15

Snoring Like an Elephant

Jack helped the old man pack up all his belongings from his little flat. Aside from his memories, Grandpa didn’t have much. Flying goggles, a pot of moustache wax, a tin of spam. Then they walked the short distance to Grandpa’s new ‘quarters’.

As soon as they were upstairs in the boy’s bedroom, the pair were playing World War II pilots. They were meant to have been in bed hours ago. However, together they took to the skies, Grandpa in his beloved Spitfire and Jack in his speedy Hurricane. “Up, up and away!” they cried, as they battled the mighty Luftwaffe. They made such a racket, they were in danger of waking up the whole street. For a moment, Jack didn’t care that he had no close friends to invite over to stay. This was the best sleepover ever! Just as the pair of flying aces were bringing their imaginary planes in to land, Mum thumped on the bedroom door. She shouted, “I said, ‘LIGHTS OUT!’”

“I do wish that blasted charlady would keep it down!” said Grandpa.

“I HEARD THAT!” came the woman’s voice from the other side of the door.

After a game of cards in the ‘officers’ mess’ by torchlight, the old man made his way over to the bedroom window. He looked up at the empty sky. Only a faint sprinkling of stars could be seen twinkling through the dark.

“What are you doing, sir?” asked the boy.

“I am listening for enemy aircraft, old boy.”

“Can you hear any?” said Jack excitedly. He was now sat cross-legged on the top bunk, his model planes dangling around his head.

“Shush…” shushed Grandpa. “Sometimes the Luftwaffe pilots switch off their engines and just let their planes glide. The enemy’s chief weapon is surprise. All that gives them away is the sound of the wind whistling past the wings. Listen…”

Jack cleared his mind of thoughts and concentrated hard on listening. It was absurd, if you thought about it. Here they were in 1983, listening out for planes that hadn’t flown over the British Isles for nearly half a century. But it was so real in Grandpa’s mind, Jack couldn’t help but believe it too.

“They would have been here by now, if they were coming tonight. We must doss down for the night. There is every chance the enemy are planning a dawn bombing raid.”

“Yes, Wing Commander,” said Jack, saluting his grandfather, not sure whether bedtime was the appropriate time to salute.

Grandpa closed the window, and shuffled over to the bottom bunk. “Well, goodnight, old boy,” he said as he turned out the light. “I hope you don’t snore. I can’t abide snorers!”

With that, the old man fell instantly asleep and started snoring as loudly as a bull elephant.

“ZZZZZZ… ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.”

The ends of his moustache fluttered like a butterfly’s wings.

Jack lay there on the top bunk, wide awake. Despite the deafening sound of the snoring, he couldn’t be happier. He had saved his grandfather from being sent to Twilight Towers. Now that the whole family was under one roof, the boy had a warm fuzzy feeling in his tummy.

Jack’s head rested on his pillow. Underneath it he had hidden the key to his room. The boy had promised his parents that the old man wouldn’t go walkies in the middle of the night again, so while Grandpa was looking the other way he had locked the bedroom door.

The boy stared up at his model planes, spinning in the dark. If only they were real, he thought. Jack closed his eyes and began imagining he was in the cockpit of a World War II fighter plane, flying high above the clouds. Before long he was fast asleep.