was always impeccably dressed in a uniform of double-breasted blazer, crisp white shirt and neatly pressed grey slacks. A maroon, silver and blue striped Royal Air Force tie was forever knotted neatly around his neck. As was the fashion with many World War II pilots, he favoured a dashing flying ace’s moustache. It was a thing of wonder. The moustache was so long it connected to his sideburns. It was like a beard but with the chin bit missing. Grandpa would twizzle the ends of his moustache for hours, until they stuck out at just the right angle.
The one thing that would give Grandpa’s confused state of mind away was his choice of footwear. Slippers. The old man no longer wore shoes. Now he always forgot to put them on. Whatever the weather, in rain, sleet and snow, he would be sporting his brown checked slippers.
Of course Grandpa’s eccentric behaviour made the grown-ups worry. Sometimes Jack would pretend to go to bed, but instead creep out of his bedroom and sit at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas. There he would listen to his mother and father downstairs in the kitchen, discussing Grandpa. They would use big words that Jack didn’t understand to describe the old man’s ‘condition’. Then Mum and Dad would argue about Grandpa being put in an old folk’s home. The boy hated hearing his grandfather talked about in this way, as if he was some sort of problem. However, being only twelve years old, Jack felt powerless to do anything.
But none of this stopped Jack adoring hearing stories about the old man’s wartime adventures, even though these tales had become so real to Grandpa now that the pair would act them out. They were Boy’s Own adventures, stories of derring-do.
Grandpa had an ancient wooden record player the size of a bath. On it he would play booming orchestral music, with the volume as high as it would go. Military bands were his favourite, and together Jack and his grandfather would listen to huge classical pieces like Rule, Britannia!, Land of Hope and Glory or the Pomp and Circumstance Marches way into the night. Two old armchairs would become their cockpits. As the music soared, so did they in their imaginary fighter planes. A Spitfire for Grandpa and a Hurricane for Jack. Up, up and away, they would go. Together they would fly high above the clouds, outwitting enemy aircraft. Every Sunday night the pair of flying aces would win the Battle of Britain, without even leaving the old man’s tiny flat.
Together Grandpa and Jack inhabited their own world and had countless imaginary adventures.
However, the night our story starts, a real-life adventure was about to begin.
3
A Waft of Cheese
This particular evening, Jack was asleep in his bedroom, dreaming he was a World War II pilot, as he did every night. He was sitting behind the controls of his Hurricane, taking on a squadron of deadly Messerschmitts, when he heard the distinct sound of a telephone ringing.
RING RING RING RING.
That was strange, he thought, there weren’t any telephones on board 1940s fighter planes. Yet still the telephone kept ringing.
RING RING RING RING.
The boy woke up with a start. As he sat up in bed he banged his head on his model Lancaster bomber that was suspended from the ceiling.
“Ow!” he cried. He checked the time on the nickel-plated RAF pilot’s watch his grandfather had given him.
2:30am.
Who on earth was calling the house at this hour?
The boy leaped down from his top bunk and opened his bedroom door. Downstairs in the hall, he could hear his mother talking on the telephone.
“No, he hasn’t turned up here,” she said.
After a few moments Mum spoke again. Her familiar tone convinced Jack that she must be talking to his father. “So no sign of the old man at all? Well what are you going to do, Barry? I know he’s your father! But you can’t stay out all night looking for him!”
Jack couldn’t remain silent for a moment longer. From the top of the stairs he cried, “What’s happened to Grandpa?”
Mum looked up. “Oh, well done, Barry, now Jack’s woken up!” She put her hand over the receiver. “Go back to bed this instant, young man! You’ve got school in the morning!”
“I don’t care!” replied the boy with defiance. “What’s happened to Grandpa?”
Mum returned to the telephone call. “Barry, call me back in two minutes. It’s all going off here now and all!” With that she slammed down the receiver.
“What’s happened?” demanded the boy again as he ran down the stairs to join his mother.
Mum sighed theatrically as if all the woes of the world were on her shoulders. She did that a lot. It was at this exact moment that Jack realised he could smell cheese. Not just normal cheese. Smelly cheese, blue cheese, runny cheese, MOULDY CHEESE, cheesy cheese. His mother worked at the cheese counter of the local supermarket, and wherever she went, a strong waft of cheese came with her.
Both stood in the hall in their nightclothes, Jack in his stripy blue pyjamas, and his mother in her pink fluffy nightgown. Her hair was in curlers and she had thick smears of face cream on her cheeks, forehead and nose. She often left it on overnight. Jack wasn’t sure exactly why. Mum thought of herself as quite a beauty, and often claimed to be the ‘glamorous face of cheese’, if such a thing was possible.
Mum flicked on the light and they both blinked for a moment at the sudden brightness.
“Your grandpa’s gone missing again!”
“Oh no!”
“Oh yes!” The woman sighed once more. It was clear she was worn out by the old man. Sometimes she would even roll her eyes at Grandpa’s war stories, as if she was bored. This bothered Jack greatly. Grandpa’s stories were infinitely more exciting than being told about the week’s bestselling cheese. “Me and your father were woken up by a phone call around midnight.”
“From who?”
“His neighbour downstairs, you know, that newsagent man…”
After his big house had become too much for him, Grandpa had moved last year to a little flat above a shop. Not just any shop. A newsagent’s shop. Not just any newsagent’s shop. Raj’s.
“Raj?” replied Jack now.
“Yeah, that’s his name. Raj said he thought he heard your grandpa’s door bang around midnight. He knocked on his door, but there was no answer. The poor man got himself in a terrible panic, so he called here.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“He jumped in the car and has been out searching for your grandpa for the past couple of hours.”
“Couple of hours?!” The boy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why on earth didn’t you wake me?”
Mum sighed AGAIN. Tonight was turning into something of a sigh-a-thon. “Me and your dad know how fond you are of him, so we didn’t want you to worry, did we?”
“Well, I am worried!” replied the boy. In truth he felt a lot closer to his exciting grandfather than he did to anyone else in the family, including his mother and father. Time spent with Grandpa was always precious.
“We’re all worried!” replied Mum.
“I am really worried.”
“Well, we’re all really worried.”