Grandpa’s Great Escape

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.”

“Well, I am really really worried.”

“Well, we’re all really really really worried. Now please let’s not have a competition about who is the most worried!” she shouted angrily.

Jack could tell his mother was becoming increasingly stressed, so thought it best not to reply to that last remark, even though he was really really really worried.

“I’ve told your dad a hundred times your grandpa needs to be in an old folk’s home!”

“Never!” said the boy. He knew the old man better than anyone. “Grandpa would absolutely hate that!”

Grandpa – or Wing Commander Bunting as he was known during the war – was far too proud to spend the last of his days with a lot of old dears doing crosswords and knitting.

Mum shook her head and sighed. “Jack, you are too young to understand.”

Like all children, Jack hated being told this. But now wasn’t the time to argue. “Mum, please. Let’s go and look for him.”

“Are you NUTS? It’s freezing tonight!” replied the woman.

“But we have to do something! Grandpa is out there somewhere, lost!”

RING RING RING RING. Jack lunged for the telephone, lifting the receiver before his mother could. “Dad? Where are you? The town square? Mum just said we should come out and help you look for Grandpa,” he lied, as his mother gave him an angry look. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

The boy put the receiver down, and took his mum by the hand.

“Grandpa needs us…” he said.

Jack opened the door and the pair ran out into the darkness.

4

Second-hand Trike

The town was eerily unfamiliar at night. All was dark and quiet. It was the deepest winter. A mist hung in the air, and the ground was moist after a heavy downpour of rain.

Dad had taken the car, so Jack pedalled along the road on his trike. This trike was only meant for toddlers. In fact, the boy had been given the trike second-hand for his third birthday and had outgrown it many years ago. However, his family didn’t have enough money to buy him a new bike, so he had to make do.

Mum stood on the back, holding on to his shoulders. If any of his classmates from school had seen him giving his mother a lift on his trike, Jack knew he would have to go and live alone in a dark and distant cave for all eternity.

Grandpa’s military band music played out in Jack’s head as he pedalled as fast as he could down the street. For a toddler’s trike, it was a deceptively heavy beast, especially with his mother standing on the back, her fluffy pink nightgown blowing in the wind.

As the wheels turned around on his trike so did the thoughts in Jack’s mind. The boy was closer to the old man than anybody; surely he could guess where his grandfather was?

Without seeing another soul on the way, the pair finally arrived at the town square. A pathetic sight greeted them.

Dad was in his pyjamas and dressing gown, hunched over the steering wheel of the family’s little brown car. Even from a distance, Jack could see the poor man couldn’t take much more of this. Grandpa had gone missing from his flat seven times in the past couple of months.

When he heard the trike approach, Dad sat up in his seat. Jack’s father was wiry and pale. He wore glasses and looked older than he was. His son often wondered whether being married to Mum had added years to the poor chap.

With the sleeve of his dressing gown, Dad wiped his eyes. It was clear he had been crying. Jack’s father was an accountant. He spent all day doing long boring sums and didn’t find it easy to express his feelings. Instead he would bottle things up. However, Jack knew his dad loved his father very much, even though he was nothing like him. It was as if the love of adventure had skipped a generation. The old man’s head was in the clouds, while his son’s head was buried in books of figures.

“Are you all right, Dad?” asked the boy, breathless from pedalling.

As his father wound down the window to talk to them, the handle came off in his hand. The car was ancient and rusty, and bits often fell off.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Dad lied, as he held the handle aloft, not quite sure what to do with it.

“So no sign of the old man?” asked Mum, already knowing the answer.

“No,” replied Dad softly. He turned away from them and stared straight ahead to hide how upset he was. “I’ve looked all over town for him for the past few hours.”

“Did you look in the park?” asked Jack.

“Yes,” replied Dad.

“The railway station?”

“Yes. It was all locked up for the night, but there was no one outside.”

Suddenly Jack had an inspired thought, and couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “The War Memorial?!”

The man returned his gaze to his son, and shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s the first place I looked.”

“Well, that’s it then!” announced Mum. “Let’s call the police. They can stay out all night looking for him. I am going back to bed! We have a big promotion on our Wensleydale at the cheese counter tomorrow and I need to look my best!”

