The Time Travelling Teacher · The Time Travelling Teacher “Run, Rabbit, Run” 1. The lesson...
Transcript of The Time Travelling Teacher · The Time Travelling Teacher “Run, Rabbit, Run” 1. The lesson...
The Time Travelling Teacher
“Run, Rabbit, Run”
1.
The lesson staggered to its end and, as the bell rang, the children gathered their belongings
from the cloakroom and formed what could only be described as a loosely gathered collection
of boys and girls – it certainly wasn’t the line that he hoped every day that they could make, a
line which would snake tidily from the door, along the front wall of the classroom and end,
finally, by his desk. He called for a little quiet, waited until the boys at the back had
eventually finished discussing what tactics they would employ on Fortnite when they got
home, and then led them through the school and onto the playground, where some were
collected by their waiting parents, while others declared that they were “Walking!”. He
watched them all leave, bidding some of them goodbye and waving at others as they trotted
off across the concrete and disappeared out of the school gate. Then, when they had all gone,
he turned and made his way slowly back to his classroom.
Mr Rabbit - yes, that was really his name and he cursed his parents every day that they
hadn’t been called something normal, like Jones or Robinson, or Montague-Smythe – had
been a teacher for over twenty years and in all that time there hadn’t been a day when he
hadn’t wished that he’d paid more attention at school so that he could have been a scientist,
or a doctor, or a lawyer. He hadn’t been an unintelligent boy – which is why, in the end, he’d
been able to become a teacher – but he’d never really given any thought to what he wanted to
do when he left school (although cowboy and science fiction writer had often been the things
he’d mentioned when asked). As a consequence, he hadn’t chosen the subjects he’d studied
with any great care, instead giving greater consideration to which teachers he’d liked rather
than to any possible career path that he might have followed, and so it was that he had
become the proverbial Jack of All Trades and Master of None. With no obvious next steps (a
promising career as a table tennis star had been ruined before it began by his utter lack of
hand-eye co-ordination) the teaching profession beckoned and he grabbed – surprisingly
easily considering his inability to hit a ping pong ball – the opportunity with both hands.
The rest, as they say, was history.
Although, as a teacher of Year Six children, he taught every subject, not just history.
Mr Rabbit, and I really must make this clear from the start, was a tall man, with what could
only be described as a rather round tummy. His once dark brown hair was now almost
entirely grey – a change for which he often blamed his pupils – and his blue eyes sparkled
(or, at least, they shone a little bit under the bright classroom lights). Contrary to his name –
and just to reinforce that he was, in fact, a man and not a member of the rabbit family – his
ears, whilst a little large, were not long and pointed, and his teeth were quite straight and not
in the slightest bunny-like. Generally, he would wear a loose fitting grey suit – all the better
to hide his expanding waistline – over a crumpled white shirt and, very occasionally, he
would mix it up by adding a matching waistcoat to the ensemble. In short, he was a mostly
unremarkable looking man.
What was remarkable about him, however, was that he was one of those teachers that his
pupils actually liked. He liked to think that he was, as all good teachers should be, a fair man,
but one who would brook no argument over discipline; a teacher who liked to make lessons
fun, instead of simply regurgitating facts and figures for the sake of it; an educator and an
entertainer. Now, of course, as they tend to be, the children in his care were often reluctant to
show how much they liked him to his face – hence the inability to line up properly, the
distinct lack of silence when called for, and the obvious disinterest in the face of any kind of
school work – but they were always sad to leave his class at the end of the year and their
parents were always very complimentary about his efforts. Most importantly (from Mr
Rabbit’s perspective, anyway) they respected him enough to never mock him for his name
and, for the most part, his classes would even agree to call him Mr R. It certainly made a
change from when he had been at Primary School himself and the other children had relished
in their ability to tell him to “Hop it!” every time he asked if he could play.
As he walked back into his classroom, Mr R wasn’t surprised to find a small group of
children sitting around one of the desks. It was club night, after all, and he had made sure that
he had signed up to do his bit by running an after school activity. What he was surprised by,
however, was how few children had actually turned up. He quickly counted in his head, then
double-checked the umber on his fingers. One … two … three. Yes, he’d definitely been
right the first time.
Three.
And they weren’t even his favourite three.
Now, of course, they weren’t his favourite three children because, like every sensible
teacher, he didn’t have favourite pupils, but if he’d had to pick three children to be stuck in
an adventure with – and I hope I haven’t given away where this story is heading by using that
word – or even in an after school club, it certainly wouldn’t have been these three.
Mr Rabbit smiled at them and hoped that it was a more convincing smile than it felt. “Is
this all of you?” he asked.
The three children – two boys and a girl – looked around the classroom and then, as one,
shrugged.
Mr Rabbit tried again. “Do you know if anyone else is joining us?”
One of the boys shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. “Dunno.”
The girl raised her hand and Mr Rabbit nodded. She didn’t speak, and so he nodded at her
again. When she still didn’t speak, he sighed. “Yes, Stella, how can I help you?”
The girl, whose name was Stella – Mr Rabbit hadn’t just picked a random name to call her
because, if he had, it would most likely have been Barry – leaned forward in her seat. “Oh,
yeah, right,” she began, acknowledging that she had been called upon to speak. Stella was
one of the children in Year Six but not in Mr Rabbit’s class. He’d seen her in the cloakrooms,
pushing the other children out of her way to get at her coat, and had heard her through the
wall, her high-pitched shriek almost loud enough to crack the windows, but he’d never had
the pleasure of teaching her. “What club is this?” she asked.
Mr Rabbit rubbed at his ear, trying to get rid of the ringing, and then opened his mouth,
about to speak. The words, however, failed to arrive. It wasn’t unusual for his pupils not to
know what lesson they were being taught – he veered off onto so many tangents that a simple
Science lesson could easily end up in a discussion about geography or, in some cases, even
PE – but he thought that all the children would know which clubs they had signed up for. It
was their choice, after all.
“Yeah,” one of the boys chimed in. His name was Gareth, although his friends all called
him Gruff, mostly because he had a lot of dark brown hair which made him look a little bit
like the Gruffalo. Gareth was in Mr Rabbit’s class and had spent much of the year acting as if
he didn’t know very much. Mr R wasn’t entirely sure that it was an act. “What club is this?”
he asked, repeating Stella’s question.
With another sigh, Mr Rabbit held his hands up in despair. “It’s History club,” he told
them, trying – but failing – to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “What club did you
think it was?”
The boy who had shuffled in his seat was now leaning back on his chair, only one of its
feet still touching the floor. This was Martin, a boy whose reputation for misbehaviour was
legendary. It was alleged that he was attempting to break the school’s record for collecting
Red Cards, and there were some stories that suggested he had been responsible for the rule
that no-one was allowed to bring pencil cases into school, after the Headteacher had seen
what he kept in his (although this story had never fully been substantiated). Fortunately for
Mr Rabbit, he had managed to avoid teaching Martin throughout his time at the school. It was
only a matter of months, though, before he would be in Year Six and then Mr R would have
nowhere to hide.
“My Mum told me I had to come,” Martin mumbled through the chewing gum that he was
busily chewing. “Didn’t matter what the club was!”
“Me too,” echoed both Stella and Gareth.
“As I say,” Mr Rabbit told them, reaching for the button to turn on his Smart Board, “this
is History club.”
“’Istory?” asked Martin, his chair swivelling beneath him. “What’s the point in that? Why
ain’t it football, or basketball, or …”
“Some other kind of ball?” Mr Rabbit completed the sentence for him. “We can call it
History-ball if that makes it better for you?”
“What’s that then?” Gareth grunted.
Mr Rabbit shook his head. “It’s what’s known as a joke, Gareth,” he explained, turning his
back on the children and watching as the Smart Board slowly began to come to life. It began
to glow and within seconds, pictures began to form on the screen – pictures which Mr Rabbit
had prepared earlier, of Henry VIII, of a spitfire caught up in a dogfight, of the great Fire of
London, of a variety of different historical events. “There are no balls in this club, it’s just
about things that happened in the past.”
“What?” called Stella, her voice echoing around the almost empty classroom again. “Like
when you were born?”
The three children laughed and Mr Rabbit managed a strained smile. They were starting to
give him a headache but he wasn’t going to let that put him off. He loved History. All those
things that had happened in the past to shape their present: the Kings and Queens who had
dictated the laws; the scientists who had discovered how the world worked; the wars which
had moulded the way the planet was today. There were so many things to learn, and so much
to teach to anyone who was interested. He hoped – although he knew it was most likely a
vain hope – that Stella, Gareth and Martin would quickly come to realise just how lucky they
were to have been put in his club.
Without warning, the Smart Board screen began to flash. Mr Rabbit moved towards it,
reaching for the button to switch it off, but before he could something even stranger
happened. The room began to spin, and the pictures which had been forming on the Smart
Board suddenly leapt from the screen and into the room. Henry VIII danced a jig around the
room, pausing only to loom over Stella and shout “Off with her head!” The spitfire swooped
low over the desks, rattling its machine guns and leaving what Mr Rabbit could only hope
weren’t bullet holes across the backs of his bookcases. A caveman reared up behind Gareth
and grunted something incomprehensible, to which Gareth replied with something equally
incomprehensible. And then, outside the classroom window, Samuel Pepys began hammering
on the glass, yelling something about how London was burning and they should fetch the
engines.
“Well,” Mr Rabbit thought, as everything suddenly went black and he felt himself fall to
the floor, “that’s never happened before.”
2.
When Mr Rabbit finally opened his eyes, he wasn’t at all surprised to find Stella, Gareth
and Martin standing over him, looking worried. What surprised him more was what he saw
behind them.
Behind Martin’s head stood what appeared to be a small stone building, cuboid in shape,
with a narrow opening hallway up its wall and a flat roof; over Stella’s shoulder he noticed
seagulls flying in a blue sky; and just beyond Gareth, Mr Rabbit was almost certain that he
could see the rolling grey waves of the ocean. None of these things in themselves were
unusual. What surprised Mr Rabbit was that they were in his classroom. He sat up slowly and
looked around, taking in the fact that his desks, chairs and even the walls of his classroom
had disappeared, to be replaced by an almost empty, green field, a clear (aside from the
screeching gulls – blue sky and, rather too close for comfort, a cliff top. He blinked, half-
expecting his classroom to reappear when he opened his eyes again.
It didn’t.
Mr Rabbit, however didn’t panic.
Instead, he did the next best thing which was to leap up from the grass, stumble backwards
away from the cliff edge and then fall into a heap again. His jacket fell over his head, hiding
his face from sight and, for a few moments, all the children could hear from beneath the grey
material were mumbled phrases, such as “I must be dreaming”, “I’ll wake up soon” and “It’s
all a big practical joke, like that time they tipped Mr Thorne’s car onto its roof!”.
The three children waited patiently and finally he pulled the jacket away from his face and
stared at them, his eyes wide.
“How on earth,” he demanded, “did we get here?”
“We thought it was a school trip,” Martin replied, shrugging. “You know, like when we
went to the zoo – only with less animals and no long, boring coach ride.”
Mr Rabbit’s mouth dropped open, only marginally wider than his eyes. “But I just closed
my eyes …”
“That’s what my Mum says when we go to my Gran’s,” Stella told him. “It’s a long way
away and I hate having to go, but she says ‘Just close your eyes for a minute and then we’ll
be there,’ and do you know what?”
Mr Rabbit shook his head.
“She’s never right. It always takes forever!”
“Was there,” Mr Rabbit asked, “a point to your story?”
“Only that you shutting your eyes probably isn’t why we’re here,” Stella replied, looking
around. “Wherever we are.”
She was, Mr Rabbit had to admit, absolutely correct. Unless he was actually asleep and
this was all a dream, which he very much doubted because he wasn’t in the habit of dreaming
about being at the seaside with three of his (least favourite) pupils, then closing his eyes
hadn’t brought them here. He shut them again, though, just on the off-chance that when he
opened them the four of them would have been transported back to school. As he slowly
lifted his eyelids and saw Martin, Stella and Gareth still standing in a field in front of him, he
realised that, rather than relying on magic and hope, he was actually going to have to do
something practical to get them home.
He patted the pockets of his suit and let out a small yelp of triumph. From inside his jacket
pocket, he pulled his mobile phone.
“Well, wherever we are,” he told the children, echoing Stella’s words, “and however we
got here, we can at least call someone to come and get us!”
He swiped and pressed the screen, and then held the phone to his ear. Aside from the crash
of the waves, the screech of the gulls and the sound of Gareth chewing something rather
sticky, there was silence.
Mr Rabbit looked at the phone, not at all surprised to be greeted by the notice that there
was ‘No Signal’. He held the phone up in the air, hoping that bars would appear and, when
none did, he waved the phone around his head, desperately trying to find even the slightest
bit of signal.
Nothing.
No bars.
No signal.
No luck.
Mr Rabbit could feel his face growing red as his fingers tightened around the utterly
useless piece of glass, plastic and wiring that he was holding up in the air. He was just
imagining the great satisfaction it would give him to throw the phone onto the floor and
dance up and down on it when he heard a sound. Not, he reflected sadly, the sound of his
phone ringing, nor that of a friendly, laughing voice calling across the field to him to say that
the joke was over and it was time to go home now. Instead, it was a sound which he hadn’t
heard for quite a long time, not since he’d been on holiday to Yorkshire and taken a ride on a
real-life steam train, in fact.
Spinning around, it took him only a moment to locate where the sound was coming from.
There, in the distance, just beyond the small, stone building, he could see a really rather
old-fashioned train, steam trailing out behind it as it raced along a track, heading, if he
guessed correctly, for what looked very much like a railway station. It was this train that he
had heard, blowing its whistle to announce its arrival at its destination and it was this train
that suddenly offered Mr Rabbit hope that the four of them might just get home before it got
dark. The station stood about a mile away – Mr Rabbit was guessing that it was a mile,
anyway, but he wasn’t a geography teacher and so not the best at judging distance – and if
they could cover that distance quite quickly then perhaps they could catch the train and let it
take them at least some of the way home.
Mr Rabbit pointed towards the train and the station. “Look!” he exclaimed.
The three children stared at where he was pointing. “What’s that then?” asked Gareth,
through a mouthful of chewing gum.
“It’s a railway station, Dumbo!” Stella replied. “Ain’t you never seen one before?”
“Nah, we don’t go on railways,” Gareth answered her, shaking his head. “We only go on
trains.”
Before Stella could comment further, Mr Rabbit interrupted them. “If we can get to the
station,” he told them, dropping his phone back into his pocket, “we should be able to catch a
train.”
He started off in the direction of the station, signalling that they should follow him. “At the
very least,” he continued, “we should be able to find out where we are. And they’ll probably
have a telephone so we can phone your parents and let them know what’s happened. Not that
I really know. But we can tell them where you are. They might offer to come and get us. And
if they don’t, I’ll phone Mrs Hardacre. She might be able to help.”
Mrs Hardacre was the Headteacher of the school where Mr Rabbit went through the
motions of teaching and where the three children socialised with their friends. She was,
unfortunately, the stereotypical Headteacher (you’ll know the sort if you’ve read any books
where the children are the heroes and their teachers are there to stop them having fun). She
was stern of face and stern of attitude, quick to dish out punishment while reluctant to dish
out praise, and her heart was the stone that Mr Rabbit often used to explain what a metaphor
was. He didn’t genuinely believe that she would help them – he wasn’t quite that naïve – but
he was still in something of a state of panic at finding himself in the middle of nowhere with
three children and no risk assessment and he really wasn’t sure what he was saying anymore.
The three children laughed at the foolishness of his suggestion, but set off behind him
nonetheless. They knew that Mrs Hardacre was never going to come galloping to their rescue
– not on a horse, you understand, that was just how she moved – but there was a good chance
that Mr Rabbit would be able to find someone to come and get them.
They could never have guessed, however, what it was that they would find.
