大象传媒

We were living in Wingham, Kent, where my mother had moved with my brother and me in the belief that we should be safer there than in London. In 1943 my father, who had enlisted at the very beginning of the war, had been sent to North Africa - I still have some of his letters to me, praising me for being able to read them myself and telling me to be a good girl.
One night, the woman lodging with us woke to hear my mother sobbing bitterly. When she went to investigate, she found my mother fast asleep with tears rolling down her face. Our lodger shook her and she started awake, still sobbing. As she
calmed down, she said, "I dreamed someone was showing me a casualty list, and Wally's name was at the top."
It was several days later that the telegram arrived: my father had been killed in action on the 9th May, the very day on which she had had her dream.
We returned to London,to my grandparents' house in South London. As the bombing got worse,Grandad built bunks for us all in the cellar of the old Edwardian house and every night Nan, Grandad, Auntie Kath, Auntie Maisie and my cousin Tony, Mum, Bob and I would sleep down there, "snug as a bug in a rug" as Grandad said.
One night I woke and knew, without knowing how I knew, that I was alone. Puzzled rather than scared, I climbed down from my bunk, confirmed that all the other bunks were empty, and started to climb the stairs up from the cellar. It seemed a long way to the top of the first flight. I turned on the landing to climb the next flight and saw, in the open front doorway, outlined against a bright pink and orange sky, all the grown-ups, and my brother in my grandfather's arms, staring out in silence.
The group silhouette changed as Auntie Kath noticed me and drew me into her side. Now, all I could see was the strange light in the sky; only later did I realise that I had been watching London burn.
In 1945 as the war drew to its close, we had grown used to the routine of life in Broxholm Road. Auntie Kath had gone off to the Wrens, lying about her age to be accepted; the rest of us rubbed along together with the usual family squabbles and laughter. We had heard that Uncle Sid -a captain in the army - had been in a car accident in Belgium, but was recovering well.
At the upstairs window my mother suddenly gasped,"Good Lord," she said, turning away to tell my grandmother, "It's Sid - he's coming along the road." Then she looked out again. There was no one in sight. "Funny ... I could have sworn ..." she said, her voice dying away. That night she dreamed that Sid, her eldest brother, was walking towards her down a sunlit road, smiling. "I'll give your love to Wally," he said.
It was no surprise to her next morning when the telegram arrived announcing that Uncle Sid had died in hospital from a clot travelling up from his leg to his heart.
I am not a superstitious person and I don't believe in ghosts. But I think when there is great love between people, sometimes there is a kind of telepathy between them too, which makes distance no barrier to their communication

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