Grandfather came in from milking later and Mum told him what we’d heard on the radio. He said nothing, but went to wash his hands in the sink. Then all he said was, “Poor beggars. Poor beggars.”
Mum said when she came up to bed a few minutes ago that today was the beginning of the end of the war, that Dad would be back soon, and then we could go back home to the farm and everything would be as it was before. But I don’t think anything will ever be like it was again. Nothing stays the same, does it? Nothing is ever like it was, is it?
All I can think about as I write this is that Adie might be lying out there tonight on some French beach, dead or wounded, and I’ll never know, because no one will ever tell me because no one will ever know that we knew each other. I try closing my eyes and picturing him in my head. I try so hard to see him not dead and not wounded either. I try to see him alive and smiling at me. Whatever happens to him, wherever he is, that’s how I’m going to remember him, forever.
I know I should be thinking of Dad too, and I am. I’m trying. I’m thinking of them both now. I’m praying for them too.
This is me writing now, Boowie. This is your Grandma. I wrote lots more in my diary after this but none of it is very interesting, and anyway, the mice got some of it years later when my diary books were stored in a box up in the attic — mice or squirrels, I can’t be sure. There are only two more entries I wanted to show you because they finish the whole supremely amazing story, insofar as my story finishes at all. And if you don’t understand quite what I mean by that then you’ll find out soon enough, but not until after the whole of the story has unfolded. Curiouser and curiouser …!
My birthday and we’ve moved back home. It should have been the best birthday present I ever had. I was longing for today. And now it’s come and I should be happy, but I’m not. This house isn’t my home. It’s an empty shell stacked with furniture, tea chests everywhere, and it’s damp. When we arrived the front door was hanging off its hinges, so anyone could have been in and out, and they have been too. There’s black mold on the ceiling, green in some places, and there are dead birds and leaves everywhere. The wallpaper’s falling off above the chimney in the sitting room, and half a dozen windows are broken. The rain’s come in and rotted the windowsill in my bedroom. The ceiling in Grandfather’s room has come down in one corner: There’s a hole in the roof where the slates have been blasted away by some shell.
The gutters are full of grass and one drainpipe has fallen down into the garden and smashed the greenhouse. Not that you can call it a garden, not anymore. You can hardly see a flower. Grass has grown up everywhere. You can’t even see where the flowerbeds and the vegetable garden were. The granary must have taken a direct hit from a shell because there’s nothing left of it but rubble. Barry and me went off on a walk around the farm. There’s nettles and weeds head-high wherever you look. But the worst of it is that it’s all so quiet. Only Grandfather seems truly happy to be home. “Never you mind,” Grandfather said this evening, as we sat around the table in the kitchen in gloomy silence, “once we bring the animals back tomorrow, the place’ll come alive, you’ll see. We’ll soon put it all right. Spick-and-span in no time. Few hens about the place and they’ll cackle loud enough to drive out any quiet.” I hope he’s right. At least I’m back in my own room, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet. All I’ve got so far is my bed, my chair, and my lamp. My room smells. The whole house smells.
PS I can’t believe this! I just finished writing my diary, and was reaching out to blow out the lamp when I noticed some writing on the wall by the window, in pencil. This is what it says:
January 10, 1944. Harry and Adie were here looking for Tips. Welcome home, Lily!
I just keep reading it over and over again. I can’t stop crying and I don’t know whether it’s because I’m happy or I’m sad. I’m both. I’m not going to tell anyone about this, not tonight. It was written to me, so tonight I’m going to keep it to myself. I’ll tell the others in the morning. I have to look at it again and again to believe it is real.
Supreme! Supreme! I feel supreme all over, because just about the best thing that could happen, has happened, and it happened at breakfast time.
I wondered where I was when I first woke up this morning. The window was in the wrong place. I was lying in bed, trying to work it all out, when I saw the writing on the wall. Then I remembered everything. I was home! I jumped out of bed and called everyone into my room to show them the message Adie and Harry had left. Of course I told them as if I’d only just discovered it. Grandfather wasn’t there. He’d already gone up to Uncle George’s to milk the cows. All we talked about at breakfast was the writing on the wall, but we were in a hurry because Mum said we had to be up at Uncle George’s as quick as we could, “lickety-split” she said, to help fetch home the cows after milking.
Anyway, we were washing the dishes when the back door opened, all by itself it seemed, and in she came, meowing and purring all at the same time, wandering under the table, in amongst the chair legs, tail quivering with pleasure. Tips! Tips alive! Tips back from the dead! We were all crying, Barry too, and he doesn’t even like cats. I put down some milk for her and she lapped till she’d licked the bowl clean. She’s a lot thinner than she was, and there’s a scratch on her face that wasn’t there before. But she’s definitely Tips, my Tips, one white paw and all her black patches in the right place. And she purrs the same too.
