The Memory Cage Read online

  “I will, thanks,” I said.

  “Who’ll play with me after?” piped Sophie.

  “Off you go, Alex!” taunted Leonard. He made a gun with his hand in his lap and pulled the trigger at me. “Go play with my baby sister.”

  “Who wants tea?” asked Grandad again.

  Leonard did an over-the-top sigh.

  “No, thanks, William,” said Mum mechanically.

  “I will, Grandad,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Who’ll play? Who’ll play?” pestered Sophie. She sounded as if she was going to go into a tantrum any minute. Dad flicked the volume of the telly up a bar with the remote control.

  “There are already reports of dangerously high river levels …”

  I watched Grandad sit down and stare at his plate. I thought about all the things in his life he’d been through that I’d known nothing about. Why hadn’t he told me about the Dunkirk book? Why had he never shown me Grandma’s grave?

  Grandad picked up his fork.

  Then his knife.

  He sawed at a piece of meat and ate it.

  I looked at Dad. He couldn’t even know who’d saved him from the fire when he was a baby. You only had to look at the way he treated Grandad to tell that.

  I looked at Mum and Victoria, even Sophie, and I thought to myself, they should all know the truth about Grandad. They ought to know.

  Grandad chewed a potato.

  Except I didn’t know the truth, did I? Not the whole of it. I didn’t know how Tommie died and whether Grandad was really to blame. If he had been, well, maybe it didn’t matter how many other good things he’d done in his life. That would be the thing he was remembered for.

  Grandad gathered up a forkful of green beans.

  He’d cleared half his plate.

  So far so good.

  I ate faster, hardly tasting my food, intent on getting finished and getting away from that table without a scene, and inviting Lia round, and telling her what I’d found out …

  And that’s what might have happened next.

  If Leonard hadn’t gone and opened his big mouth.

  “The Ministry of Defence today announced pay rises for the armed forces …” blared the telly.

  “Pass the parsley, darling,” Mum said.

  “Must be short of soldiers,” muttered Grandad. “I’d have thought there were more than enough.”

  “You can never have enough soldiers,” said Leonard.

  “Can’t you?” Grandad stabbed a fork into his chop.

  Leonard swamped his plate with gravy. “Well, I’m joining up as soon as I’m sixteen!”

  A silence hung over the table with the steam from the potatoes.

  “As if!” snorted Victoria at last. “You’ll never pass the physical!”

  I saw that Grandad had stopped chewing. He had gone very still. He had a corner of tablecloth clenched in one fist.

  I gripped my knife and fork. The only thing I’d wanted was for us to get through lunch in peace. Why couldn’t Leonard have stayed upstairs playing his stupid war games? Why did he have to bring them to the table instead?

  “When I join the army …” he began.

  Grandad cut him off. “You won’t be.”

  Leonard stared at him with a scowl. “What?”

  “Joining up.”

  “Says who?”

  “I said you won’t be. That’s an end to it.”

  “It’s my life,” said Leonard. “You can’t stop me.”

  Grandad pushed his chair back from the table. “I don’t believe in war,” he said. “Never have and never will. There’re plenty of other ways to solve problems. I’ve been on a battlefield, and there’s no glory in it, I can ruddy well tell you that now, Leonard. It’s not like one of your computer games.”

  “What place is it of yours to say what he will and won’t do?” cut in Dad. “I’m his father.”

  We all turned to look at him.

  “More green beans, anyone?” piped Mum.

  Grandad leaned towards Dad. His voice starting to crack with anger.

  “You want him to be a soldier, do you? You want that? Your own son? Killing people? Getting killed himself?”

  “He should be allowed to make his own decisions, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Like I did, you mean?” Grandad said.

  Mum started spooning great heaps of extra green beans on to everyone’s plates. Victoria had sunk down in her seat, trying to stay well out of it. Sophie stared from Grandad to Dad and back again with an interested look on her face.

  “Some people can only make selfish decisions,” said Dad.

  Grandad got to his feet. A knife clattered to the floor.

  “That’s what you think I was, do you, Richard? Selfish!”

  Dad banged a hand on the table. “We damn well should fight! If our way of life is threatened. If our families are threatened.”

  “Don’t judge things you know nothing about.”

  Dad rose slightly from his seat. “I know something! I know that you came back but Tommie didn’t.”

  “Richard!” Green beans flew from Mum’s spoon.

  “So that’s what this is all about, is it?” I’d never seen Grandad look so angry. “Mildred really did work well on you, Richard, didn’t she?”

  So Lia’s idea was right. Great Aunt Mildred had been saying bad things to Dad about Grandad while he was growing up.

  Mum slapped an extra lamb chop on to Dad’s plate. But he was on a roll.

  “You know what you were, William?” he said. His voice trembled and his face had gone a funny colour. He spat out the word. “You were a coward.”

  He said it like he’d been wanting to the whole of his life, like it had been trapped inside him all this time and it was a relief to let it out at last. To finally say what he’d been wanting to say all along, and not care who was listening. He even seemed to give a laugh as he said it.

  “Richard, that’s enough!”

