I only remember two significant incidents that year…
“Mama, what are you doing?”
“Shhhh,” she whispered, “Listen!”
She turned the volume of the radio up and listened intensely,
“I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street.
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we hear from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”
My mother’s face twisted in anger
“BASTARD!” she shouted, I didn’t know who she was saying it to, the radio, Our Prime Minister, Hitler or me? My Mother quickly snatched my hand and led me to our shelter in the garden. My Father soon followed, she was expecting bombs to come rain down on us straight away, we laid there on the damp floor for many hours until we finally realised that there was no threat.
The second event that I remember happened one month after.
My parents had been arguing for quite some days. Today was worst than ever. The war had put a lot of pressure on my parent’s relationship.
“Please don’t go!” my mum said as she collapsed on the chair crying. He looked at her with a stern look.
“I have to do this!” he replied. He was wearing the same suit that he did ten years later. In his right hand the same suitcase and in his left hand the briefcase and his hat on his head.
My father than left disappeared into the night.
One week ago.
I had long forgotten my father. My mother explained to me that my father had left her for another women but I didn’t care that much I was used to only having a mum, and my life seemed to carry on fine, the war had just finished and I was still alive.
I wanted to sift through the articles and newspapers that I had collected through out the war. I knew that people in the future would want to understand how people feel and reacted to the war at the time, and how the papers told the stories of our troops progress. I had stored all these papers in my father’s old welsh-dresser. I only used the first drawer for them, my mother had always kept a lock on the others, but today as I took the my papers out of the drawer they slipped and fell to the floor taking the locks of the other drawers with them. They had become old and rusted so the weigh of the paper must of loosened it. I quickly tided the papers, cleared the cobwebs that joined the dresser and lamp together and piled the stack next to the lamp.
Curiosity got the better of me and I peeked inside first drawer, they were all letters, weird why would she keep them locked up. I shut that drawer and opened the one below it. That was also full of letters. I picked up the envelope of one of the letters and read it aloud to myself.
“Mrs Elizabeth Beckon, Twenty-two Acorn Drive, Barnet,”
In the corner it had a royal crest and a red censorship stamp over it
I played the letter back where I found it and stood up to find my mother breathing down my neck.
“Mum I’m sorry I didn’t…”
“Didn’t know, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I looked at my mum blankly, I finally realise that there was something in that letter that was important and that I wasn’t suppose to read,”
“Mum I don’t understand?” My mother sat me down on a chair and told me about my father, how he didn’t go off with another girl but just went off to serve his country. This came as a bit of a shock to me
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know, but he hasn’t sent me a letter in two years.”
“Haven’t you tried to find out where he was stationed?”
“No one would tell me. They said it would compromise his safety!”
“The war is over now. You can find him, oh please try mum!” She looked at me and then smiled. The next day she went down to the nearest army station to find out where he was, they handed her an address for her to be able to send a letter to him, and that’s what she did. She sent him a plead to come home.”
Present day.
So there he was standing in the doorway of our house, a stranger to my mother and me. He was a long forgotten memory of what life used to be.
