Inkerman Writers - Lynn Miller

The story tells the tale of Maxwell, a ten-year-old boy with a father in the Army. When his father is called away to fight, Max is initially excited until he realises it means his dad will not be able to take him to the football.

We see how Max undergoes many changes in his character in the days and weeks that follow. The central event, around which all the other themes are intertwined, is how he and his friend Ben find a snake and try to care for it before returning it, reluctantly to its owner. But that is just the vehicle that drives the story on.

The real story is about how Army families react to the trials of knowing that loved ones could be killed at any moment and also how ignorance can lead to misjudgement: there is an interesting side-story in that another boy ’s (Chris) mother is in the Army but his dad is at home in a wheelchair. The story tells how Max gradually develops respect for him as well having initially taken the micky out of Chris before he realised the plight of the father.

While Dad Was Away

CHAPTER ONE

“Oh no!” That was my mum, short-haired, short-bodied and, it seems just now, short-fused. Dad had just told her he ’d got his orders. He and his regiment had to go out East, to where the fighting was. Cool. But I ’ll let you work out how mum felt about it.

“Why you? Why now?”

“Because it’s my job.” Dad’s voice was tight, like he was holding it with both hands.

“But you’ve only just got back from your last tour of duty.”

“That was months ago.”

“Yes, just long enough for me and the kids to get used to you and get settled into a routine and now it ’s all up in the air again.” Her voice was sharp, clattering out like hailstones on a tin roof. I heard a click and mum breathe out heavily. She was smoking again.

“You knew it was coming.” Pause. “I thought you’d given those things up.”

“I have, but just now I need a cigarette, alright?” Breathing out of smoke again. “So, the fact that we knew this was coming makes it alright, does it?”

“It should do, yes.” Uh,oh, dad’s voice was getting louder.

“And how long will you be gone this time?”

“Six or seven months. We haven’t been told yet. We’ll find out tomorrow. It depends on how things go. It doesn’t look good, though.”

“With R and R when?”

“I don’t know that yet either.”

“Oh that’s great, that is. So me and the kids are totally disrupted, coping on our own and then you ’re going to come back, mess us up again and go again. I can’t wait.” What was mum on about? It was great when dad came home for rest and respite. Sure, he could be a bit moody, but at least he ’d play a bit of footie with me.

Dad tried to calm mum down again. “Come on, love, it’s the situation out there. We’ve all got to go at some time.”

“If they’d left you alone for a while, it might have all been over by the time they got round to you. ”

“It’s my job, love. I’m in the army, I’m a soldier.”

“So?” Mum sounded like me when I knew I couldn’t win the argument. “When do you go?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Do you know, the kids hardly know what you look like?”

Give over, mum. He’s tall, dark hair, moustache, brown eyes that go dead black when he’s mad. People say I take after him.

“Be reasonable.”

“You be reasonable. Who gets to pick up the pieces, eh? Who has to comfort the kids when they don ’t know if you’re coming home?”

“For god’s sake. You knew this could happen when you married me and when we had the kids.”

“And that really does make it alright, does it?”

Doors were slammed then and dad shouted, “Tell you what, I’ll stay over there, shall I? Not bother to come back for R and R in case it disturbs you in your cosy little world. ”

Mum shouted back, “That’s it, off you go. I’m allowed to be upset, you know.” Then, so quietly that I could only just hear it, “I miss you too; I get frightened too.”

There it was, then, life being lived as it always is in the Pearce household. I’d been waiting for this for most of the evening. Let me explain.

My name’s Maxwell, but most people call me Max –except when I’m in trouble, of course, then it’s Maxwell Pearce, if you don’t mind.

I’m a pretty average sort of kid, I suppose; ten years old, Year 6, five foot one inch, dark brown hair, brown eyes, not fat, not thin, not clever, not thick and I ’ve got the right number of arms and legs. There’s nothing more to say about me, really. Like I said, a pretty average sort of kid.

