The Return of the Railway Children

by Lou Kuenzler

  “And maybe the war will be over before then, anyway,” said Edie. Anything seemed possible here in the peaceful countryside. Len Snigson had met his match in Aunt Roberta. Greta had been found, safe and sound. And Belinda Barton-Withers had brought news of Fliss too. As she joined in singing lullabies to the sleepy, snuffling Twiglets, Edie suddenly felt a great wave of fresh hope. Just for a moment, she felt herself relax.

  It seemed as if nothing really bad could ever happen. Not while she was here at Three Chimneys.

  Chapter Twelve

  Secret Codes

  The Snigsons never did turn up with the proper papers, of course, and the young pigs settled in well. Two old milk churns were left in front of the post office in the village and anyone with vegetable peelings or other leftovers could donate them to the pig club. Colonel Crowther kindly offered to drive the churns up to Three Chimneys in his motorcar whenever they were full.

  Everyone referred to the twin piglets as the Twiglets, of course. Although, when it was discovered they were girls, Perky thought it was funny to encourage Greta to name them Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose, like the real princesses at Windsor Castle.

  “Oh, Perky, you are terrible!” cried Maisie Gills, who had come to look after Greta. “You can’t name a piglet after a princess!” The poor young babysitter got such a terrible attack of the giggles that the cup of tea she was drinking went right up her nose. Her already pink cheeks turned scarlet and things were only made worse when Greta insisted on thumping her on the back – quite hard.

  “Stop!” she squealed. “I don’t care what you call the wretched piglets, just let me get a hankie and blow my nose.”

  Unfortunately for Perky, his suggestion was also overheard by the colonel, who had driven up early that morning to deliver the churns.

  “Have some respect, lad,” he barked. Poor Perky looked as if he wished a hole in the ground would open up and swallow him. “You cannot name piglets after members of the British Royal Family. That sort of thing’s no good for morale.”

  “It was only a spot of fun,” Perky mumbled.

  “Silly boy,” said Greta, shaking her head as if she would never have dreamed of naming a piglet after a princess, even though her eyes had lit up at the thought.

  “Just remember, young man,” said Colonel Crowther. “Princess Elizabeth will be our queen one day.”

  “Do you know them, Colonel? The princesses, I mean,” said Edie, trying to draw attention away from poor Perky, whom she knew hadn’t meant any real harm. The old colonel seemed so proud and proper, she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was personally acquainted with royalty.

  “I did meet their Royal Highnesses on one occasion,” he said. “When I was dining with the king.”

  “Oh,” gasped Edie. “How exciting.”

  “Did they have their crowns on?” asked Greta.

  “Of course.” He chuckled. “That’s how I knew they were proper princesses.”

  “Golly!” Greta squealed with excitement. “Were they sitting on thrones?” she asked. “Did they have unicorns?”

  “I believe they did,” teased the colonel.

  But Aunt Roberta stepped in. “Come along, now. We mustn’t hold the poor colonel up. He is a very busy man. Thank you so much for bringing the churns, Colonel Crowther.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, almost bowing to Aunt Roberta as if she was a queen. “I think this pig club of yours was a wonderful idea, my dear lady. And don’t you worry, I’ve got my eye on those Snigson brothers. They’re both in the Home Guard, you know. I’ve put them on extra duties. That’ll make sure they don’t get up to too much mischief.”

  Uncle Peter came to the door and saluted as the colonel drove away.

  “Didn’t you ever want to be in the Home Guard too, Uncle Peter?” asked Gus as they watched the colonel’s little black car rattle away down the hill.

  Edie coughed and trod on his foot, hard! Couldn’t he see it was a stupid question? It seemed obvious to her that Uncle Peter wouldn’t want to have anything to do with guns and fighting any more, even if it was only practice in the fields and lanes.

  “I’m not much use to them, I’m afraid. Not with this limp.” Uncle Peter tapped his bad leg. But Edie wondered if it was more about the noise and bangs. She had noticed even when he was building a pigpen for the Twiglets that he shuddered every time he brought the hammer down on a nail.