*
“It’s called a pillbox,” Mr Rabbit explained as they trudged across the field towards the
railway station. Stella had made the mistake of asking what the small, concrete building they
had seen was and he had taken upon himself to educate the children as – he hoped – they
made their way home. “That one would have been used as a beach defence during World War
Two. They would have had machine guns inside and would have been used to hold back any
invading soldiers. Did you know that, in 1940, almost twenty thousand were built? And it
was because of the pillbox – as well as the spitfires and other planes that defended the skies –
that Britain wasn’t invaded during the war!”
He was excited to share his knowledge with the children but he could tell from their
expressions that they weren’t interested in what he had to say. It wasn’t uncommon – Mr
Rabbit often found that he couldn’t enthuse the children just through his own love of a
subject. He was a firm believer that they had to experience something to fully understand it,
and that was why he insisted on taking them on so many field trips and educational visits, to
local battlefields, to museums and even, on one memorable occasion, as far as Hadrian’s
Wall. It had been a few years ago, and part of the annual Year Six residential trip, and it was
enough to say that his idea of dressing some of the children as Romans and some as invading
Celts hadn’t been one of his best notions. Since then, residential trips had consisted of a few
days at an outward bound centre, where no-one could do serious injury with a sharpened stick
to anyone else.
Finally, and in silence, they reached the station. Mr Rabbit looked at the sign on the station
wall – it read St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme, a place he had never heard of – and then led the
children through an old wooden gate and onto the platform where, almost immediately, they
dashed away from him, running the length of the station and up onto the bridge which
spanned the rails. Mr Rabbit walked slowly behind them, looking for either a working
telephone or, failing that, a ticket office. Unfortunately, there were none of the former and the
door to the latter was firmly locked. He rattled the handle impatiently, hoping that it would
miraculously unlock and then, when the miracle failed to happen, he turned away and looked
at the timetable that was pinned to the wall next to the door. With his finger, he found St.
Martin’s-Under-Lyme and then traced the list of names below it until he reached another
name he recognised – Waterloo. If they could get there, he reasoned, then they could get
home. Quickly, he scanned the train times, glanced up at the clock hanging from one of the
beams that supported the station’s roof, and calculated how long it would be before the next
train.
Only twenty minutes to wait!
He was just patting his pockets to check that he had his wallet with him when he heard a
voice from the other end of the platform. He looked up in time to see Gareth dangling from
the underside of the bridge’s stairs and a man, dressed in a dark blue uniform with red piping,
shouting at him to get down at once. Shaking his head in dismay, Mr Rabbit set off along the
platform.
“Gareth, get down from there!” he called, as he approached the man and offered an
apology. “I’m so sorry, I sometimes think he has a little bit of ape in him! I’ll try to keep
them under control while we wait.”
The uniformed man grunted, looking over Mr Rabbit’s shoulder and the teacher followed
his gaze. On the other side of the tracks, he could see Stella and Martin dangling their legs
over the edge of the platform. He shook his head again.
“I really am sorry about this,” he told the uniformed man. “They’re not used to … erm …
all the fresh air! Martin, Stella, come here!”
The two children stared at him, almost as if they didn’t understand the instruction.
“Now!” he shouted. Reluctantly, the children pulled themselves up from the edge of the
platform.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” the uniformed man asked. “Are you just down
from London?”
Mr Rabbit nodded. “To be honest, we’re a little bit lost,” he explained, choosing not to
mention that he had no idea of how they had even got there. The man didn’t seem too pleased
to see them anyway – Mr Rabbit didn’t want to give him any more reason to be surly with
them.
“I thought you might be.” The man’s voice had a slight West Country accent to it, and Mr
Rabbit wondered if perhaps they were in Somerset or somewhere similar. “Everyone else has
already gone down to the village. You should be meeting in the Village Hall.”
With a frown, Mr Rabbit asked, “Everyone else?”
“That’s right, all the other school children and teachers.”
“So, you’re saying that we’re not the only ones here?”
The man nodded. “Well, of course. You didn’t think you were the only ones here, did
you?”
Gareth had dropped down from the bridge and Stella and Martin had finally joined them.
“What’s he saying?” Stella asked.
Mr Rabbit shook his head, utterly confused. He really didn’t understand what was going
on. The last thing he could definitely remember was being in his classroom, just about to start
History club. After that, everything was a blur. How and why they were here was a mystery
to him. If they’d been on a coach, he didn’t remember, and he certainly couldn’t recall
organising any kind of educational visit to a place that he’d never even heard of.
Perhaps, he thought, Mrs Hardacre had arranged it without telling him. That definitely
sounded like something the Headteacher would do – after all, she certainly had a history of
organising things for her staff to do and not mentioning it to them until the very last moment.
He vividly recalled the time he’d been expected to put on a production of The Lion King, for
the whole school and their parents, with only three days’ notice … but at least he could
remember having to do that. This was different – but it didn’t mean that Mrs Hardacre wasn’t
behind it.
He shook his head, looking at the blank faces of the three children. “It seems you were
right,” he said, finally accepting what he thought was probably the truth of the situation. “It is
a school trip!”
3.
The Village Hall sat in the centre of the village of St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme, in the middle
of a small patch grass which, according to a road sign, was the Village Green. The uniformed
man – who had finally introduced himself as Mr Carter, the station master – had offered Mr
Rabbit and the three children a ride into the village in the rear of his vintage, open-backed
truck (Mr Rabbit hadn’t seen one like it since he had been a boy, and even then it had been a
museum piece, only driven on special occasions by his Grandad) and, as he pulled the truck
over beside the Village Hall, Martin and Gareth leaped over the side and onto the grass,
laughing as they landed in a heap. Mr Rabbit climbed down from the back, helping Stella
down, and then walked round to the cab and, leaning in through the passenger’s side window,
thanked Mr Carter for his help. The station master grunted something in reply and then pulled
away, very slowly disappearing up the road.
Mr Rabbit turned to the children. “Right,” he said, helping the two boys to their feet, “let’s
go and see what’s going on.”
The children followed him into the hall.
Inside, it was a hive of activity. The hall was filled with children, all dressed in school
uniform – dark grey shorts, white shirts, light grey jumpers and stripy ties, for the most part –
amongst whom loitered some adults, who Mr Rabbit guessed were their teachers. They were
all women, wearing long, flowing dresses of muted colours, and looking rather nervous as
they tried to keep the children in check. Mr Rabbit didn’t recognise any of the other teachers
and, judging by the differences in the uniforms of the children, he guessed that they were
most likely all from different schools. As they bustled around the room, their voices a loud,
tuneless hum, the children and the adults had just one thing in common – a small box which
hung on a strap either from their shoulders or around their necks.
At the front of the hall, in front of a small raised platform which could, at a push, have
been described as a stage, stood another set of adults, nervously talking to each other and
looking out at the children gathered before them. On the stage stood three men and a woman.
One of the men was dressed in a smart, khaki uniform. He had a stick tucked under his arm
and a military style peaked cap upon his head. The woman was wearing a smart, floral dress
and straw hat, similar to the outfit Mr Rabbit’s Grandmother had worn on those occasions
they had been allowed to go for a drive in his Grandad’s truck. And finally, the other two
men were dressed in dark blue uniforms – not dissimilar to Mr Carter’s, but without the red
piping – and white, metal helmets. Wrapped around their arms were white bands with some
writing on which Mr Rabbit couldn’t read from this distance. He did, however, recognise the
uniforms as those of Air Raid Wardens.
Suddenly, things seemed to become a little clearer to Mr Rabbit. He still didn’t know how
they had come here, or indeed when it had been arranged or by whom, but it did seem
obvious that they had come to visit a recreation of life at home during the Second World
War. The children were all dressed as evacuees – the small boxes they carried were obviously
their gas masks – and the adults on the stage were the billeting officers, who would organise
for the children to be placed with local families (the adults in front of the stage, he guessed)
while they stayed in the countryside, away from the dangers of the cities. It was all very
realistic. There were no signs of any modern electronics – even the speakers on either side of
the stage looked as if they were of the era – and all of the clothes and uniforms seemed very
authentic. Mr Rabbit was very impressed and suddenly felt as if he, and his three children,
stood out like sore thumbs in their Converse, Nikes and, in Martin’s case, jeans.
Perhaps, he thought, there would be someone he could talk to about getting the right
costumes. At the very least, they ought to have gas masks.
As he began to push his way into the hall, a hush fell and the woman on the stage stepped
forward, a clipboard in her hand.
“Good morning,” she called. She had a posh voice, the tone clipped in exactly the way the
voices of the radio presenters of the thirties and forties had been. “My name is Mrs Worthing,
I am the billeting officer for St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme and it’s my job to place you with the
families with whom you will be staying.
“Firstly, I’d like to welcome you to the village of St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme. It’s lovely to
see so many of you here and we are very much looking forward to welcoming you to our
homes during these unusual and dangerous times. I realise that it will be scary for some, if
not all of you, but we will make sure that we do everything we can to make you feel
comfortable with us while you stay here in St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme. We want you to feel
like this is your home, no matter how long or short your stay may be, and if there is anything
at all that we can do to make things easier for you – absolutely anything at all – please don’t
hesitate to ask. We are here to help you, to look after you, and to make sure that you are safe
and, most importantly happy.”
Mrs Worthing paused, removed some sheets of paper from her clipboard, and handed them
to the three men on the stage. She then looked back out at the assembled crowd in front of
her.
“This is Captain Stewart of the Home Guard, and Mr Giles and Mr Worthing.” She smiled
broadly. “Yes, he is my husband. They are going to speak to your teachers and make sure that
everyone knows which adults they will be staying with and where they will be staying. When
you have met your adults, you’ll be able to gather your belongings and they’ll take you home.
If we’re all very quiet and sensible, it won’t take us very long at all.”
There was a buzz of excitement as the three men stepped down from the stage and began
to make their way through the crowds, speaking to the adults who were still busy shepherding
the children. Mr Rabbit looked around the hall and was surprised to see how into the re-
enactment some of the children were getting. Some of the children were grinning as they
were led off, obviously keen to experience what life had been like for the evacuees, but some
of the children looked petrified. As they were separated from their teachers, he could see
tears streaming down the faces of some of the youngest children there, and he could hear
their anxious voices asking if they had to go, as the adults they had been assigned to took
them by the hands and led them out of the hall.
Slowly, the crowd thinned as the children and their teachers left with their families, until
finally only Mr Rabbit and his three children were left. Mrs Worthing stepped down from the
stage and approached, flanked by her husband and the man she had called Captain Stewart.
They stopped in front of Mr Rabbit.
“Hello,” she greeted them politely. Her expression as she scanned her clipboard, however,
was a puzzled one. “You seem to be the only ones left! Have you come to us from London?”
“That’s right,” Mr Rabbit replied. “ Turnpike Lane Junior School. I’m Mr Rabbit.”
She looked again at the clipboard. “You don’t appear to be on our list,” she told him with a
frown. She sounded a little disappointed and Mr Rabbit couldn’t decide if it was because they
hadn’t been assigned to someone or if it was simply that they weren’t on her list and were
going to cause her some measure of trouble.
“I’m not sure who organised this for us,” he tried to explain, wondering if perhaps Mrs
Hardacre or one of her secretaries had put their name down as party leader instead of his. “If I
could just –“
Mrs Worthing snatched the clipboard away before he could take it from her. “This has
been arranged at the highest levels,” she snapped, her friendly expression suddenly slipping,
replaced by a more suspicious one. Her tone was accusatory when she continued. “If your
name isn’t on my list, then you’ve come to the wrong place. Perhaps you should have stayed
on the train until you reached the next stop. They may have been expecting you there.”
Mr Rabbit shook his head again – he seemed to be doing that a lot, he thought. “We
weren’t on the train,” he began.
“Not on the train?” Mrs Worthing’s eyes widened. “Then how did you get here?”
He was about to reply, and explain that he actually didn’t have any idea how they had got
there, when a hand touched his shoulder and a gentle voice stopped him.
“It’s all right, Mrs W.”
A man was suddenly at Mr Rabbit’s shoulder, and he immediately recognised him as the
third man from the stage, Mr Giles. He had an open face, with wide blue eyes and an easy
going smile. Like Mr Carter, he had a soft, West Country twang to his voice and, as he
slipped an arm casually over Mr Rabbit’s shoulder, the teacher felt suddenly reassured.
“Why don’t I look after this young fella and his charges? I’ve got a couple of spare beds
and I’m sure the missus can find a cot for the girl to sleep in.”
Mr Rabbit smiled and not just because he hadn’t been referred to as a young fella in a very
long time. Mr Giles had such a friendly manner about him that he was almost glad that they’d
been left off the list. This would be the perfect person to guide these three particular children,
and he was looking forward to learning everything he could from the man – although he
wondered if they were really going to be staying overnight, or if a coach would be sent to
collect them ready for home time. He would still need to have very firm words with Mrs
Hardacre when they got back to school, of course, but perhaps not being told what was
happening would work out for him for once.
“That’s awfully kind of you, Mr Giles,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. “If you were able
to look after us, we’d be really grateful to you.”
“That’s not a problem at all,” Mr Giles insisted, patting Mr Rabbit on the back. “As long as
that’s okay with Mrs W here?”
He looked at the woman who made a show of checking her list once more, before finally
nodding.
“I’ll have to telephone Mr Stephens, though,” she said, straightening her back and lifting
her nose rather snootily into the air. “Something has gone wrong somewhere and we ought to
know what.”
“Of course, Mrs W, you know what’s best.” Mr Giles put his hand on Mr Rabbit’s
shoulder once again. “Give your details to Mrs W here and I’ll be waiting outside. It’s just a
short walk back to the farm, we’ll be there in no time.”
He patted each of the children on the head as he passed them – surprisingly, none of them
attempted to bite him, or even flinched, as he did – and then Mr Rabbit turned to Mrs
Worthing, quickly giving her his full name, the names of the children and the name of the
school. When he had added Mrs Hardacre’s name to the list of details, he thanked her and led
the children out of the hall.
Mr Giles was leaning against the wall, waiting for them and, as they approached, he
beckoned for them to follow him.
4.
The farm was, as Mr Giles had suggested, a short walk away and, as they approached
down a narrow country lane, Mr Rabbit was again impressed by how authentic everything
looked. As they walked through a rickety wooden gate, the first thing they saw was an old red
tractor, attached to a rusty old trailer. The tractor was really nothing more than an engine,
four wheels – two about the size of Martin, and two much smaller and narrower – and a
bucket shaped seat. Emerging from the red case that barely covered the engine was a small
exhaust pipe, and under the seat were a couple of heavy looking springs which, Mr Rabbit
guessed, acted as the suspension. The trailer it was attached to was little more than a long
wooden board resting on top of two hard, rubber wheels.
Across the yard from the tractor sat a barn – or, at least, Mr Rabbit guessed it was a barn –
which was little more than a falling down wooden structure and, next to that, stood the
farmhouse. It was the stereotypical farmhouse, with a neat thatched roof and flower boxes at
the windows. The flower boxes, however, were empty of flowers and the windows had tape
plastered in crosses over them, replicating what Mr Rabbit recognised as the windows of the
period. Washing – clothes of the period, obviously – hung from a length of rope that
stretched from the side of the house to one of the walls of the barn and a metal tub sat
underneath the line and, as Mr Giles closed the gate behind them, a black and white collie
pranced across the yard and ran around the farmer’s feet, panting heavily.
Mr Giles waved a hand at everything they could see. “Home sweet home,” he told them,
then called, “Susan, I’m home!”
The door to the farmhouse swung open and a woman, dressed in black dungarees and what
appeared to be one of her husband’s plaid shirts, burst out and greeted Giles with her arms
wide. It was only then that she noticed Mr Rabbit and the children.
“Hello there!” she greeted them warmly. “And who do we have here?”
“This is Mr Rabbit,” Giles told her, pointing at the teacher. “And these three are …”
“Stella!”
“I’m Martin.”
“Gruff,” Gareth said, raising a hand.
“Why does that one bark?” asked Mrs Giles, pointing at Gareth. Then she ruffled his hair
and laughed. “Hello, all!” She peered at them closely. “Have you not got your cases with
you?”
