The Chop

by Graham Hurley

  Gramps said flying in bombers the way he did was quite dangerous. Lots of people he knew in other planes never came back. They got shot down by the Germans or crashed for some other reason and if you crashed you mostly got killed. They called that The Chop. You never knew when it was going to happen and you never thought it would happen to you but the more you flew and the more that people you knew didn’t come back the more you started to wonder about The Chop.

  There was a special look people had when they got frightened about The Chop. Gramps and his friends called it the Chop Look. They went very quiet or they laughed too loudly at silly jokes or they stopped eating and got a bit pale. Funny. I’ve seen a lot of people round town like that, even under their masks. Maybe they’re thinking about The Chop, too.

  I asked Gramps why he wanted to be in the war when it was so dangerous and he said you didn’t have much of a choice. You could go in the army or the navy or the air force. He didn’t want to be a soldier because that’s what his dad had been, in the big war before, and it was horrible. He didn’t want to be in the navy, either, because Gramps gets seasick, even on the boating lake at Great Yarmouth. So that left the air force.

  The other thing about the air force was you got really good food, like eggs and bacon, before you went off to drop bombs on the Germans. And also some of the Lancaster airfields were round our way so he could get home when there was time between ops. Ops is short for operations which was what happened when you flew off to Germany. Eggs and bacon, by the way, is my big favourite, as well.

  Gramps flew in his Lancasters from an airfield at Tuddenham, which is quite near us. The airfield was built specially for the war (and for Gramps) but Gramps said it wasn’t up to much. All the flyers lived together in huts. By the time Gramps got there it was the middle of winter and there was no furniture. When Gramps asked why, they said it was because they’d had to burn it all on the hut stove to keep warm.

  This is funny because the first thing Gramps told me about the turret at the back of the Lancaster was how cold it was. He called it his castle. He had to wear all kinds of special clothing and even then he was still freezing. This must explain why Gramps has the fire on in the cottage all the time. He still chops the wood himself so he must still be quite strong.

  When I asked Gramps about dropping the bombs he showed me some photos from a book he’s got. The photos are all black and white, taken from way up in the Lanc, but you can still see the explosions on the ground. They look like fireworks, or maybe little white flowers in the darkness. It was Gramps’ job to look for German fighter planes out in the night sky but even when he saw them (which he did sometimes) you never fired your guns until they fired first in case they hadn’t seen you. When they fired he said it was like a string of little sausages coming towards you. He called it “tracer” and if one hit you, you probably got The Chop.

  I mentioned about dad listening to Churchill’s speeches to Gramps but it turns out he’s got no time for Churchill. After Gramps had won the war, and the fighting and the bombing was over, Churchill made another big speech on the radio (dad probably had a copy) . He went round thanking everyone – all the soldiers, and sailors, and fighter pilots, and everyone – but he never mentioned Gramps’ lot. They called themselves Bomber Command and they were very fed up about this because half of them had died trying to drop all those bombs and Gramps said he and a few others had half a mind to jump in a Lancaster and drop a couple more on Churchill himself, just to make the point. He’s like that, Gramps. Never lets go. That’s what my mum says, too. Her little terrier, she calls him.

  There must have been funny times, as well, during the war and Gramps says there were. Some nights the weather was terrible so they never took off but went to the pub instead. It was called The Bull. It was a couple of miles from the airfield so they used to go there by bike. One special night, after they’d just done thirty of these “ops”, they got really drunk and came back in the dark in formation on their bikes (formation is the way they spaced themselves when they flew off to Germany). On the way home that night Gramps ended up in a ditch, where he went to sleep, and although he got into trouble next day he didn’t really care because thirty ops meant that you got a long break before you went bombing again. It was nearly the end of the war by now and Gramps never flew again. Not even to bomb Churchill.

