Chichester Greenway

by Alton Saunders

  Chapter 28:

  FAREWELL

  A moment came when they could be there no longer. They were in their chairs, back in The Golden Palace. For a long time they sat in silence. Some had tears in their eyes.

  “My sister was there,” said Bavilan.

  “My parents are glad I’m going to live with Birgit,” said Toln.

  Little by little they shared their experiences, but it became harder and harder to remember them as the everyday memories and images of life on Vika or on Earth – all the busy days and years – came flooding back into their minds. What was left, though, and it remained with them always, was the knowledge that behind all the ups and downs of life there is a peace and joy in which nothing that is good and dear is ever lost.

  “I think we’d better get home now,” said Andrew.

  Vicky could hardly hold back her tears as they said farewell to their Vikan friends. “We want to give a present to your mums,” said Vonn. She and Akkri climbed into a skimmer with Andrew and Vicky, and the others came out onto the balcony to wave them off as the skimmer glided down through wispy clouds.

  “We’re going back home,” Vonn told Mrs Canadine. “Thank you for being so kind to us. We’ve brought you a present.” She handed her a bowl of the kind that is made in the northern area where her parents lived. The bowl was piled high with Vikan fruits.

  “What wonderful fruit! And what a lovely bowl! Thank you, dears,” and she gave Vonn and Akkri a hug.

  “We’ll be going round to Vicky’s flat now, Mum,” said Andrew.

  Vicky felt a little nervous as they walked down Chichester Greenway to the main road. She had never had a friend round to the flat before and now three friends were coming. What would her mum say? She hoped she would not be rude or unkind to them.

  She wasn’t. As they came into the kitchen she put her newspaper down and greeted them with a big smile. “Welcome, young people,” she said. Vicky knew this was a slightly odd way to greet her friends but it did not seem to matter. There was a nice smell in the kitchen that Vicky could not quite place. “Would you like a piece of cake?” her mum asked. Vicky was puzzled. She usually kept herself well informed about what was in the fridge and in the white cupboard next to the fridge. She was sure they didn’t have any cake at the moment. “I made it this morning,” her mother went on. “It told me here in the newspaper how to do it,” and she held the page up for them to see.

  The cake was hard and dry, but for Vicky it was something wonderful, a real cake made by her mum. Vonn and Akkri thought it special, too: it was probably the last Earth food they would ever taste.

  “We’ve brought you a present, Mrs …” Akkri realised he did not know Vicky’s surname.

  “Just call me Gladys, darling,” said Vicky’s mum. “My name’s Gladys.”

  “Here you are, Gladys,” and Akkri handed her a bowl of fruit like the one they had given to Mrs Canadine. To his surprise it looked as if the present was some sort of problem.

  “I don’t think I deserve a present,” she said. “I’m not always very nice to Vicky.”

  Vicky put her arms round her and her mum started to cry. It was strange – she, Vicky, was comforting her mum, and then with a pulse of joy she felt her mum reach out and pull her close, so that Vicky’s nose was uncomfortably squashed against her mum’s shoulder. It was one of the happiest moments of Vicky’s life. And then Vicky, too, started to cry.

  Vonn and Akkri and Andrew quietly left the room and went down the steps to the street. They walked back the way they had come till they reached Andrew’s gate.

  “Now it really is goodbye, isn’t it?” said Andrew. He touched fingertips with the Vikans for the very last time. “Bye, then,” said Andrew, and stood watching in tears as a skimmer took them away.

  Soon after that, back on The Golden Palace, Akkri and Vonn were saying goodbye once again, as Toln solemnly touched fingertips with each of his friends in turn before getting into a skimmer to go off to his new life on Vestre Lillesund.

  Vicky woke up next morning feeling sad. Vonn and Akkri were going home. Along with Andrew they were the best friends she had ever had and they lived far, far away. She would probably never see them again. She got up and went through into the kitchen, where she found that her mum had made her a boiled egg and toast for breakfast. She had never done that before. Vicky could hardly believe it and found it hard not to cry as she ate the food.

  “I’ve made you a cheese and tomato sandwich to go with your lunch things, Vicky dear.”

