A Medal for Leroy Read online

  Lunch was always the same on our visits: corned beef and bubble and squeak. And for pudding we had custard with brown sugar, because years before, when I was about three, Maman had told Auntie Snowdrop this was my favourite meal. Over lunch Auntie Snowdrop would fuss over me like a mother hen, making sure I had enough. The trouble was that I had very quickly had quite enough. At nine years old, I no longer liked corned beef and bubble and squeak, and I had gone off custard years ago. I hated the stuff, but I’d never had the nerve to tell her, and nor had Maman.

  That lunchtime I had to work my way through three helpings of custard. Swallowing the last few spoonfuls was hard, so hard. I knew I mustn’t leave anything in my bowl, that it must be scraped clean, that it would upset Auntie Snowdrop if it wasn’t, and also invoke the wrath of Auntie Pish, whose favourite mantra at meal times was always, ‘Waste not, want not’.

  After lunch we went down to the beach as usual, and as usual Auntie Snowdrop took a bunch of snowdrops with her, snowdrops I’d helped pick with her from the garden – they grew in a great white carpet all around the garden gnomes. Jasper hated gulls, all gulls. He chased them fruitlessly up and down the beach, yapping at every one of them, returning to us exhausted but happy, and still yapping. We tramped together along the beach until Auntie Pish decided she had found just the right place. She waved her walking stick imperiously out to sea. “This’ll do, Martha,” she said. “Get on with it then.”

  Every year until now Auntie Snowdrop had performed the ceremony herself, but this time she turned to me. “I think maybe Michael should do it,” she said, and she handed me the flowers. “He’s old enough, don’t you think? And after all, he was your father. Would you like to do it, Michael?”

  Auntie Pish was clearly surprised, as we were, at how Auntie Snowdrop had suddenly taken the initiative, and she didn’t like it one bit. She waved her stick at me impatiently. “Very well,” she snapped. “If you’re going to do it, then get on with it. But look out for the waves. Don’t go getting your feet wet, Michael.”

  I took the flowers from Auntie Snowdrop and walked down to the water’s edge. I did it just as she had done it every year I could remember. I reached out and dropped the snowdrops into the sea one by one. Some the waves took away, others were washed at once back up onto the beach, and left stranded round my feet.

  I felt Maman beside me, her arm around my shoulder. “Your Papa adored snowdrops, you know,” she whispered.

  “Is he really out there, Maman?” I asked her then. “Is that where his Spitfire went down?”

  “Somewhere in the Channel, chéri,” she replied. “No one quite knows where. But it doesn’t matter, does it? He’s with us always.”

  We turned back then and walked up the beach towards the Aunties.

  Auntie Snowdrop had her handkerchief to her mouth. I could see she was crying quietly.

  “Time for tea,” Auntie Pish said. “Martha, would you please stop that dog yapping? He’s driving me mad. Come along. And do keep up, Martha, don’t drag along behind so much. Pish!” And she strode off up the beach, stabbing her stick into the pebbles as she went. “Come along, come along.”

  Auntie Snowdrop caught my eye, smiled and raised her eyebrows, enduring the moment. She was telling me in her own silent way, don’t worry. I’m used to it. I smiled back in solidarity.

  The walk home took a while, a bit longer than usual. That was when I noticed Auntie Snowdrop was wheezing a bit, that she had to stop from time to time to catch her breath, so much so that in the end I left Jasper to run on ahead, and went back to keep her company. She smiled her thanks at me and took my hand in hers. She held on to me to steady herself, I remember that. And her hand was so cold.

  I couldn’t wait to be gone. They clinked their teaspoons on their cups and talked, and talked, and went on talking, on and on, about what I neither knew nor cared. Auntie Pish was doing most of the talking and Maman looked about as fed up as I felt. I kept looking up at the photo of Papa on the mantelpiece, at the poppies all around it. Maman was twiddling her ring, something she often did, particularly when she was with the Aunties. That was when I remembered the medal I had found in the box when we’d moved house a few weeks before.