Mr Rabbit looked momentarily blank and then smiled weakly. “We weren’t expecting to
stay long,” he told her, shrugging, “so we … erm … didn’t bring anything.”
“Not staying for long? I hope that’s the truth!” Mrs Giles laughed again. “Not that you’re
not welcome, of course. I just meant that I hope this war doesn’t last too long – all those
young boys.” She looked sad for a moment, but then her smile returned. “Not to worry, we’ll
find you something to wear if you’ve nothing of your own. Old Mr Giles there is about your
size and we’ve got plenty of children’s clothes from when ours were growing up. They’ll fit
you lot, I’m sure. Now, I bet you need to wash up after your long journey, don’t you?”
“Yes, please,” replied Mr Rabbit, suddenly feeling very dirty. “That would be lovely.”
“And I need a wee!” Martin was hopping back and forth, from foot to foot. “Desperately!”
“Well, if you follow the path around the side of the house, you’ll find the lav at the end of
the garden. Mind the hole, though. Mr Giles has just started digging out our shelter.”
Martin’s face creased into what could only be described as a disgusted frown. “In the
garden?” he asked.
“That’s right,” replied Mr Giles. “Where do you have your lav?”
Before Martin could say anything – and knowing Martin, it wouldn’t have been polite –
Mr Rabbit interrupted. “Why don’t you go and find it, Martin? You can let us know what it’s
like when you get back.”
“But –“
“It’s all part of the experience,” Mr Rabbit explained in a patient whisper, before Martin
could argue. “Everyone has outdoor toilets in the forties. Now, off you go.”
For a moment, Martin glared at his teacher. Then, grumbling something about how
experience was just another word for having a rubbish time, he stomped off around the side
of the house. Mr Rabbit watched him go before turning back to Mrs Giles.
“You said something about washing up?” he reminded her.
“That’s right,” she replied, already heading back into the farmhouse. “Follow me and I’ll
fetch you some warm water.”
*
When Mr Rabbit had finished washing – it wasn’t that unusual having to use a ceramic
bowl filled with warm water, although the harsh, unscented soap left his skin feeling a little
raw – he put on the clothes which Mr Giles had found for him (he loved the braces, thought
he’d probably rock the flat cap and decided it was a look he might go for when he got back to
school). Then, he found his way to the kitchen, where Martin, Gareth and Stella were sitting
at the table, tucking into some freshly baked bread and lumps of cheese. Mrs Giles was
standing over them, listening as Martin described in great detail his experience of using the
outside toilet. When he had finished, the children all laughed. Mrs Giles simply looked
puzzled, but didn’t comment. Instead, she looked up at Mr Rabbit with a smile.
“Can I get you some lunch, Mr Rabbit?”
He looked at the bread and cheese and felt his mouth watering. “I’d be happy with some of
this,” he told her, pulling up a chair and sitting beside Gareth. “If that’s okay?”
“Help yourself,” Mrs Giles replied, still smiling. “There’s plenty more where that came
from. It’s all made here on the farm.”
Mr Rabbit took a bite of the still warm bread. It was delicious and when he added some
cheese to it, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. A few minutes passed as they all sat
and chewed contentedly.
When they had finished eating, the children fussed over the collie dog – his name, Mrs
Giles told them, was Timmy, but when Mr Rabbit had asked if he was named for the dog in
the Famous Five, she had just looked at him blankly – and Mr Rabbit helped his hostess rinse
the plates that they had used. It was then that a thought occurred to him. Excusing himself, he
stepped outside and checked his phone. There was still no signal and, worse, the battery was
almost dead. He switched it off and went back into the farmhouse.
“Would you mind if I used your telephone?” he asked Mrs Giles. “I don’t seem to be able
to get any signal.”
Mrs Giles looked puzzled. “We don’t have a telephone,” she told him, almost as if he had
asked an incredibly stupid question. “You can send a telegram from the Post Office in the
Village, though.”
“I was hoping to call school and let them know what was happening. Perhaps one of your
neighbours has a phone?”
Mrs Giles shook her head. “Mrs Worthing – you’ve met her – at the Post Office has a
telephone, but I don’t think she’ll let you use it. Besides, your school will know you’re here –
she’ll have been on to that nice Mr Stephens in London and let him know already.”
“Mr Stephens?” Mrs Worthing had also mentioned him but Mr Rabbit still didn’t know
who he was.
“He’s the one as organises the evacuees for St. Martin’s,” she explained. “Mrs Worthing
will have let him know you’re safe and sound with us. Now, don’t you worry.”
Mr Rabbit wanted to respond, at the very least to commend Mrs Giles on her commitment
to her role, but he decided not to for now. Perhaps, he thought, the staff at this experience had
to stay in character while the children were around and, after they had gone to bed, he would
be able to find out a little bit more about how things worked here. And, when everyone was
out of character, perhaps they might let him use a phone. For now, though, he would play
along.
“I’m sure she will,” he replied, taking a plate from her and drying it with the rough cloth
she had given him. “I’ll check with her later.”
Mrs Giles nodded and passed him another plate.
5.
For the rest of the afternoon, Mr Rabbit and the children explored the farm, tramping
through the acres of grass, encountering different animals grazing in different fields. Stella
insisted that they stay and talk to the sheep for almost an hour, and the two boys laughed – a
lot – when Mr Rabbit stepped in cow poo as they ran through the cow’s field, trying to avoid
the attentions of what Gareth had described as “a massive bull” but which turned out to be
nothing more than one amongst a dozen other cows.
As Mr Rabbit had grumbled and attempted to clean his dirty Converse by dragging it
through the long grass, the children had talked about what they would do if they had to stay
on the farm for longer than just that afternoon. Martin had suggested finding a football and
setting up goals in the farmyard – using their jumpers, of course – so that they could have a
kick-around; Gareth had been keen on that idea but had also suggested playing hide and seek,
although he had given away that he would hide in the barn before he’d even finished telling
them his idea; and, most surprisingly of all, Stella had told the boys that they could find some
of the other children they’d seen earlier and perhaps make plans with them. Mr R had been
most impressed with that suggestion – he hadn’t expected these three children to want to stay
on the farm, let alone socialise with anyone. If the coach didn’t come and pick them up
before bedtime, then he would certainly be encouraging them to mix with the other children
on the trip. It would do them good to spend some time with children from other schools and,
he hoped, they might even learn a few manners!
Finally, the light began to grow dim and the four of them made their way back to the
farmhouse, where Mrs Giles was busily preparing them a dinner of what looked and smelled
very much like roast chicken. Mr Rabbit imagined that the chicken had probably been
pecking at the ground somewhere on the farm earlier that day, but didn’t mention it to the
children. While they went to wash their hands, Mr R stood in the kitchen, watching Mrs Giles
busy at work, and feeling very much like a spare part, until eventually she shooed him away,
reminding him that he had wanted to return to the village and speak to Mrs Worthing. He had
nodded his agreement and set off confidently from the farmhouse, reaching into his pocket
for his phone to check both for missed messages and to see if any signal had returned. Before
he could look at it, though, the farmer’s wife was chasing down the lane, calling after him.
He stopped, returned the phone to his pocket, and listened carefully as she spoke slowly and
patiently to him, giving him directions to the Post Office – not because he’d asked for them,
but because, even though it had only been a short walk from the village to the farm, his sense
of direction had already failed him and he had set off in the wrong direction. If he’d
continued going that way, Mrs Giles, explained, he would have found himself on a Cliffside
somewhere near Great Yarmouth.
So they weren’t in Somerset at all, he realised as he turned round and headed in the right
direction. If his Geography was correct – which, given that he hadn’t even been able to walk
in the right direction to find the village, it probably wasn’t! – they were actually somewhere
in Norfolk. It was reassuring to have some idea of where they were, he thought, but it didn’t
help with the how they had got there. Or the why.
Eventually, the village came into sight, and Mr Rabbit made for where he thought the Post
Office ought to be – although when he found himself on the far side of the Village Green and
then heading away from it, down a narrow alleyway, he realised that perhaps he hadn’t
listened carefully enough to Mrs Giles’ instructions. He turned around and made for the
Green again, pausing as he reached the edge of the grass.
It was starting to get dark by now and none of the streetlamps that surrounded the grassy
area had come on, making it difficult for Mr Rabbit to see anything further than a couple of
metres ahead. He was again impressed by the authenticity of the experience. Of course there
wouldn’t have been street lights at this time of day, because there would have been a black
out in force. As dusk settled, lights would have been going out across the entire country.
Blackout curtains would have been drawn across windows, lights in houses only used
sparingly and, even then, only behind those curtains, and there certainly wouldn’t have been
outside lights to draw the attention of approaching aircraft. Nobody wanted the Luftwaffe –
the German air force who took to the skies daily – to be able to use their lights as a reference
point for an attack. Children had been evacuated to the countryside to escape from the
constant barrage of bombs falling on the cities, that danger didn’t need to be invited here by
the careless use of uncovered lights.
Mr Rabbit peered into the half-darkness and finally located what he thought was a red
pillar box standing outside a small brick building. He began to pick his way carefully across
the Green, anxious not to get any more mess on his Converse, but as he reached the entrance
to the Village Hall, he stopped. The door was open just a crack and, from inside, a sliver of
light spilled onto the pavement. For a moment, Mr Rabbit was tempted to leave the door open
– after all, everyone here was just acting and there wasn’t really any danger from German
aeroplanes. Everyone else, though, was taking the re-enactment very seriously, he realised,
and he didn’t want to be a spoilsport. Maybe, he thought, it might even be a test, to see if
anyone would take responsibility and actually do something about the light.
There might, he decided, even be a prize for the school who did notice and act upon it –
there had always been prizes on the other residential trips he’d been on. It was true that those
prizes were for swimming, or climbing, or dancing, or being victorious in a pitched battle
between Romans and Celts, but they were prizes nonetheless. And Mr Rabbit loved to win
prizes!
He stepped up to the door to pull it closed but, as he reached for the handle, he paused.
From inside, he could hear two voices, a man and a woman, and it sounded like they were
arguing. Their voices were certainly raised and there was something harsh about the man’s
tone, almost as if he were trying to keep his temper but not really doing a very good job of it.
Normally, Mr Rabbit would have left them to it – their argument was nothing to do with him,
and he still needed to phone school and speak to Mrs Hardacre – but even as he was thinking
this, he recognised the woman’s snooty tone.
It was Mrs Worthing.
Quickly and quietly, he slipped into the hall and pulled the door closed behind him. At the
front of the hall, next to the stage, stood Mrs Worthing and a man that Mr Rabbit didn’t
recognise, deep in discussion.
Neither of them noticed Mr Rabbit.
“It must happen on schedule,” the man was insisting. “We must carry out our orders. It is
vital to the war effort that everything goes according to plan!”
“I understand that,” Mrs Worthing replied, “but we must also be careful. This isn’t –“
Mr Rabbit cleared his throat and stepped forward, interrupting them.
“I’m really sorry to disturb you,” he apologised with a shy smile. “I was wondering if I
could have a word with Mrs Worthing?”
Both Mrs Worthing and the man looked at him, shocked by the sudden interruption. The
man’s face went bright red, but Mrs Worthing stepped forward, quickly regaining her
composure. Before Mr Rabbit could take another step into the hall, she was upon him,
guiding him towards the door.
He didn’t notice the other man sidling towards the rear of the hall and disappearing behind
the curtains.
“It was Mr Rabbit, wasn’t it?” Mrs Worthing said, switching off the lights of the hall,
opening the door and almost physically pushing him through it. “I thought you’d gone with
Mr Giles?”
Mr Rabbit watched as she closed and locked the hall door. He couldn’t help wondering
what the other man was doing inside, but he didn’t ask. He was probably preparing some
activity or other for the children to do tomorrow and he really didn’t want to spoil any of the
surprises.
“Yes, that’s right,” he replied, following Mrs Worthing as she began to walk away. “Mr
Giles has kindly said we can stay at his farm, but I was very keen to get in touch with my
school to let them know we arrived safely.” He thought it was easier to play along with the
story that they had been evacuated, rather than try to explain the complexities of working
with Mrs Hardacre. “Mrs Giles suggested you might have a telephone I could use.”
Mrs Worthing stopped and stared at him, although for a moment it looked as if she might
have been looking over his shoulder towards the Village Hall. He glanced over his shoulder
but could only see the building, standing in darkness, at the centre of the Green.
“Mr Rabbit, I can assure you that your school knows where you are and that you are safe.
Mr Worthing and I contacted all of the schools, including yours, to let them know you were
here and billeted. You really have nothing to worry about.”
She was, Mr Rabbit guessed, aiming for reassurance but all he could hear in her voice was
impatience. The way that she shifted from foot to foot as if she were keen to get away didn’t
detract from that impression.
“I was just a little worried, because you said that you had no record of us,” he began, but
before he could explain any further Mrs Worthing cut him off.
“It’s all been sorted out now, Mr Rabbit. Mr Stevens in London assures me that you are
where you are supposed to be. Mr Giles will take care of you now and will be able to answer
any more of your questions, and we’ll look forward to seeing you in the school house on
Monday morning.” She paused and offered him what he imagined was supposed to be a kind
smile. It looked more like a sneer, but that could just have been the light. “Now,” she
continued, “if there’s nothing else, I really ought to be getting home to Mr Worthing.”
Mr Rabbit had hundreds of other questions – where were they, how had they got here,
what were they doing here and who had sent them were just four – but he could see from Mrs
Worthing’s face that she wasn’t going to answer anything else. Instead of questioning her
further, then, he nodded and thanked her for her help.
“You’re welcome,” she replied, glancing again over his shoulder. “I will see you on
Monday. Have a nice weekend.”
And with that, Mrs Worthing hurried away.
For a moment, Mr Rabbit watched her go but then he turned back towards the Village Hall,
peering into the darkness towards where Mrs Worthing had been looking. He couldn’t be
certain, but he thought he saw a figure dash out from behind some trees that stood at the rear
of the building, and then disappear quickly down one of the alleyways that led away from the
Green. He watched for a few seconds more, but there was no more movement. Finally, he
shook his head, dismissing what he’d seen as none of his business.
He looked around, at the Green, at the Hall, and all the different roads and alleys which led
away from the centre of St. Mary’s-Under-Lyme.
“Now,” he murmured to himself, “how do I get back to the farm?”
6.
He’d only got lost once on the way back – which had led to an hour long detour which
took in the Village pond, an orchard and the railway station – but finally Mr Rabbit found his
way back to the farm. He was just pushing open the gate when Martin, Stella and Gareth
emerged from the farmhouse and rushed towards him, all talking at once.
“Mr Rabbit, you’ll never guess what!”
“Mr R, it’s completely insane!”
“Mrs Giles reckons it’s 1941!”
Mr Rabbit locked the gate, then grinned at them.
“That explains the blackout, then,” he told them.
“Eh?” grunted Gareth, looking puzzled. Stella and Martin didn’t look particularly
enlightened either.
“The blackout.” Mr Rabbit quickly explained about the precautions the people had taken
during the war, pointing out the blackout curtains in Mrs Giles’ windows and the absence of
any lights as he pointed across the fields towards where he thought the village was. “If it was
2020, the whole area would be lit up like a Christmas tree,” he told them.
“So, what?” asked Stella, her brow creasing in a frown. “’Ave we travelled back in time?”
Mr Rabbit shook his head. “Of course not. This is an open air museum. It’s been set up so
that people like us can experience what life would have been like during the war. That’s why
there’s a blackout, and why everyone is dressed up in forties clothes. It’s very authentic,” he
finished, sounding impressed.
“But, the Mrs showed us this thing …” Martin struggled to find the word. “What did she
call it, Gruff?”
Gareth frowned. “A newspaper, I think.”
“Yeah, that was it. A newspaper.”
Mr Rabbit wasn’t surprised that Martin had struggled to recall the word – newspapers
probably didn’t feature highly in his life, either at home or at school. In class, he would have
seen and heard his news on the interactive whiteboard or on the internet; at home … well, at
home, they probably didn’t even discuss current affairs, except when it meant their fruit cake
had less raisins in it.