  “Thanks, Mum.” Vicky could hardly get the words out. It all felt so strange, almost unreal. For a moment she again wondered if her mum was making fun of her. But no, her voice had sounded warm and kind in a way that Vicky had been longing for all her life, and she remembered how her mum had hugged her the day before.

  The day continued to be strange and surprising when she got to school. Andrew was already in the playground and there he was, playing a card game with J.

  Andrew was finding that strange, too. He had felt alarmed when J came over to him, but J was smiling and it was not a nasty smile. Andrew realised that the card game J wanted to play with him was really for younger children, but J did not seem to be aware of this and Andrew was so pleased that J was being friendly that he readily agreed. The playground was quieter than usual and there did not seem to be any scuffles or angry disagreements going on. And when the bell rang for the start of school there was hardly any pushing and shoving as they moved into the building. Andrew even felt it safe to give Vicky a little smile as they walked in together.

  Mrs Warbloff had come to school twenty minutes earlier than she usually did. She knocked on the door of Mrs Faighly’s study.

  “Come in! Oh, hallo, Caroline, come and sit down.”

  This was unexpected. Mrs Faighly was very formal with the teachers and always called her Mrs Warbloff. How should she respond? Then, “Hallo, Julie,” and it felt quite all right to call her Julie. “Julie, something wonderful has happened. I don’t know if you have ever heard about this – I don’t talk about it much – but my husband disappeared nearly ten years ago. He’s come back! He’d been attacked and lost his memory but now it’s come back and he’s come back! I can still hardly believe it.”

  “What wonderful news! I’m so glad. I expect you feel quite churned up. Would you like a few days off? I’m sure we could manage.”

  And this was unheard of. Mrs Faighly usually made it very clear that her teachers were not expected to take time off except under the most extreme circumstances. “No, it’s not that. I was wondering if you could write a letter saying that Ernst and I were suitable people to foster young Gillian and her baby. We had always hoped to have children, and I feel so sorry for her. Ernst has a house in Chichester Greenway and we’re going to move there.”

  “That’s where Andrew Canadine lives, I think.”

  “Yes, Ernst has mentioned Andrew and Mrs Canadine. We’re going to live in Ernst’s house and there would be room for Gillian and her baby. I think it would be better for them than living in a hostel.”

  “I’m sure it would. What a lovely idea. I’ll certainly write a letter and do anything else I can to help.” At this point the bell rang for the start of school. “I must see if we can find a nicer bell. It sounds so angry, doesn’t it! Anyway, let’s have another chat soon.”

  “Thank you, Julie, thank you very much,” and Mrs Warbloff went off to her first lesson.

  Most of her pupils had already arrived when she walked into the classroom, but it seemed quieter and more peaceful than it usually did. Several of the children smiled at her as she came in and they sat quietly in their places as she did the register. There was no Assembly that morning so they were going straight into their first lesson, Maths.

  Vicky found she was not dreading the lesson as she usually did. She even felt a slight twinge of regret when Mrs Warbloff handed the register to Franco
to take to the school office, and announced: “I hope you won’t be disappointed, but I’ve decided we won’t do Maths this morning. I’ve had an idea I would like to discuss with you. We’ll just wait for Franco to come back.” She would not normally have trusted Franco with the class register, but today it seemed safe to do so.

  When Franco returned, Mrs Warbloff went on: “I’ve always wanted to do a play with a class of mine but it has never seemed possible. If you like the idea, I think we can find the time we need by skipping a couple of Maths lesson a week and doing rehearsals in the lunch hour. If we work hard at it, I think we could get everything ready to perform to the rest of the school by the last week of term.” She was about to ask if they would actually like to do a play, but at this point she looked round the classroom and saw the delighted smiles on the faces of her pupils. “I think that’s a ‘Yes’, isn’t it?”

  It was a ‘Yes’, and for the next forty minutes Mrs Warbloff enjoyed the sort of lesson she had always hoped for. She walked round the classroom handing out copies of ‘Three Plays for Schools’. “It’s the one called ‘Mister Scrooge’,” she said. She had bought ten copies, or so she thought, paying for them herself – not nearly enough for a whole class, but it was all she could afford at the time – hoping that one day she might be able to make use of them. The pile was heavier than she had expected and she was puzzled to find that there was a copy for each pupil and one over for herself.