  “There are plenty of other ways to help the war effort without being in the Home Guard,” said Aunt Roberta firmly. “Uncle Peter translates important documents for the government… ”

  “That’s why I’m here, as it happens.” Perky dug into his postbag. “Aunty Patsy thought you might want this delivered PDQ!”

  “PDQ?” said Edie.

  “Pretty damned quick!” said both the boys, rolling their eyes at her.

  Perky passed a big brown envelope to Uncle Peter. “Anything for me?” said Edie hopefully. She had finally received a long, newsy letter from Fliss at the beginning of the week. It began in blue ink, right back on the very first night she’d arrived at the base, then switched to green pen halfway through with news of her flying trips – although lots of that part had been scrawled out with thick black lines by the censor. Finally, Fliss finished off in pencil sending love, and a big red lipstick kiss, of course. Edie had read it and reread it a hundred times already.

  “Sorry. Nowt else today.” Perky climbed back on to his bike. “See you at RCHQ later,” he mouthed. Then he rode away.

  Uncle Peter’s thick brown envelope certainly looked impressive. It was covered with government seals and stamps and the word SECRET was printed in big red letters along the top.

  “Blimey!” said Gus.

  “It’s not that exciting, I’m afraid.” Uncle Peter shrugged. “It’s probably just a shopping list from some poor chap in Berlin, reminding himself to buy toothpaste… ”

  “You speak German?” said Gus. He looked shocked.

  Uncle Peter nodded. “I taught myself after the last war.”

  “That’s amazing,” said Edie. But Gus took a big step back. He scowled as if Uncle Peter had said he was Hitler himself, and Greta gave a funny squeal. Surely they didn’t think Uncle Peter was some sort of terrible monster, just because he spoke German. He wasn’t a Nazi in disguise. He was just using his language skills to help the war effort.

  Gus had gone white as a sheet. He turned his back on Uncle Peter completely as if he couldn’t even bear to look at him. Greta, on the other hand, seemed suddenly excited. She ran forward and shook Uncle Peter by the sleeve.

  “What is it, mein Liebling?” He smiled.

  “You can talk real, real German?” said Greta. “Like… ” But before she could say another word, Gus grabbed her arm.

  “Quick,” he shouted. “We’ll miss the 9.15 if we don’t hurry.”

  In an instant, Uncle Peter’s German skills were forgotten. “See you later,” cried Edie.

  The three children sped away across the field. Gus was practically dragging Greta with him as they ran. He seemed to be hissing something in her ear. Probably another brother and sister row. Edie left them to it. She ran fastest of all, desperate to reach the train in time. They’d been so busy settling the Twiglets in and doing their other chores, it had been days and days since she had last sent her love to Fliss by the Green Dragon.

  That afternoon, the three older children met at HQ whilst Greta stayed at home with Maisie, who had brought her knitting bag from the village and promised to help make Mr Churchill a scarf. Maisie had also baked a delicious bread pudding from a leftover loaf and allowed Gus and Edie to take a thick slice each away with them on their adventure, and one for Perky too.

  When the cake had been eaten, and every precious sultana savoured, Edie and the boys agreed to take turns to sit at the far end of the old dining carriage with the binoculars trained on Boar’s Head Farm.

  Perky was on duty first. While he was on watch, Gus took a brown post offi
ce notebook out of his pocket. Perky had given them one each, just as he had promised. There had been a leak in the storeroom last winter and the covers were a bit water-damaged and some of the pages stuck together, but other than that they were as good as new.

  “Make do and mend!” as Edie had said, gratefully echoing the familiar wartime motto, when she had been given hers.

  Gus pulled a stubby pencil out from behind his ear. He was clearly excited about something. “We know for sure the Snigsons were responsible for smuggling the Twiglets into the village,” he said. “And I’ve been keeping track of their activities ever since.”

  Edie glanced over his shoulder at the page. All she could see was a lot of squiggles. “What’s all that gubbins?” she asked.