“And it had the date on,” Martin continued. “14th of March, 1941. I remember the date cos
it’s my Dad’s birthday. Not 1941, of course, cos he ain’t as old as you, Mr R, but the 14th of
March part.”
“The newspaper will be a reproduction,” Mr Rabbit explained patiently, beginning to lead
the children back towards the farmhouse. “There’ll be all sorts of things like that for you to
look out for. Newspapers, gas masks, the food that you’ll eat. You see how even the windows
are taped to stop them shattering? It’s all very realistic.”
He opened the door and one by one they filed into the farmhouse and made their way to
the kitchen. Mr and Mrs Giles were sitting at the table, reading by candlelight. The windows
behind them were covered by heavy grey blankets.
Mr Giles looked up from his newspaper. “Were you able to get in touch with your
school?” he asked.
Mr Rabbit shook his head. “Mrs Worthing said it was all taken care of, though, so
hopefully it’ll all be fine. The children are going to go to bed now,” he continued, pulling out
a chair and sitting opposite the Giles’. “But before they go, they have something to say to you
both.”
It was something of a ritual, one they performed whenever they went on a school trip or
had a visitor into school, and the children knew the correct response.
“Thank you,” they chimed, even though Mr Rabbit could see that they were all desperate
to complain about being sent off to bed so early. He imagined that, at home, they would still
have been up at midnight, playing on their X-Boxes or Playstations, or whatever it was that
young people got up to these days. It would make a nice change for them to be away from
technology and in the fresh air for a while, and an early night would definitely do them no
harm.
“You’re welcome,” the Giles’ told them, before adding, “Goodnight.”
The three children grunted their good nights and then reluctantly shuffled out of the
kitchen. Mr Rabbit listened to them clumping their way up the stairs and into their rooms
before he turned to the Giles’.
“Well, that was an interesting day!” he told them, leaning his elbows on the table. “What
do you have planned for us tomorrow?”
Mr Giles looked blankly at him.
“Well, I’ll be up in the top field, fixing the fence, and Mrs Giles will be helping out in the
village, making sure the school rooms are ready for you on Monday. It ain’t nothing exciting,
but you’re welcome to lend a hand if you’d like to.”
“We thought you’d be wanting to get settled in,” Mrs Giles continued. “Make sure
everything’s ready for the children and such.”
Mr Rabbit was puzzled. “I assumed there’d be some activities planned for the children,” he
told his hosts. “You know like looking at an air raid shelter, digging for victory, that kind of
thing?”
The Giles’ faces remained blank.
“Do the activities start on Monday, then?” he asked.
Mrs Giles nodded slowly, almost as if Mr Rabbit were an idiot. “Yes,” she replied. “You’ll
be teaching in the school. Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmetic. I don’t think anyone wants the
children to be digging, and they certainly don’t need to be playing in the shelters. Best to save
those for when they’re needed.”
Mr Rabbit couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Usually on this kind of trip, the Museum
workers would have led all of the activities and the teachers would have taken a back seat,
only offering support if behaviour became unruly, or if the children struggled to participate –
both things which Mr Rabbit was used to doing. He certainly hadn’t been expecting to lead
the learning (well, he hadn’t even expected to be here, so it wasn’t really that surprising) and
didn’t really fancy the idea of spending his whole weekend planning activities for Monday.
He shook his head.
“Are there any resources that teachers would usually use?” he asked. It seemed an easier
option than preparing something completely from scratch. “I could probably adapt
something. Or if you have a computer, I could download something.”
Mr Giles put his newspaper down and yawned. “We don’t often have visitors from
London,” he laughed, standing up and stretching his arms. “Especially not under these
circumstances. So, I don’t imagine there’s anything that anyone would usually use. And we
certainly don’t have combuders or whatever you’re talking about. They must be some fancy
city things.” He tucked his chair under the table and chuckled to himself. “We’re lucky to get
the newspaper out here some days.”
He pushed the paper across the table and Mr Rabbit picked it up, studying the front page.
Martin was right – the date was 14th of March, 1941 – and the paper itself certainly didn’t
look like a reproduction. It felt, oddly, almost as if it were brand new.
A horrible thought suddenly struck him.
“Could we just talk out of role for a moment?” he asked as he placed the newspaper back
on the table. If he could just get the pair of actors to speak to him as themselves, rather than
as the characters they were playing, it would reassure him so much. If his thought was
correct, though … “I really need to know what’s going on here.”
Mrs Giles stepped up beside her husband, her brow as furrowed as his.
“Out of role?” she asked, and it was suddenly clear to Mr Rabbit that confusion wasn’t a
pretence. “I don’t know what you mean?”
“Come along, young fella,” Mr Giles added. “Say what you mean. You’re a confusing one
and no mistake.”
Mr Rabbit’s eyes widened as the truth began to dawn on him.
“What’s the date?” he asked.
Mr Giles pointed to the top of the newspaper. “It’s the 14th of March.”
“Yes, but what year?”
Mrs Giles laughed. “Did you fall down and bang your head while you were out in the
dark?” she asked, moving around the table and putting a hand on his shoulder. Her smile was
genuine and her voice kind. “Don’t you remember what year it is?”
Mr Rabbit shook his head.
“It’s 1941,” she told him, and somehow he knew that she was telling the truth.
It was 1941.
They had travelled backwards through time.
7.
Mr Rabbit found himself, once more, standing at the edge of the Village Green.
He had woken early that morning, after a night disturbed by what sounded and – when
he’d peered out of his darkened window into the sky above – looked very much like low-
flying aeroplanes. They had been dark grey against the almost black sky, but he was certain
that he’d recognised them as the Luftwaffe, the German airforce. He’d tried to go back to
sleep once they had passed but hadn’t been able to settle – there was just too much going on
in his head. Finally, he had given up. He had climbed out of bed, thrown on his clothes and
set off for the Cliffside where he and the children had first arrived.
Because that was how he was now thinking of it. They had arrived, somehow, in a small
village, eighty years and one hundred and fifty miles from home. He didn’t want to believe it
– even he knew that time travel was impossible – but he couldn’t come up with any other
explanation for what had happened to them. It was all too realistic to be a re-enactment or an
outdoors museum. The people were all so genuine that he couldn’t believe they were simply
acting; the clothes, vehicles, even the newspapers were all of the period; and then there were
the planes, flying through the night to wherever the Germans planned to bomb. It couldn’t all
be simulated just for a school party to get a feel of what the war was like. He had to accept
what was in front of his eyes. No matter where he went, or who he spoke to, the evidence was
clear – it was 1941 and the Second World War had been raging for well over a year.
He reached the cliff not long after the sun had risen and for a few minutes had stared at the
burning disc as it hung low on the horizon. He knew, if he had finally got his Geography
correct, that somewhere out there, across the sea, lay a Europe that was burning, laid waste
by the ever-moving German war machine. Half of the continent was already under the control
of Hitler’s Reich and plans were being drawn up to conquer the other half – including the tiny
island that he lived on. Thousands of lives had already been lost and many millions more
would die before that fateful day, four years from now, when the German High Command
finally surrendered. Knowing that was difficult enough for Mr Rabbit to bear, but knowing
that there was nothing he could do to stop it, despite everything he knew, was somehow even
worse. He felt somehow responsible for what was going to happen, even though he knew that
it had all happened thirty years before he had even been born.
His silent contemplation was interrupted by a voice from behind him, and he turned to find
a small group of uniformed men approaching. In the lead was the Home Guard officer that he
had seen at the Village Hall the night before, Captain Stewart. He looked, to say the least,
unimpressed with Mr Rabbit’s presence, a sentiment which he quickly expressed.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice a gruff growl.
Mr Rabbit shrugged. “I didn’t realise –“
“Didn’t you see the signs?”
“What signs?”
Stewart pointed to the cliff edge and then behind him, towards the Pill Box and beyond,
where Mr Rabbit knew the railway station lay. His cheeks were red and his bristling white
beard gave him the look of a special Father Christmas edition of Action Man. “There are
signs everywhere. No entry! Can you not read? I would have thought that a teacher from
London would have the basic skills!”
“I … I … I ..,” stammered Mr Rabbit, unable to offer any defence to the rapidly
approaching soldier’s tirade. “I didn’t …”
“Can’t even speak in proper sentences!” barked Stewart, almost in Mr Rabbit’s face now.
“Perhaps it would be best if you made yourself scarce before I start to think that you’re a
cleverly disguised German agent.” The Captain paused and threw a look over his shoulder at
the men gathered just behind him. “Although if you’re illiterate and unable to speak, the use
of the word ‘cleverly’ might be inaccurate.”
He laughed and Mr Rabbit could feel his breath in his face. Although the Captain was
standing so close now that it could just as easily have been the bristles of his beard that Mr
Rabbit felt.
He took a deep breath and composed himself before speaking again.
“I was up here yesterday, with the children,” he told the Captain, offering the best – if not
the most accurate – explanation for why he was there. After all, he could hardly tell the
soldier that he had come here in the hope that he could find some explanation as to how and
why he had travelled through time. The old man would have thought he was mad, which
when he thought about it, was as good an explanation for what had happened as any. “One of
the boys lost their … their wrist watch and I was hoping to find it. It was … a gift, yes, a gift
from his father before he joined up.”
It wasn’t true, of course – the closest either of the boy’s fathers had come to fighting in a
war was when, two years ago, they had joined in with the riot outside PC World during the
Black Friday sale – but Mr Rabbit hoped that Captain Stewart would be fooled by it. The old
soldier was bound to have some sympathy for a boy whose father was at war.
“And have you found it?” Stewart demanded, some of the anger gone from his tone.
Perhaps, Mr Rabbit hoped, his story had hit the right note. He put his hands behind his
back and very carefully unfastened his own watch, letting it drop into his hand. He held it out
for the Captain to see.
“I have, actually, just before you arrived. I’m sorry, I was just about to leave, but I got
caught up in the sunrise.” He pointed out at the sun which was beginning to slip behind some
clouds, staining them a burnt red. “Isn’t it beautiful.”
Captain Stewart nodded. “Makes you proud to be an Englishman,” he murmured, his voice
solemn. “Reminds you just what our boys are fighting for.”
Mr Rabbit smiled. “Freedom,” he replied.
“Exactly.”
For a moment they stood there together, staring out over the sea, a comfortable silence
between them as they thought about what was happening miles away on the other side of the
water. Finally, Captain Stewart cleared his throat.
“Right, lad,” he said, taking Mr Rabbit by the arm and guiding him away from the edge of
the cliff. “We have work to be doing here, so you’d best be getting back to the Village. Make
sure that boy of yours gets his watch back, eh? He’ll want it to give to his father when he
comes home, I’m sure!”
“I’m certain he will,” Mr Rabbit replied, tucking the watch into his pocket. “I’ll leave you
to your work, Captain.”
Slowly, he began to walk away, pausing as a sudden urge grabbed him. He turned to the
Captain, who was still watching him, and offered a crisp salute.
“Thank you, Captain,” he said, his voice quiet and respectful. “You’re a credit to your
country.”
*
By the time he reached the Village, Mr Rabbit was starving and regretting that he had left
the farmhouse before breakfast could be served. He had considered returning to the Giles’
home, but he had something he wanted to do in the village that he didn’t want the children
tagging along for. Hands thrust deep into his pockets, he walked across the Green and
stopped outside the Village Hall.
When he had been here the night before, he had seen Mrs Worthing talking to a man who
had clearly not wanted to be seen. As soon as Mr Rabbit had revealed himself, the man had
slipped away and Mr R was sure that it had been this man that he had seen creeping away
from the Hall as he and Mrs Worthing had talked. There was probably some completely
innocent explanation as to who he was – like, for example, someone employed to clean the
hall, or Mrs Worthing’s secret boyfriend! – but during his long career as a teacher Mr Rabbit
had developed a sixth sense for detecting bad behaviour and he couldn’t help thinking that
this man, and therefore Mrs Worthing, were up to no good. He wasn’t sure what he would
find in the Hall, but he knew that it would have bugged him if he hadn’t looked.
Casually, he walked round the whole building, trying hard to look as if he was meant to be
there, while actually standing out like the proverbial sore thumb. Occasionally, he paused,
trying to peer in through the windows but, even on tiptoes, he wasn’t quite tall enough to see
over the sill. When he reached the back of the Hall, he stopped and bent to one knee,
pretending to tie his shoelace, while reaching up and testing the door handle. It didn’t move.
He tried again, and when it still didn’t budge, he gave up on it. It was, he decided, most likely
locked and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by forcing the lock. Instead, he carried
on with what he thought was his casual – but which was, in fact, really rather suspicious –
tour of the building.
When he finally reached the front doors again, he made a decision. He might not find out
anything by going into the Hall, but he certainly wasn’t going to learn anything by waiting
outside.
Cautiously, he looked around and then tried the handle.
The door opened.
With another glance around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, Mr Rabbit slipped into
the Hall.
The windows of the hall were not only taped over but also rather dirty, filling the Hall with
a rather murky light, and so Mr Rabbit turned on the lights. He wasn’t surprised when they
didn’t make much difference and so he pulled out his phone and switched it on. Although
there was only a small amount of battery left, there would, he hoped, be enough for what he
needed – he wouldn’t be making calls or sending texts for at least the next fifty years, so he
didn’t need to save the power for that. As he stepped into the centre of the Hall, he switched
on the Torch App.
He glanced around the room, checking the floor and the stage for any clues, and then
sweeping the beam of his torch into the shadows and corners, looking for anything. Apart
from dust, which looked as if it had been gathering there since the start of the war – ruling
out the explanation that the man had been a cleaner, at least – Mr Rabbit could find nothing.
Carefully, he pushed past the curtains at the side of the stage and moved into the darkness
beyond, lighting his way with the torch.
He was about to give up when the light from his phone caught something shiny, nestled in
the folds at the bottom of the stage curtains. Rushing over, he shut off the torch light, tucked
the phone in his pocket, and knelt down, reaching for the small piece of metal. Then, he stood
up and crossed to the window, holding the thing up into the light, studying it through
squinting eyes. It wasn’t something that he had seen at first hand before but he recognised it
immediately and knew it could mean only one thing.
It was a swastika badge.
There was a Nazi in St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme.
8.
Gareth, Martin and Stella woke very early the next morning and were eager to be up and
doing something, but when they went to find Mr Rabbit, he was nowhere to be seen. The
three children searched all over the farm – in the fields, in the barn, even along the lane – but
there was no sign of their teacher. Finally, frustrated that they couldn’t find him but, more
importantly, clutching their grumbling their stomachs, they returned to the farmhouse for
breakfast. As they sat down at the table to freshly boiled eggs and toasted bread, Mrs Giles
explained that Mr Rabbit had gone into the village – she didn’t know what for, but he’d said
it was important – and would be back later that afternoon.
He had, she told them, left instructions that they were to keep themselves amused and out
of trouble but no ideas as to what they could do, and so they would have to think of
something themselves. Normally, she went on, she would have loved to find things for them
to do – baking, crafting, picking fruit and making jams, that kind of thing – but she was busy
herself and so sadly that would all have to wait for another day. She did, however, have one
suggestion for them and it was something that, surprisingly, all three of them leaped at. Mrs
Giles would make them some sandwiches, pack them up with some fruit for their lunch, and
then the children could spend the day exploring. Not just around the farm, because of course,
they’d already done that, but even farther afield. There were so many places in St. Martin’s-
Under-Lyme that Mrs Giles had enjoyed exploring when she had been a girl; places that her
two boys had spent hours in when they had been younger; places which the three children
would have to find; places where they could find a souvenir which would prove to Mrs Giles
that they had actually been there. They could pretend, she said, to be pirates, and that this was
their treasure hunt.
They loved the idea.