  Next in this little story of mine, something unexpected happened. When I got home, mum was with a woman I’d never seen before. She was quite old, maybe even older than mum, and very tall and thin. Mum had met her at work, because it was Thursday and the supermarket was open, and she’d brought her home because she knew I’d be back from Gramps in time for tea.

  The woman’s name was Dorothy. She had a funny accent but that turned out to be because she came from Africa, a country called Zimbabwe (which she called “Zim”). She’d been there all her life on a farm with her husband, and he was still out there looking after things. There was all kinds of trouble in Zim to do with the government and this woman Dorothy had a job in a big manor house out beyond Fetchbury where she was looking after a very old lady who had lots of money but wasn’t very well. Dorothy said she did everything for this old lady who spent most of her time in bed. Just lately she’d got quite ill (not with the virus) and she had to be with her most of the time. The supermarket used to deliver all the food and stuff but they wouldn’t do that any more. She’d said all this to mum and mum had thought of me. Would I run stuff up to the manor house every Thursday?

  When she said this, Doff looked at me with that special kind of smile people use when they really want a favour. She said she was worried about the old lady and the virus and I said of course I’d bring out the groceries and stuff and if she wanted me to leave them out by the gate, then that’s what I’d do. She thought this was a terrific idea. She left some money with mum and a list of stuff for next week. I looked at the list after she’d gone. Someone in that house loved Munchy Morsels (which I’d never heard of).

  It was two days later when the phone rang. It was Gramps. He wanted to talk to my mum. After he’d finished, my mum said he was really upset and told me to get over there as soon as I could. We still had dad’s car but mum didn’t know how to drive. When I asked what the matter was with Gramps, she said it was to do with his pigeons.

  Gramps was sitting in the cottage in his pyjamas. For once, he didn’t have the fire going. There was a kind of hearth in front of the fire, and the hearth was covered with sheets of old newspaper. On top of the newspaper, all floppy and dead-looking, were his pigeons. I counted them. There were thirteen. He’d found them first thing in the morning. Someone had wrapped them in the newspaper and left them outside his gate. When I asked who, he said Bridgeman. He’d heard the sound of his Land Rover from his bedroom at the front. It had a squeak from a wonky wheel. Bridgeman’s squeak.

  I made Gramps some tea but he wouldn’t drink it. He liked porridge in the mornings but he said he wasn’t hungry. He just sat in his chair, staring at the dead pigeons. These days, you weren’t supposed to be that close to birds. Dead birds could carry the virus. I suppose I should have mentioned this but there didn’t seem much point. There were little bloody marks on each of the pigeons where the shots had gone in so it couldn’t have been bird flu because the virus kills from the inside. Gramps said it was murder. Bridgeman had killed his pigeons. Given them The Chop.

  I was going to tidy up the mess but Gramps said to leave them. He’d bury them later in the garden at the back. What mattered now was Bridgeman. He’d worked for the man, and his father, most of his life. He knew what the birds had meant to him. Now this.

  Despite being so little, Gramps has big, bony hands. Just then, he was tying his fingers in knots. Mum was right. He was really upset.

  When I tried to cheer him up he didn’t really listen. In the end I put the radio on. The man on the news was saying about how the government were planning to offer everyone counselling onc
e the virus had gone. There’d be thousands of counsellors, enough for everyone. I could see Gramps was listening hard. When the man had finished, Gramps shook his head. He said the country he’d fought for – I think he meant bombed for – had gone. Now there was just a sixty million people scared witless by a bunch of chickens. That was exactly what he said, except there was a rude word in there too, just before “chickens”. When Gramps talks like this it means trouble.

  Because I didn’t really know what to do, I went home. There was a chatty e-mail from Maddie waiting for me. She and Elmore had been trying to sell their new ring-tones but no one wanted to buy them. I could have told her that already (the tolling bell is horrible) but Maddie never listens so it wouldn’t have made any difference.

