Page 25 of Strangers in Time

“Oh, theyministerthings all right. Paper shuffling and official regulations and lots of tut-tutting. And mind you they have secret warehouses full of food spread all over Britain in case of invasion. Well, the Huns aren’t coming, are they? So I says, give us the food. But no, they won’t do that, will they? If you can muddle that bit out, then Bob’s your uncle.”

Charlie helped her with the few dishes. Afterward, Gran made them two cups of weak loose tea, and they settled in the front room. The fireplace held only woebegone howls of the wind and the idle drips of rain coming through their cracked chimney pot.

“Now, Mr. Abernathy did promise more coal,” Gran said, her tone frustrated. “But I suppose it hasn’t come in yet. And my old bones tell me this coming winter will be a positive corker. Chills already set in, least with me, but I’m old as Methuselah.”

Off this remark Charlie produced two lumps of coal from his pockets.

“Where on earth?” she began when she saw them. “Charlie!”

Charlie set about to turn the lumps to heat in their small fireplace opening. “Fell off a lorry,” he explained. “And I was there when they did.”

“Didn’t the driver want them back?”

“Bloke didn’t notice. I yelled and yelled but he must’a been deaf or somethin’. Lot of that goin’ round what with the bombs and all.”

Charlie had actually stolen the lumps after using his metal tool to defeat a lock on a door where the coal was stored. The two pieces were all that would fit in his pockets. He breathed life into the small flames with a pair of bellows and his gran drew closer to the hearth.

“Damp gets in your bones, don’it, Charlie?”

He rubbed his hands together near the bluish flames. Their chimney flue had never worked properly, but he didn’t mind thesmoke collecting around the room and settling over him, though it did make him hungry. Well, just about everything made him hungry.

“I… found somethin’ the other day, Gran.”

She put down her tea, picked up her ball of yarn and needles, and took up working on what would be a winter sweater for him, if the yarn and her rheumatic fingers held out.

“Found something? What would that be, I wonder.”

Charlie took out the book and held it up to her.

“The pages are empty,” he said.

She laid aside her clacking needles and took up the book. “You said you found it? Where?”

“Down an alley. I was taking a shortcut to school,” he added quickly. As a rule, his grandmother did not care for him being in alleyways.

She flipped through the pages. “What are you going to do with it?”

Charlie shrugged. “Could sell it. Folks want paper.”

“So, you don’t want to keep it, then?”

He scrunched up his bony face. “Keep it? What for?”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Hang on a tick, your schoolwork requires no writing?”

Charlie had been ready for that one. “They give us copy books, Gran. You got to usetheirs, see?”

She looked at him frowning. “Oh, I see, yes, indeed I do.” She handed the book back and picked up her knitting once more.

“I’m all knackered, Gran, goin’ to bed,” he announced with a yawn.

She immediately looked at the small windup clock on the mantel that matched the one in her bedroom, and then glanced in surprise at her grandson. She put a hand to his forehead. “You feeling poorly, Charlie? You do look a bit peaky, luv.”

“Just tired. Tired in thehead. Mathe-matics,” he added with feigned fatigue.

And with this final lie of the night he went to his cupboard andlay down in his small box after closing the door so that it was very dark. His fingers skimmed the edges of the book. He hadn’t a pencil or a pen, though he might be able to pinch one. Yet what would be the point of writing things in it? He set the book on the floor and deliberately faced away from it.

He would sell the book. Paper was useless to him. But coins weren’t. As he had told Molly Wakefield, they could come in quite handy. And with that thought he focused fully on the girl. Charlie had been out trying to pinch some useful things when he had run into her.

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