* * *
The morning after his fifth birthday party, Alfie came downstairs to find his mother in her wash-day clothes with her hair tied up on her head, boiling water in every pot on the range, looking just as unhappy as she had the night before, and not just the normal unhappiness she felt every wash day, which usually lasted from seven in the morning until seven at night. She looked up when she saw him but didn’t seem to recognize him for a moment; when she did, she just offered him a dejected smile.
“Alfie,” she said. “I thought I’d let you sleep in. You had a big day yesterday. Bring your sheets down to me, will you? There’s a good boy.”
“Where’s Dad?” asked Alfie.
“He’s gone out.”
“Gone out where?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, unable to look him in the eye. “You know your dad never tells me anything.”
Which Alfie knew wasn’t true, because every afternoon when his father came home from the dairy, he told Margie every single detail of his day from start to finish, and they sat there laughing while he explained how Bonzo Daly had left half a dozen churns outside in the yard without the lids on and the birds had got at them and spoiled the milk. Or how Petey Staples had cheeked the boss and been told that if he continued to complain he could just go and find another job where they put up with guff like that. Or how Mr. Asquith had done the poo to end all poos outside Mrs. Fairfax from number four’s house and her a direct descendant (she claimed) of the last Plantagenet King of England and meant for better places than Damley Road. If Alfie knew one thing about his father, it was that he told his mother everything.
An hour later, he was sitting in the front parlor drawing in his new sketchbook while Margie took a rest from the washing, and Granny Summerfield, who’d come around for what she called a bit of a gossip—although it was really to bring her sheets for Margie to wash too—held the newspaper up to her face and squinted at the print, complaining over and over about why they made it so small.
“I can’t read it, Margie,” she was saying. “Are they trying to drive us all blind? Is that their plan?”
“Do you think Dad will take me on the float with him tomorrow?” asked Alfie.
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes, but he said I couldn’t until I was older.”
“Well, then,” said Margie.
“But I’ll be older tomorrow than I was yesterday,” said Alfie.
Before Margie could answer, the door opened, and to Alfie’s astonishment a soldier marched in. He was tall and well built, the same size and shape as Alfie’s dad, but he looked a little sheepish as he glanced around the room. Alfie couldn’t help but be impressed by the uniform: a khaki-colored jacket with five brass buttons down the center, a pair of shoulder straps, trousers that tucked into knee socks, and big black boots. But why would a soldier just walk into their living room? he wondered. He hadn’t even knocked on the front door! But then the soldier took his hat off and placed it under his arm, and Alfie realized that this wasn’t just any soldier and it wasn’t a stranger either.
It was Georgie Summerfield.
It was his dad.
And that was when Margie dropped her knitting on the floor, put both hands to her mouth, and held them there for a few moments before running from the room and up the stairs while Georgie looked at his son and mother and shrugged his shoulders.
“I had to,” he said finally. “You can see that, Mum, can’t you? I had to.”
“We’re finished,” said Granny Summerfield, putting the newspaper down and turning away from her son as she looked out of the window, where more young men were walking through their own front doors, wearing uniforms just like Georgie’s. “We’re all finished.”
And that was everything that Alfie remembered about turning five.
CHAPTER 2
IF YOU WERE THE ONLY BOCHE IN THE TRENCH
The Janáčeks had already been gone for almost two years when Alfie stole the shoeshine box.
They had lived three doors down from the Summerfields for as long as he could remember, and Kalena, who was six weeks older than he was, had been his best friend since they were babies. Whenever Alfie was in her house in the evening, Mr. Janáček could be found sitting at the kitchen table with the shoeshine box laid out before him, shining his shoes for the next day.
“I believe a man should always present himself to the world with elegance and grace,” he told Alfie. “It is what marks us out from the animals.”