  Dad glanced at Mum and then pulled the newspaper up in front of his face with a grunt.

  Grandad looked like he wanted to say more. But then he saw Sophie gawping at him and instead he yanked open the patio door and strode away into the rain and down the garden towards the Den.

  I felt like running after him, but I figured he didn’t want company right then.

  “I’ve work to do,” said Dad, throwing down the paper and going off in the other direction.

  Mum heaved the patio door shut. “I’ve got work to do as well,” she snapped, starting to clear the plates. “All of you, out of my kitchen!”

  “But what about pudding?” protested Leonard. “I’m not even finished!”

  “Out, I said. Now!”

  So much for the Little Family Announcement.

  Maybe I should have felt grateful to Leonard. But all I felt was numb.

  We filed out of the kitchen and went into the lounge.

  “Tick, tock,” taunted Leonard as he leaned over me to look for the remote control. “Tick, tock.”

  I pushed him away.

  “Face the truth, Bosnia Boy. I heard Mum and Dad talking. Grandad’s time’s up, and yours is too.”

  “Well done for starting off that lovely argument, Leonard!” Victoria sprawled along the settee with the remote control and flicked on the television. Sophie started pulling jigsaw pieces from a toy box in the corner. The tail end of the news came on. Some item about a man on trial …

  “What’s on the other side?” said Leonard, flopping down in Grandad’s armchair. “Turn off this boring rubbish, can’t you?”

  “Some of us like to keep in touch with the planet we live in,” said Victoria.

  “Which planet would that be in your case, Vickie dear?”

  I watched Sophie slap the jigsaw pieces in. She couldn’t get any to fit. She kept turning them and trying to force them in, but nothing worked. In the end she gave up and started wiggling a piece of wool across the carpet.

  “Naughty, Moggy! Play
with me. Don’t scratch the furniture!”

  “The war crimes trial … Bosnia …”

  That was all I needed. I saw Victoria glance at me.

  A picture came up on the screen. An old man with a beard and glasses.

  “You can’t imagine an old man like that doing murder and stuff,” said Victoria. “He looks like somebody’s grandad!”

  “We’re missing the start of Combat Unit!” complained Leonard.

  Victoria sighed and threw him the remote. “There you go, moron.” She started leafing through a fashion magazine.

  That was it.

  Leonard changed channel and the screen was filled with blokes firing paint at each other and killing themselves laughing.

  Mum came in and started plumping cushions around us, slapping them a lot harder than she needed to. Sophie sat chatting to a one-armed doll.

  Everyone carrying on as normal.

  As if nothing whatsoever had happened.

  – CHAPTER 17 –

  PLAYING WITH FIRE

  In the lounge. 2:45 p.m. Two heads better than one.

  “They seem to have the totally wrong idea about your grandad.”

  Lia had come round and we had the lounge to ourselves. The others had driven to the shopping mall in Dover. Grandad still hadn’t come out of the Den.

  “He saved your dad from a burning house, but your dad thinks he’s a coward! And he may have been a conchie, but we know he had a hard time of it, being beaten up and all that.” She stroked the hair of Sophie’s doll. “What I don’t understand is, why didn’t your grandad just tell your dad what really happened?”

  “Maybe it was too hard for him to talk about,” I said. “I mean, Dad was saved but my grandma died. Maybe it was easier for him never to say anything about it.”

  “Hmmm.” Lia looked at me doubtfully. “Well, I agree with you. I think your family need to know what happened.” She clicked her fingers. “I know! You can tell them all straight when you’re together. Show them the scrapbook. Tell them everything you know! I reckon it might be the only way to get your dad to listen.”

  “OK,” I said slowly. “Mum wants us all to have a picnic on the beach on Saturday morning …”

  “Perfect!” said Lia. “You can do it then.”

  “But not unless we’ve got all the parts worked out,” I said.

  “Like what happened to Tommie, you mean?”

  “You don’t think Grandad had anything to do with it, do you?” I said. I felt queasy just thinking about it. I wanted Lia to say, “Course not, Alex. Don’t be an idiot!” But how could she know? How could either of us know for sure?

  Imagine it. Imagine that you find out that your grandad did things when he was younger. Terrible things that nobody will speak about.

  “You’ve got to go back up there.”

  I stared at Lia.

  “To your grandma’s room.” She wheeled herself across the room and picked up one of Sophie’s jigsaw pieces. “Tonight. Read the rest of the diary.”

  I felt myself go tense.

  “You can’t go up there now, can you? And you can’t bring it down here! Your grandad might come in any minute. I think you need to wait until everyone’s in bed again. Get the key out of the clock and go back. Surely you were planning to do that anyway?”

  Yes, I was, but the thought of being up there in the dark again, alone …

  “I’d come with you,” said Lia. She gave me a punch on the arm. “But I’m not too good with steps, am I?”

  – CHAPTER 18 –

  GRANDMA’S DIARY

  In Grandma’s room. Half-past midnight. Scared out of my wits.

  The diary wasn’t where I’d left it.

  If I could have got out of there right then, I would have done, but my feet were rooted to the floorboards. I was paralysed.

  You have to keep looking, Alex, I told myself. It’s for your grandad.