  Maman must have guessed my thoughts, or read them perhaps. Suddenly she put her hand on mine, and interrupted Auntie Pish, who was not used to being interrupted.

  “Sorry, Auntie Mary, but I’ve just remembered…” she began. Auntie Pish did not look at all pleased. “Auntie Martha. Roy’s medals – the ones I let you have, remember? He’s got one of his own at home, haven’t you, chéri? But I know he’d love to see the others sometime. Do you mind?”

  “Of course I don’t. They’re upstairs,” Auntie Snowdrop replied. “I’ll fetch them at once, shall I?”

  “Yes, Martha,” Auntie Pish said, “you go and fetch them. And while you’re about it, bring us the last of the rock cakes from the kitchen, will you? I see we have empty plates. Don’t be long.”

  Auntie Snowdrop folded her napkin neatly, got up and went out. Auntie Pish shook her head. “She’s always polishing those medals,” she grumbled. “I don’t know why she bothers – it only makes her sad. She still gets so upset and depressed: won’t get up in the morning, won’t eat her food, hardly speaks to me for days on end. If it wasn’t for choir practice I sometimes think she’d give up the ghost altogether. I mean, Roy died over nine years ago now. The war was a long time ago. We have to put it all behind us, that’s what I keep trying to tell her. It’s water under the bridge, I tell her. Well I mean, there’s no need for any more sadness, is there? No point. What’s done is done. You can’t bring him back, can you?”

  Maman looked long at Auntie Pish before she spoke. Then she said very quietly: “Happiness, I think, is like Humpty Dumpty in that poem I used to read to Michael. ‘All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again…’ Once it is broken, you can’t just put happiness together again. It is not possible.”

  Auntie Pish didn’t know what to say, and for a change she said nothing. She cleared her throat and drank some more tea. Auntie Pish silenced. It was a rare and wonderful moment. It cheered me up no end. I almost felt like clapping, but then we heard Auntie Snowdrop coming slowly back downstairs. She came into the sitting room, carrying a wooden pencil box, holding it out in front of her, with the greatest of care, in both hands. Her eyes never left it as she put it down on the coffee table.

  “Well, open it then, Martha,” Auntie Pish told her impatiently. “It won’t bite.” Auntie Snowdrop slid back the lid and took it off. There were three medals lying there on cotton wool, the King’s face looking up at me from each one.

  “You see how shiny I keep them?” Auntie Snowdrop was touching them with her fingertips. “Your Papa, I always thought he looked a bit like the King – except for the moustache, of course. I never liked his moustache. He said it made him look older, more like a proper fighter pilot. I never wanted him to go to war, you know. I told him. But he wouldn’t listen to his old Auntie. This was his pencil case when he was a boy. He had it all through his school days.” Then she looked up at me and fixed me with a gaze of such intensity that I’ve never forgotten it. “You’ll never go to war, will you, Michael?” she said.

  “No, Auntie,” I told her, because that’s what I knew she wanted me to say.

  “Good. You don’t need to, you know,” she said, “because you’ll have all these medals when I’ve gone, so you won’t ever need to go to war to get them, like your Papa did.”

  “Oh Martha,” Auntie Pish said. “Don’t go on so. You’ll upset the boy.”

  “And you will keep them polished for me,” Auntie Snowdrop said, quite ignoring her sister.

  “Course I will,” I said.

  “He’s a good kind boy,” Auntie Snowdrop said, reaching out and touching my hair. “Just like his Papa was. He has the same face, same lovely hair, just the same.” She glanced up at the photo, and then back at me again. She took my
hand, gripping it tight as she spoke to me. ”But always remember, Michael, it’s not the face that matters, not the skin, not the hair, it’s what lies beneath. You have to look deeper, Michael, behind. Look through the glass, through the photo, and you’ll find out who your Papa really was. Remember what I said now, won’t you?”

  We were driving back to London an hour or so later when Maman told me. “Auntie Snowdrop’s not very well. She’s going to have to go into hospital in a week or so for an operation – I think Auntie Pish is very worried about her.”

