The Book Of Lost Things

That evening at dinner, his father was talking about the war again. It still didn’t feel to David as if there was a war on. All of the fighting was happening far away, even if they did get to see some of it on newsreels when they went to the pictures. It was a lot duller than David had expected. War sounded quite exciting, but the reality, so far, had been very different. True, squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes often passed over the house, and there were always dogfights over the Channel. German bombers had been carrying out repeated raids on airfields to the south, even dropping bombs on St. Giles, Cripplegate in the East End (which Mr. Briggs described as “typical Nazi behavior” but which David’s father explained, rather less emotively, as a botched effort to destroy the Thameshaven oil refinery). Nevertheless, David felt removed from it all. It wasn’t as if it was happening in his own back garden. In London, people were taking items from crashed German planes as souvenirs, even though nobody was supposed to approach the wrecks, and Nazi pilots who bailed out provided regular excitement for the citizenry. Here, even though they were barely fifty miles from London, it was all very sedate.

His father folded the Daily Express beside his plate. The newspaper was thinner than it used to be, down to six pages. David’s father said that was because they had started rationing paper. The Magnet had stopped printing in July, depriving David of Billy Bunter, but there was still the Boy’s Own paper every month, which David always filed carefully alongside his Aircraft of the Fighting Powers books.

“Will you have to go and fight?” David asked his father, once dinner was over.

“No, I shouldn’t think so,” his father replied. “I’m more use to the war effort where I am.”

“Top secret,” said David.

His father smiled at him.

“Yes, top secret,” he said.

It still gave David a thrill to think that his father might be a spy, or at least know about spies. So far, it was the only interesting part of the war.

That night, David lay in his bed and watched the moonlight streaming through the window. The skies were clear, and the moon was very bright. After a time, his eyes closed, and he dreamed of wolves and little girls and an old king in a ruined castle, fast asleep on his throne. Railway tracks ran alongside the castle, and figures moved through the long grass that grew beside them. There was a boy and a girl, and the Crooked Man. They disappeared beneath the earth, and David smelled gumdrops and peppermints, and he heard a little girl crying before her voice was drowned out by the sound of an approaching train.

V Of Intruders and Transformations

THE CROOKED MAN finally crossed over into David’s world at the start of September.

It had been a long, tense summer. His father spent more time at his place of work than he did at home, sometimes not sleeping in his own bed for two or three nights in a row. It was often too difficult for him to return to the house anyway once night fell. All of the road signs had been removed to thwart the Germans if they invaded, and on more than one occasion David’s father had managed to get lost while driving home in daylight. If he tried driving at night with his headlights off, who knew where he might end up?

Rose was finding motherhood difficult. David wondered if his own mother had found it as hard, if David had been as demanding as Georgie seemed to be. He hoped not. The stress of the situation had caused Rose’s tolerance for David and his moods to sink lower and lower. They barely talked to each other now, and David could tell that his father’s patience with both of them was almost extinguished. At dinner the night before, he had exploded when Rose had taken an innocuous remark of David’s as an insult and the two of them had begun to bicker.

“Why can’t you two just find a way to get along, for crying out loud!” his father had shouted. “I don’t come home for this. I can get all the tension and shouting matches I want at work.”

Georgie, seated in his high chair, started to cry.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said Rose. She threw her napkin down on the table and went to Georgie.

David’s father buried his head in his hands.

“So it’s all my fault,” he said.

“Well it’s not mine,” replied Rose.

Simultaneously, their eyes turned toward David.

“What?” he said. “You’re blaming me. Fine!”