  “It’s not gubbins.” Gus sounded very insulted. “It’s code! If my notebook falls into enemy hands, all they’ll see is a secret cypher. My father uses code all the time when he is on top-secret missions, you know.”

  “Ah!” said Edie, frowning at the funny mixture of symbols and letters: NN → 2p RS = X.

  “Don’t you see? NN is Len Snigson,” explained Gus. “I used the last letters of both his names. And the arrow means he collected something.”

  “2p?” Edie scratched her head.

  “Two piglets,” sighed Gus. “From the RS.”

  “Railway station!” cried Edie. At least that bit was simple. “But what does the cross mean… ?”

  “It means: Len didn’t collect the two piglets because Greta took the pram away.” Gus tapped his pencil on the page. “Do you see that now?”

  “Sort of,” said Edie, sending a cloud of dust into the air as she flopped down on one of the long seats by the window. All this code seemed to be an awful lot of fuss and bother for something they already knew.

  “What about the conversation we overheard by the railway line when we saw the Dark Demon?” she asked. “Do you think that was about the piglets too?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Gus. It was his turn to look awkward now. “I hadn’t actually come up with my code back them. So I didn’t note it all down. Not word for word, I mean.”

  “I did,” cried Edie waving her own little post-office book in the air.

  “In code?” groaned Perky, peering at her over the top of the binoculars. He’d only used his book to make paper aeroplanes and to leave a note for Aunty Patsy saying he’d be back in time for tea.

  “It’s more like a story, actually. A chronicle of our adventures,” said Edie grandly. She liked the way that sounded. It was becoming clear she wasn’t really cut out to be a spy. She thought perhaps she’d rather write books when she grew up.

  “A hunched figure came out of the mist… ” she began.

  “There wasn’t any mist that morning,” said Gus.

  Edie ignored him. “A hunched figure came out of the mist… It was Len Snigson.”

  “Len doesn’t have a hunched back,” said Perky.

  “Do you want to hear what he said or not?” snapped Edie. But she could tell the boys weren’t going to listen properly, so she skipped on to the part where Len actually spoke: “‘Listen, Donny, I’m telling you, it’s somewhere here,’ he told his brother. ‘From this telegraph pole, all the way back to the mouth of the tunnel.’ The railwayman’s rasping voice was as clear as a snarling dog in the morning air… ” Edie was especially proud of that last line.

  “Hmm,” said Perky with a cheeky grin. “It isn’t a patch on the tale of the Ghostly Signalman… I should tell you that sometime.”

  “But it is true. I’ll give Edie that,” said Gus. “The bit about what Len said, at least, once you’ve got rid of all the mist and snarling. The brothers were definitely interested in that stretch of track. They started pacing up and down, as if they were measuring it out.”

  “Perhaps they were looking for a message telling them which train to expect the piglets to arrive on?” said Edie.

  “If someone was sending a message, surely they’d have agreed on an exact place to leave it,” said Gus.

  “Maybe it was written on a piece of paper and it blew away in the wind?” suggested Edie.

  But Gus shook his head. “In that case, they’d have had no idea where to start. They were only looking along the edge of the track.”

  “True,” sighed Edie. She had to admit Gus was good at this sort of thing.

  “Come on,” said Perky, springing up from his lookout post. “There’s nowt happening on the farm. We should go and have a look by this famous telegraph pole. Perhaps you missed summat.”

  “All right,” agreed Edie, although she wished they could stay in the dining carriage a bit longer. She had always wanted her very own secret camp – somewhere she could play make-believe. They didn’t have a garden in Glasshouse Street, not even so much as a window box. The old railway carriage was even better than a real Wendy house would have been.

  But the boys were already out the door, balancing on the fallen tree trunk, which acted like a drawbridge, and jumping down to the bank below. Edie followed and together they walked all the way back to the part of the line near the telegraph pole and paced up and down the edge of the railway, searching the same stretch of ground until their legs ached.

  “It would help if we knew what we were looking for,” grumbled Perky. But he was far too busy trying to frighten Gus and Edie with his terrible tale of the Ghostly Signalman to be much use anyway.