  “She didn’t sound like it to me,” I said. “She was horrible to her, she’s always horrible to her.”

  “I know,” Maman replied. “But you have to remember, chéri, those two, they’ve been together, lived together, all their lives. They need one another. I doubt they could ever live without each other, not now. Auntie Pish is an hour or so older, that’s all. No twins were ever less identical, that’s for sure. Your Papa used to say to me that they were like two sides of the same coin. And he knew them better than anyone.”

  I looked down at the snowdrop I’d been given when we left and remembered how long and tight Auntie Snowdrop had hugged me when we said our goodbyes, how she’d stood there waving us off, how frail she had suddenly seemed.

  “She will be all right, won’t she?” I asked.

  “Let’s hope so,” Maman said, but she said nothing more.

  As I pressed the snowdrop into my diary later that night, I turned back through the pages and found the many others I had brought back from our visits to Folkestone over the years. I saw how they were lace-thin and transparent with age – like the skin on Auntie Snowdrop’s hand, I thought. I hoped then that this wouldn’t be the last snowdrop she would give me.

  That night I lay in bed picturing Papa’s face in my mind, doing what Auntie Snowdrop had told me, trying to discover the man behind the photo, to look deeper. I fell asleep still trying, still wondering.

  few months later, I suppose – after one of those days when everything had gone right, and there weren’t many days like that. We’d had extra playtime because two teachers were away with the flu. So there was lots of time for football and hopscotch and marbles in the playground. No sums, no spelling tests, no dictations, no standing in the corner. Best of all, there was Maman waiting for me at the school gates when I came out.

  Although I was pleased to see her, it was odd, because there was no reason for her to be there, none that I could think of anyway. I mean, there was no smog, so she couldn’t have been worried about me crossing the road on my own. And she wasn’t coming into school to see the teacher because I was in trouble, not so far as I knew. Maybe she’d come by because she was on her way to the shops and we’d stop off at the Milk Bar in the High Street, and I’d have a chocolate milkshake? Now that would be good! It had happened before once or twice.

  As it turned out, that was exactly where we were going, not to the shops, she said, but straight to the Milk Bar, which was fine with me. Milkshakes were always a rare and real treat.

  Maman seemed strangely distant somehow as we walked along. I was prattling on about how good school was when the teachers have flu, how the boys’ toilets were flooded so we’d had to use the teachers’ toilets, and that was great because there was a wooden seat, and a lock on the door, the paper was soft… but I could tell Maman wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. All the way down the street she hardly spoke, which wasn’t like her at all. I remembered then that she hadn’t been smiling when she first saw me running across the playground towards her. And Maman always smiled and hugged me after school, always.

  The milkshake was cold and long and gave me a headache because I drank it through the straw too fast. I stopped drinking for a moment and glanced up at her. She was looking down at me and I knew from her eyes that she was about to tell me something she didn’t want to tell me.

  “It’s about Auntie Martha, Michael,” she began.

  “What?” I said. Maman rarely called the Aunties – either of them – by their proper names. I knew already what was coming.

  “It is difficult for me to tell you, chéri, but you have to know,” she went on. “You know Auntie Martha had her operation a while ago, on her lungs. Well everything seemed to be all right. She was getting better…”

  “She’s died, hasn’t she?” I said.

  Maman nodded. “In her sleep last night, that’s what Auntie Mary said on the phone this morning. Very peaceful. I’m so sorry, Michael. You liked her a lot, didn’t you? And I know she loved you. She was very proud of you, you and your Papa. She was a sweet lady, always kind and thoughtful. There’s a funeral the day after tomorrow, in Folkestone, but you don’t have to come, if you’d rather not.”

  “I’ll come,” I told her. I didn’t finish my milkshake.

  I had never been to a funeral before, I didn’t know what to expect. I certainly hadn’t expected a huge church packed with people, hundreds of them, the ladies in hats, and the men, stiff in dark suits and black ties, their hair slicked down. Some had to stand all the way through the service because there was no room for them to sit down. I could hardly believe it, all these people there for my Auntie Snowdrop. I sat in the front pew between Maman and Auntie Pish, with Jasper beside her. The coffin rested on trestles only a few feet away – all of us together for the last time.

