing.
On the boy’s instruction, all the highest points for miles around were checked. The tops of hills, roofs of any tall buildings, the church spire of course, even electricity pylons.
Nothing.
Jack designed a ‘Missing’ poster for his grandfather. He had hundreds photocopied at school and trundled around town on his trike sticking them up on every tree and lamppost he could find.
Nothing.
Every time the telephone or the doorbell rang, Jack would race to answer it, praying it would be news about Grandpa. But there was no trace of him.
The boy felt terribly guilty and would cry himself to sleep at night. His mum and dad told Jack not to blame himself, but over and over he wished that he had listened to them.
Perhaps an old folk’s home really was the best place for Grandpa? At least he would be safe there. Though the boy hated to admit it, it seemed Grandpa was now far too much of a handful for the family to look after.
As each day passed the sense of absence grew deeper.
Yet after a while, Jack realised something awful. The world kept turning; his mum and dad went back to work. The people of the town returned to their lives. A missing old man had become old news.
Most of all, it was the not knowing that was agonising. Had Grandpa gone forever? Or was he lost somewhere, in desperate need of help?
Reluctantly, the boy returned to school. It was hard to concentrate at the best of times, but now Jack’s mind really was elsewhere. Whatever the subject, all he could think about was his grandpa.
After school every day he would stop off at Raj’s shop to see if there was any news.
DING! went the bell as Jack entered the newsagent’s. It was now a whole week after his grandfather’s disappearance.
“Ah! Young Master Bumting! My favourite customer! Come in out of the cold, please!” called Raj from behind his counter.
In such a low mood, all the boy could muster was a polite nod in the newsagent’s direction.
“I scoured all the newspapers again today, but I am sorry to say there has been no sign of your grandfather,” said Raj.
“I just don’t understand!” replied Jack. “When he went missing before we always found him. This time it’s like he’s disappeared into thin air.”
Raj mused on this thought for a while, and to aid concentration picked up a lolly from the counter and popped it in his mouth. The man’s face grimaced a little, it was clear he didn’t like the taste, and he quickly popped it back with the others for sale.
There had long been rumours among the kids at Jack’s school that many of Raj’s sweets came ‘pre-sucked’. Now the boy knew for sure. Strangely, it didn’t make him like the newsagent any less.
“Your grandfather is a war hero…” said Raj, thinking out loud.
“Yes! He even has a Distinguished Flying Cross!” agreed Jack. “That’s one of the highest honours a pilot could be awarded.”
“…So I cannot believe a man like that would just give up on life. He’s out there somewhere. I just know it.”
DING! The boy left the shop with a spring in his step for the first time in days. Now at least Jack felt there was hope. The drone of an aeroplane’s engine echoed across the sky. Looking up, for a moment Jack half expected to see his grandfather. But of course it wasn’t a Spitfire
. Just another anonymous jumbo jet.
“Up, up and away,” the boy recited to himself.
Raj was right – Grandpa must be out there.
But where?
18
Jiggery-Pokery
Day trips were something of a rarity at Jack’s school. After a boy had slid down the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton at the Natural History Museum on his bottom, the headmaster had banned all trips until further notice. It was only one of a long list of misdeeds committed by pupils at Jack’s school over the years. Most had now entered into school legend…
– At London Zoo, a girl leaped over the wall at the penguin enclosure. She thought that by tugging her pullover over her head, waddling and catching a fish in her mouth she could pass herself off as a penguin.
– A trip to a Dr Who exhibition ended in chaos when a number of boys stole Cybermen, Sontaran and Dalek costumes and pretended that there was an alien invasion of Earth.
– One Christmas on a school outing to see the local pantomime two pupils stole the pantomime horse costume. They were only found out when several months later they attempted to enter the Grand National.
– An excursion to an ancient fort took an unfortunate turn when the teacher was fired out of a cannon. He was later found up a tree two miles away.
– On an outing to HMS Victory, a group of boys pulled up the anchor and set sail. They hoisted a skull and crossbones flag and declared that they were pirates. After several months at sea, the boys were apprehended by a Royal Navy aircraft carrier.
– A day trip to a local farm ended in disaster when the geography teacher was herded into a sheep dip and all his hair was sheared off. It was slightly preferable to the previous year when the pupils had attached him to the milking machine.
– At the National Gallery a boy scrawled ‘Gaz Woz Ere’ with a black marker pen on a priceless Turner masterpiece. At first he denied it, before being reminded that he was the only boy in the school called ‘Gaz’.
– An outing to the Bank of England ended in disgrace for the school when they realised £1,000,000 had gone missing. The maths teacher Mr Filch is still in prison for his role in the robbery.
– On a visit to the local Fire Station the fire chief regretted letting the children loose on one of the hoses. A teacher was propelled into the air by the spray and kept up there for over an hour until the water ran out.
– The school had been banned forever from Madame Tussaud’s waxworks in London after a couple of boys made off with the replica of Mrs Thatcher. The next day they wheeled the waxwork around the school on a skateboard, pretending the Prime Minister was on a visit.
Despite this long list of offences, Miss Verity petitioned the headmaster to lift the ban. Eventually she was granted permission to take her history class on a visit to the Imperial War Museum in London. Miss Verity was well known for being the strictest teacher in the school and the headmaster was sure there would be no funny business on her watch.
Jack had been so distracted by his grandfather being missing, he had all but forgotten about the trip. First thing in the morning, and with his head elsewhere, the boy boarded the coach. Needless to say, before the coach had even left the playground, all the kids had scoffed the entire contents of their packed-lunch boxes. The greedy little tykes.
