The TV Time Travellers by Pete Johnson

Author:Pete Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407048895
Publisher: RHCP

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A Reunion – and a Warning

Zac

TWO MINUTES TO four at the village hall.

The tables were laden with wartime food and tea urns, behind which sat women from the village, all dressed in the clothes their grandmothers would have worn. Flags streamed across the room, and wartime posters too, urging people to Dig for Victory and warning them that Careless Talk Cost Lives.

And Mr Wallack had just given us our briefing. ‘Remember, this afternoon is about celebrating the real-life evacuees. I shall walk amongst them, encouraging them to tell me their stories. As will Miss Weed and Farmer Benson. Your job is just to offer our guests food: nothing else. You are certainly not here to enjoy yourselves. There are about thirty guest evacuees expected, so on no account are you to touch the food. None of it is for you.’

Then he and Miss Weed gave us a masterclass on the correct way to hold a tray and address our guests. But for once I was hardly listening. I was too busy imagining those evacuees returning to the village hall they’d first walked into seventy years ago. And especially Victor and Dennis. I kept studying their pictures.

‘They’ll have changed a tiny bit, you know,’ said Leo.

‘Or maybe they won’t,’ said Barney. ‘Maybe they’ll look exactly as they did in 1939. Wouldn’t that be spooky?’

The doors opened and two people appeared: a woman in red tinted glasses and with two ribbons in her hair, and a bald man, leaning heavily on a stick. The woman announced to no one in particular, ‘I knew we’d be the first.’

‘Better than being late,’ said the man. ‘Being early shows respect.’

Leo whispered to me, ‘So is he Victor or Dennis?’

‘Don’t think so,’ I said firmly. ‘Well, he’s too small to be Victor, who’s over six feet.’

‘Old people shrink though,’ said Barney.

‘No, they don’t,’ cried Izzy.

‘Yes, they do,’ cried Barney. ‘It’s a known medical fact.’

Izzy cried, ‘So one morning they just wake up two inches shorter and find none of their trousers fit them any more?’

‘No, it happens very gradually,’ said Barney.

‘So if you’re very, very old you’re going to be a midget,’ said Izzy.

‘What about me?’ I cried. ‘I’m a midget already.’ They all laughed at that. Then Harriet rushed over to the couple with her tray of wartime food.

‘Trust her to get in first,’ murmured Izzy.

But a couple of minutes later Harriet sped over to me. ‘Now, that was incredible. That woman, Nora, said she hadn’t been back here since 1941 when she was called home. And her last memory is of being in this very hall, watching a Christmas panto of Pinocchio. She said that seeing us all dressed up took her right back. And she could remember again how much she missed her family and home. She said the pain was like a toothache that never went away. She missed them every single day.’

Harriet stopped. She was really moved by what Nora had told her. It was genuine, I could tell. And despite what the other evacuees said, I still liked her.

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