Mum said I didn’t have to go with them to fetch the animals home, that she and Grandfather and Barry could manage without me. So all I’ve done today is cuddle Tips. I’ve played with her, fed her, and cuddled her again. I think I gave her ten months’ worth of cuddles in one day. She’s come home, just like Adie said she would. I’ve looked back in my diary to be sure. These are exactly his words: “She’ll come home. That cat’s a real survivor, sure as my name is Adolphus T. Madison.” So I’ve decided that from now on she’s always going to be called Adolphus Tips. I asked her first of course, and she purred, so she’s happy about it. Mind you, she’s been purring nonstop ever since she came home! She’s happy because it’s an important-sounding name, and she likes to feel important. I keep saying it, to get myself used to it, getting her used to it. Adolphus Tips. Adolphus Tips. It makes me smile every time I say it out loud, because it sounds so funny, and because every time I say it I think of Adie.
Just now I touched the writing on the wall before I turned off the lamp. I’m going to do that every night to bring him luck over in France. And I’m going to pray for him too, then maybe he’ll come back like Tips has, like Adolphus Tips has.
And now over sixty years later, here’s the beginning of the end of the story.
Adie didn’t come back. But there has hardly been a day since that I haven’t thought about him, and about Adolphus Tips too. She was already quite an old cat by the time we found each other again, and she aged quickly after her miraculous return. I think that her struggle for survival on her own must have taken a lot out of her, and giving birth to all those kittens too. She died peacefully three years later and I buried her in the garden.
Gradually the people moved back into the cottages and farms all around us. As you can imagine, there had been a lot of destruction. Hardly a single building had survived unscathed and many were in ruins. The farms and farmyards were infested with weeds and rats, and there were rabbits everywhere, thousands of them. We ate a lot of rabbit stew! For a while it was a sad place to be, but bit by bit things improved. The houses were repaired, the farms tidied up. The church had been hit too, one of the walls blown out, so we couldn’t use it for a while. I remember the first time the bells rang again. It was to celebrate the end of the war in 1945.
That was the year Dad came home, and the year the village school opened again. And it was the year we got our generator too. Dad had worked a lot on generators in the army, so he installed it himself. We were one of the first houses in the village to have our own electricity. Dad was always very proud of that. Later on,
generators became his business. He took over one of the barns as his workshop and he supplied generators all over the country, all over the world. Mum and Grandfather and I went on running the farm together and we were quite happy to be doing it.
After the war was over Barry went back home to London, back to his mother. He wrote to me for a while, but then we lost touch. One of us didn’t reply, I don’t remember who. He came back to see us though, several years afterwards. He had his new wife with him and wanted her to meet us, and to show her the farm, I suppose. I remember I was even a little jealous. He still smiled the same, was still very sweet and kind. He told us over tea that his stay with us during the war had been the happiest time of his childhood. He’s living out in Australia now near a place called Armidale in New South Wales. He became a sheep farmer. After his time with us down on the farm, he never wanted to be anything other than a farmer. We exchange photos of our grandchildren at Christmas. I hope to go and visit him one day. We’ll see.
As you know, Boowie, Mrs. Blumfeld never went back to Holland after the war, but stayed on in our village as the schoolteacher. You came with me to see her once or twice, do you remember? She’s in the graveyard now, not far from Grandfather and Uncle George, and Mum and Dad too, and now your grandpa as well. I keep all their graves as tidy as I can, and I often put flowers there too, snowdrops, primroses, bluebells, daffodils, fuchsia, whatever is in season, whatever I can find in the garden. Sometimes we’ve done it together, Boowie, haven’t we?
Now to the end of my story. It was about three years ago. You had just gone back home, I remember, after spending your holidays with your grandpa and me. I was going for my usual walk along the beach, past the place where the old hotel had once been, when I saw a couple of men standing at the water’s edge, looking out to sea. I remember thinking it was strange because they looked a little out of place, not dressed for the beach at all. As you know, you can hear someone coming on those pebbles from a long way away. They must have heard me because they turned around to look at me at the same time. Both of them were very tall, and both were black. One looked much older than the other. He had white hair and was carrying a bunch of flowers. Maybe this was a moment I’d always believed would happen, because I knew who it was the moment I set eyes on him. It wasn’t only my eyes that told me. It was my heart too. But he didn’t recognize me. They turned away again, and as I watched, both of them began scattering the flowers into the sea, throwing them as far as they could, which wasn’t very far, so they soon floated in again on the waves and washed up on the beach. I knew the flowers were for Harry.
I waited a while before I approached them, not wishing to disturb the moment.
“Adie?” I said. He turned and looked at me. He was frowning, struggling to remember. “Adolphus T. Madison,” I went on. “That’s T for Thomas, Private First Class, US Army?”
Then he smiled the smile I remembered. “Lily?” he said. And we took each other’s hands, unable to say another word.