While they ate the rest of their breakfast, Mrs Giles made them rough pirate hats from the
previous day’s newspaper and, as soon as their packed lunches were ready, they jammed
them on their heads and rushed out into the farmyard. Nimbly, they clambered over the gate
and raced off up the lane, pausing only to pull sticks from the hedgerow. As they ran, they
waved the sticks in the air, as if they were pirate swords, occasionally clashing them together
in a pretend fight but, more often than not, simply hacking away at the bushes and branches
that lined the lane. They talked to each other in pirate voices, laughed pirate-y laughs, and
soon they found themselves looking down a hill towards a pond.
There were a handful of ducks floating peacefully on the water, but Martin made short
work of them, chasing them away with his stick, while Gareth ran along behind him,
growling. Stella watched the boys, hoping that one of them would trip and fall into the pond
and, when neither of them did, she joined them and suggested a game they could play while
they were here. It was a good game, she told them, and all they had to do was try to push
each other into the water. Taking it in turns, they would stand by the edge of the pond while
one of the other two took a run at them and shoved with all their might. Stella pushed at
Martin, but he wouldn’t budge. Martin charged headlong at Gareth, but the two boys simply
ended up in a heap on the floor, laughing. Finally, both boys teamed up against Stella,
thinking that their combined strength would easily force her back into the pond. It was only
when she neatly sidestepped them, sending the two boys careering headlong into the water,
that they realised they had been outsmarted.
Dripping wet, they grabbed a feather from the grass beside the pond and continued on their
quest. It wasn’t long before the three pirates arrived at a field, filled with nothing more than
grass – grass which stood at least as tall as Gareth. They raced into the field, swords slashing
at the greenery around them, creating trails wherever they moved, but it wasn’t long before
they had come up with an even better game. This time, they would split up, each heading to
separate corners of the field. When Stella shouted “Go!” they would move into the field,
trying to find the others which, because the grass was so long, should not have been an easy
thing to do. If they could creep up on one of the other pirates, without being spotted, then
they were the winner.
As it turned out, Martin was remarkably bad at the game. Instead of moving quietly
through the grass, he charged headlong from one side of the field to the other, yelling at the
top of his lungs. Anytime he came near, Stella and Gareth were able to disappear gracefully
into the grass and then tag him as he passed by them. Fortunately, this didn’t stop Martin
enjoying himself, and it wasn’t until the children realised just how hungry they were that they
stopped.
They found a flattened area of grass in the very middle of the field and sat down to tuck
into their sandwiches, completely hidden from anyone who might come looking for them.
After lunch, they moved on again, bypassing fields where crops were beginning to grow –
pausing only to grab a souvenir of a carrot leaf as they passed – and heading towards the trail
of steam they could see which told them they were close to the railway station. Stealthily, as
if they were commandos on a daring mission, they crept into the station and relieved the
ticket office of a train timetable each, and then headed back out into the fields, back towards
the cliff side where they had found themselves with Mr Rabbit, only the day before. Their
destination was the Pill Box. The day before, it had seemed empty and the three children had
decided, after their drenching in the pond, that it would be a great place to play, pretending to
defend the shores of Britain as Mr Rabbit had told them it had been designed for.
Since they had walked this way the previous day, however, rolls of barbed wire had
appeared close to the edge of the cliff and around the concrete shelter. Picking their way
around the razor sharp wire, they stopped close to the Pill Box and checked their
surroundings, making sure that no-one was nearby and, when they were happy that they were
alone, they moved on. When they reached the structure, Gareth pulled himself up onto its
roof and lay flat on it, pretending to enjoy the meagre rays of spring sun.
Martin and Stella were scrambling up beside him when a voice from inside the Pill Box
emerged. Hurriedly, they pulled themselves up and lay flat beside their friend.
“The first boat will arrive at twenty two hundred hours.” The voice which drifted up to
them from inside the box had a slight accent to it, but none of the children could recognise
what kind of accent it was. It was enough that it was different to their own to make them
smirk. “There will be twelve soldiers aboard and they will ascend to the cliff top here.”
“And what if they’re seen?” This was a woman’s voice. She sounded, especially to the
children who weren’t used to that kind of thing where they came from, rather posh.
“They won’t be. It will be during the blackout and they will be camouflaged.”
“But what if they are?” insisted the woman.
There was a sneer to the accented voice as it replied, “Then any resistance will be dealt
with. Our plan cannot fail.”
Martin looked at Stella with a frown. Stella simply shrugged, equally uncertain what they
were hearing.
“Go through it once more,” the snooty woman said, almost as if for the benefit of the
children hiding above her. “I need to be sure.”
“Of course,” the man replied. “My Eagle unit will depart at nineteen hundred hours from
the Dutch coast, under the cover of the fading light. They will travel across the North Sea and
then wait a mile off the coast, just out of sight of anyone who may be on this cliff. When the
air raids begin, the boats will move closer to the coast, during the blackout. Each boat will
contain twelve soldiers. You –“
“I will be waiting here, with Bernard,” she interrupted him. “We will ensure that the threat
of the machine gun placements has been neutralised and that your unit will encounter no
resistance.”
“Precisely. Then, at twenty two hundred hours, the first boat will land below the cliff here.
The men will ascend and take control of the machine gun defences, preventing their recovery
by your pathetic Home Guard. At that point, the remainder of my force will land and ascend
the cliff before moving into St. Martin’s and occupying the village. We will then send word
to the rest of our forces on the Dutch coast who will set sail immediately. With our foothold
secure here, it will then be safe to land the rest of the troops. The occupation of Great Britain
will then be unstoppable.”
“And the people in the village?”
“They will follow orders or be imprisoned, of course.”
There was a moment’s silence and the three children looked at each other. What they had
heard was ludicrous. Mr Rabbit had told them that no German force had landed on British
soil during the Second World War and yet, here they were, listening to people discussing
plans for exactly that.
“I need to get back to the village now,” the woman said, and it sounded as if she were
close to the door. “Someone is bound to miss me if I’m gone too long.”
“Very well,” the man replied. “I will return to my … what did you call it? My hiding
place?” He laughed. “But we will not have to hide for much longer!”
The children flattened themselves even more as, just below them, a woman emerged from
the Pill Box, her back to them. Quickly, she moved away, her floral dress flowing around her
as she made her way across the windy fields. Moments later, a man dressed all in black
stepped out from the doorway. For a minute or two, he watched the woman as she picked her
way around the barbed wire, making for the railway station beyond. Then, without looking
back, he strode off towards the cliff’s edge.
As silently as possible – which wasn’t that silent, given the grunting caused by Gareth’s
exertions – the three children slipped off the roof and huddled together behind the structure,
hidden from both the man and the woman should they turn to look back. Stella looked at the
boys.
“What are we going to do?” she asked them.
“What do you mean?” Martin looked confused. “Aren’t we pirates anymore?”
With the back of her hand, Stella batted him around the head.
“They must have been Germans,” she explained, slowly and patiently. “Mr Rabbit said
they didn’t invade Britain, but that’s what they’re planning to do. We have to do something!”
“But didn’t Mr R say this was all just a game?”
“That’s right,” grunted Gareth in agreement.
“So?”
“So, it doesn’t matter what happens, then, does it?” Martin continued. “We’ll still go home
when it’s all finished, won’t we?”
“Maybe,” Stella replied, getting to her feet and peering round the corner of the Pill Box.
She could see neither the man nor the woman anymore. “Even if it is just a game, I still think
we should tell Mr R.”
“But why?” the boys chorused.
Stella offered them a wicked smile. “Because,” she told them, “I don’t like to lose!”
9.
Mr Rabbit was in the lane outside the Giles’ farm when he saw the three children. They
were running headlong towards him, their faces filled with what he could only imagine was
excitement. He certainly hoped it was excitement because what else it could have been didn’t
bear thinking about. It was almost exactly the kind of look they had when they had been in
some kind of mischief – although mischief was a very forgiving word for the trouble that
these three often found themselves in – and had been hauled off to Mrs Hardacre’s office. If
he hadn’t already been concerned about what he had found in the Village Hall, Mr Rabbit
would probably have felt a chill run down his spine.
He stopped outside the rickety old gate and waited for them to catch up before he began to
unlatch it. It didn’t really surprise him to see that Martin and Gareth looked a little damp, but
he resolved not to ask them about it.
“What have you three been up to?” he asked them instead, not really wanting to hear a
truthful answer.
Martin and Gareth were bouncing up and down, desperate to speak, but Stella put a hand
on each of their shoulders and silenced them before they could open their mouths.
“Mrs Giles sent us off on a treasure hunt,” she told Mr Rabbit, and although she was trying
to stay calm, Mr R could still see the excitement on her face. “We went to some fields and
played by the lake.” Which explained why the boys were damp. “And then we went back to
that Kill Box we saw yesterday.”
Kill Box? Mr Rabbit looked puzzled.
“You know, that place where we were yesterday. Where they had the machine guns.”
Stella sounded rather impatient. “By the cliffs.”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, as it dawned on him what she meant. “The Pillbox. Did you see the
soldiers?” he asked, remembering his own encounter.
All three children shook their heads.
“We did see something else, though,” burst out Gareth, unable to control himself.
Stella glared at him.
“We agreed I would tell him,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Didn’t we?”
“Yes, Stella.” Gareth looked embarrassed and looked away. “Sorry, Stella.”
“You will be,” she murmured, before turning back to Mr Rabbit. The teacher raised an
eyebrow and her face went red, as she realised that he had heard what she had said. “Sorry. I
was joking.”
“Of course you were,” Mr Rabbit replied, shrugging off Stella’s casual threat. “Will one of
you please tell me what you saw?”
Stella nodded. “Yeah, so, we were out by the Kill … Pillbox and there were these two
people inside.”
“Right.”
“So we hid on top of it and listened to them talking.”
Mr Rabbit looked very disappointed.
“You know what happens when you eavesdrop, Stella. We don’t want a repeat of what
happened with Mr Gardner.”
When she had been in Year Four, Stella had garnered quite the reputation for loitering
outside the Staff Room, listening for exciting bits of gossip, which she would then sell to
other children throughout the school. It had been Stella who had started the rumour that Mr
Gardner, the PE coach, had killed at least five children from a rival school’s football team, a
rumour which had almost ended in the police launching an investigation into the poor man,
even though she had simply overheard him telling another member of staff that his boys had
“absolutely murdered them” while describing his team’s victory in a five-a-side tournament.
After that incident, her eavesdropping activities had been severely punished and Stella had
seemed to become a reformed character – at least in that respect, anyway.
Mr Rabbit hoped that this was not the first step on a slippery slope.
“We weren’t spying, honest,” she protested, looking at the boys. “Were we?”
Both boys shook their heads but, as good as their word, didn’t speak. Martin, however, was
hopping back and forth, from foot to foot. If Mr Rabbit hadn’t been able to see the excitement
on his face, he would have sworn that the boy needed to use the toilet again.
“We thought we probably shouldn’t be there,” Stella confessed. “You know, because of all
the barbed wire. So, when we heard them, we got on the roof and hid.”
Mr Rabbit nodded. “Carry on,” he told her.
“One was a woman,” she told him, “and one of them was a bloke with a funny accent.
They were talking about a plan, about how they were going to come from the sea and land on
the beaches. They were going to bring beagles with them.”
Mr Rabbit frowned.
“No,” Martin interrupted, finally unable to contain himself. “It was seagulls. Cos we’re at
the beach! They’re gonna fly over the sea on seagulls.”
“Hold on!” Mr Rabbit held his hands up and quietened the children. “What are you talking
about?”
Gareth shoved past Stella and stood right in front of Mr R, his arms spread wide.
“Some seagulls, or beagles, or some illegal immigrants is coming across the sea and is
going to take over the village and if anyone doesn’t do what they’re told then they’ll be told
off, or something,” he finished, breathlessly.
Suddenly, the children’s random words became quite clear to Mr Rabbit.
“You’re talking about an invasion,” he declared. “A German invasion.”
The children nodded.
“The eagle has landed.”
“Nah,” Stella muttered. “It was definitely a beagle.”
Mr Rabbit unlatched the gate and hurried the children through. “But the Germans never
landed in Britain,” he said, guiding them across the yard and into the farmhouse. “There was
never an invasion.”
“Maybe it’s all part of the game,” Martin suggested, following Mr R into the kitchen.
“That’s what you said, wasn’t it? That it was all a game?”
“I thought it was,” Mr Rabbit nodded, sitting at the kitchen table and reaching into his
pocket. “But now …”
He paused, and the children looked at him for a moment in silence. He gestured that they
should sit and, when they had, he continued.
He told them what had happened the night before with Mr and Mrs Giles, and how he had
realised that they had travelled backwards in time. He explained to them that he had spoken
to Mrs Worthing at the Village Hall, and how he had been suspicious about the man she had
been speaking to. And, finally, he placed something on the table which he had pulled from
his pocket. The children looked at it and waited for him to continue.
“It’s a swastika,” he told them, turning the small metal pin over so that they could see the
image on the front. “It’s the symbol of the Nazis and means that you’re almost certainly right
about there being an invasion coming. Someone dropped it in the hall – I think it was
probably the man that Mrs Worthing was talking to.”
“Is she the posh bird what spoke to you yesterday?” asked Stella, curiously.
“The billeting officer. That’s right.”
Stella nodded. “I thought I recognised the voice,” she told him, a huge grin spreading over
her face. “That’s who was in the Kill Box.”
“Mrs Worthing?” Mr Rabbit’s jaw dropped. “Are you sure?”
“Snooty voice, like she was better than you. Bit stuck up. Really stuck up! Yeah, it was
definitely her.”
“But why?” Mr Rabbit didn’t understand. Why would Mrs Worthing be involved in a
German invasion? She must surely have seen what was happening on the continent – why
would she want that to happen here? He knew that there were people in Britain who hadn’t
wanted to go to war, people who had felt that words rather than actions could have ended the
conflict, but he hadn’t expected to find someone who would want Hitler to take control of the
whole of Europe. The Nazi leader’s ideas were so extreme that Mr Rabbit couldn’t believe
that people – even the German people who they were supposed to benefit – had been
invested in them but, he guessed, perhaps people would believe only what they wanted to
believe. And he knew, from years of teaching about it, that many people wanted to believe
that Hitler was only doing what was best for his people.
Even if it meant millions of people had to die to bring about his new world.
“Tell me what else you heard,” he asked them.
The children told him, in as much as they were able, everything that that had heard in the
Pillbox, concluding with the mysterious man heading off towards the cliff and his hiding
place. Mr Rabbit listened intently and then, when they had finished, closed his eyes for a
moment, in thought.
When he opened them again, the children were watching him expectantly.
“What are we going to do?” asked Gareth.
Mr Rabbit offered them a weak smile.
“You three are going to get washed up, ready for dinner,” he told them. “And we’ll talk
more about it before bed.”
“But –,“ the three children chimed, before Mr R cut them off.
“Go on,” he instructed them, pointing to the kitchen door. “I need to think about things for
a while.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the children filed out of the kitchen. Mr Rabbit listened as they
clumped heavily up the stairs and, when he heard a door slam somewhere above him, he
slumped into his chair.
What could he do?, he wondered. He was only a teacher and they were just children. Even
if they knew where the mysterious man was hiding, how exactly could they stop him and his
soldiers taking over St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme? Perhaps they could ask someone for help, he
thought, although he immediately questioned whether anyone even believe them if they told
them what they’d seen and heard. If he’d only had the children’s word to go on, he wouldn’t
have believed them – it was just lucky that he had seen what he had seen, and found what he
had found.
It was, he realised, an almost impossible situation.
Just then, the door opened and Mr Giles walked in, carrying a rather unpleasant looking
shotgun, draped over his arm, and a pair of rabbits in his other hand. He nodded at Mr Rabbit.
“How do, young fella,” he greeted the teacher, dropping the rabbits on the table between
them. “How has your day been?”
For a moment, Mr Rabbit considered telling the farmer the truth – that he and his three
children had uncovered a German plot to invade St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme. But, even as the
thought crossed his mind, he realised again how ridiculous it sounded.
Instead, he shrugged.
