Out of the Blackout Read Online Free PDF Page B

way. But I don’t remember getting on the train. Do you?’
    â€˜I tell you, I don’t remember a thing about that time. I was only five too. And I don’t go grubbing around in my memory—too much going on now, this moment, to bother wi’ bleedin’ past ’istory. I do know you joined the gang last of all.’
    â€˜What do you mean? You do remember!’
    â€˜No, I don’t. But you remember Nellie Tucker?’
    â€˜I think so. Wasn’t she—?’
    â€˜One of us. Yeah. Anyway, she came down, must be a couple o’ months ago, to visit old Mrs Potter, who’d looked after her. Proper little London sparrow she is—bit of all right, too. Shop assistant. Anyway, we went out a couple o’ times while she was here. Bit different from these country girls. She—’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜She let me go the whole way, first time of askin’.’
    Micky’s face took on a drooling grin of reminiscence.
    â€˜I don’t want all the sexy details. What did she say about me?’
    â€˜Oh yes, well—she’s got this marvellous memory, see? Sort of photographic, only not for words, more for pictures, like. Well, naturally we got talkin’ about how we come ‘ere. The evacuation, an’ that. And o’ course we got talkin’ about you. And Nellie’s got this picture in her mind: us all in a group, like, wi’ the teacher checkin’ up on our names. Then the teacher got on the train to sort out which was to go in which compartments, and she’s got this picture o’ you walkin’ up the platform wi’ a satchel over your shoulder, just joinin’ up wi’ the group, and gettin’ on the train with us.’
    Simon sat there, considering. Nellie’s picture called up no memories.
    â€˜Case,’ he said. ‘I had a case, not a satchel. I’ve still got it.’
    â€˜That’s right. She said you had a case in your hand, and a little satchel over your shoulder.’
    â€˜I think she’s wrong. I’d still have had it when I got here, and I know I didn’t.’
    â€˜Little kids goin’ to school often did have satchels. Wi’ their names on in indelible ink, case they got lost.’
    There came to Simon, he did not know from where, a sharp image of a leather bag, thrown from a window, sailing through the air, to land on a grassy bank.
    â€˜ ’Ere,’ said Micky, who had been thinking, and had got really interested for the first time: ‘perhaps you threw it away when you realized it had your name on it.’
    â€˜Perhaps I did,’ said Simon.
    â€˜Cunning little bugger!’ said Micky again. He’d never before imagined that Simon might be endowed with that cunning that he saw as his own birthright. ‘You never know, perhaps things will come back to you. They do sometimes, you know.’
    â€˜I know. I think something just did. But it’s more likely the opposite will happen, isn’t it?’
    â€˜What? You’ll forget?’
    â€˜Yes. And think I remember things I don’t really remember. What I ought to do is write down everything I remember now. And if anything comes back to you—’
    â€˜It won’t mate. I live in the present. Why don’t you try it?’
    Simon did write down what he remembered, in a stiff-backed exercise book which he was to keep and add to for many years. He tried to be scrupulously honest, marking specially the things he was dubious about. When, on the last day of the vacation, he read over all he had written, he saw clearly that it didn’t amount to much.
    By then he had something else to occupy his mind. Early in January Tom Cutheridge received a blow on the head from the hoof of an estate horse. He lay dangerously ill in Buckridge Hospital for ten days, and Simon and his mother waited and watched and comforted each other. In those days, before Tom was out of danger, Simon