“No!” said Jack. From secretly listening to his parents’ conversations about Grandpa at night, the boy knew this could spell disaster. Once the police were involved, questions would be asked. Forms would have to be filled in. The old man would become ‘a problem’. Doctors would poke and prod him, and because of his condition no doubt Grandpa would be sent straight to an old folk’s home. To someone like his grandfather who had lived a life of freedom and adventure, it would be like a prison sentence. They simply had to find him.

“Up, up and away…” muttered the boy.

“What, son?” replied Dad, mystified.

“That’s what Grandpa always says to me when we are playing pilots together in his flat. As we take off he always says ‘Up, up and away.’’’

“So…?” demanded Mum. She rolled her eyes and sighed at the same time. Double whammy.

“So…” replied Jack. “I bet that’s where Grandpa is. Up high somewhere.”

The boy thought long and hard about which was the tallest building in town. After a moment it dawned on him. “Follow me!” Jack exclaimed, before speeding off down the road, pedalling his trike furiously.

5

Loon in the Moon

The highest point in the town was in fact the church spire. It was something of a local landmark and could be seen for miles around. Jack had a hunch that Grandpa might have tried to climb up there. When he had gone missing before, he had often been found somewhere high up, atop a climbing frame, up a ladder, even once on the roof of a double-decker bus. It was as if he needed to touch the sky as he had done all those years ago as an RAF pilot.

As the church came into view, there was the distinct silhouette of a man sitting on top of the spire. He was perfectly framed by the glow of a low silvery moon.

From the moment Jack saw his grandfather he knew exactly what the old man thought he was doing. Flying his Spitfire.

At the foot of the tall church was the short vicar.

Reverend Hogg had a rather obvious comb-over. What hair he had left was dyed so black it was blue. His eyes were as small as penny coins, hidden behind black-framed glasses. The vicar’s glasses rested on his upturned piggy nose, which he was forever sticking in the air so he could look down it at people.

Jack’s family did not go to church regularly, so the boy had only seen the vicar out and about in the local town. But once he had seen Reverend Hogg carrying a crate of expensive-looking champagne from the off-licence. On another occasion, Jack could have sworn he saw the man cruising past in a brand-new Lotus Esprit sports car, puffing on a big fat cigar. Weren’t vicars meant to help the poor, Jack couldn’t help wondering, not lavish money on themselves?

This being the middle of the night, Reverend Hogg was still wearing his bedclothes. The vicar’s pyjamas and dressing gown were made of the finest silk, and he was sporting a pair of red velvet slippers which were monogrammed ‘C of E’ (for Church of England). Around his wrist was curled a chunky diamond-encrusted gold watch. He was clearly a man who had a taste for the high life.

“GET DOWN FROM THERE!” barked Reverend Hogg at the old man, just as the family ran through the graveyard.

“IT’S MY GRANDPA!” shouted Jack, once again breathless from having pedalled so hard on his trike. Reverend Hogg reeked of cigars, a smell the boy could not stomach and instantly he felt a little queasy.

“Well, what on earth is he doing on MY church roof?!”

“I am sorry, vicar!” yelled Dad. “It’s my father. He gets confused…”

“Then he should be under lock and key! He has already dislodged some of the lead off MY roof!”

From behind the gravestones, a gang of tough-looking men appeared. They all had shaved heads, tattoos and teeth missing. From their overalls and spades, Jack assumed they must be gravediggers. Though it seemed strange that they were digging graves in the dead of night.

One of the gravediggers handed the vicar a torch, which he shone straight into the old man’s eyes.

“COME DOWN THIS INSTANT!”

Yet still Grandpa did not respond. As usual he was in a world of his own.

“Rudder steady. Holding on course, over?” he said instead. It was clear he did indeed believe he was high up in the skies piloting his beloved Spitfire.

“Wing Commander to base, over?” he went on.

“What on earth is he on about?” demanded Reverend Hogg, before muttering under his breath, “The man is a complete loon.”

One of the gravediggers, a big, burly man with a skinhead and a tattoo of a spider’s web on his neck spoke up. “Shall I fetch your air rifle, Reverend? A few shots should scare him down in no time!”

His fellow gravediggers snickered at the thought.