“It’s been okay,” he said, not looking up at the farmer. “Your wife sent the kids off on a
treasure hunt, so I had a bit of a walk, tried to familiarise myself with the area. I have an
awful sense of direction and really don’t want to keep getting lost if we’re going to be here
for a while so I went and had a look at the sea, walked down into the village and then …”
He tailed off as, finally, he realised that Mr Giles wasn’t listening.
He was, instead, looking at the small, metal pin badge that sat on the table between them.
“Wha’s that?” he demanded, his tone hard.
“I can explain …” Mr Rabbit began, but he stopped when the farmer lifted the shotgun
from his arm, and snapped it closed. The teacher’s face went white.
“I said what’s that?” Giles repeated.
This time, Mr Rabbit couldn’t speak. His eyes were locked on the horrific black hole that
stared at him from the end of the shotgun’s barrel.
“I’ll give you one more chance,” Mr Giles told him, the gun aimed squarely at his chest. “I
think it’s time you started talking!”
10.
Mr Rabbit raised his hands.
“It’s not mine,” he murmured through gritted teeth. “I found it in the Village Hall.”
Mr Giles lifted the shotgun a little higher. “And why would I believe that?” he asked, his
face dark.
“I don’t know. But it’s true.” He suddenly felt as if he were one of the children, summoned
to Mrs Hardacre’s office for a roasting about their behaviour. “It was behind the stage.
Someone had dropped it.”
“What were you doing in the Hall?” Mr Giles frowned, but Mr R noticed that he had
lowered the gun a little. “You said you’d been walking.”
Mr Rabbit nodded. “I have. But I noticed something last night when I went to see Mrs
Worthing, and so I went to have a look.” He quickly told Mr Giles exactly what had
happened, and what the children had seen and heard, leaving out none of the details. He knew
how far-fetched it sounded, but the gun pointed at his chest was most definitely an incentive
to tell the farmer the whole truth.
When he had finished his tale, he slumped back in his chair again and let his head fall on
his chest.
“That’s it,” he murmured, not looking up. “That’s the truth.”
The chair opposite him scraped across the floor, and Mr Rabbit looked up to see Giles
sitting down and placing the shotgun safely on the table between them. The farmer nodded.
“That,” he said, folding his arms across his chest, “is the most ridiculous story I’ve ever
heard.”
“But it’s true,” insisted Mr Rabbit.
Mr Giles nodded. “I reckon it is,” he agreed. “I don’t reckon that anyone would make up
something quite that stupid.”
“Thank you,” Mr Rabbit sighed, exhausted. “I think.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither one sure what else to say. They were finally
disturbed by what seemed to be the sound of tiny elephants coming down the stairs. The
kitchen door flew open and the three children burst in. Judging by how grubby both Gareth
and Martin still looked, Mr Rabbit suspected that they had entirely ignored his suggestion to
have a wash. He didn’t, though, have the energy to scold them for it.
“Mrs Giles will be back soon,” Mr Giles told them, as they gathered around the table,
looking at the rabbits and the shotgun. “She’ll have these little beauties in a pot and on the
table in no time.”
Stella’s face turned white. “We’re gonna eat those?” she asked, pointing at the rabbits.
“We are! We’ll have some in a stew and some in a pie. Very tasty.”
“But, it’s a bunny,” Stella protested.
“That’s right,” Mr Giles agreed. “And a very tasty bunny, too. Ain’t you never had
rabbit?”
All three children shook their heads.
“Well, you’re certainly in for a treat. Now, talking of bunnies, Mr Rabbit here tells me
you’ve had some excitement today?”
This time, all three heads turned towards their teacher, mouths open, eyes wide.
“It’s okay,” Mr Rabbit assured them. “We can trust Mr Giles.”
“That’s right,” the farmer agreed. “You can trust me. So,” he continued, winking
conspiratorially at them, “what are we going to do about these Nazis?”
*
There were many suggestions to answer Mr Giles’ question – Mr Rabbit’s particular
favourite was Gareth’s idea of freezing the North Sea so that the Germans couldn’t sail across
it – but by the time Mrs Giles had joined them in the kitchen, and begun skinning the rabbits,
they were no closer to finding a solution. They had managed to continue talking for a few
more minutes, but when the butcher’s knife had appeared and Mrs Giles had started to cut the
rabbits into pieces, Stella and Martin had begun to feel rather unwell and so Mr Giles had led
them all out into the barn. As they left, he joked with Mrs Giles that they would bring her
some rats back for breakfast.
Stella had not been amused.
They settled down on some hay bails in the barn and talk immediately turned back to their
dilemma – which, from Stella’s point of view, was a much better topic of conversation than
what dead animal they would be eating next.
“I think,” Mr Giles began, staring up at the ceiling of the barn and noting that there were
holes which he would need to patch before the autumn, “that we need to call the authorities
and let them know what’s happening.”
Mr Rabbit looked doubtful. “I’m not sure they’d believe us,” he said, sharing the thoughts
that he’d already had. “And even if they did, would there be enough time for them to do
anything about it? This is supposed to be happening tomorrow night, after all.”
“What about the soldiers from the village?” asked Martin, remembering what Mr Rabbit
had told them about his visit to the Pillbox that morning.
“The Home Guard?” Mr Giles asked.
Mr Rabbit nodded. “That’s right.”
“They might be able to help,” the farmer said, his voice not conveying any sense of
certainty. “But that Captain Stewart is a bit chummy with Mrs Worthing. I’m not sure he’d
accept that she were involved.”
“Don’t tell him about her, then,” Stella suggested. “We can deal with her ourselves.”
“And what do you have in mind,” her teacher asked, frowning.
“We find her, take her down and lock her up.”
“Take her down?” Mr Rabbit laughed. “And how do you propose doing that?”
“Mr G has a shotgun.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of shooting her,” the teacher replied, a note of
panic creeping into his voice. “That might just be a little extreme.”
“We’d only need to shoot her in the leg,” Gareth said, joining in for the first time since his
frozen-sea solution. “The she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere!”
“We are not shooting anyone. And the next person who suggests it will stay in 1941 when
we finally go home!”
The children’s mouths suddenly clamped shut.
“Thank you,” continued Mr Rabbit. “I appreciate your input but it’s not really all that
helpful at the moment. What we need is a plan that means Mrs Worthing and whoever she
has been talking to are arrested, and that the Eagles –“
“Seagulls!”
“Beagles!”
“Illegals!”
“That the Eagles can’t land on British soil – or, if they do, are immediately driven back
into the North Sea.” He paused and looked at the children and Mr Giles. “We’re all agreed on
that, yes?”
They all nodded.
“I agree with you that we do need to inform the authorities, and I think having some help
from some of the locals would be really helpful, so Mr Giles, would you be able to organise
that?”
“I don’t know. As I said, Captain Stewart –“
“What if he had orders, telling him that it was an exercise?” Mr Rabbit suggested,
interrupting the farmer. Suddenly, an idea was forming in his mind. “If we could make him
believe that the orders came from whoever his superior officer is, then he’d have to follow
them, wouldn’t he?”
Mr Giles nodded.
“So, that’s the first thing we need to do. If I can get into the Post Office, I think I can
probably take care of that.”
“What about us?” asked Stella, her eyes twinkling with excitement.
“I have a plan,” he told them, leaning in and whispering as if someone might be listening.
“Listen very carefully – I shall say this only once!”
11.
It was sometime after midnight and the only light was from the moon.
Mr Rabbit and Gareth crouched low beside the Village Hall, dressed all in black – Mr and
Mrs Giles had been able to find them some old clothes to help them hide in the shadows –
and their faces covered by woollen hats which they had cut eye holes into. Gareth had crept
all the way from farm into the village, and Mr Rabbit could have sworn that he’d been
humming the theme from Mission Impossible the whole time. When he’d asked Gareth about
it, the boy had told him that he was a ninja, that the tune was his “ninja-ing music” and that,
if he wanted his help, he’d stop asking stupid questions. After that, Mr Rabbit had just left the
boy to it, trying not to laugh as he had ducked behind trees, crawled through long grass and
hidden in bushes, even when there was nothing to hide from. It had certainly kept them both
amused, albeit for very different reasons.
They had been crouching by the Hall for almost five minutes, making sure that they were
alone. Gareth was impatient to get on, Mr Rabbit could tell, but it was vital to his plan that
they weren’t discovered and so he kept his hand on the boy’s shoulder, holding him back
from charging headlong across the Green. Despite his obvious desire to play the silent
assassin, Gareth had nearly given the game away when they had first reached the green,
rushing straight towards the Post Office without thinking about who might be watching. If Mr
Rabbit hadn’t grabbed him and pulled him into the shadows surrounding the Village Hall, he
would have stumbled right into the Air Raid Warden, who was just finishing what the teacher
guessed was probably his last patrol of the night. They had waited for the man to disappear,
and then Mr Rabbit had insisted, in a quiet whisper, that they wait another couple of minutes
to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Gareth had frowned and grumbled something about his
teacher being no fun, but had waited nonetheless.
When the coast was finally clear enough to satisfy Mr Rabbit, the two of them crept out
from behind the bush and, almost on tiptoes, stealthily made their way across the green until
they stood outside the Post Office. Gareth crouched down by the door, reaching for
something from his pocket, whilst Mr Rabbit stood behind him, continuing to watch for
anyone who may have been out for an admittedly unusual midnight stroll. It was, he
reflected, lucky that Gareth was here. Although Mr Rabbit was quite used to being a lookout
– every day, a different member of staff was posted on guard at the door of the staffroom to
warn of approaching children or, more importantly, Mrs Hardacre – he didn’t have much
experience of breaking and entering. It seemed, however, that it was a subject that was very
close to Gareth’s heart.
While Mr Rabbit had been explaining his plan to Mr Giles and the children, he had noticed
Gareth’s eyes light up when he had mentioned that he would need to break into the Post
Office, but it hadn’t been until they were sitting eating their dinner that Stella had pulled him
aside and, in an urgent whisper, explained to him that he really needed to take Gareth with
him. Gareth’s Dad and Uncle, she told him, were famous (although Mr Rabbit preferred to
think of them as infamous) for their lock picking skills. Many were the times, she went on,
that they had been picked up by the police to discuss how certain buildings – both on the
local estate and in the shopping centre – had been entered and had precious and expensive
items removed from within. Such was their skill, however, that neither of them had ever been
arrested or charged with anything. This, apparently, was something worthy of respect and
Stella had told him almost as if it were a badge of honour.
Mr Rabbit had listened to her tale with a scowl of disapproval.
“And,” he had asked, “what is the point of this tale of criminal enterprise?”
Stella had winked at him. “It’s a family business,” she explained. “They pass the skills
down through the family. Gruff’s Grandad taught his Dad and Uncle. Gruff’s Uncle taught
his son. And …”
And Mr Rabbit had realised exactly why she was telling him this. Gareth’s Dad had passed
his skills onto Gareth. And if Gareth was half as skilled as his father …
“You’ll be in and out of that Post Office without anyone knowing,” Stella had continued.
“Do you reckon you could do that?”
Mr Rabbit had been forced to admit that his own lock picking skills would likely have
involved both his shoulder and his great weight being thrown against the door, and that
Gareth’s abilities would come in very handy. When he’d asked for the boy’s help, Gareth had
been incredibly excited and clearly, as he worked at the lock with a pair of tweezers and a
hairpin, the excitement hadn’t faded.
It was only a matter of moments before there was a click and the door swung quietly open.
“We’re in, Mr R!” Gareth exclaimed, slapping his hand over his mouth when he
remembered that he was supposed to have been keeping quiet. “Sorry!” he whispered.
Mr Rabbit grinned. “Well done, Gareth,” he told the boy, ruffling his hair as he stepped
round him. “Now it’s your turn to keep watch.”
Leaving Gareth in the doorway, Mr Rabbit crept into the Post Office, pulling out his phone
and switching on the Torch App so that he could see what he was doing. In some ways, it felt
more wrong to be illuminating the small room than it had breaking in, but the teacher tried to
ignore his feelings of guilt and focus on the task ahead.
The Post Office was not huge and Mr Rabbit had crossed the gap between door and
counter with only a handful of small steps. He opened the door that led behind the counter,
which was mercifully unlocked, and then shone the torch light over the shelves and
cupboards that filled the narrow space. He ran the beam of light along the counter itself. He
even illuminated the floor in front of him. Still, though, he couldn’t see the telegraph
machine. He could feel his calm beginning to desert him more rapidly than a packet of
biscuits disappeared from the staff room. Without the telegraph machine, he couldn’t print
out orders for Captain Stewart, which would mean that there would be no soldiers on the cliff
side when the German invasion force landed. His whole plan was based on this. He couldn’t
believe that it was going to fall at the first hurdle.
He waved the torch around in a panic, its light banishing the shadows from every corner of
the tiny shop, but still he couldn’t see the machine he was looking for.
Suddenly, he heard the door click shut and he swung the torch round until it shone in
Gareth’s no longer excited, but rather scared, face.
“Someone’s coming!” the boy hissed, throwing himself dramatically to the floor and
crawling across the dusty floorboards, until he was hidden just beneath the windowsill. If
anyone peered in, they would be hard pushed to see him there, but they would easily see Mr
Rabbit who was still standing behind the counter in plain view. It took him a moment to
realise the danger he was in, but as soon as he did, he moved. His heart racing, he ducked
quickly down behind the counter and lay flat on his ample stomach – it was only when he
was safely hidden that he remembered to turn off the torch.
Just as he extinguished the light, there was a rattling at the door and, then, voices.
“There was a light in there, I swear!”
“You’re imagining it, Fred! It was probably the moon on the glass. Why would someone
be in the Post Office in the middle of the night?”
“I dunno. Maybe they’ve got something urgent they need to send.”
“Like what?”
“Perhaps it’s someone’s birthday tomorrow.”
“So?”
“So, they want the birthday card to get there in time.”
“I reckon they’d have to have sent it weeks ago if they wanted it there for tomorrow. You
know what the post’s like at the moment. You’re lucky if anything gets where you want it to
go at all. And that’s not just because old Dotty Worthing’s got other things on her mind!”
“What’s that then, George? Are you talking about that bloke you reckon you saw her
with?”
“That’s it. Right handsome fella he was, tall, blond hair, military bearing.”
The voices began to fade, and Mr Rabbit guessed they were finally moving away from the
door. He risked kneeling up and peering over the top of the counter.
“Who do you reckon he is?”
“I dunno. Not seen him around here before.”
And then they were gone.
“Blimey,” murmured Gareth. “That was close.”
His heart was still racing but Mr Rabbit managed to nod.
“Have you found the machine, yet?” asked Gareth, crawling over to the counter and using
it to pull himself up. “We should probably get a move on in case those geezers come back.”
Mr Rabbit couldn’t believe quite how calm Gareth was being. They had nearly been
caught breaking into the Post Office which, during war time, was definitely punishable with
something much worse than the Red Card he would have received at school, and all the boy
could think of was finishing the job they had come to do. Perhaps nerves of steel ran in his
family – or maybe it was just the ability to steal which was hereditary. Mr Rabbit looked
along the counter and then at Gareth.
“I don’t know where it is,” he confessed, a hint of panic rising in his tone. “I thought it
would be –“
He stopped suddenly and his eyes widened. There, right in front of him, resting on a small
shelf just below the counter top, sat the telegraph machine.
“Actually,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief, “forget that. It’s right here.”
12.
It took Mr Rabbit about half an hour to work out the basics of how the telegraph machine
worked but once he had figured it out he was able to quickly send a message. He and Mr
Giles had decided that it would need to be simple, but equally clear enough to get Captain
Stewart and the Home Guard in position before the German forces began to land on the
beach. Finally, they had agreed on:
To: Captain Stewart
From: General K. N. O. Ledge VC MBE
Manoeuvres to begin March 16 14:00 hours Stop Full unit
presence required Stop Live ammunition to be used Stop
Defences to be manned Stop
As soon as it was sent, Mr Rabbit and Gareth slipped out of the Post Office – Gareth
making sure that the door was locked behind them – and then, once off the Village Green,
they made their way back to the farm, taking care to both avoid bumping into any further
patrols and to make sure that they weren’t being followed. By the time they reached the
rickety wooden gate, the first rays of sun were beginning to turn their surroundings from
black to grey.
