Grandpa’s Great Escape

So instead of reading a book to his grandson at bedtime, the old man would tell the boy of his real-life adventures during the war. His stories were more thrilling than any you could find in a book.

“One more tale, Grandpa! Please!” the boy begged on one such night. “I want to hear about when you were shot down by the Luftwaffe and had to crash-land into the English Channel!”

“It’s late, young Jack,” Grandpa replied. “You go to sleep. I promise I will tell you that tale and plenty more in the morning.”

“But—”

“I’ll meet you in your dreams, Squadron Leader,” said the old man as he kissed Jack tenderly on the forehead. ‘Squadron Leader’ was his nickname for his grandson. “I’ll see you in the skies. Up, up and away.”

“Up, up and away!” the boy repeated before drifting off to sleep in Grandpa’s spare room dreaming he too was a fighter pilot. Time spent with Grandpa couldn’t have been more perfect.

But that was all about to change.

2

Slippers

Over time Grandpa’s mind began transporting him back to his days of glory more and more. By the time our story begins, the old man completely believed that it was still World War II. Even though the war had ended decades before.

Grandpa had become very confused, a condition that affects some elderly people. It was serious, and sadly there was no known cure. Instead it seemed likely it would worsen over time, until one day Grandpa might not even be able to remember his own name.

But as ever in life, wherever there is tragedy, you can often find comedy. In recent times the old man’s condition had led to some very funny moments. On Bonfire Night, Grandpa insisted everyone go down to the air-raid shelter at once when the next-door neighbours started letting off fireworks in the garden. Or there was the time when Grandpa cut a wafer-thin chocolate mint into four pieces with his penknife and shared it out with the family because of “rationing”.

Most memorable of all was the time Grandpa decided that a shopping trolley at the supermarket was really a Lancaster bomber. He hurtled down the aisles on a top-secret mission, hurling huge bags of flour. These ‘bombs’ exploded everywhere – over the food, over the tills, even covering the haughty supermarket manageress from head to toe.

She looked like a powdery ghost. The clean-up operation lasted many weeks. Grandpa was banned from the supermarket for life.

Sometimes Grandpa’s confusion could be more upsetting. Jack had never met his grandmother. This was because she had died nearly forty years ago. It had been one night towards the end of the war in a Nazi bombing raid over London. At the time Jack’s father was a newborn baby. However, when Jack stayed at his grandfather’s tiny flat, the old man would sometimes call for his ‘Darling Peggy’ as if she was in the next room. Tears would well in the boy’s eyes. It was heartbreaking.

Despite everything, Grandpa was an incredibly proud man. For him everything had to be ‘just so’.

He was always impeccably dressed in a uniform of double-breasted blazer, crisp white shirt and neatly pressed grey slacks. A maroon, silver and blue striped Royal Air Force tie was forever knotted neatly around his neck. As was the fashion with many World War II pilots, he favoured a dashing flying ace’s moustache. It was a thing of wonder. The moustache was so long it connected to his sideburns. It was like a beard but with the chin bit missing. Grandpa would twizzle the ends of his moustache for hours, until they stuck out at just the right angle.

The one thing that would give Grandpa’s confused state of mind away was his choice of footwear. Slippers. The old man no longer wore shoes. Now he always forgot to put them on. Whatever the weather, in rain, sleet and snow, he would be sporting his brown checked slippers.

Of course Grandpa’s eccentric behaviour made the grown-ups worry. Sometimes Jack would pretend to go to bed, but instead creep out of his bedroom and sit at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas. There he would listen to his mother and father downstairs in the kitchen, discussing Grandpa. They would use big words that Jack didn’t understand to describe the old man’s ‘condition’. Then Mum and Dad would argue about Grandpa being put in an old folk’s home. The boy hated hearing his grandfather talked about in this way, as if he was some sort of problem. However, being only twelve years old, Jack felt powerless to do anything.

But none of this stopped Jack adoring hearing stories about the old man’s wartime adventures, even though these tales had become so real to Grandpa now that the pair would act them out. They were Boy’s Own adventures, stories of derring-do.

