Not Safe After Dark

All in all, the journey took a little over two hours. Only about ten or eleven children were shepherded off at the small country station, and I followed as they were met and taken to the village hall, where the men and women who were to care for them waited. It was more civilized than some of the evacuation systems I’d heard about, which sounded more like the slave markets of old, where farmers waited on the platforms to pick out the strong lads, and local dignitaries whisked away the nicely dressed boys and girls.

I went up to the volunteer in charge, an attractive young country woman in a simple blue frock with a white lace collar and a belt around her slim waist, and asked her if she had any record of an evacuee called John, or Joh

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’ll help you go from house to house. There weren’t that many evacuees, you know. Far fewer than we expected.’

I nodded. I’d heard how a lot of parents weren’t bothering to evacuate their children. ‘They can’t see anything happening yet,’ I said. ‘Just you wait. After the first air raid you’ll have so many you won’t have room for them all.’

Phyllis smiled. ‘The poor things. It must be such an upheaval for them.’

‘Indeed.’

I took deep, welcome breaths of country air as Phyllis and I set out from the village hall to visit the families listed on her clipboard. There were perhaps a couple of hundred houses, and less than fifty per cent had received evacuees. Even so, we worked up quite a sweat calling at them all. Or I did, rather, as sweating didn’t seem to be in Phyllis’s nature. We chatted as we went, me telling her about my school teaching, and she telling me about her husband, Thomas, training as a fighter pilot in the RAF. After an hour or so with no luck, we stopped in at her cottage for a refreshing cup of tea, then we were off again.

At last, late in the afternoon, we struck gold.

Mr and Mrs Douglas, who were billeting Joh

‘He’s not here,’ Joh

I shook my head. ‘Sorry, Joh

Young Joh

I patted his shoulder. ‘I don’t think so. More like she’ll be glad to see you. How did you manage to sneak in with the real evacuees, by the way?’

Joh

‘Oliver Bradley,’ I said. The boy whose name Joh

‘Yes. He goes to Broad Hill.’

I nodded. Though I had never heard of Oliver Bradley, I knew the school; it was just across the valley from us. ‘Go on.’

‘I asked him where he was going, and he said he was being sent to Acksham. It was perfect.’

‘But how did you get him to change places with you?’

‘He didn’t want to. Not at first.’

‘How did you persuade him?’

Joh

I smiled. It would have to be something like that.

‘And I made him promise not to tell anyone, just to go home and say there wasn’t room for him, and he’d have to try again in a few days. I just needed enough time to find Dad… you know.’

‘I know.’

We arrived at the station, where Joh

We didn’t have long to wait for our train. I thanked Phyllis for all her help, told her I wished her husband well, and she waved to us as the old banger chugged out of the station.

It was past blackout when I finally walked into our street holding Joh

I could sense that something was wrong as soon as I turned the corner. It was nothing specific, just a sudden chill at the back of my neck. Because of the blackout, I couldn’t see anything clearly, but I got a strong impression of a knot of shifting shadows, just a little bit darker than the night itself, milling around outside Colin Gor-mond’s house.

I quickened my step, and as I got nearer I heard a whisper pass through the crowd when they saw Joh

The first thing I noticed when I approached Colin’s house was that the window was broken and half the blackout curtain had been ripped away. Next I saw that the door was slightly ajar. I was worried that Colin might be hurt, but out of courtesy I knocked and called out his name.

Nothing.

I pushed the door open and walked inside. It was pitch dark. I didn’t have a torch with me, and I knew that Colin’s light didn’t work, but I remembered the matches and the candle on the table. I lit it and held it up before me as I walked forward.

I didn’t have far to look. If I hadn’t had the candle, I might have bumped right into him. First I saw his face, about level with mine. His froth-specked lips had turned blue, and a trickle of dried blood ran from his left nostril. The blackout cloth was knotted around his neck in a makeshift noose, attached to a hook screwed into the lintel over the kitchen door. As I stood back and examined the scene further, I saw that his down-turned toes were about three inches from the floor, and there was no sign of an upset chair or stool.

Harmless Colin Gormond, friend to the local children. Dead.

I felt the anger well up in me, along with the guilt. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gone dashing off to Acksham like that in search of Joh