Returning to the Imperial War Museum was bittersweet for the boy. Jack had visited it so many times before with Grandpa, it was like a second home to them. Of course, this was when his grandfather still knew he was his grandfather.
As the coach pulled up outside, Jack recognised the museum at once. It was an impressive building, with Roman-style columns at the front, a green dome on the roof and the two naval cannon pointing proudly aloft in the courtyard.
The trip was nearly cancelled before anyone had even got off the coach. Two boys on the back seat had pushed their bottoms against the window to moon some elderly Japanese tourists. After Miss Verity gave them both life sentences in detention, she made a speech to all the children on the coach.
“Now, listen up!” she shouted over the excited hum. The children were buzzing having wolfed down all the cakes and chocolate bars in their lunch boxes. They were far too hyper to be quiet. “I said LISTEN UP!” she bellowed. And there was silence. “Every single one of you will be on your best behaviour today. You are all a walking advertisement for the school. If there is even a hint of jiggery-pokery, monkey business or shenanigans of any kind, we are all getting straight back on the coach.”
Like all the other kids, Jack had no idea what ‘jiggery-pokery’ meant exactly. But he imagined it might include sliding down a priceless dinosaur skeleton on your bottom.
“Now, here are your worksheets!” announced Miss Verity, handing out bundles of A4 paper. There was an audible groan from all the kids, who were looking forward to the day trip being something of a ‘doss’. “There’s even a sheet for you,” she said, as she handed one to the baffled-looking coach driver. “What I am looking for today are the three ‘F’s. Facts. Facts. Facts.”
Jack scanned his worksheet. There were hundreds of questions, all dealing with boring historical details. Dates, names, places. Jack and his classmates were going to have no time to marvel at the exhibits. Instead they’d have to spend the entire time reading every sign on every wall and jotting down every last fact, fact, fact.
The Imperial War Museum was full from floor to ceiling with tanks, weaponry and uniforms, all from past and present. Jack’s favourite part of the museum was the Great Room, where planes hung from the ceiling. It had inspired him to display his model aeroplanes in his bedroom in much the same way.
The museum had the most remarkable collection of fighter planes. There was a World War I biplane, the Sopwith Camel, a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf and an American Mustang. However, pride of place was given to the most legendary fighter plane of them all. The Spitfire.
On seeing her again, Jack’s heart began to sing. Somehow she made the boy feel close to his grandpa again.
19
Bird of Prey
Most of the kids from Jack’s school wanted to race through the Imperial War Museum as fast as they could. Their plan was to head straight to the gift shop and spend their pocket money on something completely unrelated to the exhibits. Like a smelly rubber in the shape of an ice cream that they could sniff all the way home.
All Jack wanted to do was stare at the Spitfire. The machine always had this pull on him. Today that pull seemed stronger than ever. The Spitfire had been built to bring death and destruction, but she was also a thing of great beauty. Seeing her again, Jack understood why this particular fighter plane, above all others, had entered into legend.
If only he could take to the air. “Up, up and away,” he muttered to himself. It seemed a shame that this great warbird was gathering dust in a museum, when she should be zooming through the sky.
From every angle the Spitfire was stunning. Looking at her from below, Jack noticed how her underneath was as smooth and pale as the underside of a killer whale. The wings appeared strong and powerful, like those of a bird of prey. Jack’s most favourite part of all was the wooden propeller. Sat on the nose of the plane, it looked more like a military moustache. It was as if the Spitfire wasn’t a machine at all, but a person.
In this tall display room there were flights of steps that led up to a raised walkway. This gave visitors a better look at all the different planes dangling from the ceiling. But when Jack went up there to study the Spitfire further, he noticed something very curious. The Perspex bubble that sat atop the Spitfire cockpit had steamed up. There had to be something heating it from the inside.
Yet more curious was the sound coming from the cockpit. It was the sound of snoring.
ZZZZZZ! ZZZZZZZZ! ZZZZZZzz!
Someone must be fast asleep in the Spitfire!
20
Breaking the Rules
“Come along, Jack!” called out Miss Verity from below, before turning to go into the next room of the museum.
&
nbsp; “Coming, Miss!” the boy shouted down from the walkway, even though he had no intention of following her just yet. He needed to find out if someone really was asleep in the Spitfire.
“Hello?” called Jack now in the direction of the fighter plane.
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzz! ZZZZzzZ!
There was no response.
“HELLO!” he called out again, a little louder this time.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzZZZZZZZZZZZzzz!
ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzz!
Still no response.
From the walkway it was impossible for the boy to reach the Spitfire directly. A running jump was sure to be fatal. The planes were all suspended high off the ground.
However, the wing of the Sopwith Camel was not far from the walkway. If Jack could somehow clamber on to that then he would be able to crawl along it on to the next plane. Eventually he would be able to reach the Spitfire.
Jack could be brave in his imaginary aeroplane. But he had never felt brave in real life, just shy and rather timid. Now he was about to break all the rules.
Jack took a deep breath. Not daring to look down, the boy climbed up on to the handrail of the walkway. He closed his eyes for a moment before leaping on to the wing of the World War I biplane.
THUNK!
The Sopwith Camel was largely made of wood and much lighter than the boy had imagined. His weight made the ancient fighter plane wobble. For a moment Jack was terrified he might lose his balance and plummet to the ground. Thinking fast, he crouched down to his hands and knees to spread his weight. Scuttling like a crab he moved along the wings until he was near the next plane.
Grandpa's Great Escape Page 5
