The Return of the Railway Children Read online

  To Hans, who was a “Railway Child” too –

  much love, LK

  “I wonder if the railway misses us …

  we never go to see it now.”

  The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (1906)

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  1. Goodbye, Piccadilly

  2. Smoke, Steam and Suitcases

  3. The Great Leap

  4. Three Chimneys

  5. The Railway Children Return

  6. Scrumping in Springtime

  7. Headquarters

  8. The Dark Demon

  9. The Telegram

  10. Missing

  11. The Pig Club

  12. Secret Codes

  13. The Storm

  14. “Our Duty In A Time Of War”

  15. A Bad Day

  16. A Happy Birthday

  17. The Very Last Dark

  18. The Fox

  19. The Lie Of The Land

  20. Maps and Plans

  21. Capture

  22. Beginnings and Ends

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Goodbye, Piccadilly

  They were not railway children to begin with.

  In fact, at first there was just one child. Edith lived alone with her mother in war-torn London while enemy planes dropped bombs on the city every night. Back then, if Edie thought about railways at all, it wasn’t roaring steam trains puffing past woods and country fields. It was more likely to be the underground sort, with dark tracks and gloomy tunnels running deep beneath the battered city streets. Edie spent so many long nights huddled in Piccadilly Tube station, amongst hundreds of other Londoners hiding from the air raids, that she began to forget what it was like to sleep in the comfort of her own soft bed.

  The Tube station was only a five-minute stroll across Piccadilly Circus from the tiny attic flat on Glasshouse Street where Edie lived with her mother. Yet, every time the siren sounded, there was always a mad last-minute dash to get safely underground.

  “Perhaps I ought to go down early next time and save us a good space,” said Edie one spring evening as the wailing siren warned them to hurry and take shelter yet again. She’d heard of other people doing this – old ladies or mothers nursing babies, staying in the station all day, holding on to the best sleeping spots right down on the platform, furthest underground, away from the bombs, but with a good wall to lean against while you slept.

  “Nonsense, sweetheart,” answered Phyllis – or Fliss, as Edie always called her mother. It was all she could manage when she’d try to say “Phyllis” as a little girl. She never called her “Mum” or “Mother” or “Ma”. Fliss seemed more like a big sister to Edie than that. “It’s a sweet thought, darling, but you’d die of boredom.” Fliss kissed the top of Edie’s head as she leant over her and reached a silk scarf from the peg behind the door.

  Trust Fliss to worry more about being bored than being hit by a bomb, thought Edie. She fidgeted anxiously with the buttons on her coat as Fliss stood in front of the mirror, tucking her long auburn hair under the scarf and putting a fresh dab of scarlet lipstick on her lips.

  “But once the siren’s sounded, it means German planes have already been spotted over the city. Bombs could start dropping at any moment,” Edie said, rushing to the sink and filling a big flask with cold water from the tap so they’d have something to drink. Fliss had promised to make tea earlier so that it would be ready to take with them if the air-raid warning came, but she must have forgotten about it. Edie sighed under her breath and snatched up a pile of blankets she had folded by the door, balancing the flask on top of them.

  “Nearly done.” Fliss patted her lipstick dry then sprinkled her handkerchief with a little Chanel perfume, the exotic French scent she always wore.

  “You don’t need perfume now!” groaned Edie. “Come on!”

  “I always need perfume!” Fliss’s blue eyes twinkled. “Especially now!” One of Fliss’s old friends was a pilot who had recently brought her a big bottle of the perfume from France, even though rationing was supposed to have made it almost impossible to get hold of. Fliss often got little gifts from her friends in the air force; before the war, she had learned to fly planes herself and had even crossed the channel to Paris in a tiny bright yellow biplane called a Tiger Moth. That’s the thing about Fliss, thought Edie: she’s always on the hunt for adventure.

  But with war raging in the skies above Britain, Edie couldn’t help feeling glad her mother’s flying days were over. Fliss was helping out in the offices at the Air Ministry instead. “The most excitement I get these days is flying a paper aeroplane!” she moaned on an almost daily basis.