All the people on Damley Road were friends, or they had been before the war began. There were twelve terraced houses on either side of the street, each one attached to the next by a thin wall that carried muffled conversations through to the neighbors. Some of the houses had window boxes outside, some didn’t, but everyone made an effort to keep the place tidy. Alfie and Kalena lived on the side with all the even numbers; Granny Summerfield lived opposite, with all the odd ones, which Margie said was particularly appropriate. Each house had one window facing onto the street from the front parlor, with two more up top, and every door was painted the same color: yellow. Alfie remembered the day Joe Patience, the conchie from number sixteen, painted his door red, and all the women came out on the street to watch him, shaking their heads and whispering to each other in outrage. Joe was political—everyone knew that. Old Bill said he was “his own man,” whatever that meant. He was out on strike more often than he was at work and was forever handing out leaflets about workers’ rights. He said that women should have the vote, and not even all the women agreed with him about that. (Granny Summerfield said she’d rather have the plague.) He owned a beautiful old clarinet too, and sometimes he sat outside his front door playing it; when he did, Helena Morris from number eighteen would stand in her doorway and stare down the street at him until her mother came out and told her to stop making a show of herself.
Alfie liked Joe Patience, and he thought it was funny that his name seemed to be the opposite of his character because he was always getting worked up over something. After he painted his front door red, three of the men, Mr. Welton from number five, Mr. Jones from number nineteen, and Georgie Summerfield, Alfie’s dad, went over to have a word with him about it. Georgie didn’t want to go, but the two men insisted, since he was Joe’s oldest friend.
“It’s not on, Joe,” said Mr. Jones as all the women came out on the street and pretended to wash their windows.
“Why not?”
“Well, take a look around you. It’s out of place.”
“Red is the color of the working man! And we’re all working men here, aren’t we?”
“We have yellow doors here on Damley Road,” said Mr. Welton.
“Whoever said they had to be yellow?”
“That’s just the way things have always been. You don’t want to go mucking about with traditional ways.”
“Then how will things ever get better?” asked Joe, raising his voice even though the three men were standing directly in front of him. “For pity’s sake, it’s just a door! What does it matter what color it is?”
“Maybe Joe’s right,” said Georgie, trying to calm everyone’s tempers. “It’s not that important, is it? As long as the paint isn’t chipping off and letting the street down.”
“I might have known you’d be on his side,” said Mr. Jones, sneering at him even though it had been his idea to ask Georgie to join them in the first place. “Old pals together, eh?”
“Yes,” said Georgie with a shrug, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Old pals together. What’s wrong with that?”
In the end, there was nothing that Mr. Welton or Mr. Jones could do about the red door, and it stayed that way until the following summer, when Joe decided to change it again and painted it green in support of the Irish—who, Joe said, were doing all they could to break off the shackles of their imperial overlords. Alfie’s dad just laughed and said that if he wanted to waste his money on paint, then it was nothing to do with him. Granny Su
mmerfield said that if Joe’s mother were still alive, she’d be ashamed.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Margie. “He has an independent streak, that’s all. I quite like that about him.”
“He’s not a bad fellow, Joe Patience,” agreed Georgie.
“He’s his own man,” repeated Old Bill Hemperton.
“He’s lovely looking, despite everything,” Margie said. “Helena Morris is sweet on him.”
“She’d be ashamed,” insisted Granny Summerfield.
But other than that, the people on Damley Road always seemed to get along very well. They were neighbors and friends. And no one seemed more a part of that community than Kalena and her father.
* * *
Mr. Janáček ran the sweet shop at the end of the road. It wasn’t just a sweet shop, of course—he also sold newspapers, string, notepads, pencils, birthday cards, apples, catapults, soccer balls, laces, boot polish, carbolic soap, tea, screwdrivers, purses, shoehorns, and lightbulbs—but as far as Alfie was concerned the most important thing he sold was sweets, so he called it the sweet shop. Behind the counter stood rows of tall clear-glass containers crammed full of sherbet lemons, apple and pear drops, bull’s-eyes, licorice sticks, and caramel surprises, and whenever Alfie had a penny or two to spare he always went straight to Mr. Janáček, who let him stand there for as long as he liked while he made up his mind.