Mr Giles, Stella and Martin were already up and waiting for them in the kitchen.
“’Ow did it go?” asked Mr Giles, pouring Mr Rabbit a cup of tea and passing a glass of
water to Gareth. “Did you get it done?”
Mr Rabbit began to tell the story but clearly wasn’t doing a good enough job of it because
Gareth soon took over, explaining in great detail just how he had saved the day when the Air
Raid Wardens had almost caught them, then how scared Mr Rabbit had been – “I know
rabbits are supposed to be good at running,” he had told them, “but he would have beaten
Usain Bolt!” – and finally how the teacher “couldn’t see past the end of his nose” when he’d
been looking for the telegraph machine.
Stella laughed. “My Dad does that,” she said, punching Mr Rabbit in what she probably
thought was a friendly way but which really hurt. “He looks all over the place for something
and it’s always there, right in front of him. It must be his age,” she concluded.
Mr Rabbit offered her a sarcastic smile. “Thank you, Stella!” he said, before taking a sip of
his tea. “It’s over to you and Martin now. Do you remember what to do?”
Stella nodded, but Martin’s face was the very picture of confusion.
“Are we going to milk the cows?” he asked, and he sounded even more confused than he
looked.
His mouth dropped open and Mr Rabbit was about to say something entirely rude and
inappropriate for the ears of his three pupils when Stella held a hand up and stopped him.
“Don’t worry, Mr R,” she told him, confidently. “I’ll explain on the way."
*
Stella knocked hesitantly on the door and then, when there was no answer, hammered on it
with her fist. When the door remained resolutely unopened, Martin stepped up and the two of
them used both their fists to bang and their feet to kick at the white door.
Eventually, from somewhere inside, they heard the heavy sound of footsteps and then a
weary voice.
“I’m coming,” it called, before the children heard a key turn in the lock and the door
slowly opened. Dressed in blue-striped cotton pyjamas and a very heavy looking navy
dressing gown, Mr Worthing did not look pleased to have been woken at seven o’clock on a
Sunday morning.
“Can I help you?” he asked as politely as he could.
“We need Mrs Worthing!” Stella announced, pushing past him and into the house. “It’s
really urgent,” she continued.
Martin followed her in, barging past Mr Worthing and crashing open a door which led into
a very neatly presented lounge. “We need her help!”
Mr Worthing yawned. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” he complained, wearily rubbing
at his eyes. “Could it not wait for another hour?”
Stella was suddenly in his face. “No!” she yelled, her face turning red. “It’s important. Our
friend needs her help!”
“He’s fallen down a mine!” Martin gasped.
Stella turned and scowled at him.
“No, Martin, he hasn’t,” she said firmly, her eyes boring into him. “He’s fallen over and
hurt his leg.”
“Yeah,” Martin agreed. “That!”
Mr Worthing frowned at them. “Who did you say you were?” he asked.
“I’m Stella and this is Martin. We arrived yesterday!”
“Oh yes. The children who were late” He yawned again. “Just wait here a moment and I’ll
fetch my wife.”
He left them alone in the lounge and the children listened as he stomped back up the stairs.
For a moment, there was silence and then they heard the sound of voices, talking quietly at
first, but then becoming clearer as the voices became raised. Finally, they heard footsteps
coming back down the stairs and Mrs Worthing burst into the room.
“What exactly is the meaning of this?” she demanded furiously, her face red, her hair
sticking up all over the place. The children had obviously woken her up and she looked
completely discombobulated – which was exactly what they had hoped for.
“Gareth’s fallen and hurt his leg,” Stella explained breathlessly, trying to add as much
drama to her tone as possible. “Mr Rabbit and Mr Giles said we needed to get you. They
don’t know what to do. They said only you would know what to do!”
Mrs Worthing pulled her pink dressing gown tightly around her.
“Where are they now?” she asked, her voice a little calmer than before.
“They’re at the –“ Martin began but Stella punched him hard on the arm. He yelped.
“They’re in the Village Hall,” she said, glaring again at her friend. “They said we had to
get you and take you there.”
“What precisely do they expect me to do?”
Mrs Worthing may have calmed down a little but she still didn’t seem like she was going
to budge. It was, Stella concluded, time to butter her up. It was a skill she had developed over
the years by watching her Mum. Whenever her Mum wanted to buy herself something nice,
or wanted Stella’s Dad to do something for her, or needed a little bit of time to find the rent
for the landlord, she would turn on the charm and, Stella had noticed, it had almost always
worked. She had, therefore, started trying it with the teachers at school. When she didn’t have
her homework, she’d tell Miss Grainger that her hair looked particularly lovely, and she’d get
a two day extension on the deadline; when she was late for school, she’d be absolutely certain
that Mrs Barlow would understand because she was the most kind and caring teacher in the
school; and when she wanted to stay in at lunchtime, rather than going out in the drizzle,
she’d tell whoever would listen that they were so much better at being a midday supervisor
than any of the other ladies. It didn’t matter what the situation was – there was always a
compliment that would deal with it.
“They said that you were the only person experienced enough to deal with it,” Stella told
Mrs Worthing, her voice almost sickly sweet. “You deal with all of the evacuees and they
wouldn’t want to do anything that you hadn’t authorised. Only you, they said, would know
exactly what to do and how to do it.”
Mrs Worthing’s creased brow uncreased and she offered up what can only be described as
a smug smile. “They are right, of course,” she murmured. Then, “Wait outside, I’ll get
dressed and you can take me to this injured child!”
Stella smiled a very satisfied smile as Mrs Worthing hurried out of the lounge and back up
the stairs.
*
Fifteen minutes later, Martin and Stella led Mrs Worthing into the Village Hall. She had
put on a long black dress, a purple, knitted cardigan and had quickly run a brush through her
hair.
“Where is he then?” she demanded, noting to her surprise the empty hall.
Stella pointed to the curtains that hung at the rear of the stage.
“Back there,” she said, taking the woman’s hand and pulling her across the floor.
Martin grabbed her other hand. “Yeah,” he agreed. “She’s back there.”
“She?” began Mrs Worthing, but before she had a chance to say anymore, she was being
dragged around the side of the stage and through the door which led behind it. As the door
closed behind them, Martin dropped Mrs Worthing’s hand and moved behind her, while
Stella continued dragging her on.
At the very back of the stage, hidden behind some old cardboard palm trees and wooden
pyramids was a door. It stood open, revealing … well, very little. There was no light beyond
the door and, apart from a doorway, Mrs Worthing could see very little. Nonetheless, Stella
pointed to the doorway and dragged the woman towards it.
“He’s in here!” she insisted.
But Mrs Worthing no longer looked convinced. When she had seen the empty hall, she had
become wary of the children’s claims – now, with what could only be called a cupboard
standing open before her, she became blatantly suspicious. Almost disbelieving, in fact.
She stood still and stared down at Stella.
“Are you trying to tell me,” she demanded, “that your friend, Mr Giles and Mr Rabbit are
in there?”
Stella nodded eagerly.
“And why on earth would I believe that? It’s tiny. They would not fit!”
“What if I told you it was a TARDIS?” Stella asked her.
“A what?”
“You know, a time machine. Dimensionally transcendental.”
“I have no idea what you are saying,” hissed Mrs Worthing, her suspicion becoming
impatience.
“What are you? Thick or something?” Martin moved towards her, shaking his head. “It
means,” he told her, suddenly breaking into a run, dropping his shoulder and barging her into
the cupboard, “that its bigger on the inside than the outside!”
And with that, he slammed the door shut and turned the key, locking it.
13.
Martin and Stella stumbled through the kitchen door, unable to control their laughter.
“What’s so funny?” asked Gareth, feeling as if he was missing out on something. He had
enjoyed sneaking into the Post Office with Mr Rabbit, but was a little put out that he hadn’t
been allowed to go with the other children.
“She wouldn’t go into the cupboard,” giggled Stella, “so Martin shoulder tackled her! If I
hadn’t been there, he probably would have dropped an elbow on her and gone for the pin!”
All three children were big wrestling fans, but Martin in particular devoured all of the
professional wrestling that he could find on his television. His favourite wrestler went by the
name of ‘The Stone’, an enormously muscled behemoth who specialised in shoulder tackles
and whose finishing move was an elbow drop from the top rope. Martin had been practising
these moves (both in and out of school, against the recommendations of the wrestling
promotions) and had been very pleased that he had finally been able to use at least one of
them in real life. The language coming from inside the cupboard, where they had left Mrs
Worthing, suggested that she hadn’t been quite as pleased.
“So, she’s all locked up?” asked Mr Rabbit, passing the two children glasses of water.
They nodded as they drank.
“We locked the cupboard and all the doors to the Hall,” Stella explained, wiping her
mouth. “And then we stuck the signs on the doors, like you asked.”
Mr Rabbit had drawn, on large pieces of paper, signs which read ‘Danger! Home Guard
exercises taking place! Keep clear!” He hoped that, when attached to the Village Hall doors,
they would discourage people from entering to investigate what the screaming from within
might be about. There was no guarantee that they would work, of course, but they only
needed Mrs Worthing out of the way for a few hours and this might just give them that
chance.
“Well done, fingers crossed that will give us the time we need.” Mr Rabbit looked at Mr
Giles. “Are we ready for the next stage?” he asked.
The farmer laid his shotgun on the table and placed some small red tubes next to it. “I’ve
loaded these with salt, like you asked,” he said, pointing to the shotgun shells. “I’m still not
sure –“
“It’s just safer with the children around,” the teacher explained patiently (and for about the
fifteenth time). “Hopefully, we won’t even have to use them. The gun itself should be enough
to scare off whoever Mrs Worthing’s friend turns out to be.”
Mr Giles nodded. “So, are we off to the beach, then?”
Gareth’s eyes lit up. “Are we going to the beach?” he asked.
“We’re going to the beach,” Mr Rabbit replied, pointing first to himself and then to Mr
Giles. “You three are staying here with Mrs Giles.”
“Aw, that’s not fair!” grumbled Gareth.
“I’ve never been to the beach,” complained Stella.
“I wanted to make sandwiches!” Martin added.
“Castles,” Mr Rabbit corrected.
“Eh?”
“You wanted to make sandcastles. At the beach.”
“No,” Martin said, shaking his head. “I wanted to make sandwiches for a picnic at the
beach. You can’t eat castles.”
“Very true, Martin.” Mr Rabbit smiled. “Perhaps we’ll have a beach picnic after we’ve
driven back a German officer invasion.”
*
The two men stood at the foot of the cliff and Mr Giles pointed along the beach.
“There are a lot of caves just along the coast,” he explained, nervously fiddling with the
shotgun that hung over his arm. “Seems to me that might be a good place to hide.”
Mr Rabbit agreed. He had been trying to come up with an idea as to where Mrs Worthing’s
friend might be hiding but without local knowledge – and he had absolutely none of that,
given he had been in East Anglia and 1941 for a little bit over thirty six hours – he hadn’t
been able to come up with anything. He really ought to have asked Mr Giles for his opinion
in the first place but, as a Primary School teacher, delegating anything wasn’t something that
he was very good at.
Silently, the two of them trudged along the beach, constantly scanning the horizon for
boats, and the clifftop for any signs of movement. Mr Rabbit could feel the sand beginning to
fill his Converse and began to think that perhaps Mrs Hardacre had been right about his
choice of footwear when she had rather forcefully suggested that he buy a pair of ‘sensible’
shoes. If he’d been wearing a nice pair of leather loafers, he reflected, he probably wouldn’t
be feeling quite as uncomfortable and there likely wouldn’t be grains of sand slipping
between his toes and causing an horrific amount of irritation. He could almost hear his
Headteacher’s voice somewhere at the back of his mind, making sure that he knew she had
been right.
He ought not complain, though – he knew that it could have been so much worse.
Somewhere on the other side of the sea, there were tens of thousands of men marching across
Europe, not just wearing ill-fitting boots, but fighting and dying in the mud, hundreds of
miles away from their family and friends, unsure if they would ever see home again. He
knew how that felt, at least. He was stuck here, almost eighty years in his past, not sure
whether he or the three children would ever get home, and he had no idea what he would do
if they couldn’t find a way back. Could he really be responsible for these three children’s
upbringing? Did he have the energy and, more importantly, the patience to cope with them?
He wasn’t sure of the answers to either question and hoped that he would never have to find
out.
Instead of worrying about it, he concentrated on what he would do when they found the
man who had become known to them as ‘Mrs Worthing’s friend’. The plan that he had
concocted relied entirely upon this man – most likely a member of the German officer
military – being scared off by the presence of a teacher and a farmer, and his squad of highly
trained soldiers turning back when they saw a small group of elderly men, dressed in second
hand uniforms and brandishing an array of unusual weaponry. It seemed unlikely, now that
he really thought about it, that trained soldiers would let something so ridiculous put them off
and that it was much more likely that they would simply eliminate – he preferred the
ambiguousness of the word ‘eliminate’ to the more direct ‘kill in cold blood’ – the problem.
Again, he was pinning everything on his faith that things would work out and keeping his
fingers (and toes) firmly crossed.
Eventually, and without incident, they reached a small, rocky cove and Mr Giles pointed
out the darker areas in the rocks which concealed the caves. Some, he explained, were far too
shallow to hide in; others were mostly submerged beneath the water for up to twenty hours a
day and so no-one could have been in those; but there were two or three which remained dry
and were deep enough to provide a reasonable measure of shelter. It was there that they
would start their search.
Cautiously picking their way across the rocks, Mr Giles and Mr Rabbit made their way
towards the caves – again, the Converse proved to be entirely inadequate to the task of
keeping Mr R’s feet dry and, by the time, they reached the first dark entrance, his socks were
soggy and his feet cold. He ignored the discomfort and followed Mr Giles into the cave,
switching on his phone and turning on the torch app once more to illuminate their way. Mr
Giles frowned at the phone.
“What’s that?” he asked in a whisper.
“It’s … erm … just a torch,” Mr Rabbit stuttered in response. He had forgotten that Mr
Giles wouldn’t have seen this kind of thing before. He thought fast. “All the teachers who are
evacuated are given one … erm … in case we lose the children during a blackout.”
It was a very poor explanation, but Mr Giles didn’t seem to be bothered. He peered into the
shadows and declared that there was no-one there and that they should move onto the next
cave.
It was the same story in the next cave but, in the third, it became clear very quickly that
someone had been camped out in there – cosying up to the seagulls which had clearly nested
there at some point – for quite some time. There was a sleeping bag rolled up neatly and
rested on top of a rock; a neat stack of unopened cans stood against one of the wall; some
empty cans had been thrown into one corner; and there was an awful smell, caused by what
Mr Rabbit could only imagine was where Mrs Worthing’s friend had been using a part of the
cave as a toilet. There was, however, no sign of the man himself.
“What do we do now, then?” asked Mr Giles, shifting the shotgun from one arm to the
other. “Do we wait here or go and look for him?”
Mr Rabbit shrugged. He still wasn’t sure how all of this had become his responsibility but
he knew that he now had an obligation to deal with it.
“I don’t really know,” he confessed. “If we stay here, he might not come back – he might
already be out there, helping his team come ashore. But, if we go and he comes back, we
might miss our chance to catch him.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps one of us should go
and look and the other stay here? Cover both bases, so to speak.”
“Aye,” Mr Giles agreed. “Sounds like a sensible idea. I know the land, so –“
“If you know the land,” a faintly accented voice interrupted him, “then you will be very
useful to me!”
14.
Both men turned towards the voice.
A tall figure loomed in the cave entrance, his features hidden in shadow. He raised a hand
and beckoned them towards him.
“You!” he spat, pointing towards Mr Giles. “You will come with me and act as guide when
my men land. And you …” – he pointed at Mr Rabbit – “… you will stay here.”