  “Ready!” she cried now, putting a last drop of Chanel perfume behind her ear and grabbing Edie’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  They dashed out of their peacock-green front door, letting it bang closed behind them.

  Edie almost tripped, she ran so fast down the steep stairs from their attic flat. It was horribly busy as they darted across Piccadilly and squeezed into the Underground station. But Fliss led the way, smiling and greeting everybody as she ducked through the crowd in the ticket hall. By some miracle, they managed to find a spot just big enough for the two of them on the end of the platform against the wall.

  “See, you old worrier!” Fliss grinned and put her arm round Edie’s shoulder as they snuggled down together. “I told you we’d be all right.”

  “I know.” Edie couldn’t help smiling too. Things did have a habit of working out when Fliss was around. Edie gave a sigh of relief; she was glad they’d managed to get such a perfect spot. Without it, they’d have had to sleep on the escalators, where the sound of falling bombs could be heard all through the night. Edie shuddered at the thought. Even though it was hot and stuffy on the platform, at least it felt safe – like an underground cave, deep beneath the city – and you couldn’t hear a thing that was going on up above.

  The man beside them had turned his back and was already snoring loudly. Edie wished she could sleep like that, but she knew it would be a restless night. She didn’t really mind being squashed in amongst strangers, not if Fliss was here with her. She could just about bear the constant noise of rustling, chatter and snoring too – even the heat. But the worst thing about so many bodies being squeezed into the airless tunnels together was the smell. There were only a few makeshift toilets between everyone, and the stench from them filled the air. Some people brought their own chamber pots or tin buckets and used those, squatting on the edge of the platform, but Edie was so embarrassed by the thought, she’d rather have climbed back up to the street to be hit by a bomb. The best thing for it was to cross your legs, hold tight and pray for the all-clear siren.

  Meanwhile, she tried not to breathe too deeply and snuggled up against Fliss’s shoulder.

  “Here!” As if reading her thoughts, Fliss passed her the handkerchief she had sprinkled with Chanel. “Have a whiff of this.”

  Edie smiled as the rich, musky scent of the perfume filled her nostrils. She’d felt so cross with Fliss earlier, for not hurrying while the siren sounded and forgetting to make tea – the sort of practical things that everybody else’s mothers always seemed to do – but now she couldn’t think of anything better than having a squirt of exotic French perfume to sniff.

  “Trust you to think of it!” she whispered as Fliss stroked her hair.

  None of the other girls at school had mothers anything at all like Fliss. Even though she was at least ten years older than most of them, she seemed far more glamorous. They smelt of sickly-sweet lily-of-the-valley scent or plain carbolic soap – not expensive French
perfume.

  “My mother doesn’t approve of French perfume,” Edie’s form captain, Olive Paterson, had said once. “Nor red lipstick.”

  “Oh!” Edie had just nodded. But inside she felt as if she’d been punched. She knew that what Olive was really saying was that her mother did not approve of Fliss.

  Fliss wasn’t married. She never had been. Not even when Edie was born. She had always raised her alone, just the two of them.

  And if Edie ever tried to find out anything about her father, all Fliss would ever say was that he had been “no good”. “He fled like the wind as soon as I told him I was expecting his baby. If he’s foolish enough not to want to be part of our lives, my darling, then we don’t need him! We’re Fliss and Edie – just fine by ourselves.”

  And they were fine … mostly. But, as fine and happy as they were, Edie would still have liked to know more about her disappearing father. She wished there was a photograph at least, so she could see his face and imagine him sometimes. Or a name. She didn’t even have that. No one knew who he was – except Fliss of course. And maybe Aunt Roberta.

  Once, a year or so ago – before the war – when she’d thought Olive Paterson was going to be her best friend at school, Edie had tried to explain. “I don’t have a father, you see. Not really,” she began.

  But Olive had laughed so hard she nearly fell off her chair.

