6

It felt like the circus had come to town.

Joseph remembered it well. Not the show itself, Dad hadn’t had enough money to buy tickets, but the procession through town beforehand, the announcement that the greatest show on earth had arrived.

With the procession came the acts: muscular strongmen, graceful acrobats, fearless lion-tamers, and, bringing up the rear: the freaks. Bearded women, tattooed men, a child joined to its sibling at the waist, all drawing gasps and laughter from the crowd.

Joseph remembered being mesmerised by them, repulsed, confused and intrigued in equal measure, but never had he wondered how it might feel to be in the show before: to be the one being pointed and laughed at.

Today he had found out. The memory was now seared into his brain, playing on endless repeat like a scratched gramophone record, even when he pulled himself under the lukewarm bathwater to escape.

Mrs F had insisted on them both washing when they got home, and set about boiling the kettle until the tin bath steamed on the hearth rug.

She made no effort to make Joseph get in first, banishing him to his room while she ‘sorted herself out’. He retreated happily, and lay on his bed, listening to the tick of the clock and the faint wail of Mrs F singing through the floorboards. Finally, she called him down.

‘The water’s still hot, and there’s soap on the side there. Don’t be using it all, mind. That’s got to last us until the end of the month.’

Joseph shrugged. He wouldn’t put a dent in the soap. He had no desire to get in the bath at all. Instead, he stood there, motionless, only removing his clothes when he heard her bedroom door close upstairs.

He wouldn’t stay in long, he decided. Didn’t like the idea of lying in water that had already held her.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a bath. Grandma had long since given up asking him to do anything, and bathing had been way down the list. But once submerged, he had to admit that the water, still warm despite being second-hand, eased his muscles, if not his mind.

Today had been humiliating. The allotments may only have been two streets from the zoo, but it felt like miles. While Daphne made slow but steady progress with her cargo, onlookers cooing at an exotic beast in such a mundane setting, Stan and Ollie were nowhere near as obliging or awe-inspiring. They stopped whenever he drove them on, added to the manure pile more times than anatomically possible, and generally made him look like an ass at every given opportunity.

The kids standing on the street, watching, thought it was hilarious. They pointed and laughed. Some practically rolled in the gutter, though others weren’t laughing after they strayed too close to Joseph and received a well-aimed kick. It was these occasional successes that released the pressure in his head and stopped him from dropping the reins to chase them down the street.

But even now, with his head under the water, Joseph could still hear their laughter, and feel its heat on his face.

As he pushed bubbles up to the surface in disgust, though, he heard a new, muffled sound that definitely wasn’t his ears filling with suds. This was a long continual drone, which even from his position, sounded urgent, immediate.

He tried to ignore it, but it got louder and louder, until finally, begrudgingly, he broke through the surface, ears popping as the wail of the air-raid siren ripped through the closed windows.

Planting his hands either side of the tub, he made to push himself out of the bath, just as the door opened to reveal Mrs F, hair wilder than ever, plus Tweedy, seemingly revelling in the chaos.

Mortified, Joseph let his naked body fall back into the bath, not caring about the wave that leaped onto the floor as a result, and for once Mrs F didn’t seem angry, even when the boy yelled at her: ‘Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?!?’

‘No, and neither has Adolf.’ She threw a rough towel in his direction as she picked up his festering pile of clothes. ‘So wrap that round you and get out here pronto.’

Torn by not wanting to do anythingshe said, but terrified by the prospect of the world caving in around him, he pulled himself from the bath, and, shrouding himself in the towel, followed her through the back door.

Cold wasn’t the word for what hit him. So icy was the wind that he expected to look down and see the dripping bathwater turning into icicles.

It burned his skin as he staggered in her wake to the bottom of the garden and the air-raid shelter.

He’d seen them at home, of course: ramshackle affairs that looked like they’d collapse under the force of a sneeze, but it had never bothered him. He didn’t think for a second that the Luftwaffe would bother coming after them so far north. But here? This was the city, Hitler’s prime target, so he had expected something a lot more robust than what he found. There were two untidy piles of sandbags against the back wall and on top of these, a crudely shaped corrugated iron roof. On the front wall, if you could call it that, sat another sheet of metal forming a sort of door, which Mrs F was pulling aside.

‘Get in!’ she yelled, as her eyes flicked skywards.

Joseph saw little point, for all the protection it offered, but he begrudgingly did as she said. It was strange to see her flustered and nervous. Until this point Joseph had thought she could blow a Nazi bomber from the skies with her temper alone, but this was different. She was different.

It wasn’t much warmer inside, despite the small, claustrophobic space. Tweedy’s whirling tail whipped the two of them in turn, proving a nuisance as Joseph tried to pull on his clothes without losing hold of the towel.

‘Get yourself decent. We’ll have guests any second.’

Guests? thought Joseph as he wrestled his sweater on. It was hardly the place for high tea.

