Little Manfred Read online

  Dedication

  For Maggie, Jamie, Flora and Isabelle

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Twenty-five years later

  Afterword

  Extra Time

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  THE SEA WAS ten minutes away from the farm, no more. So there was hardly a day of my life that I didn’t go down to the beach. It was my favourite place to escape to. Farm chores were definitely not my idea of fun – except bottle-feeding lambs or calves – but if there were sheds to muck out, and there always were, I’d make myself scarce, quick as a twick, and run off down to the beach.

  The trouble was, that as soon as he was old enough, Alex would always follow me. Alex was my little brother and he talked a lot. He was seven by this time; I was twelve and liked to do my thinking and my sulking on my own. But wherever I went he went, and wherever we went, Mannie came with us – that’s Manfred, our black and white sheepdog. We’d go swimming in the sea in summer, all three of us.

  We’d chase the gulls whenever we saw them ganging up on the oystercatchers; we’d skim stones if the sea was calm enough – twenty-six bounces was my record – Alex had only ever managed two! Whatever we did, wherever we went, the three of us were always together.

  All our friends thought Manfred was a funny sort of a name for a dog. Apparently I’d called him after our toy dog, Little Manfred, a wooden dachshund, painted brown with red wheels. Mum had played with him when she was little. Then I’d had him to play with for a while, and now he belonged to Alex; only Alex wasn’t that interested in him any more, mostly because he’d grown out of him, but also because Little Manfred only had three wheels by now, and didn’t work very well. Dad had trodden on him the Christmas before, by accident of course. So Little Manfred was ‘busted’, and Alex never let Dad forget who’d done it. Dad was always saying he’d mend him, but he never did. So there Little Manfred had stood ever since Christmas, lopsided on the sitting-room windowsill, waiting for a new wheel.

  For some reason I never really understood, Little Manfred always seemed more important to Mum than to anyone else. She really cried when the accident happened. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so upset. I’d see her looking at Little Manfred so sadly sometimes, stroking his back almost as if he were a real dog. And at Christmas after the accident, she tied a red ribbon round his neck, “to make him feel better,” she said.

  I didn’t discover why she loved him so much or why he was called Little Manfred until one day in that summer of 1966.

  I remember the exact day. It was the day after England won the World Cup at Wembley. Both Dad and Alex were football mad. Just about everyone in England was that summer, except Mum and me. We hated the fuss and ballyhoo, but all the same, I’ve got to say that I did quite like it when England won. I watched the game on the television with Dad and Alex. Mum ignored the whole thing, she was just not interested.

  Anyway, that next morning I was wandering along the beach with Alex. He had a football at his feet and kept replaying Geoff Hurst’s last-minute goal over and over, dribbling the ball down the beach and then letting fly as he scored the goal yet again. Then he was Nobby Stiles, skipping along, holding the cup up high, his socks round his ankles. It made me laugh out loud watching him. And Mannie loved it too, barking his head off and then chasing after the ball wherever Alex kicked it.

  It was a wild and blustery day with clouds scudding across the sky. I sat down and watched the waves tumbling in towards the shore. Mannie was bored with football by now because Alex kept taking the ball away from him. Instead he was doing what he usually did, chasing everything that moved – his tail first, then gulls, leaves and a paper bag that was flying low across the beach, just too high for him to catch. After a while he came running back to me. I knew what he was after. And I knew too that once I started the game it would go on for ever. He stood there looking at me adoringly, his eyes pleading with me. I gave in, just as he knew I would. I picked up a stick and threw it into the sea for him. Off he went and back he came, again and again and again.

  I had just thrown the stick for the umpteenth time when a pair of oystercatchers flew up suddenly from behind me, out to sea, piping as they went. Something had alarmed them. Mannie was distracted from his game and dropped his stick, which was strange because he was as used to oystercatchers as I was – he didn’t usually pay them any attention. His ears were pricked forward, his gaze fixed on something higher up the beach. I thought at first it must be Alex’s football. I could see it now. It had landed up there not far from the upturned rowing boat. But it wasn’t the football that was bothering him. He had heard something. And I heard it too now, the sound of voices, men’s voices. There was a growl in the back of Mannie’s throat.

  That was when I first saw the two men. They were coming down the track towards the rowing boat at the top of the beach. As they reached it they stood there for some moments, looking out to sea. One of them was carrying a walking stick, and had on a strange hat, with a feather in it; the other was much taller, and was wearing a duffel coat.

  They were arm in arm, and leaning into the wind. Mannie was barking at them by now. I told him to shut up and, to my surprise, he did exactly as I said. He came to sit close to me, his head against my leg for reassurance. Then Alex was beside me too.

  “Who are they?” he whispered. The taller of the two had spotted Alex’s football by now and picked it up.

  “Yours?” he called out.

  The men looked a little older than Dad. City people, I thought – they had on muddied city shoes, not wellies. Alex nodded and put his finger in his mouth, which he always did when he was nervous.

  “I’ll bring it down to you,” said the man. “Not so good at kicking these days.”