  “He had his head sliced off by a train way back in 1866,” he whispered, raising his hands like a spectre. “Whooo!”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Edie laughed. Perky was just about the most friendly looking ghost she’d ever seen.

  Even so, she couldn’t help screaming when he leapt out at her from behind a bush five minutes later.

  They gave up after that and trudged home, no closer to solving the mystery of what the Snigsons had been up to that day on the side of the tracks.

  That night, as she lay in bed, Edie couldn’t get thoughts of the horrible headless signalman out of her mind. Suddenly Perky’s silly story and his ghostly moans didn’t seem quite so funny any more.

  I’ll keep out of Perky’s way for a few days until he’s forgotten all about it, she decided sleepily. It’ll serve him right.

  But, the very next morning, Perky was back.

  “Edie,” he cried, dropping his bike and running across the meadow while she was milking Mr Hitler. “I’ve another telegram for you.” He waved the thin brown envelope in the air.

  Edie froze. She tried to remember what Perky had said last time: telegrams didn’t always bring bad news.

  She stood up, very slowly, clutching the milking pail.

  She was trembling a little. She couldn’t help it. It was as if the Ghostly Signalman himself had run an icy finger down her spine.

  “Here!” She thrust the metal pail into Perky’s hands. “You can finish milking Mr Hitler, can’t you?” she said. Without waiting for his answer, she grabbed the telegram and ran.

  If it was bad news, she wanted to be alone when she read it. She kept running until she reached the wooden fence above the railway line – the place where they waved to the 9.15.

  She sat down on the sunny bank and ripped the envelope open with one quick tear, like pulling a sticking plaster off her knee. With trembling hands, she unfolded the paper and read:

  B-U TOMORROW = FLISS

  For a moment, Edie wasn’t sure what to think. It wasn’t bad news at least. Fliss had sent the telegram herself, which showed she was safe and well. But what did it mean?

  “B-U tomorrow,” Edie mumbled. “Be you… ?” Why did everything in this war have to be in code? Then suddenly, she leapt in the air and cheered, sending a pair of pheasants screeching into the sky.

  “B-U!” she cried. “Of course! Beat-up.” She remembered the daring low flights Belinda Barton-Withers had described. She’d said it was what the ATA pilots did when they got a chance to fly near home, or where their loved ones were, at least. No wonder Fliss had
written in code, or the censor would have stopped her for sure.

  Perhaps that was why Fliss had given no exact time for her flight, either. Edie worried for a moment that she might miss her altogether, but realized with a rush of relief that whatever time the plane came the next day she would be sure to hear it as soon as it flew near.

  Her heart soared. Fliss was coming. She was going to do a beat-up. Right here above Three Chimneys. Tomorrow.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Storm

  Edie woke with a start to the sound of Uncle Peter shouting again – more like screaming this time than actual words. It was followed by Aunt Roberta’s hurried footsteps rushing along the landing to his room.

  She sat up in bed and hugged her knees as she listened to the murmuring voices down the hall.

  It must be the middle of the night, she thought. She could hear the wind rattling the windows and Greta’s steady sleeping breaths beside her. In the glow of the night light, she could see Greta’s little blonde head resting on Mr Churchill, her fingers wound round the smart new stripy scarf that Maisie had knitted for him.

  Greta could probably have slept through a direct hit in the Blitz! But Edie knew there was no point in trying to get back to sleep herself. It had taken her long enough to drop off in the first place. She was too excited about seeing Fliss fly low over Three Chimneys for her promised beat-up. It was only a few hours away now at the most. She swung her feet out of bed, pulled on a sweater and crept to the door.

  It was so dark in the house with the blackout curtains drawn that she tripped over the rug at the top of the stairs and thumped down the first three steps on her bottom.

  “Ow!” She tried to stifle a groan.

  “Shh! Keep it down,” hissed a voice in the darkness below. As Edie heaved herself to her feet, she could just make out the shadowy figure of Gus in the gloom of the kitchen.

  She scrambled down the last few steps to join him. She didn’t need to ask why he was awake too as another yell rang out from the floor above.