Just then the door flew open and in piled three shivering bodies.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ a woman sighed at Mrs F, followed closely by a tank of a man, clutching a semi-sleeping child and a lantern. They peered curiously at Joseph through the darkness, making him feel self-conscious.

‘These are the Twyfords,’ Mrs F told him. ‘Sylvie, Thomas and Rufus.’ The child wriggled in his father’s arms: the closest thing to a greeting on offer, as the adults continued to stare.

‘And this is Joseph. I was telling you about him, Sylvie,’ Mrs F continued. The two women exchanged a look that said nothing and everything at the same time.

‘Ah,’ replied Sylvie, re-examining him in more detail, before moving as far away as possible, which wasn’t easy in such a cramped space.

‘Right then, I’ll be off,’ said Mrs F, a statement so ridiculous given what was happening outside, that even Joseph challenged it.

‘Off? Off where?’

‘Work,’ she answered, incredulous that he even asked.

Joseph frowned in the half light. This hardly seemed the time to be mucking out.

‘Sylvie said you can stay here with them till it passes. Tweedy too.’

This pulled quite a reaction from Sylvie. ‘Now, Mags, I did say that I would babysit the boy, but we didn’t discuss the dog. And you know my opinion on that.’

Joseph frowned. Opinion?

Mrs F was quick to respond. ‘Would you rather I took Tweedy with me and risk him getting hurt?’

‘I’d rather you did what most people have done, to be honest. I don’t wish to be rude, Mags, but most folk have seen it’s cruel to keep pets alive during the war. Plus, they’re hungry beasts, aren’t they?’

‘He’s not eating into your rations, Sylvie. Only mine. And I will never ever put down a healthy animal when there is no need. I don’t have time for this, Sylvie, but as you’re sat in my shelter in my yard, I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself. Now, Joseph, you look after Tweedy, do you hear? Don’t let him out of your sight. And get yourself to bed as soon as it’s over. I’ll be home not long after.’

Without a further word, and before he could interrogate her more, she threw the door open and dashed into the siren-filled night, which sent poor Tweedy scuttling to the door to try and follow.

To Joseph, it was another clear example of how terrible his life had become. The world was fighting itself, dragging the only person he cared about away from him to war. And now he’d been sent to a city where a bomb was more likely to fall than where he’d come from. Here he was, left at Hitler’s mercy in a damp, wet trench with what felt like a cardboard roof, alongside a family of complete strangers and a dog crazier than Adolf himself.

Tweedy, it seemed, agreed. Instead of calming down, he continued to spiral out of control, pawing at the mud walls like a deranged prisoner, howling when they refused to give in to his demands. Every minute or so he would stop, not because the Twyfords were shouting at him to do so, but because he kept pulling on Joseph’s sock with his teeth to join him, almost imploring him.

Joseph knew only too well what it was like to be left without a choice or a say, and he knew he didn’t like it either.

‘It’s all right,’ he said reluctantly, without adopting that babyish voice most people used when speaking to a pet. ‘She’s coming back soon.’

But no matter how many times he stroked his back, or rubbed at the matted fur that clung beneath his jaw, Tweedy was inconsolable, and after one final frantic burrow, he changed tack completely and threw himself against the door, dislodging it enough to pull himself triumphantly through and out into the night.

‘You are joking!’ Joseph moaned. How on earth had he managed to lose a dog in an air-raid shelter?

‘What have you let him out for?’ Sylvie yelled.

‘I’ll get him back in,’ snapped Joseph. He didn’t want to spend any more time with these people than necessary. It was clear they were looking down their noses at him.

The door was jammed, so he pulled himself through the gap, hearing Sylvie tell her husband to follow behind. ‘Do you want to face Margaret’s temper if anything happens to either of them?’

But from the cursing behind Joseph, it was clear Mr Twyford had no desire to leave the shelter.

Joseph looked for the dog, hoping he was merely chasing his own shadow in the yard, and yes, there he was, doing exactly that.

‘Come on, boy,’ said Joseph, taking a calm, quiet approach that felt quite alien to him. ‘Back inside now, come on.’

But the dog wasn’t interested. In fact, he picked that moment to show he could be just as stubborn as the boy. Instead of obediently padding back underground, he tore in the opposite direction, and leaped the fence into next door’s yard.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Joseph groaned. What had he done to deserve this? And more importantly, what was he going to do about it?

He weighed up his options, which were equally simple but unappealing: chase the dog and possibly risk a Nazi bomb. Or lose the dog, slink back to the shelter, and risk the wrath of Mrs F.

What sort of a choice was that? It wasn’t like he owed Mrs F a damned thing, but he had little desire to sit in a cramped pit with the world’s grumpiest man and his miserable wife.

God, he thought, what the hell do I do? He looked to the sky. Silent but for the siren. Empty. Not a bomber to be seen.

What harm can it do? he said to himself. He’d corner the dog, drag him back to the shelter, then pretend he was deaf as well as rude.

He ran to the fence and clambered clumsily over it.