The figure stepped into the cave and Mr Rabbit’s torchlight lit up his face. He was a
middle-aged man, his face almost as grey as the uniform he wore, his hair – obviously once
blond – now a fading white. The lines on his face – which were not dissimilar to those on Mr
Rabbit’s – suggested that he didn’t smile very often. He certainly wasn’t smiling now.
“How are you going to make me do that?” asked the teacher. “It’s not like you can lock me
in.”
“No,” the man said, reaching for something at his waist and then aiming it at Mr Rabbit.
“But I don’t need to lock you in if I just shoot you.”
It became suddenly clear what it was that the man was holding. Mr Rabbit shrank back.
“I’ll just wait here, then,” he murmured, lifting his hands above his head.
“Put down the weapon,” the man commanded Mr Giles, gesturing at the shotgun. He took
another step into the cave and this time pointed his own gun at the farmer. “I don’t think you
will be quick enough to use it, anyway.”
Mr Giles’ face went red as he struggled to control his temper, but he slowly crouched and
placed the shotgun on the damp stone floor nonetheless.
“Thank you.” The man moved further into the cave, still keeping some distance between
himself, Mr Rabbit and Mr Giles. “Now, if you do not mind, my men will begin arriving
soon, and I would like to be there to meet them.” He stepped behind Mr Giles and picked up
the shotgun. “We need to get to the rendezvous point to ensure their safe landing. I believe
the phrase you English use is ‘after you’.”
He laughed, as he used the barrel of the shotgun to push the farmer forward.
As Mr Giles hesitantly moved towards the entrance, Mr Rabbit stayed in the shadows at
the back of the cave. His worst fears – that a teacher and a farmer would be outmanoeuvred
by the German officer – had been realised, but he couldn’t help thinking that there must still
be something that he could do to turn things round. The German officer couldn’t concentrate
on both of them, especially after he left the cave with Mr Giles, and so if he waited patiently
he could, perhaps, follow them from a distance and then … pounce? It sounded ridiculous in
his head and he was pretty certain that it would be just as ridiculous in reality, but what else
could he do?
Mr Rabbit took a few stealthy steps towards them. The German officer either didn’t notice
or didn’t care. He continued to push Mr Giles out of the cave.
As he stepped out onto the rocks, however, Mr Giles stopped and slowly turned to face the
German officer.
“I don’t think you should do this,” he said, trying to sound brave but his voice faltering. He
glanced off to his right, almost as if he couldn’t bear to look at the man in front of him.
“Someone will get hurt.”
“Shut up!” barked the German officer, stepping out of the cave and onto the rocks. “You
will do as I say!”
As the words left his mouth, something hit him hard in the ribs, sending him stumbling
across the rocks, both the shotgun and his own pistol knocked from his hands. Mr Rabbit
watched on, open mouthed, as Martin leaped onto the German officer’s back, wrapping one
arm around his head and the other around his neck – a move which he recognised as a classic
Sleeper Hold. Even as Martin applied the hold, Stella and Gareth joined him in the fray.
Stella used a length of wood – it looked uncannily like one of Mr Giles’ fence posts – to
strike the German officer hard in the stomach, while Gareth waited until she was clear to
launch several hard kicks to the man’s thighs and then groin area.
The German officer sank heavily to his knees, a pained groan escaping him, and Mr Rabbit
could see Martin tightening his hold. For a moment, he left the boy to his own devices and
then, satisfied that the German officer had been subdued, he stepped forward and touched
Martin’s shoulder. The boy glared at him, growling, but finally relaxed his grip on the man’s
throat.
The German officer slumped forward and lay panting on the rocks. Mr Giles pointed the
pistol, which he had retrieved from a nearby rock pool, at his back.
“What will you do now?” the man hissed.
“Make sure that your soldiers don’t land,” replied Mr Rabbit, absent-mindedly patting
Martin on the head. The boy’s fierce expression slowly faded, replaced by a smug grin.
Gareth and Stella’s expressions were remarkably similar.
“And then,” he continued, mirroring their smiles, “we’ll hand you over to the authorities.”
*
Mr Rabbit led the way across the rocks and onto the beach, the three children happily
trailing along behind him. Mr Giles brought up the rear, dragging the German officer through
the sand until they reached what he claimed was the rendezvous point. Surprisingly, it was
directly below the pill box.
“Do you think they’re up there?” Mr Rabbit asked, looking up at the cliff top. He glanced
at his watch. “It’s almost time.”
The farmer lifted his eyes from the German officer. “I reckon they ought to be,” he replied
nervously, even now not sure that their plan would work. “If they’re not, we’re done for.”
“You don’t even know if your troops are assembled!” the German officer laughed bitterly.
He struggled against the ropes which Mr Giles had used to bind his hands, but to no avail.
“Soon, you will be in chains and I will be –“
To everyone’s surprise, Stella kicked him in the back.
“Shut up, Heinz!” she spat.
“Heinz?” muttered Martin. “Does he make the beans?”
“I don’t know, Martin. It’s just a name cos he’s German.”
“How do you know that’s his name, just because he’s German?”
Stella sighed. “I just do, Martin, okay?”
“I quite fancy some beans,” Gareth chimed in. “On toast.”
“Oh, yeah, that’d be great.” Martin licked his lips. “With loads of brown sauce!”
“Do these children ever stop talking?” the German officer shouted, his eyes blazing. “Their
incessant prattling is enough to drive anyone mad! They are idiots!”
Mr Rabbit knelt down beside him and looked him straight in the eyes. “That may well be
true,” he whispered, offering up a small smile. “But they’re my idiots and I haven’t given you
permission to comment. So, as Stella said, shut up!”
The German officer glowered at him but did as he was told and shut up.
Moments later, Gareth tugged Mr Rabbit’s sleeve.
“What’s that noise?” he asked.
Mr R listened.
Somewhere, out on the water, he could hear the sound of a motor.
“Is that them?” asked Mr Giles, looking down at the German officer.
He didn’t answer.
“You heard the man,” Gareth growled, leaning in until he was face to face with the officer.
“Is that them?”
Mr Rabbit put a hand on Gareth’s shoulder. “Could we all stop intimidating the German,
please? If I’ve taught you nothing else,” he continued, leading the boy away, “I’d like to
think that you’ve learned that violence should only be used as a last resort. Europe is ablaze
at the moment only because people couldn’t resolve things through talking. No-one wanted
the war – certainly no-one will ever want another one – but words just wouldn’t work.” He
turned to Mr Giles. “So, if he doesn’t answer the question next time, you can shoot him.”
Mr Giles lifted the pistol.
It had the desired effect.
“Yes,” blurted out the German officer. “Yes! It is them. They are on schedule.”
“Thank you.” Mr Rabbit smiled. “Now, you need to stand up.”
“Why?”
Mr Rabbit looked thoughtfully at him. “Because,” he said, “your Eagles need to see that
you’re our prisoner. They need to know that they can’t mess with us. They need to
understand what happens when you try to invade our country. Then perhaps they’ll go home
and leave us alone.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the German officer clambered to his feet. Mr Guiles stood on one side
of him, the pistol pointed towards him. On the other side stood Mr Rabbit, the shotgun
cradled in his arms. A metre or two in front of them, stood the three children, arms folded
across their chests. If he had been able, Mr Rabbit would have insisted on a selfie.
The dark, menacing shape of a boat appeared on the horizon, small at first but growing
larger as it moved towards them. On its deck, they could see soldiers crouching, rifles at the
ready, aimed at the beach. It was unmarked, no flags were flying from it, but even from this
distance, they could see that it meant trouble. Mr Rabbit swallowed hard, even as a smile
began to appear on the face of the German officer.
And then, from somewhere high above them, there came the roar of voices. Mr R, Mr
Giles and the three children looked up and there, standing just back from the edge of the cliff,
their rifles raised and pointed out to sea, were the St. Martin’s-Under-Lyme Home Guard.
For a moment, the boat continued towards the shore, undaunted by the troops amassed atop
the cliff. But then a machine gun rattled. With a fine spray of water from its rear, the boat
turned slowly but surely and headed back out to sea.
As a cheer erupted from the cliff top, the officer dropped to his knees, his face buried in his
hands.
Mr Giles nodded at Mr Rabbit.
“Well done, young fella,” he said, a huge grin all over his face. “I take my hat off to you.”
“Thank you,” Mr Rabbit replied, suddenly feeling all the tension of the last few minutes
flooding out of him. His shoulders slumped and, for a second, he thought he might be sick.
Then, it was gone and he smiled back at Mr Giles. “I think the kids should take most of the
credit, though. It wouldn’t have worked without them.”
Stella, Martin and Gareth laughed. “We won!”
“We did indeed,” Mr Rabbit agreed. He was about to offer them all high-fives, when Mr
Giles reached out and took his arm. Quietly, he led the teacher slightly apart from the
children.
“Just one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t really want me to shoot him, did you?” Mr Giles asked, frowning.
“God, no,” Mr Rabbit answered, breathing a very deep sigh of relief. “I was almost wetting
myself at the thought that he wouldn’t tell us what we wanted to know!”
15.
Mr Giles led them all back up to the top of the cliff, where they were greeted by Captain
Stewart and his Home Guard. They looked surprised to see the teacher and his three pupils,
but even more shocked at the bound German officer they were dragging reluctantly behind
them. The Captain stepped forward, a serious look on his face.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his face beginning to turn pink. “You shouldn’t
be in this area – it’s been reserved for military manoeuvres. Giles?”
He looked at Mr Giles with a frown.
“You shouldn’t be bringing civilians to an exercise. Why aren’t you in uniform? And who
is that?” He pointed at the German officer.
Mr Giles was about to answer, but Mr Rabbit stopped him. “We snuck out early this
morning,” he explained, thinking quickly. “We wanted to see the beach – the children haven’t
seen it before, you see, because they’ve spent all their lives in London. When Mr Giles
noticed that we were gone, he guessed where we probably were and came down to tell us we
shouldn’t be here. He was just escorting us back to the farm when we heard your guns.”
Mr Giles nodded. He had heard enough to be able to add his own part of the explanation.
“I made them take cover until the firing was over, sir,” he continued, “and then I was just
taking them home now.”
The Captain wasn’t completely satisfied. He looked again at the man in the German
uniform. “You still haven’t told me who that is.”
For a moment, Mr Rabbit was stumped. He should just tell him the truth – that their
prisoner was a German officer who had been leading an invasion, that they had captured him
and that he, and his co-conspirator Mrs Worthing – needed to be taken into military custody
immediately. It was the most obvious thing to do, and the most sensible. The officer was a
danger to the safety of the country and Mrs Worthing had worked with him – they both
needed to be punished in some way for what they had done. But if he did tell that the truth, he
didn’t think the Captain would believe him – he hardly believed it himself – and then both the
German and Mrs Worthing would probably be released and left to make another attempt.
He opened and closed his mouth several times, unsure exactly what to say.
Finally, Stella spoke.
“He was in the caves,” she said, glaring at the others and almost daring them to interrupt
her. “He doesn’t speak any English, but we reckon he was washed up from a shipwreck or
something. Maybe they were trying to get here in a boat that got sunk and he swam the rest of
the way.”
Mr Rabbit’s eyes widened. It wasn’t the most convincing story he had ever heard but it
was certainly better than anything he could have come up with at such short notice.
And then she continued.
“We thought that maybe you could take him wherever he needs to go.” She almost batted
her eyelids. “You seem like a very clever bloke and would know exactly what to do with a
German soldier.”
The Captain blushed at the flattery but accepted it without comment.
“We’ll just leave him with you then, shall we, sir?” Mr Giles asked.
The Captain nodded, still a little flustered. After a moment, though, he looked at Giles.
“You should have been with us for the exercise,” he insisted.
“I know, sir. But I thought protecting the civilians was more important. And when we
found him …” Giles gestured towards the man in the German uniform and left the sentence
unfinished.
“Humph.” The Captain clearly wasn’t happy, but what else could he say? The whole point
of the Home Guard was to offer protection to the people who hadn’t gone to war – he could
hardly complain that one of his troops had made sure that the lives of four people weren’t in
danger. “Well, leave him in our custody,” he continued, “and get them out of here. I’ll make
sure he’s handed over to the relevant authorities and that your presence here isn’t mentioned
in my report.”
Of course, Mr Rabbit thought with a small smile. Because they weren’t supposed to be
there, he could leave them out of his report – so that he wouldn’t get into trouble for not
realising they were there. He would then also be able to take credit for capturing the German
officer, who would probably be thought of as a spy. No-one needed to know that he hadn’t
actually captured the man, nor did they need to know that it had been an evacuated teacher,
three school children – and a farmer.
The Captain might even get a medal out of it, if he played his cards right.
Mr Giles didn’t seem to mind, though. He simply saluted and said, “Thank you, sir,” in a
polite tone. Then, pushing the German officer towards the small group of Home Guard
troops, he led Mr Rabbit and the children away across the field.
When they were far enough away for the soldiers not to be able to hear they were just
passing the pill box, in fact, which the soldiers had deserted almost as soon as they had driven
back the approaching boat – Mr Rabbit patted Stella on the back. “That was quick thinking,”
he told her.
“Thanks, Mr R,” she grinned.
Then, he looked at Mr Giles.
“What are we going to do about Mrs Worthing?” he asked.
Mr Giles nodded slowly. “I’ve got some thoughts about that,” he replied. “What if –“
Mr Rabbit didn’t hear anything more.
Suddenly, the field was spinning. Somewhere in the distance, the railway line which he
knew led to the station began to blur. The grass all around him seemed to be growing at a
ridiculous speed, almost as if time had sped up and nature was out of control. The blue sky
that had been happily sitting where it always was, above him, was suddenly beneath his feet
and the firm ground that he had been standing on had vanished leaving him hanging in space.
A whooshing sound filled his head and a spitfire raced past him, not over his head exactly,
but somewhere nearer his feet. Faces filled his mind – Mr and Mrs Giles, Mrs Worthing, the
German officer, even Captain Stewart – and he could hear their voices echoing somewhere in
between his ears, asking him if he’d bumped his head, telling him that he shouldn’t be near
the cliff, casually informing him that it really was 1941.
And then everything went black.
*
After what seemed like forever, Mr Rabbit slowly opened his eyes.
He had, naturally, expected to find himself laying on his back on the grass, staring up at
the blue sky and a handful of seagulls that, perhaps, had thought they could nest in the unruly
mess that was his hair. He had also thought that he might be greeted by the faces of Stella,
Martin and Gareth.
In one of these respects, he was entirely wrong.
He blinked, as a ceiling began to come into focus, and then blinked again, as he recognised
the four walls of his classroom. He rolled his head back and saw the Smartboard filled with
the images from history that he had hoped to stimulate the children with.
And finally, he saw the three children from his history club, standing over him, staring
down at him like he was some kind of museum exhibit. They were no longer dressed in the
forties clothes that Mr and Mrs Giles had provided for them. Instead, they were dressed as
they always were – in school uniform (apart from Gareth’s jeans).
Mr Rabbit looked down at himself. He was back in his suit, he realised, reaching up to his
head. And the flat cap, which he had rocked, was gone!
“What happened?” he asked the children, his voice sounding tired even to himself.
“Dunno,” Stella replied, and there was something sad in her voice. “Looks like we’re back,
though.”
“Yeah,” grunted Gareth. “Just as I was starting to enjoy myself!”
Mr Rabbit struggled to sit up. His whole body ached, even more than it had after his last
residential trip when he had been persuaded by his group to ascend the climbing tower only
to be left hanging there for an hour while the children took photographs of him and posted
them on social media.
He shook his head, almost as if to clear the mist that was hanging over him.
“I know what you mean,” he said to Gareth. Despite the danger they had been in, and
despite the fact that they had been miles – and years – away from home, it had been a very
real and very exciting adventure. He had been a teacher for a long time, and taken part in a lot
of different, and sometimes unusual activities, but nothing he had ever done compared to this.
“I enjoyed it too.”
He grinned at the children.
“Same time next week?” he asked.
Unsurprisingly, all three of them nodded enthusiastically.
*