JOE AND NELLY A World War Two ghost story

Joe stared at Nelly. A low buzz near his ear made him shut his mouth so quickly his teeth clicked together. It was a bluebottle. He swiped at it and then pointed at the marble in Nelly’s hand.

‘Where did you find that?’

Nelly smiled. She turned her head and nodded at the huge hole in the ground behind her. ‘I’m sure we can find more if we look together.’

Joe forced himself to look away, to look anywhere but at the flight of steps and Nelly. But she was a magnet and his eyes were drawn back to her. Her clothes were dirty and torn. She’d lost a ribbon from one of her pigtails and her face was smeared with grime. She had always been very clean and tidy. In fact, she was the neatest girl in their class. Their mums used to walk the route to school together, chatting as he and Nelly hurried on ahead. Nelly wore clothes that her mum sewed like an expert from patterns she collected from Woman’s Weekly. The two neighbours shared magazines and patterns but Joe’s mum was better at knitting. Nan was the seamstress in their family.

Joe’s eyes met Nelly’s and his cheeks started to burn. She didn’t look much different from the way she looked on the station platform the day he left for Wales – except for the dirt and messy clothes. Questions poured into his head, but he couldn’t find his voice to ask them.

He climbed the steps and sat down next to her. The prickly heat of the sun beat down on his neck and droplets of sweat formed on his top lip. He wiped them off with the back of his hand.

‘I’ve not been back a week yet...’ he said. Nelly looked at him and waited, an encouraging smile on her face.

All of a sudden he couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth. ‘I don’t like it. Everything’s different. I wish it could be the way it was before, with my mum and dad both at home. I miss playing games with Dad and telling Mum about everyday things. Nobody listens in Granddad’s house and there’s no room to play, not even space for a kick-about in the yard.’

‘I’ll play with you,’ said Nelly. ‘We can look for more of your things.’

‘How do you know about them?’

‘Well, you came here before, a few days ago, and I could see that you were looking for something. It has to be the things you left behind.’

He struggled to control a tremble in his lip and then let his face relax into a half-smile. ’What happened to your things? Where do you live now?’

Nelly shrugged her shoulders. ‘Here on the street,’ she said, ‘just like you.’

Joe looked at the rest of the street and wondered who had taken Nelly and her family in. There weren’t many houses left.

‘You’ve got taller,’ Nelly said. ‘And you’ve got a tan. Or did your freckles join together?’

Joe looked at Nelly’s pale skin and then at his own. It was true. He’d spent so much time outdoors in Wales he hadn’t even noticed.

‘Well you haven’t changed much,’ Joe replied. ‘You’re still chewing your nails.’

Nelly pulled her finger away from her mouth. The nail was raw and bitten down to the quick. When she smiled at him the wings of her birthmark moved as if it was about to fly off her face.

‘I have to go home now,’ he said, ‘Mum’s on an early shift and she’ll be back soon. But I’ll meet you here on Monday and we can start looking for more treasure. You never know, we might find something bigger and better.’

‘Why can’t you come tomorrow?’ Nelly asked, with a hint of a little child’s whine in her voice.

‘My nan would be really disappointed if I didn’t turn up at Sunday school,’ he said. ‘Unless you can come too.’

‘I can’t,’ Nelly said. ‘I’ll see you on Monday’

Joe slid down the stone steps and jumped from the bottom one onto the cracked pavement. He turned back and looked at Nelly, perched on the top step like a raggedy sparrow. He gave her a wave, turned away and dragged his feet to the other end of the street.

Back at his grandparents’ house, Nan was sitting at the table with a pot of tea and some broken digestives. He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her, a cup of tea in one hand and the other hand in his pocket, holding the marble, listening to Nan and politely chatting about all sorts of things, while keeping Nelly and their plans to himself – a secret.

Joe spent every day with Nelly except Sunday, always at the flight of steps that once led up to his front door and now ended at nothing - just a giant hole like a wound with the scab picked off. No flowers where the back yards used to be. Not much colour at all. Just grey dust and crumbly rubble. They chatted about life before the war, about the children they used to know at Rolls Road School and, when Joe told her it was bombed, Nelly’s eyes opened wide.