  “Of course you’ve got a father, Edie,” Olive sneered. “Everyone has a father, otherwise you wouldn’t have been born.”

  “I know that,” blundered Edie. “It’s just that mine is… ” She searched her mind, trying to come up with the right thing to say. “Mine has been mislaid!” Edie beamed, delighted to have thought of such a grown-up way of putting it.

  “Mislaid?” Olive laughed louder than ever. “You make him sound like a tatty old umbrella that’s been left on a train. Why don’t you go to the lost property office at Waterloo Station and see if somebody’s handed him in there?” Then she ran out into the playground screaming with laughter. For weeks after that, Olive and most of the rest of her form referred to Edie as Edith Umbrella.

  Yet, if the girls in her class were bad, their mothers were far worse. They were always looking down their noses at her, and Edie had even overheard two of them whispering about her at the school carol concert last year.

  “That’s the little girl who was born out of wedlock,” said one, pointing at her from behind her hymn book. “She lives alone with her unmarried mother.”

  “No better than a stray cat on the street,” hissed the other.

  Edie’s eyes had stung with tears, but she wouldn’t let herself cry. It would have seemed unfair to Fliss somehow. She always tried her best to be a good mother, even if she was a little disorganized and never sewed Edie’s name tapes on and burnt the cakes she’d baked for harvest festival. But there were so many other things she was good at – like flying aeroplanes and telling stories and making Edie laugh.

  It didn’t matter now, anyway. School was going to close after Easter because there weren’t enough girls to keep it going any more. Olive Paterson and her family had left London as soon as war broke out. They’d gone to live in their big manor house somewhere in Wiltshire.

  Good riddance! thought Edie. She wouldn’t miss Olive or her snooty friends one little bit.

  Lots of the other girls had gone away too, the rich ones to their own country houses or to boarding schools, far away from the bombs. A few had joined local evacuees being shipped off to farms and villages. But Fliss had promised she wouldn’t send Edie away. They would stay here together and muddle through somehow.

  “Close your eyes,” Fliss whispered now, waving the scented hankie under Edie’s nose. “Smell this and imagine we are not in this horrid old Tube station after all … we’re in the Café de Paris.”

  “Oh, I wish we were!” Edie closed her eyes and sniffed deeply. She loved going to the Café de Paris. Fliss knew a pretty young chorus girl there called Lottie, and they often went to watch her dance. The basement jazz club was just about the most glamorous place on earth, with glass lights shaped like flower petals and a sweeping double staircase, which Edie always worried she would fall down, headfirst, tripping over her own feet. They had sheltered there all night during an air raid last week. While Fliss and Lottie danced until dawn, Edie had curled up on a makeshift bed of soft fur coats in the cloakroom. The cafe was so deep underground it was said to be bombproof.

  “Go to sleep and pretend you’re there now!” whispered Fliss, waving the handkerchief again and swaying gently as Edie dozed against her shoulder, slumped on the hard floor of the Tube station. Fliss began to hum the tune to “Oh, Johnny, Oh”, one of the songs which “Snakehips” Johnson, the famous band leader at the cafe, liked to play.

  Edie closed her eyes, listening as Fliss sang softly in her ear, and breathing in the rich musky scent of Chanel. As she drifted off to sleep, she imagined she really was in the cafe, amongst all the beautiful dancers, like Cinderella at a royal ball.

  Hours later, Edie woke with a start. She reached out, expecting to touch soft furs beneath her, but felt only the cold damp floor of the Underground station. Then she remembered where she was. She wasn’t in the Café de Paris at all. She was down in the Tube, squashed up on the platform like a sardine in a can.

  “Come on!” whispered Fliss. “The all clear’s sounded. We can go home.”

  It was morning as they stumbled back up the steps and out into the bright spring light and bustle of Piccadilly Circus. Signs of the war were all around: even the famous statue of Eros had been covered up with sandbags to keep the winged god safe from bombs.