Ben, my friend, he’s about the same. His hair’s lighter than mine, though, and I guess he’s a bit taller and a bit thinner than me. Oh, and his eyes are a sort of greeny, browny colour. He calls them hazel. I call him nuts. Get it? Nuts, hazelnuts? Anyway, apart from that he ’s not much different to me.

Anyway, it was night time in the spring half term holidays and it was fairly late, midnightish. As usual, I didn ’t want to go to sleep, so I smuggled my Gameboy into bed and pulled the duvet up high over my head. I propped myself up more comfortably against the pillows, torch tucked between my raised knees. With a deftness I was suitably proud of, I pushed buttons and jiggled knobs, twitching and jerking happily as I fought to save an unknown, alien world from total devastation.

But that got stopped with a start when mum suddenly swept back the duvet and loomed above me.

“Bedtime.” One word that spelled out doom - oh yes, that and taking my Gameboy away with her.

So, that left me bored. Bored, bored, bored.

Pretty soon I was tossing and turning in my bed. I was hot and sweaty and the duvet was sticking to my skin. I moved, kicked the duvet off. Then I was cold, my feet got clammy and tingling. I tried thinking about the game I was playing before mum appeared. I tried to imagine myself fighting the woman in the pink suit thing and the

Man in the blue, shiny suit, but I managed to kill myself off straight away. Not bad, eh? Especially as it was just in my mind.

Eventually, I tried reading. I risked pulling my torch out from under my pillow and pushed it up against the wall in the hopes that I could stop mum from seeing its light. I dug out an old comic from under my bed and started to flick through it. But that couldn ’t hold my attention. You see the truth is, I was a bit worried about my dad. Where was he? Why was he home so late? I was sure it wasn ’t good that he still wasn’t home. I mean, soldiers should come home at the right time, shouldn’t they? Last time he was this late it was something to do with being sent to Ireland .

“Huh!” I turned off my torch and wondered if I dare switch on my PS2. I fancied a go at racing something fast, crashing a few smart cars, maybe kicking out a few lampposts on the way. But, just as I was beginning to sneak out from under the duvet, I heard the front door open then shut. Dad was home? Why so late? I carried on sneaking out.

Luckily, I’d thought there’d be a time when I’d need to get out of bed without anyone knowing about it and I’d oiled the hinges on the door. My preparations had also included checking out just exactly which floorboards on the landing let out a telltale squeak and which part of the handrail on the stairs grunted if you put any weight on it. Trouble was, me and Ben, who ’d been sleeping over at the time, only got as far as checking two thirds of the way down the stairs before we ’d been caught by one over-watchful mum on guard duty.

I now perched halfway down the stairs, shivering in my army camouflage pyjamas. Dad coming in so late meant something was wrong, I knew it. Mum had been on edge; she ’d even had a cigarette as soon as she’d parcelled me off to bed – that always meant there was trouble brewing.

And that was how I’d come to be sitting there, straining my lugs and trying not to breathe so’s I could hear what was being said behind the sitting room door. But nothing was being said any more – just the sound of mum smoking her cigarette.

I suddenly became aware of the carpet’s rough pile digging into my toes as it sunk in what was happening and my hands got sticky and wet in the middle. Dad had said this was going to happen; his battalion was going to get sent to the war. Mum had said she ’d hoped it would all be sorted before then.

But I thought it was brill. After all, dad was a soldier, he was supposed to go and fight. I just wished I could go too. I ’d be unbearable. I’d see that dictator off. He’d be begging in days, desperate for me to let him go and live in exile somewhere.

Hang on, though. What about the football? Dad said he was getting tickets for the United match in a couple of weeks. He promised we could go. It was my reward for getting my homework done for a whole time. He ’d promised he would take me. And he’d said he’d help me fix up my den ready for the Easter holidays. He’d promised, so I could have somewhere to go to get away from Jenny. And what if he didn ’t . . .

“What are you doing?” It was Jenny, my little seven-year-old pain in the backside sister.

“Get lost!”

“Oh, that’s charming.” She used that stupid namby pamby voice that she thought made her sound like mum.

“Just go away, will you?”

The sitting room door opened.

“Maxwell? Jenny? What are you two doing?”

