大象传媒

THE EVACUEE

He was at least nine feet tall with a nose that had been flattened sometime in the past by an even bigger fist than his own. On his head he wore a cap with a red band and a peak that was pressed hard down on his forehead so that he had to throw his head back to look forward. His boots were huge with toes that gleamed like glass.
He said, 鈥淐ome here, you little bugger. What are you doing with that gun? What鈥檚 your name? And wipe your nose鈥�.
He repeated, 鈥淲hat were you doing sitting on that seat, and why is the gun pointed at that school?鈥�

The seat was fixed to the side of a multi-barrelled anti-aircraft gun, and in front of the seat were two wheels with handles and by rotating these wheels the boy, generally known as, "Two Candles", (Ed: footnote) had lowered and turned the barrels so that that were pointing straight at the first floor form room at Fairlop school, where he hoped the form master, Mr Jones, would still be sitting. He had not been able to discover how to make the thing fire before the khaki clad giant with the red hat had appeared and started to bawl.

The gun had appeared in the 鈥榩rairie鈥� some weeks previously and on the way home from school each day the boy had watched the soldiers making a nest of sandbags to encircle it and then erect tents nearby with little slatted wooden paths, going from the tents to the gun. The prairie was the local name for a large open area of grassland that was bordered on three sides by houses and on the other side by a railway line. Some of the schoolboys took this 鈥榮hort-cut鈥�, which was about a mile longer than the normal way home by road, on days when the weather was kind and they would not get wet or covered in mud.

There was also a field kitchen near the gun, from which delicious smells of food emanated. At nine years of age all food was desirable to the boy, who had not yet acquired the sophistication of taste. He spent many hours just hanging around the field kitchen looking forlorn and hopeful, but he only ever received the encouragement to 鈥渟od off鈥� and worry someone else.

The khaki giant had by now lost patience with the boy鈥檚 silence, so he thrust his face within a few inches of the boy and screamed, 鈥淵ou 鈥榦rrible little turd, bugger off and if I ever see you here again I will ram your head up your arse and use you as a football鈥�. The boy ran, and didn鈥檛 stop running until he had reached the safety of the railway line.

Some weeks later, the boy was swinging from the topmost branches of a tall tree in the garden of a very upmarket home in Ipswich. The boy had been evacuated to this paradise by the advent of the war, which had been declared on the dreaded "Germins" that very day. This paradise had unlimited food of a very superior type, which was served to the boy and his brother by the maid in a real dining room, with table cloth, silver and napkins.

It was a lovely warm day and the maid had just brought the elderly resident Aunt out into the garden and settled her in a chair, with a blanket well tucked in around her knees in case she should catch a chill, when, the boy gave a magnificent display of his climbing skills by swinging from the highest branch of the tree and bellowing out a perfect rendering of the Tarzan jungle call.

The elderly Aunt had very bad attack of the galloping jitters and had to be taken quickly indoors by the anxious maid. Later, when Two Candles Sexton Blake made a detailed search for clues he discovered that the seat of the chair was very wet, which was duly entered into his detective's notebook..........but the mystery was never solved.

Ed: The boy had never possessed a handkerchief!

Note: The gun emplacement was installed in August 1939 in a field beside the LNER railway line between Fairlop and Hainault stations 鈥� now part of the underground Central Line.

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