  Edie blinked and rubbed her eyes. She always hated this moment, coming back above ground. What if their flat had been bombed in the night, and there was nothing left but sky and fallen rubble where her pretty blue bedroom had once been? She forced herself to look towards Glasshouse Street and breathed a sigh of relief. She could see the tip of the turret on their high attic roof, pointing proudly to the sky like a lighthouse.

  “All clear!” she murmured. But as soon as she glanced in the opposite direction she saw ambulances and fire engines streaming out of Coventry Street and down Haymarket to their right.

  “Somewhere close has been hit,” said a woman as she squeezed past them with a cat in a basket. “I’m just glad my Ginger was safe.”

  As they drew closer, Edie could see a barricade half-drawn across the road. People in suits and overalls were hurrying to work and, in amongst the hustle and bustle of the regular morning routine, wardens were shouting and waving their arms.

  “Direct hit last night! Hell of a mess,” sighed an ARP warden, as two firemen with blackened faces sat on the edge of the pavement nestling big tin mugs of tea.

  “Oh no!” whispered Edie. She bit her lip. Somehow she knew, even before they saw the shattered building, that it was the Café de Paris.

  “It can’t be true,” gasped Fliss, steadying herself against Edie’s shoulder.

  There was nothing left but the balcony, suspended like an arch in the sky. Three whisky glasses were still resting on a little table, which seemed to hang in mid-air as if waiting for the drinkers to return. In the crater below, the grand piano sat unharmed in the rubble, covered in shards of twinkling glass from the splintered flower-petal lights.

  “So much for being bombproof, eh?” shrugged the warden as they stood and stared. There was a horrible, thick, burnt smell of smoke and gas.

  “Did everyone get out?” asked Edie desperately. “Did they all get away?”

  The warden shook his head solemnly. “Not all, I’m afraid, miss. It took a direct hit. Right through the roof.”

  Edie shuddered. Then she saw Lottie, the chorus-line dancer they knew. She was standing on the opposite side of the street, shivering in her tiny dance costume, which was more like a ballet tutu than a real dress. The huge white ostrich feather in her hair was grey with dust. Fliss grabbed a blanket from an ambulance man and das
hed across the road to wrap it around Lottie’s shoulders.

  “It’s all right, poppet,” she whispered. “It’s all over now.”

  Edie followed. She stretched out her hand and rubbed Lottie’s back, just like Fliss did whenever she was sad. Tears streamed down the dancer’s pale, delicate face, clearing channels like little rivers through the dust and soot. “Me and the girls just missed it,” she sobbed. “We were waiting in the wings, about to come on. Another minute or so and we’d have been on stage… But Snakehips was right there. Right underneath it. He was just starting the opening bars of ‘Oh, Johnny, Oh!’” She gulped for breath. “And poor Mr Poulson, the manager, too.”

  Edie felt sick. She wanted to turn and run away but she couldn’t move. She stood rooted to the spot as Lottie shook her head and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand.

  “God rest their souls,” Lottie whispered, and she staggered away up the street.

  “Poor lass,” said the warden. “Anyone who got out was lucky to survive.”

  “Buckingham Palace was hit too,” said a fireman who was searching through the rubble. “But the Royal Family are safe.”

  “God save the King!” roared a soldier with a bandage over one eye. Edie wasn’t sure if he’d come from the cafe or just been walking down the street, but he was swigging from a dusty bottle of champagne that he must have found in the rubble. He offered Fliss a sip but she shook her head.

  “Let’s go home, sweetie.” She grabbed Edie’s hand. “There’s nothing we can do here. It’s just too beastly.”

  As Fliss pulled her away, Edie spotted a high-heeled silver shoe lying in the gutter. Just one, as if it had been dropped by Cinderella at the ball … except that it was covered in dust and soot.

  She shivered.

  “That’s it! I’m getting you out of this city,” said Fliss, almost dragging Edie back past the boarded-up statue of Eros.

  “You mean we’re leaving?” said Edie. “When?” But Fliss didn’t even seem to hear her.

  “I should have done it months ago,” she said, talking more to herself than to Edie. “What kind of mother am I?”