I shot upstairs and into my room, slamming the door as I heard. “Maxwell was listening to you talking.”

This time I did switch on my PS2 and I was just beginning to really hit on some grotesque looking monster of a car when dad walked in.

“You heard what mum and me were saying?”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t be for too long, you know.”

“You’ll be back in a couple of weeks, then?” I wished I hadn’t said that.

“Well . . .”

“You’ll be back for the United match?” I let my voice sound as dead mad as I felt. I had to; I’d got myself in it now.

Dad’s voice came out strained. “Come on, Max. You know . . .”

“Thought not.” Whoops. That was too far. One look at dad’s face and I knew I was not number one favourite, all of a sudden.

The veins in dad’s neck started to stick out. “There are more important things happening in the world than football matches.” Dad was getting really mad.

“Right.” I knew I was pushing it. I wished I could stop.

“Yeah, right. And if you can’t see that, I’m disappointed in you.” He turned to walk out of the room, and then wheeled back round. “Are you going to be a pain like this for your mum while I’m away?”

I didn’t bother to answer. Like he cared.

Later, Max and his friend, Ben, find a snake.

We walked through the woods, chatting together, shoving each other around and laughing about my fight with Chris Jones. Mind you, we didn ’t say much about who won. We paid absolutely no attention to the budding of the trees or the soggy, last-year ’s-cast-off leaves that we were traipsing through and that were sticking to our trainers in little brown, balled-up clumps. I had no intention of worrying about the mess my clothes were getting into, I can tell you. Why bother? I was in dead trouble anyway; a little bit more wouldn ’t hurt any.

The den was still there, hidden away from the people whose houses backed onto the woods. It looked a bit battered and its branches were still a bit bare, like the skeleton of a building, but the leaves were starting to come out and there was even some new grass round the sides. But the mud. It was like a swamp, a smelly, sticky swamp.

Ben followed me into the den on his hands and knees. He stood up and studied the two well-muddy patches on his trousers.

“My mum’s going to have a fit when she sees these,” he said, dolefully.

“What can she do to you? Kill you?”

The look on Ben’s face implied that she might just do that. He sighed and shrugged, resolving himself to his fate.

The cushions we’d brought down last summer weren’t much better. In fact, they were gross. Ben picked one up and held it out.

“Yeuk,” he said with so much feeling that anybody would have thought he’d been asked to eat worms. “I’m gonna throw this out.” And with that, he slung it to the back of the den.

“What was that?” I stared at the ground. Something had moved near Ben’s feet, where the cushion had come from. I giggled, feeling silly.

“Mouse probably,” Ben smirked.

I reckoned he was right, but it could stand more investigating. I peered at the ground, pulled aside a few blades of grass, grabbed a stick and poked a bit, but I couldn ’t see a thing, just grass and roots and stuff, nothing that shouldn’t be there. So I straightened up.

“Must have been a mouse,” I said.

Ben held up his hands in some ghoul-like impression and hunched his shoulders at me. “Maybe it was some enormous monster, been kipping in our den over winter and is now waking, waking to find two mere mortals attacking his hideaway, threatening to expose his existence. ”

I punched Ben in the shoulder. “You’re loopy, you.”

Ben punched me back and we ended up shoving each other around, Ben pretending to be the monster, me being the mere mortal in fear of his life.

Suddenly, I saw something writhing along the ground where I’d been looking. I jumped back and grabbed Ben.

“God, Ben, look.”

“Oh yeah, very good, pretending to be – aah!” Ben let out a yelp as he saw where I was pointing. “A snake!”

“I know it’s a snake. It’s an adder.”

Ben looked at me like I was some kind of genius – or idiot.

“Oh, right.” Then, “Adders aren’t poisonous, are they?” he stepped toward it.

“Dunno.”

Ben jumped back. Actually, he jumped behind me. “I don’t think they are,” I said as he stared over my shoulder.

What I did next surprised me even more than Ben. I yanked my coat off and threw it over the snake. It immediately became very still.

“What d’you do that for?” now Ben was staring at me as if I was some sort of being from the Planet Zog.