“Sometimes, Alfie,” he said, leaning over the counter and taking off his spectacles to clean them, “I think that you enjoy deciding what to spend your pennies on more than you do eating the sweets themselves.”
Mr. Janáček had a funny voice because he wasn’t English. He was from Prague, and although he’d come to London ten years before, he had never lost his accent. What came out as vat. Sweets as sveets. Kalena didn’t speak like him because she’d been born in their house at number six and had never been outside London in her life.
“You’re the luckiest person I know,” Alfie told her one day as they sat together on the edge of the pavement, chewing on a licorice allsort and watching the coal man deliver a bag into Mrs. Scutworth’s at number fifteen. The coal man’s face and hands were completely black with soot, but he must have just rolled up his sleeves before he arrived because his forearms were pale white.
“Why do you say that?” asked Kalena, carefully peeling the skin off a banana.
“Because your dad runs a sweet shop,” he replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “There isn’t any job in the world that’s better than that. Except maybe working on the milk float.”
Kalena shook her head. “There’s lots of jobs better than that,” she said. “I’m not going to run a sweet shop when I grow up.”
“Then what will you do?” asked Alfie, frowning.
“I’m going to be prime minister,” said Kalena.
Alfie didn’t know what to say to that, but he thought it sounded very impressive. When he told his parents over tea that night, they both burst out laughing.
“Kalena Janáček? The prime minister?” said Georgie, shaking his head. “I’ve heard everything now. Pass me the carrots, love.”
“A prime minister’s wife, more like,” said Margie, reaching for the dish.
“Well, I’d vote for her,” said Alfie, defending his friend. He didn’t like the way they thought this was so funny.
“You’d be the only one,” said Georgie. “She wouldn’t even be able to vote for herself, so how she thinks she can get the top job is beyond me. Bit chewy, these carrots, aren’t they?”
“Why can’t she vote for herself?” asked Alfie.
“Women can’t vote, Alfie,” said Margie, cutting another slice of beef from the roast and putting it on his plate with an extra potato. (This was in the days when they were able to eat things like beef and potatoes for supper. Before the war broke out.)
“Why not?”
“It’s the way things have always been.”
“But why?”
“Is a letter that comes between x and z,” said Margie. “Now eat your supper, Alfie, and stop asking so many questions. And there’s nothing wrong with them carrots, Georgie Summerfield, so mind you eat them up too. I don’t spend my afternoons cooking just to clear away a plate of leftovers.”
Alfie didn’t think any of these answers explained anything, but he thought it was a good thing that Kalena was ambitious. Later that night, he lay in bed and thought about all the things he could do when he grew up. He could be a train driver. Or a policeman. He could be a schoolteacher or a fireman. He could go to work on the milk float with his dad or be a bus conductor like Mr. Welton. He could be an explorer like Ernest Shackleton, who was always in the papers these days. They all seemed like good jobs—but then inspiration struck and he nearly jumped out of bed in excitement at the idea.
The following afternoon, he marched into Mr. Janáček’s sweet shop and waited until Mr. Candlemas from number thirteen had counted out a handful of change for his tobacco before sitting down on the high stool next to the counter and staring up at the jars of sweets.
“Hello, Alfie,” said Mr. Janáček.
“Hello, Mr. Janáček,” said Alfie.
“What will it be today, then?” Vat vill it be today, zen?
Alfie shook his head. “Nothing, thanks,” he said. “I’ve no pocket money till Monday. I wanted to ask you a question, that’s all.”
Mr. Janáček nodded and came over to stand next to the boy, shrugging his shoulders. “Ask me anything you want.” Anysing you vant.
“Well, you’re not getting any younger, are you, Mr. Janáček?” said Alfie. This was a phrase he’d overheard Old Bill Hemperton say. Whenever he was asked to do anything to help out on the street, he said he couldn’t, that whatever it was was a young man’s game and that he wasn’t getting any younger.
Mr. Janáček laughed. “How old do you think I am, Alfie?”
