Grandpa’s Great Escape. David Walliams
it is like he said. But Grandpa’s always been such a free spirit.”
“Yes!” Mum replied with a note of triumph in her voice. “Such a free spirit that we find him up on the church roof in the middle of the night!”
There was silence for a moment. Dad did not have an answer for this.
“Listen, Barry, what else can we do?” continued Mum. “The old man’s becoming a danger to himself. He very nearly fell off that roof and died!”
“I know, I know…” Dad muttered.
“Well?”
“Maybe it is for the best.”
“That’s settled once and for all then. We can drop him off at Twilight Towers tomorrow.”
As Jack listened at the top of the stairs a tear welled in his eye, and rolled very slowly down his cheek.
8
Spit it Out!
True to form at breakfast the next morning Grandpa was acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As he sat happily tucking into his fried eggs and bacon in the kitchen of the family home, it was clear that the old man had no memory whatsoever of the past night’s dramatic events.
“More bread! Quickly, please, Charlady, chop chop!” he ordered.
Mum did not appreciate being treated like some kind of servant. ‘Charlady’ was what posh people called their cleaners in the olden days. She looked to her husband to do something, but Dad pretended to read the paper.
Two slices of white bread were slammed down on the table and within a moment Grandpa began mopping up all the grease on his plate.
As he devoured the bread, he announced, “I’ll have the bread fried next time, please, Charlady!”
“Oh, will you now?!” replied Mum sarcastically.
Jack couldn’t help but smile, though he tried to hide it.
The old man slurped his tea, followed by a, “Down the hatch!” Grandpa said that whenever he drank anything.
“Mum, Dad, I’ve been thinking,” announced the boy. “As I was up so late, I think it’s best I don’t go to school today.”
“What?” replied Mum.
“Yes. I can stay here and look after Grandpa. In fact, I should probably take the whole week off!”
Jack didn’t like school much. He had just turned twelve so had been sent off to big school. He hadn’t made any friends there yet. All the other kids seemed to be only interested in the latest pop star or silly gadget. This being 1983, many of the kids spent their lessons fiddling with their Rubik’s Cubes under their desks. Jack couldn’t find a single person who had a passion for model aeroplanes. On his first day, he was laughed at by some older boys for even mentioning them. So Jack learned to keep his mouth shut.
“You are going to school today, young man!” Mum always called her son ‘young man’ when he had done something wrong. “You tell him, Barry!”
Dad looked up from his newspaper. “Well, it was very late last night…”
“BARRY!”
The man suddenly thought better of disagreeing with his wife and his sentence quickly changed tack. “…But of course you shouldn’t miss school. And in future please do absolutely everything your mother says.” Finally he added a rather mournful, “I know I do.”
Next, the woman gave her husband a rather unsubtle poke on the shoulder. It was clear she wanted him to make the big announcement about Grandpa. As Dad did not immediately respond, she poked him again. This time it was so hard he actually went, “Ow!”
“Bar-ry…” she prompted. Mum always said Dad’s name in that strange elongated way when she was trying to get him to do something.
Dad put down his paper and folded it slowly to put off speaking as long as he could. He looked straight at his father.
Jack feared the worst.
Was this the moment when Dad would tell Grandpa that he was going to be sent to Twilight Towers?
“Now, Dad. You know we all love you very much and only want the best for you…”
Grandpa slurped his mug of tea noisily. It wasn’t clear whether he had heard what his son had said at all, as there was no flicker in his eyes. Dad started again, speaking slower and louder than before. “Are… you… lis-ten-ing… to… me?”
“Spit it out, Cadet!” replied Grandpa. Jack smirked. The boy loved that his grandfather gave Dad a much lower rank than him. In fact, the lowest rank there was.
Dad (or ‘Officer Cadet Bunting’ as Grandpa called him) took a deep breath and started again. “Well, we all love you very much, and were thinking, well, it was the… er… Charlady…”
Mum glared at Dad.
“…I mean Barbara’s idea really. But after last night we both agree. We thought it might be best if you went into…”
Jack had to say something, anything. He needed to buy his grandpa some time. So before Dad could finish his sentence he blurted: “…School with me today!”
9
Coloured Chalks
Jack had been petitioning his history teacher, Miss Verity, to be allowed to bring Grandpa into her class all term. At his new school, they had started studying World War II. Who better to learn about it from than someone who had actually been there? What’s more, all the other kids could see how cool his grandfather was. Maybe then having a collection of model aeroplanes wouldn’t be so sad after all?
Miss Verity was a tall, thin woman who wore long skirts down to her ankles and frilly blouses up to her chin. Her spectacles hung down from her neck on a silver chain. She was one of those teachers who somehow managed to make an exciting subject deathly dull. History should be thrilling, with its stories of heroes and villains who shaped the destiny of the world. Bloodthirsty kings and queens. Daring battles. Unspeakable methods of torture.
Sadly, Miss Verity’s method of teaching was mind-numbing. All the lady would do was write dates and names in her beloved coloured chalks up on the blackboard. Then her pupils would have to copy everything down into their exercise books. “Facts! Facts! Facts!” she would recite as she scribbled away. Facts were all she cared about. One particular history lesson, all the boys from her class clambered out of the window for a crafty game of footy in the playground. Miss Verity didn’t even notice they were gone, as she never turned around from her blackboard.
Convincing the history teacher to allow Grandpa into the classroom at some point had not been an easy task. In the end, Jack had to bribe her with a set of coloured chalks from the local newsagent’s shop. Fortunately for the boy, the shop owner, Raj, had sold the set of ‘luxury’ chalks as part of one of his special offers. They had come free with an out-of-date box of fudge.
It was lucky that history was the second lesson of the day, as Grandpa made his grandson rather late for school. First, it took a while to convince the old man that when Jack had said ‘school’ he did of course mean an RAF ‘flying school’, and not just the local comprehensive. Second, the ‘shortcut’ through the park turned out to be something of a ‘long cut’. Grandpa had