  “Is it by Charles Dickens?” Andrew asked. Normally he would have been jeered at for showing off, but he knew he wasn’t showing off, and Caroline and one or two others looked as if they understood why he was asking.

  Mrs Warbloff was pleased at his interest. “The play is based on ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens, but it has been changed and added to so that it works on stage.”

  “My mum read me ‘A Christmas Carol’ last Christmas,” said Andrew. He was having a proper conversation with Mrs Warbloff in the classroom with all the others listening and no one laughed when he said that his mum had been reading to him.

  “My mum can’t read,” said Janice.

  “Mine can’t, neither,” said Gary.

  Mrs Warbloff was aware that several of her pupils had difficulty with reading and writing but as the period went on she found the more able ones like Caroline and Veronica and Joel and Mishal had moved next to people like Ephraim and Pauline and Franco and were helping them with their lines as the class worked through a first reading of the play.

  There were some surprises. Although Ephraim had to be helped with almost every word of the part he was reading, he said his lines with great conviction, and Pauline seemed to be able to memorise several lines at a time, straight off, as soon as she understood what they were about. She would do well for the part of Jennifer, Mrs Warbloff thought, and maybe Ephraim could be Marley’s ghost.

  When the bell rang for the end of the period there was a groan of disappointment. Mrs Warbloff went off to her next lesson feeling as if she was floating on a cloud of happiness. Ernst was back at home, probably working on a doll’s house this very minute or making himself a cup of tea, and she, Caroline Warbloff, had just had the sort of lesson with her class that she had always dreamed of.

  Mr Barling came into the classroom. They were still doing the Civil War. Today they had to draw a battle scene. Andrew was quite used to seeing all the colours properly now, but it still gave him pleasure every time he had to do a drawing and choose which ones to use. Mr Barling was in a chatty mood and when Albert asked him about the guns the soldiers used, he started telling them about his own time in the army before he had trained as a teacher, and how a rifle works. The lesson flew by and it was soon time to go out for break.

  Andrew and Vicky walked out together. The playground was quiet. It was almost as if everyone was waiting for something to happen. And then something did happen. A golden gleam appeared in the dull grey sky and the clouds seemed to peel away. “Look!” Carry shouted. “Whatever is it?”

  The Golden Palace was hovering just a few hundred feet above the road. Andrew and Vicky waved and waved. They knew the tiny dots lining one of the balconies were their friends and hoped they could see them waving.

  For half a minute The Golden Palace hung there motionless, then, slowly at first, then faster and faster, it moved up and away until it was just a tiny speck which quickly disappeared. “I wonder if we’ll ever see them again?” said Vicky.

  The journey back home to Vika passed like a dream. Not much was said. Everyone was absorbed in the complicated bundle of feelings and memories their expedition had given them.

  “It’s like digesting food,” Viney said. “It doesn’t happen right away and we don’t really know what’s going on inside us.”

  “I think we’ve always been like that,” said Tamor, “but now we notice things going on in our feelings that we might not have noticed before.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” said Vill. “I think it’s because we’ve seen terrible things as well as wonderful things. We simply couldn’t help noticing what we were feeling about it all.”

  “I think we’re rather like Andrew,” her sister joined in. “He can see colours now that he couldn’t see properly before, and we feel things now that we didn’t feel before.”

  “And all of Vika with us,” Korriott added, and they knew that she was right.

  “There are the moons!” Yask shouted. He had been standing by a window, looking out at the vast panorama of stars, knowing that probably none of them would ever again see them like this.

  The others crowded to the window. A brilliant white curve swung into view, light from their own sun shining back at them from the upper atmosphere of Vika. Everyone cheered. They would soon be back with their families and friends.

  Two days later Vonn and Akkri were strolling along the beach together. From time to time a bigger wave than the rest rolled water and sand up around their feet. It was lovely see the familiar green sky and to hear the cries of the seabirds.

  “Now we really are back home,” said Vonn.

  “Yes, back home at last. Let’s have a swim, shall we?”

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