  The diary wasn’t on top of the writing desk, where I thought I’d thrown it. It was back in the drawer.

  My memory was playing tricks on me, I told myself. Really I had put it back; I’d been scared by the torchlight in the graveyard and wasn’t thinking straight.

  I tried to stay calm. I crouched with the diary, and then opened the front cover, letting the light from my torch spill over the pages as I turned them.

  May 12th 1941

  A shudder rippled through me. She’d written it the day before she died.

  Today I told Hatty everything. About how Tommie died.

  It was difficult to read. My torch shone over the closely spaced, curling handwriting. Here and there were dark lines of smoke damage like scars.

  I’m writing all this down so it won’t be lost. The only sure way to remember things is to write them down. Tommie’s death taught me that. You need to remember things. Keep your secrets safe. And every family has its secrets. Ours more than most.

  I know what people are saying. But William says let them talk. They have to come to the truth themselves, not have it rammed down their throats. I hate their lies, but I agree with William. Even if we told them the truth, would they believe it? People believe what they want to.

  William wouldn’t tell me what really happened to Tommie. Not for a long time. His heart was too broken. When he finally did tell me I had no doubt it was the truth because William could never lie to me. I would know it.

  That day in May last year. So many were saved, but so many died too. We heard the call for boats to rescue the soldiers off the Dunkirk beaches. William started getting a boat ready as soon as he found out, and there was nothing anybody could have said to him to make him change his stubborn, brave mind.

  Tommie was on leave at the time. He’d had a bad wound to the leg and wasn’t allowed to fly, although it was nearly healed. He insisted that he went with William. William wouldn’t hear of it. But Tommie kept on and on until William gave in. I was feeling too sick to argue with them. I wish to God that I had.

  Tommie was so proud of his brother! He admired the way that he stood firm with his pacifist principles. He was so proud of Will’s photographs too. He said that the world had to see them because they told the truth about war. That war has to be avoided at all costs.

  So, that day in May they set off in Will’s boat …

  There were smoke marks on the page, making it impossible to read in places.

  … Tommie got trapped on the beach …

  … William tried to …

  I held the torch closer to the page, desperate to make out the words.

  … William tried to save Tommie …

  I read that line again and again.

  William tried to save Tommie.

  William tried to save Tommie!

  I felt like leaping about yelling, thumping the air with my fist. Grandad had tried to save his brother! Grandad had tried to save his brother!

  But then I read the next bit and I felt a coldness creep over me.

  I’m afraid.

  Peter Webb has been making threats. He’s more and more unbalanced since his brother Henry’s death. He won’t listen to reason. He hates the photographs Will took. He stormed into Will’s darkroom today while Will was working and tried to destroy a roll of film he had.

  I am tired now, and Richard needs feeding. Will has been so good as a father to him. I don’t know what I would have done without him. I hope he will be home soon. He has been helping Hatty’s father with some fences and is due back late.

  I closed the diary and held it against me. It was the last thing my grandma had ever written. By the next morning she was dead.

  If only she’d known what was going to happen. She could have changed things. Things would have turned out so differently.

  I hugged the book close, and then slipped it in my dressing gown pocket. I would show it to Dad and he would read his mum’s words and he would finally know the truth. Not Great-Aunt Mildred’s truth, or Mr Webb’s, but the real truth.

  As I went out, I stumbled. My foot mu
st have caught on the bottom of my pyjamas. I went sprawling, my torch clattered down and went out, and as I put a hand out to break my fall, I heard something spin away from it. I scrambled around in the dark and my fingers touched something cold and round.

  Somehow I got my torch on again and looked at what I’d found. It must have been hidden under the writing desk.

  It was a metal box. A canister. About the size of a saucer. Badly dented and blackened. I turned it over. Words were printed on it.

  PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM

  My heart started thumping wildly. Could it be what I thought it was?

  What if all Grandad’s photographs and films hadn’t been destroyed by the fire? Could a film have survived somehow?

  OPEN ONLY IN THE DARK

  My head was beaded with sweat. If I had opened the canister, even in the torchlight, I’d have ruined the film inside. I knew that much. Grandad was a good photography teacher.

  There was other writing on the canister. I recognized Grandad’s scrawl.

  Then, in even smaller writing, the letters all messy as if his hand was trembling at the time:

  – CHAPTER 19 –

  SOME THINGS BEST FORGOTTEN

  The vicarage. Friday, 8:50 a.m. Religious intervention.

  The church lawns were more swamp than grass and my trainers were filthy by the time I reached Reverend Posselthwaite’s front door.

  “I wondered when you’d call, Alex!” he said, as soon as he saw me. “Yes, I have it!”

  I knew he meant the rubbing from Grandma’s gravestone, but that wasn’t the only thing I’d come for. I was pretty sure by now what the missing letters were on the inscription, and I was pretty sure who’d hacked them out.

  It was Peter Webb I wanted to talk to the vicar about.

  I started to take my shoes off, but Reverend Posselthwaite hurried me into his study. He seemed oblivious to the big dirty footprints I was leaving on Mrs Posselthwaite’s cream carpet.