‘No school? What do you do all day?’

‘I help Nan with the housework and shopping, and Granddad sometimes gives me odd jobs to do. But now I know you’re still here, we can see each other whenever we like. How about some of the games we used to play? You know, hopscotch and marbles, if we can find some more.’

‘Do you remember playing kiss chase in the playground?’ asked Nelly. ‘You tried to kiss me on the lips that time. I turned my head and you ended up kissing my ear.’

Joe felt red heat spread across his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. He used to like her a lot but that was a long time ago and so much had happened.

He was surprised that Nelly’s parents had let her stay in London. Her dad was much older than his and very protective. He hadn’t been well enough to sign up for the forces, so he stayed behind and worked in munitions. They must have thought that two parents would be able to keep her safer than strangers.

He felt Nelly’s eyes boring into him and when he looked up he noticed a serious frown on her face. ’What was so good about being ‘vacuated?’ she asked.

It was as if she could read his mind. A chill crept over his scalp and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, making him trip over his words.

‘Well - I loved - running around the countryside - and helping out on the farm. Lots of other children were evacuated there so I always had someone to play with. We climbed a lot of hills and trees. But there wasn’t much to do in Ffairfach itself. It’s only a small village. Its name means little fair. It does have a fair twice a year - and it has two stations, two pubs and a chapel.’

‘What’s a chapel?’

‘A small church where the whole village goes every Sunday. It’s called the Tabernacle.’

‘What’s a tabernacle?’

Joe knew all about this, what with Nan being a Sunday school teacher. ‘A tabernacle is a shrine that you can carry around, like the one that God told Moses to build.’

This was far too serious and he quickly changed the subject. ‘In Ffairfach, a lot of the houses don’t even have water from taps like we do in London. So the women go to the village pump with jugs and buckets for water and a gossip. Mrs Williams’s farm is a little way outside the village. It does have running water from taps and its own well but she can’t live without her mid-morning gossip at the pump.’

Nelly wanted to hear more about the train journey and the animals. Joe described the warm earthy smell of the goats, the softness of their noses and how they would eat the washing if you left the back gate open.

He couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud. ‘They even chewed up Mrs Williams’s bloomers!’

Nelly giggled. Her eyes had become brighter. She fidgeted, shifting her bottom and tapping her feet on the dusty step, longing to hear more. ‘So what was the best thing about Wales?’

‘The peace and quiet and the stars at night. There are no street lights, so it’s a bit like blackouts all the time. I used to sit out in the garden with Peter and Janet…’

‘Who are Peter and Janet?’

‘Two other evacuees from a school in South London who lived at Mrs Williams’s too. We used to sit on the grass and look up at the stars. Mrs Williams taught us the names of all the constellations. We saw the Milky Way and sometimes there were falling stars and I wished on them.’

’Have any of your wishes come true, Joe?

‘Only one so far – I came home. But it’s not my home. It’s Nan and Granddad’s. Their house is very small and it’s full of grown-ups, all talking about the war, what’s on ration and who’s been killed or injured. Mum’s never home and I miss her. She used to tell me stories and sing songs. But no one has time for me now.’

Nelly pressed her sticky, warm hand on Joe’s.

‘I know what it’s like to have no one to talk to,’ she said. ‘I was feeling lonely too, until you came home. Why don’t we start looking for your things?’

They hopped down the steps and inched their way carefully into the crater, wobbling on bricks, sliding on roof slates and dodging jagged fragments of glass. Stones rattled and bricks clunked, releasing a whiff of damp that irritated Joe’s nose. He couldn’t stop a sneeze from exploding. He fumbled in his pocket for a hanky and then remembered that he didn’t have one, so he wiped his sleeve across his face. He tasted ashy snot and tried to spit it out of his mouth without Nelly seeing, but it dribbled in a long string. He couldn’t shake it off. Thank goodness for sleeves.