“’Cos I want to keep it.”

“What!”

“I’m going to take it home and keep it.”

“Where? In the bath?”

“Ha, ha,” I mocked. “In the shed, of course.” All this was coming to me each time I opened my mouth. I was as surprised as Ben to hear what I was saying.

“And how do you reckon you’ll get it home without getting bitten?”

“You’re gonna get me a box from the supermarket.”

“What?”

“Please.” I thought I’d better add that to be on the safe side.

Ben wasn’t impressed. “But I . . .”

“Go on. You can help me look after it.”

“Catch live mice, you mean?”

“That as well.”

Ben thought for a moment. Then, “Can we tell people?”

“Some. If my mum finds out I’ll be in it deep and she’ll throw Arthur out.”

“Who’s Arthur?”

I grinned. “The snake.”

“Oh.” Ben thought some more. “Why don’t you go and get the box?”

“Do you want to stop Arthur if he makes a move?” I felt I’d won the argument.

“Okay, I’m on my way.” Ben darted out of the den and set off at a run. I could hear him thundering through the woods for ages.

I hoped to goodness Arthur would stay still. The truth was, I’d been all confident and full of knowledge to Ben, but I hadn’t really got a clue about snakes. And, as for getting him in the box, well I’d only thrown my coat over him on impulse. I think I’d seen it in a film or something. Or perhaps I’d read it somewhere. Anyway, by the time Ben got back with what must have been one of the biggest boxes in the shop, I had a plan.

We laid the box on its side in front of the snake. Then I got a big piece of wood and, while Ben was behind the box ready to upright it, I pulled my coat off and gave Arthur a shove with the wood.

It almost went like clockwork, except that Ben very nearly flicked the snake back out of the box, he uprighted it so quickly. Still, we got him in there and I even managed to get the flaps tucked together before it started moving. I went to put my coat back on.

“You’re putting that on, are you?” Ben was horrified.

“Why not?”

“The snake might have poohed or piddled in it.”

We looked at each other and said, “Gross!”

I laid the coat across the top of the box and we set off, one carrying each side.

Walking sideways was hard in the woods, but not as bad as meeting Tim Croker and his gang outside the newsagents.

“What ya got in there?” he shouted. “They send ya dad back in a box already?”

“Yeah, really funny, Croker. Actually, it’s your mum’s last tenant.”

One of these days, I reckoned, I’d learn to keep my big mouth shut. Everyone knew about Tim’s mum renting out the spare room to make a bit of extra cash since his dad left. And, of course, the rumours flew around. But nobody ever said anything to Tim ‘cos of what they’d get. And I was about to get it.

Ben started saying, “You know what we’ve got in here, Croker?” in one of those stupid, threatening voices, like he’d heard Mel Gibson do.

But I managed to shut him up. The last thing we needed was Tim Croker knowing about Arthur. That might never be something I needed to worry about, though, judging by the look on Croker ’s face. He grabbed the box.

“What have you got in there, then?” Croker didn’t so much ask as threaten.

“Mind your own,” I snarled, hoping I sounded braver than I felt.

Tim pulled at the box. “But I want it to be my business.”

“Hello. Tim, Ben and Maxwell, isn’t it?”

We all stopped and looked at the newsagent’s doorway. A man was there, a grim looking man with scars all over his face, cutting deeply into his cheeks, chin and forehead. He was in a wheelchair. Behind him stood Chris Jones. At first, I thought he just happened to be stuck behind the wheelchair, waiting to get out of the shop, but then I saw he was holding onto the handles and had obviously been pushing it. This must have been his dad. This must have been the home life Mr Dewsbury had asked me if I knew about. I felt my face flush. I looked at Ben. We both felt the same. Horrible.

“Err, hello, Mr Jones.” All three of us said it together. Tim let go of the box.

“Tim, would you mind helping Chris push me onto the ramp of my van? One of the brakes on the chair keeps sticking and it ’s hard for Chris to get it on alone.”

“Okay.”

Tim walked over toward the wheelchair and Mr Jones winked at me and Ben. We both turned bright red again and made good our getaway.