So Adie and his son — he’s called him Harry — came back to the bungalow and had tea with your grandpa and me. In between the scones and the macaroons Adie and I told each other the stories of our lives — there was a fair bit to catch up on, as you can imagine. We had a wonderful time together that day. Your grandpa took to Adie at once because Adie talked to him as if he wasn’t in a wheelchair, as if he wasn’t ill, and he always liked that, as you know. It was while we were talking that Harry told me that Adie had been wanting to make this trip all his life, to remember his old friend Harry and to visit the farm again where Lily, the little girl with the cat, lived, and where they’d been made to feel so welcome. Harry had grown up with the story all his life. Adie’s wife had died a year or so before, and he didn’t want to leave it any longer. “So we decided we’d just pack our bags and come right over,” Adie said. “Say, d’you remember that day we came visiting with the hot dogs?” We laughed out loud then as we recalled the great sausage feast and Barry’s face covered in ketchup from ear to ear. I told him that Tips had come back home in the end just like he said she would, and that I’d renamed her Adolphus Tips. He said that it made him feel “real proud” to hear that.
They drove away after tea was over and went to see the farm on their way back to London. I should have liked to have gone with them of course, but your grandpa would have been upset if I’d left him alone again so soon after my daily walk. But Adie and I wrote to one another after that, often. He sent flowers for your grandpa’s funeral and then wrote to me afterwards saying that if ever I’d like to visit them in Atlanta I’d be more than welcome.
So I went, Boowie, and that’s where I am now, in Atlanta, in America. I don’t think the two of us have stopped talking since the day I arrived; we had a lot of time to make up. And so when Adie asked me a week ago now, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to say yes. We got married last Tuesday. Second time around and I’ve married my childhood sweetheart. The church was full to bursting, and you never heard such wonderful singing in all your life. They sing with such joy over here, as if they really mean every word, every note. So I’m now Mrs. Madison, and as soon as the honeymoon’s over I’m bringing him home with me to live in Slapton. We’ll be having our honeymoon in New York — neither of us has ever been there — and then we’ll be flying back to London next Saturday evening. We arrive at Heathrow, Terminal Four at half past seven. I’m longing for you to meet him, Boowie. You’ll like him, I know you will. I hope everyone else does too. Be there if you can.
I WAS THERE, OF COURSE. We all were: uncles and aunties, the whole family. Some of them were still upset by the surprise of it all, but everyone was curious, me most of all. So we were all waiting for them at Heathrow, ready with confetti — that was my idea — as they came out of customs.
She looked so small beside him. They were holding hands and smiling like two cats that had got the cream and were blissfully happy to be sharing it. And then I was shaking Adie’s hand. “Hi there,” he said, beaming down at me from a great height. “I reckon you’ve got to be Boowie. Yep. You’re just like someone I used to know a long, long time ago, except you’re a boy, of course, and you ain’t got no pigtails.”
In 1943, four years after the beginning of the Second World War, the Allies were making ready to launch an attack on German-occupied France, in order to liberate Europe at last from Hitler and the Nazis. A seaborne attack on such a large scale had never been attempted before. The soldiers needed to practice, to exercise, and so they needed the training ground to do it.
The southern part of England became like a huge army camp, as the invasion force gathered and rehearsed. Many coastal areas had to be cleared so that simulated landings from the sea could take place, so that the soldiers were prepared when the time for the real invasion came.
The area around Slapton Sands in Devon was evacuated because the beach there was similar to the landing beaches in Normandy, across the English Channel. About three thousand inhabitants were given just a few short weeks to gather everything they had and move out.
Of course, the disruption caused great hardship, and damage to the area during the landing exercises was extensive. There were casualties too of course, among the soldiers — and in Slapton they were mostly Americans.
During Operation Tiger in April of 1944, ships full of American troops preparing to be landed at Slapton were surprised by German E-boats in the channel, and sunk. Many hundreds of Americans were drowned. This tragedy was deliberately kept secret for many years afterwards.
Then, on the morning of June 6, 1944, came D day, as it was called, when the Allies landed on the French coast and fought their way off the beaches and inland, liberating French villages and towns as they went! Eleven months of hard fighting later, Germany surrendered and the Second World War came to an end.
Some of the detail for this story was gleaned from a local history of Slapton, entitled The Land Changed Its Face by Grace Bradbeer (Harbour Books, 1984).
Michael Morpu
rgo, a former Children’s Laureate of Great Britain, is the author of numerous books for adults and children, including War Horse, now a major motion picture, and the companion book, Farm Boy. His other books include Kensuke’s Kingdom and Private Peaceful. He lives in Devon, England, with his wife, Clare.
Q: Where do you get your inspiration from?
A: I get my inspiration from everything that is going on around me. I travel a lot and meet people, talk to them and see new places. I also listen out for stories and things that are happening in the world and listen to the radio and read newspapers. I try to keep my eyes and ears open, and my heart, too.