The Kingdom by the Sea. Robert Westall
They let him pass, without saying anything to him.
In the road, the wardens who were leading him met two other wardens.
“Any luck at number nine?”
“Just this lad …”
There was a long, long silence. Then one of the other wardens said, “We found the family from number seven. They were in the garden. The bomb caught them as they were running for the shelter …”
“They all right?”
“Broken arms and legs, I think. But they’ll live. Got them away in the ambulance.”
Harry frowned. The Simpsons lived at number seven. There was some fact he should be able to remember about the Simpsons. But he couldn’t. It was all … mixed up.
“Come on, son. Rest Centre for you. Can you walk that far?”
Harry walked. He felt like screaming at them. Only that wouldn’t be a very British thing to do. But something kept building up inside him; like the pressure in his model steam-engine.
Where was his steam-engine?
Where was Mam, who could cuddle him and make everything all right?
Where was Dad in his warden’s uniform, who would sort everything out?
Next second, he had broken from their hands, and was running up another garden path like a terrified rabbit. He went through another gate, over the top of another air-raid shelter, through a hedge that scratched him horribly … on, and on, and on.
He heard their voices calling him as he crouched in hiding. They seemed to call a long time. Then one of them said, “That wasn’t very clever.”
“It’s the shock. Shock takes them funny ways. You can never tell how shock’s going to take them.”
“Hope he’s not seriously hurt, poor little bleeder.”
‘Kid that can run like that …?”
And then their voices went away, leaving him alone.
So he came to his house, slowly, up his garden.
He found his three rabbits; they were all dead, though there wasn’t a mark on them. Where the greenhouse had been was a tangle of wrecked tomato plants, that bled green, and gave off an overpowering smell of tomato.
The house was just a pile of bricks. Not a very high pile, because everything had fallen down into the old cellar.
There was a smell of gas; but the gas was burning. Seeping up through the bricks and burning in little blue points of flame, all in the cracks between the bricks. It looked like a burning slag-heap, and he knew why the wardens had given up hope and gone away.
He knew he must go away too. Before anybody else found him, began to ask him questions, and do things to him. Because he felt like a bomb himself, and if anyone did anything to him, he would explode into a million pieces and nobody would ever be able to put him back together again.
Especially, he mustn’t be given to Cousin Elsie. Cousin Elsie, who would clutch his head to her enormous bosom, and sob and call him “poor bairn” and tell everybody who came all about it, over and over and over again. He’d seen her do that when Cousin Tommy died of diphtheria. Cousin Elsie was more awful than death itself.
No, he would go away. Where nobody knew him. Where nobody would make a fuss. Just quietly go away.
Having made his mind up, he felt able to keep moving. There were useful things to do. The blankets in the shelter to bundle up and take with him. The attaché case. All proper, as Mam and Dad would have wanted it.
It seemed to take him a long time to get the blankets bundled up exactly right and as he wanted them.
In the faint light before dawn, he even managed to find Dad’s spade and bury his three rabbits. They had been his friends; he didn’t want anybody finding them and making a meal of them. He even found some wooden seed markers, and wrote the rabbits’ names on them, and stuck them in for tombstones.
Then he went, cutting across the long stretch of gardens and out into Brimble Road, where hardly anybody knew him.
He looked dirty, tear-stained, and exactly like a refugee. His face was so still and empty, nobody, even Cousin Elsie, would have recognised him.
He felt … he felt like a bird flying very high, far from the world and getting further away all the time. Like those gulls who soar on summer thermals and then find they cannot get down to earth again, but must wait till the sun sets, and the land cools, and the terrible strength of the upward thermal releases them to land exhausted. Only he could not imagine ever coming to earth again, ever. Back to where everything was just as it always had been, and you did things without thinking about them.
He supposed he would just walk till he died. It seemed the most sensible thing to do.
He must have wandered round the town all day, in circles. Every so often, he would come to himself, and realise he was in Rudyerd Street, or Nile Street.
But what did Rudyerd Street mean? What did Nile Street mean? Sometimes he thought he would go home, and Dulcie would be swinging on the front gate, shouting rude things at the big boys as they passed, but running to the safety of Mam’s kitchen if they made a move to attack her. And Mam would be doing the ironing, or putting the stew in the oven.
But the moment he turned his steps towards home, the truth came back to him; the burning pile of bricks. And he would turn his steps away again.
The last time he came to himself, he was somewhere quite different.
On the beach. The little beach inside the harbour mouth, that didn’t have to be fenced off with barbed wire because it was under the direct protection of the Castle guns.
He suddenly felt very tired and sat down with a thump on the sand, with his back against a black tarry boat. He closed his eyes and laid back his head; the warmth of the sun smoothed out his face, like Mam had often done with her hands. He smelt the tar of the boat and it was a nice smell; it was the first thing he’d smelt since the burning gas, and it was a comforting smell. The sun warmed his hands as they lay on the sand, and his knees under his trousers, and in a very tiny world, it was nice, nice, nice. It felt as if somebody cared about him, and was looking after him.
On the edge of sleep, he said, “Mam?” questioningly. And then he was asleep.
He dreamed it was just a usual day at home, with Dulcie nagging on, and Mam baking, and Dad coming in from work and taking his boots off with a satisfied sigh. He dreamed he shouted at them, “There you all are! Where have you been?”
And they all laughed at him, and said, “Hiding, silly!” And it was all right.
The all-rightness stayed with him when he woke; a feeling they were not far away. He lay relaxed; as he remembered lying relaxed in his pram when he was little and watching the leaves of trees blowing, whispering and sunlit overhead. As long as he didn’t move he knew the bubble of happiness would not break. But if he moved, he knew they would go away and leave him again.
So he lay on, dreamily. The sun still shone, though it was setting, and the shadows of the cliff were creeping out towards him. And that he knew was bad. When the shadow reached him the sun would be gone, the world would turn grey, a cold breeze would blow.
And it would be time to go home. Like the three girl bathers who were walking up the beach towards him, chattering and laughing and feebly hitting each other with wet towels. They had a home; he had no home. There was a sort of glass wall between people who had a home and people who hadn’t.
He watched them pass and get into a little black car that