  Instead of ring-tones, Elmore’s now thinking about a new idea. People are getting very nervous about bird poo. If it gets on their car, or their windows, or on bits of the garden, they think it’s full of the flu virus (and they’re probably right). So what Elmore’s done is to make up a special scraper and a big tank of stuff with disinfectant connected to a pump and a hose in the back of their old camper van. They’ve both managed to get bio-suits from the Red Cross lady in town and Elmore’s saved up for a special mask called the Advantage 3000.

  Maddie says it’s the ultimate in bird flu protection. It’s got a full facial shield, provides 100% visibility, and is made from a ballistic hard polycarbonate. I think she got those last bits from the catalogue, because she never talks like that in real life, but she also sent a photo of them both in their new uniform, ready to tackle splodges of bird poo. She said they charge £106 a visit, which is the same for the man from Dyno-Rod, and they’re wondering how to get free advertising. I showed mum the photo and she said Elmore and Maddie looked more frightening than the flu itself and that set me thinking. What does bird flu look like?

  There’s a special number you can phone. They give it out on TV. It’s called the Flu Hotline. You ring it up and one of those recorded voices asks you all kinds of questions about whether you want information about vaccinations, or medicines, or whether you’re worried about getting to work, or whether or not you’ve just come back from a country with lots of flu in it (like places like China), and which button to press if you want an answer, but there was nothing about what the virus looks like. At the end of the message there was another voice that said that there was going to be a Phase Change. I didn’t have a clue what he meant so I gave the phone to mum but the voice had gone.

  Mum said to turn on the TV. We went to BBC 24. The man on the phone was right. We’re now in something called Phase Six, which sounds pretty serious. That means no more football matches, no more cinema and plays, no more getting together at conferences, no more pubs, plus you have to have a special licence if you want to be anywhere else with more than a couple of people. The hospitals are all full now so they’re going to put sick people in some of the empty schools. I was still thinking about whether they’d still need me as a lollypop man when mum said about a website they gave out at the end of the news.

  I went upstairs and got onto dad’s old computer and put in the website address. It was something called UK Resilience. It said to enter a postcode. That took me to the East Suffolk Local Resilence Forum. It’s all a bit complicated but it seems that mum and I (and probably everyone else down the road) are either Stakeholders or Category One Responders. There was lots of stuff about vaccine uptake data and excess deaths projections but when I tried to find out more about what the virus looks like it took me to something called the Key Actions Overview which basically said we should all sit tight and do nothing.

  Mum and I were still thinking about this when the phone went. It was Maddie. She said Elmore had just found out that one of the people he helped bury the other day had been a white Muslim. Apparently Muslims get buried differently to other people because they have to be pointed towards Mecca and that some of his friends (who were real Muslims) had found out and weren’t very happy. She sounded really worried about it and when I asked what was going to happen she said Elmore had just gone out to dig the man up again. Some of these friends had come round and when Elmore said he’d do it later because it was raining they got really angry. I feel very sorry for Elmore. He hates the rain.

  In the sitting room, the TV was still on. There’s a Flu Czar in London, a man in charge of the virus, but he’s just been taken to hospital because they think he’s got it too. A doctor on the telly said this is really serious because the Czar had been vaccinated weeks ago and if it’s really the flu virus then it means that the stuff in the injection doesn’t work properly. The doctor said the virus is mutating. It knows we’re after it and it keeps putting on different disguises. Clever.

  Maddie again. Tea time. She said that Elmore hasn’t come home. He’d been gone since twelve and it had stopped raining and it doesn’t take that long to un-bury someone. She sounded worried so I said I could cycle over if it would help and she said yes so I tied on a special prayer flag for good luck (a red Wind Horse) and off I went. By the time I got there (against the wind), Elmore had turned up. There were loads of Muslims with him and they had the dead one in the back of a van. They wanted to wash the body and Elmore was trying to find a bucket and a scrubbing brush.