  Then the one in the hat took the football off him. “Nein, Nein, Marty, I shall kick it,” he said. “A football should be kicked. It is what a football is for.”

  He dropped the ball on to the ground, took a step or two back and kicked it. It was a perfectly judged kick, the ball ending up so close to us that Alex had only to bend down to pick it up. The two men laughed, waved at us, and went on their way, down towards the sea, where they stood for a few moments with their backs to us, looking up and down the beach. That was when I heard one of them saying, “It was about here. I think it was about here that it happened. Ja, Ja. Here. I am sure.”

  For a while nothing more was said. Then he went on, “I am so glad that I came back. This was a good idea of yours, Marty. I did not think it was going to be, but it is.” He spoke English with a foreign accent of some kind. I could understand him all right, but it wasn’t the kind of accent I was used to at all.

  “Did I tell you what he was doing, Marty?” the man went on, his voice a little lower. I felt a little guilty eavesdropping like this on their conversation, but I couldn’t resist it. I had to go on listening. “He always liked to bounce the stones across the water. He said that this reminded him of his childhood. We were working all morning on the barbed wire that was up there behind us, taking it away, and we were on lunch break. We were all sitting back up at the top of the beach, by the path there, near the boat. There was a boat then too, maybe this one, maybe not. Who knows? He said he had found a nice flat stone and he was going to bounce it across the sea, all the way to Germany. And then he walked away from us down to the water to where we are standing now, maybe a little further out because it was low tide that day.”

  I was close enough to hear that the words were catching in his throat, that he was struggling to control his voice.r />
  “You know what you should do, Walter?” said his friend, and he bent down and picked up a pebble. “Here, this is a good one. Why don’t you throw one for him, right now, all the way to Germany, just like he did?”

  Even as he was throwing the stone I knew exactly what Mannie would do, but I was too slow to stop him. Mannie was after it in a flash. He was already plunging into the shallows before the pebble landed in the sea. I was yelling at him to stop, “Mannie! Mannie! Manfred! Come back!”

  But no amount of shouting would be any use – I knew that. He would come back when he felt like it and not before. The two men had turned, and were coming up the beach towards us now, the one in the hat waving his stick at us. As they came closer I could see that both of them were frowning. They weren’t angry frowns exactly, but it was obvious they weren’t at all pleased with us. I felt Alex’s hand steal into mine as they came nearer.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but if you throw something, Mannie goes after it. He’s like that. He can’t help himself.”

  Then Mannie made it worse. He came bounding up to them, shaking himself all over them, and then sat down in frantic anticipation at their feet, tongue hanging out, longing for another stick or stone to be thrown.

  “You called this dog Manfred?” said the man in the hat, the one with the strange accent. The feather in his hat, I noticed then, was green, just like the hat.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Manfred or Mannie – we call him both – Manfred when I’m cross with him. He’s a farm dog really. He rounds up the sheep and the cows for Dad. But he chases anything. Like I said, he can’t seem to stop himself.”

  The man was shaking his head in disbelief. “Marty, did you hear that?” he said. “This is wundebar. It was the name of the dog, the name she chose for him herself! You remember? I told you.” Then he turned to us again. “And so you live also on a farm? I must know where it is, this farm.”

  Alex suddenly found his voice and his courage, and spoke up. “Course we live on a farm, else we wouldn’t have sheep and cows, would we?”

  It sounded a bit cheeky so I squeezed Alex’s hand to shut him up. I wasn’t at all sure I should say where we lived – after all they were both complete strangers to us then. I thought about it. There was nothing threatening about them, and from the look on their faces, I could tell that this was something they really wanted to know, that it was important to them. That’s why I told them, I suppose. “It’s on the edge of the village,” I said, “behind the school and the church. About a mile away. Not far.”

  “I thought so. I thought so,” said the man. “It is near the church, in Kessingland, nicht wahr?” he asked me. His eyes were bright with excitement now. “And the farm you live on, it is called Mayfield Farm, perhaps?”

  “How do you know that, Mister?” Alex asked him, rather bluntly. “We haven’t never even seen you before.”

  “No, young man,” he replied with a smile. “I have not seen you before, but if I am not mistaken, I have been to your farm. I think I know every ditch on this farm, every hedge, every barn.” He turned to his friend. “This is wonderful, Marty, ausgezeichnet.” Then back to me again. “And I think maybe your mother, she is called Grace, ja? Am I right?”

  I couldn’t believe it. The man seemed to know so much about us – our home, even our mum’s name – and I hadn’t told him anything. As he turned away from us I could see he was near to tears. He walked away on his own up to the top of the beach, where he sat down by the upturned rowing boat.

  That was when his friend spoke up. “I think Walter needs a little time on his own,” he said – he spoke English a bit more like we did. “This was always going to be a difficult day for him. Coming back, it is never easy, you know.”

  I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, and I think it must have showed, because, without my even asking, he went on to explain.