Grandpa had an ancient wooden record player the size of a bath. On it he would play booming orchestral music, with the volume as high as it would go. Military bands were his favourite, and together Jack and his grandfather would listen to huge classical pieces like Rule, Britannia!, Land of Hope and Glory or the Pomp and Circumstance Marches way into the night. Two old armchairs would become their cockpits. As the music soared, so did they in their imaginary fighter planes. A Spitfire for Grandpa and a Hurricane for Jack. Up, up and away, they would go. Together they would fly high above the clouds, outwitting enemy aircraft. Every Sunday night the pair of flying aces would win the Battle of Britain, without even leaving the old man’s tiny flat.

Together Grandpa and Jack inhabited their own world and had countless imaginary adventures.

However, the night our story starts, a real-life adventure was about to begin.

3

A Waft of Cheese

This particular evening, Jack was asleep in his bedroom, dreaming he was a World War II pilot, as he did every night. He was sitting behind the controls of his Hurricane, taking on a squadron of deadly Messerschmitts, when he heard the distinct sound of a telephone ringing.

RING RING RING RING.

That was strange, he thought, there weren’t any telephones on board 1940s fighter planes. Yet still the telephone kept ringing.

RING RING RING RING.

The boy woke up with a start. As he sat up in bed he banged his head on his model Lancaster bomber that was suspended from the ceiling.

“Ow!” he cried. He checked the time on the nickel-plated RAF pilot’s watch his grandfather had given him.

2:30am.

Who on earth was calling the house at this hour?

The boy leaped down from his top bunk and opened his bedroom door. Downstairs in the hall, he could hear his mother talking on the telephone.

“No, he hasn’t turned up here,” she said.

After a few moments Mum spoke again. Her familiar tone convinced Jack that she must be talking to his father. “So no sign of the old man at all? Well what are you going to do, Barry? I know he’s your father! But you can’t stay out all night looking for him!”

Jack couldn’t remain silent for a moment longer. From the top of the stairs he cried, “What’s happened to Grandpa?”

Mum looked up. “Oh, well done, Barry, now Jack’s woken up!” She put her hand over the receiver. “Go back to bed this instant, young man! You’ve got school in the morning!”

“I don’t care!” replied the boy with defiance. “What’s happened to Grandpa?”

Mum returned to the telephone call. “Barry, call me back in two minutes. It’s all going off here now and all!” With that she slammed down the receiver.

“What’s happened?” demanded the boy again as he ran down the stairs to join his mother.

Mum sighed theatrically as if all the woes of the world were on her shoulders. She did that a lot. It was at this exact moment that Jack realised he could smell cheese. Not just normal cheese. Smelly cheese, blue cheese, runny cheese, MOULDY CHEESE, cheesy cheese. His mother worked at the cheese counter of the local supermarket, and wherever she went, a strong waft of cheese came with her.

Both stood in the hall in their nightclothes, Jack in his stripy blue pyjamas, and his mother in her pink fluffy nightgown. Her hair was in curlers and she had thick smears of face cream on her cheeks, forehead and nose. She often left it on overnight. Jack wasn’t sure exactly why. Mum thought of herself as quite a beauty, and often claimed to be the ‘glamorous face of cheese’, if such a thing was possible.

Mum flicked on the light and they both blinked for a moment at the sudden brightness.

“Your grandpa’s gone missing again!”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes!” The woman sighed once more. It was clear she was worn out by the old man. Sometimes she would even roll her eyes at Grandpa’s war stories, as if she was bored. This bothered Jack greatly. Grandpa’s stories were infinitely more exciting than being told about the week’s bestselling cheese. “Me and your father were woken up by a phone call around midnight.”

“From who?”

“His neighbour downstairs, you know, that newsagent man…”

After his big house had become too much for him, Grandpa had moved last year to a little flat above a shop. Not just any shop. A newsagent’s shop. Not just any newsagent’s shop. Raj’s.