  The Muslims were all from Lowestoft. They used the van for deliveries, a bit like me and the trike, and the body was propped up against a couple of big sacks full of rice and wedged in against a wooden pallet loaded with those really big plastic tubs of hot pickle (not Branston).

  Looking at the body I could see why Elmore had got in a muddle in the first place. Whereas all the other Muslims were brown, this one was definitely white. It turned out his name was Rick Adams and he came from Lowestoft, too, though before that he’d come from Yorkshire somewhere. He’d got to know the other Muslims from a take-away in Lowestoft and ended up playing for their football team (which was really good) and scored so many goals they asked him to become a Muslim, which he did. The real Muslims said Rick’s favourite take-away was Chicken Jalfrezi, which might not have been such a good idea because he ended up dead. Washing the body was an excellent idea, though, because it was getting really smelly in the back of that van.

  After they’d finished with the scrubbing brush Elmore had to lend them his spade because they wanted to find somewhere else to bury him, maybe in a corner of the recreation ground where he scored all those goals. Elmore wasn’t very happy about this because the recreation ground was over in Lowestoft and he still had to fill in the grave in the church yard at Bassington (which is in the other direction) but when they promised to bring the spade back as soon as they’d finished, he said OK. After they’d gone, Elmore had a bath.

  Next day was a Thursday. I went up to the supermarket with Doff’s list for her and Mrs Bellamy. I thought at first that they’d run out of Munchy Morsels but then I realised all the shelves were in a muddle and the Munchies (which turned out to be cat food) had got in amongst the marmalade. I got ten tins to be on the safe side and all the other stuff including six cans of beer called Warka, which I’d never heard of before.

  After the government saying about Phase Six, and the Flu Czar dying, the supermarket was nearly empty. There was only one check-out working and the girl’s nose was all red round the nostrils so no one (except me) went near her.

  Her name’s Kate. She’s nice. I sometimes see her walking home when I’m on lollipop duty but I’ve always been too shy to say anything. In the supermarket, though, it seemed rude not to chat a bit because it must be terrible being avoided all the time. She told me that Warka comes from Poland but when I asked her why a lady from Zim wanted to drink Polish beer she said she hadn’t got a clue. Thinking about it later, I realised that she doesn’t know Doff and she’s never heard of Zim. So maybe I should have talked about something else.

  After the supermarket, on the way to Mrs Bellamy’s place to deliver Doff’s groceries, I suddenly heard the sound
of church bells. It was very faint to begin with but then it got louder and louder and pretty quickly I realised it was coming from a little village called Kettlestead which is only a little way off the main road.

  I know lots about church bells because of Gramps. He’s been a bell-ringer all his life. In bell-ringing you ring changes, which is lots of different bells in different orders, and Gramps knows hundreds. He taught me some too, and did his best to make me a good bell-ringer. He used to take me to some of the churches and got me to hold the woolly bit near the end of the big rope that dangles down from the ceiling. This bit’s called the sally and it’s a really good feeling when you pull the sally and hear the bell go bong way up in the sky. There’s more to it than that, of course, because you have to keep time with other people and if you want the truth I was never very good at it. It didn’t matter, though. I love bells.

  The church at Kettlestead was very old. I parked the trike under a tree in the graveyard. The big door at the end of the church was open and I could hear people grunting inside in time with the bells. After the sunshine, it was dark inside and it took me a time to realise that one of the men ringing the bells was Gramps. He saw me come in and gave me a wink and carried on ringing. He must have been pulling really hard because his face was really sweaty.

  This particular change was called the Weasel because it sounds like Pop Goes The Weasel. I listened for a bit and then got on the bike again. I could still hear the bells when I got to Doff’s. By then it was just the one bell, the biggest. It’s called the tenor bell and it’s the one Gramps always rings. If you want to know what it sounds like you should listen to Maddie’s ring-tone. Bong…Bong…Bong. Like I said earlier, that’s called tolling. These days especially, it’s scary and a bit sad-making.