  I kept thinking how wrong I had been to assume that my two funny old Aunties knew almost no one in the world except us. Certainly we had never met anyone else at their house when we came on our visits, no friends, no other relatives. They didn’t talk of anyone else either. There weren’t any other relatives that I was aware of anyway. Now, here were all these people, and all of them Auntie Snowdrop’s friends, a whole church full of them. I had imagined she lived a solitary and cheerless sort of existence with Auntie Pish, behind the white picket fence of their little house by the sea, with only Jasper for company, and the gulls that wheeled over the chimney or sat on the heads of the gnomes in the garden and cried to the wind.

  All through the hymns and songs and prayers – we sang ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’ for her – I couldn’t take my eyes off the coffin. It was so close to me that I could almost reach out and touch it. I was sure that she was lying there inside and listening to everything. And I was sure she knew I was there. I had to say something. I could only think of one thing to say and I spoke it from my heart, silently, my eyes closed.

  I thanked her for all the snowdrops she’d given me, and promised her I’d keep them in my diary, pressed there forever so I wouldn’t forget her. As I sat there, I kept seeing her, clear as clear in my mind, her hand still waving to us as we drove away after that last visit.

  When the church service was over, everyone gathered around the grave. Jasper was there too, lying at my feet, head on his paws. I stood there between Maman and Auntie Pish. Auntie Pish had her arm round my shoulder and I could feel she was trembling. I looked up into her face and saw that she was crying. I had never imagined that Auntie Pish could cry. In all the faces I saw around the graveside that afternoon, there was such warmth and love for Auntie Snowdrop. I felt sadder at that moment than ever before in my whole life, and maybe ever since.

  hall afterwards where everyone talked loudly into each other’s faces, sipping their tea and chewing away all the while on Auntie Pish’s rock buns – she must have made hundreds of them. I kept close to Maman for protection, hid behind her whenever I could. Everyone was kind, but too full of questions I didn’t want to answer. They all wanted to talk about their memories of Auntie Snowdrop, of the songs they’d sung with her, the concerts they’d been to, the coastal walks they’d done. But I had my own memories, and I’d keep them to myself. Again and again they kept telling me how proud she was of me, how she never stopped talking about me.

  The tea party seemed to go on forever, and would have been quite unbearable if I hadn’t thought up the brilliant excuse that Jasper needed a walk. Maman said it was a good idea, but not to be too lon
g. So I escaped and we went running off together along the beach. I ran till I could run no more. I skimmed stones, Jasper barked at the gulls, and afterwards we both sat side by side and stared out to sea. It was a dull day, the grey of the sky meeting the grey of the sea on the horizon. It seemed as if Auntie Snowdrop’s death had left the world a colourless place. Grief is grey, I discovered that day.

  Eventually Maman came out to find me and fetch me back into the hall. I couldn’t face those people again, I told her. I just wanted to go home. To my great relief, she agreed that we had stayed long enough. She told Auntie Pish I had to be at school the next day and that I had some homework to do, so we’d better be getting home. Auntie Pish came out and walked us to the car, carrying Jasper under her arm.

  “Who were all those people in there?” I asked her.

  “All your Auntie Martha’s friends,” she said. “Martha sang in the church choir, you know, and in the bath too every night. She had a lovely voice. She loved singing – and football, did you know that? Her two great passions: singing and football. Her favourite team was Arsenal – The Arsenal. She always said I had to call them The Arsenal.”

  “Football?” I said, amazed. “She never told me that.”

  “Didn’t she? Oh, she was a real Gunners fan, but she kept it to herself. Let me tell you, young man, there’s a great deal you don’t know about your Auntie Martha, a very great deal. Oh, she was a dark horse that one, but…” Her voice faltered then and she turned away. “She was the best of sisters, and the best friend I’ve ever had.” She was still tearful when she hugged me goodbye, Jasper licking my ear as she did so.