He looked up to see Nelly walking off on her own. Not far from her, in the middle of a blackened patch, an orphaned toilet stood intact in the rubble, the chain dangling from its wooden seat. Granddad had warned him to keep away from damaged sewers. Baked by the sun, a stench of latrines hung over the bomb site. A menacing black cloud of bluebottles buzzed above the toilet bowl. He called out to her, ‘Don’t go wandering off, Nelly. We have to keep to the area around the steps.’

They fanned out sideways and away from the street. From the main road, not far away, the quiet of the wasteland was broken by the rumble of a bus. Somewhere nearby, a dog yapped.

They searched slowly, peering under ragged wallpaper, picking up bricks and pieces of wood. There was so much dust they had to sift through it, as if panning for gold dust and nuggets like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. Joe laughed to himself as he pictured his favourite bit in the film when Chaplin’s so hungry he eats his boot.

‘What are you laughing about?’ asked Nelly.

He was about to tell her when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a torn red cushion, just like the ones they used to have on the settee in their parlour, and a lonely, empty sideboard drawer. The sideboard where Mum would have kept his plane. The explosion must have tossed everything into the sky like birdseed. It was only a few feet from where Nelly squatted next to a chimney pot, her head down, staring hard at the stones she was picking through. Joe watched her for a while. As she turned her hand, the sunlight caught on something in her filthy fingers and she straightened up, stretching her palm out to him. Another marble!

Joe zoomed over and she let it drop into his hand. It was cool and glassy, with watery blue threads twisting through its centre. He rolled it in his fingers, feeling tiny dimples in the surface, before slipping it deep into his pocket. Dropping to his knees, he scrabbled in the rubbish, digging into the dirt, feeling grit tear at his nails - and then the sharpness of a metal object. He wiggled his hand in just a bit more and released it from its hiding place - a FROG mark four interceptor fighter plane - without its rubber band.

By the end of the week they had found most of Joe’s model planes, some of his soldiers and enough marbles for the two of them to play with. But Joe still hadn’t told Nelly that he was searching for the aeroplane Dad had made for him.

He took the rediscovered treasures home, cleaned them up and displayed them on the window-sill and mantelpiece in the bedroom he shared with Mum. He asked Nan if she had an old biscuit or tea tin she didn’t need. She couldn’t find anything suitable so she took him down to the corner shop, where the grocer offered him an Oxo tin. It was bright red and big enough for his soldiers. Joe decided to leave the model plane collection on the mantelpiece and to ask Granddad for one of his old tobacco tins for the marbles.

‘Where did you find all that stuff?’ Granddad asked.

‘I’ve been digging in the crater. The first things I found were marbles. That was quite easy because the sun shines on glass. I had to be careful of broken windows, but once I got going, I just kept finding more and more.’

The twinkle of interest in Granddad’s eyes dimmed. He gave Joe a lecture about the dangers of falling bricks, hidden holes in the ground and the possibility of V-1 attacks, even in the daytime. How would Joe get to the Anderson shelter in time if he was stuck down a hole?

His voice was steely but not angry. ‘I don’t want you going anywhere near bomb sites. Your mum would have a fit if she knew what you’ve been up to – and so would Nan. They’d both have my guts for garters. Have you been going down there all on your own?’

Joe said, ‘No. Nelly’s always there and she’s been helping me.’

Nan pushed open the scullery door, which had been left ajar, letting in the steamy scent of washing. She must have been listening.

‘Say that again,’ she said.

‘Nelly’s been helping me.’

Nan and Granddad shared one of those grown-up looks.

‘Go and wash your hands,’ Nan said. It was an order and he hurried in. Nan pushed the door to behind him. He could hear their muffled voices. There was more than a hint of surprise and worry.

‘Nelly?’ Granddad asked in a low voice.

‘You know,’ Nan said, ‘from next door’.

‘I know who Nelly is – was,’ said Granddad. ‘Do you think he might have concussion?’

‘It might be another little girl,’ said Nan. ‘Joe hasn’t seen Nelly in years.’

‘He seemed pretty sure it was her,’ replied Granddad. He went silent for a moment. ‘What are we going to say? How on earth are we going to break it to him that she died in the air raid?’