  “Well,” he said. “This is going to be difficult for you to believe, but it looks to me as if my friend Walter over there must have known your mother a long time ago when she was a girl. All he has told me, all I know for sure – and he hasn’t told me much – is that a long, long time ago, just after the war, Walter lived for a while on a farm round here, near Kessingland. And it’s looking to me now, and to him I think, very much as if it might have been on your farm. He lived there for nearly two years, I believe. And he did say something about a dog there called Little Manfred and a girl called Grace. So when he comes here to this beach – which he clearly remembers so well – and he meets a dog called Manfred, and then he discovers you very probably live in the actual farmhouse where he lived, and that your mother is called Grace – well, you can imagine, it must have come as quite a shock to him. A nice shock, but a shock all the same. We’ll go and see how he is, shall we?”

  As we walked together up the beach, he introduced himself to us as Mr Soper. Then he added, “Marty. You can call me Marty, if you like. I don’t even know your names, do I?”

  “She’s Charley,” said Alex, seemingly quite happy now to chat away, “which is a boy’s name, but she’s a girl. She’s my sister, and I’m Alex and I’m seven and a quarter. That man by the boat, who speaks funny, who is he?”

  “Walter?” Marty replied. “Walter is a very old friend of mine from Germany. He came over to England to go to Wembley for the World Cup Final – he’s a big football fan, like me. But also he came to see me, and I thought it would be a grand idea to come here to see if he could find the place again, the farm where he stayed at the end of the war. It’s the first time he’s been back in England since he left, and that was nearly twenty years ago.”

  “Wowee!” said Alex, beside himself, as I knew he would be, with excitement – about Wembley, about the football match. “You were really there? At the match? At Wembley? Wowee!”

  Marty nodded. “I was,” he replied with a smile. “We both were, Walter and me. So I came away happy. But he was not so happy – which is quite understandable when you think about it.”

  “You were at the match yesterday? You actually saw it?” Alex still couldn’t believe it. “That goal of ours,” he went on, “it did go over the line, didn’t it? The ref was right, wasn’t he?”

  I was fed up with this. “It’s just a game, a silly game,” I said. Dad and Alex had gone on and on about that stupid goal.

  “Football not your thing then?” Marty asked me. I shrugged.

  Still Alex wouldn’t leave it alone. “Well, did it go over the line or didn’t it? You were there. You must have seen.”

  “Who knows?” Marty replied. “Walter and me, we talked about little else all the way here in the car. Funnily enough, he thought it wasn’t over the line and I thought it was – not that we’re biased, either of us, of course. But in the end, it doesn’t matter, does it? It was a great game. And like you said, Charley, when all’s said and done, I suppose, it was just a game. Someone had to win, someone had to lose. We got lucky yesterday, that’s all. It’s like Walter meeting up with you today on this beach. He got lucky. I’m sure he’s forgotten all about the match. Coming here, meeting you, being in touch with his memories – I can tell you, this means a whole lot more to him than any football match, win or lose – even the World Cup.”

  Walter was still sitting down beside the upturned boat at the top of the beach. He was lost in his thoughts until he heard us coming and looked up. Mannie was running on ahead now, a cuttlefish in his mouth. He dropped it at Walter’s feet and sat down, tongue hanging, tail wagging across the pebbles, waiting for it to be thrown. Walter reached out to fondle his ears. “Manfred,” he murmured, “Little Manfred.” Then he asked me, “Do you know why this dog is called Manfred?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “It was because Mum had a toy dog, a wooden one, called Little Manfred, and then I played with him when I was little.”

  “And then me,” Alex piped up. “He was mine, and then Dad trod on him at Christmas and the wheel got busted and so now he doesn’t work. He just falls over all the tim
e.”

  “Anyway,” I said, trying to shut Alex up, who was always interrupting, “when I was little we got this new sheepdog puppy and I called him Manfred, after Little Manfred because he was my favourite toy, and everyone thought that was a good name. So it sort of stuck.”

  “But we call him Mannie mostly,” Alex added, “not Manfred.”

  “Ah, yes,” Walter went on, “but do you know why this toy dog of yours was called Little Manfred in the first place?” He took off his feathered hat and tried to smooth down his hair, but it was blowing everywhere and he couldn’t make it lie down. It was silver-white and wispy. He looked suddenly older without his hat. “I think you should sit down out of the wind. You will be cold. This will take a little while.”

  Part Two

  WALTER HANDED HIS hat to Alex to hold, and I could see that Alex liked that – he seemed fascinated by the feather. It was some time before Walter spoke again.

  “Manfred, me and the others, we used to sit right here in this place and have our lunch,” Walter began, “right by this boat. I think it was the same boat. It is older now, like me.” He was looking out to sea as he spoke, deep in his thoughts, lost in his memories.

  “We used to try to look over the horizon, I remember. We used to make a joke that if we looked hard enough we might be able to see Germany and home. Bavaria – I came from Bavaria, and so did Manfred. Bavaria is a long way from the sea, of course. But Manfred and me, we always felt we were closer to home here on the beach than anywhere else.”

  It seemed to me almost as if he were talking to himself, that he was just letting his thoughts find the words they needed.