Alfie thought about it. He knew from experience—after a particularly unpleasant conversation with Mrs. Tamorin from number twenty—that it was always best to guess younger than you really thought. “Sixty?” he said, hoping that he might be right. (He really thought that Mr. Janáček was about seventy-five.)
Mr. Janáček laughed and shook his head. “Close,” he said. “I’m twenty-nine. Only a few years older than your father.”
Alfie didn’t believe him for a moment, but he let it go.
“Well, one day you’ll be too old to run the shop, won’t you?” he asked.
“I suppose so,” he said. “Although not for a long time, I hope.”
“Because I was talking to Kalena,” continued Alfie. “And she said that she won’t work here when she’s grown up on account of the fact that she’s planning on becoming prime minister. And I thought that you’ll probably need someone else to help out then, won’t you? When you can’t move around like you used to and you’re not able to reach up for the things on the top shelves.”
Mr. Janáček considered this. “Perhaps,” he said. “But why do you ask, Alfie? Are you applying for the position?”
Alfie thought about it. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to commit himself fully. “I just think you might keep me in mind, that’s all,” he said. “I’m a hard worker, I’m honest, and I love sweets.”
“But we don’t just sell sweets, do we? You’d have to like everything else too.”
“I can’t imagine getting too excited about string or candles,” said Alfie. “But I’d do my best. And in the meantime, I could take over every week when you have your day off.”
Mr. Janáček raised an eyebrow. “What day do I have off?” he asked in surprise. “I work, I work, and I work. I have no rest!”
“But you always close on Friday evenings and don’t open again until Sunday morning,” said Alfie.
“Ah, but that is not a day off,” said Mr. Janáček. “That is Shabbat. The Jewish day of rest. There are blessings to be made on Friday night: Kalena lights our candles, prayers are offered. We do not work, but we k
eep busy. I could not open the shop on this day. But your offer is a generous one, Alfie, and be assured that I will keep you in mind when it is time for me to retire.”
Alfie smiled. That was good enough for him. He looked over behind Mr. Janáček at the flag that was pinned to the wall beside the cash register. It was quite complicated, with a red stripe across the top, a white one in the center, and red and green squares underneath. Two crowns stood side by side over two emblems.
“What’s that?” asked Alfie.
Mr. Janáček looked over to see what the boy was looking at. “Why, it’s a flag,” he said.
“It’s not a flag of England.”
“No, it’s the flag of my homeland. Where I was born and where I grew up. Prague is a very beautiful city,” he added, stroking his chin and staring off into the lemon twisters. “Perhaps the most beautiful in the world. The city of Mozart and Dvořák. The city where Figaro and Don Giovanni were first performed. And if you have not crossed the Charles Bridge over the Vltava as the sun drops behind the castle, then you have not lived, my friend. You will visit it one day, I am sure of it.”
Alfie frowned. He had understood almost nothing of what Mr. Janáček had just said.
“If Prague is so wonderful,” he asked, “then why did you move to London?”
Mr. Janáček’s face burst into a wide smile, and he looked as happy as Alfie had ever seen him. “For the best reason in the world,” he explained. “For love.”
Alfie jumped off the stool then, said his good-byes, and marched back outside. He had no interest in hearing about this. Love was something that grown-ups talked about and girls read about—although Kalena never discussed it; she said she couldn’t let herself be distracted by love or she might never become prime minister—but that Alfie had no interest in at all. He could tell that Mrs. Janáček was very pretty, for an old woman anyway, but he couldn’t imagine that he could ever fall in love with her.
Of course, Mrs. Janáček had died in 1913, the year before the war began. She got very sick and very thin, and soon she couldn’t leave the house. Margie went to call on her every day, and Alfie overheard her telling Georgie that she was “wasting away, poor woman,” and soon she was gone and Mr. Janáček and Kalena were left alone. Alfie tried to talk to his friend about what had happened but she said she didn’t want to discuss it, not just yet, so instead he simply took her out to play every day, even when she didn’t want to go. He told her all his worst jokes, one of which, three months after her mother died, made her laugh out loud, and everything seemed to be all right again after that.