Air rifle! The boy needed to think fast if his grandfather was going to make it down to earth safely. “No! Let me try!” Jack had an idea. “This is base, over?” he called up.

All the grown-ups looked at him in disbelief.

“Wing Commander Bunting reading you loud and clear,” replied Grandpa. “Current cruising altitude is 2,000 feet, ground speed of 320 miles per hour. Have been circling all night but no sign of enemy aircraft, over.”

“Then your mission is accomplished, sir, return to base, over,” said Jack.

“Roger that!”

From the foot of the church the group below looked up in incredulity as the old man – still sat on the church spire – made an imaginary landing. Grandpa was completely convinced he was behind the controls of his fighter plane; he even mimed turning the engine off. Next he slid open the invisible canopy, and climbed out.

Dad closed his eyes. He was so scared his father was going to fall, he couldn’t watch a moment longer. Jack’s eyes were wide open in terror. He didn’t dare blink.

The old man clambered down the spire on to the roof. For a moment he stood still on the narrow peak, then without a care in the world he walked along it. But the piece of lead he had dislodged on his way up had left a dent in the roof so after just a few paces…

…Grandpa went flying through the air.

“Nooo!” cried Jack.

“DAD!” shouted Dad.

“ARGH!” screamed Mum. The vicar and gravediggers looked on with grim fascination.

The old man slid down the roof, dislodging some more of the vicar’s precious lead tiles along the way.

SMASH! SMASH!

As they crashed on the ground, Grandpa hurtled over the roof edge.

But at that moment, without making a fuss, the old man managed to grab on to the guttering and came to a stop. His thin legs swayed in the night air, his slippers bumping against the stained-glass window of the church.

“Careful of MY window!” shouted the vicar.

“Hold on, Dad!” called out Jack’s father.

“I told you we should have called the police,” added Mum unhelpfully.

“I have a christening at the church first thing tomorrow!” exclaimed Reverend Hogg. “We can’t be scrubbing bits of your grandfather off the ground all morning!”

“Dad? DAD?” called out Jack’s father.

Jack thought for a moment. If he didn’t act fast, his poor grandpa was sure to plummet to his death.

“He won’t respond to being called that,” said the boy. “Let me.” Jack then projected his voice once more. “Wing Commander? This is Squadron Leader!”

“Ah, there you are, old boy!” Grandpa called down from the guttering. Jack’s pretend name had now become real to the old man. Grandpa believed the boy was a fellow airman.

“Just make your way along the aircraft’s wing to your right,” called up Jack.

Grandpa paused for a moment, before answering, “Roger that.” A moment later he started shimmying his hands along the guttering.

Jack’s approach was utterly unexpected. Yet it worked. You had to enter Grandpa’s world if you wanted to get through to him.

Jack spotted a drainpipe running down the side of the church. “Now, Wing Commander, you see that pole to your right?” shouted the boy.

“Yes, Squadron Leader.”

“Hold on tight and slowly slide down it, sir.”

Both Mum and Dad gasped and covered their mouths as Grandpa swung like an acrobat from the guttering to the pipe. For a moment all was still as he held on tight at the top. However, his weight must have been too much for the pipe. Suddenly it came loose from the wall and started rapidly bending downwards.

CREAK went the pipe.

Had Jack said the wrong thing? Was he now sending his beloved grandfather hurtling towards the ground?

“NOOOOOOO!” cried the boy.

6

A Runaway Bulldozer

To Jack’s relief, instead of snapping, the church drainpipe bent down slowly under the old man’s weight.

Eventually, it placed him safely on the ground.

As soon as his slippers touched the wet grass of the graveyard, Grandpa marched over to the assembled group and gave them a salute. “Fall out, men.”

Mum looked more than a little offended.

“Wing Commander?” said the boy. “Please let me escort you to your car. We’ll drive you back to your quarters shortly.”

“Jolly good show, old boy,” replied Grandpa.

Jack took him by the arm and led him to the family’s rusty old car. As he opened the door, the handle came clean off. He put his grandfather safely in the back seat and closed the door once more so the old man could get warm on this chilly winter night.

As he ran back across the graveyard, Jack heard Reverend Hogg saying to his parents, “That man isn’t all there! He needs to be locked up…”

“He is fine, thank you very much!” said Jack, jumping in on the conversation.

The vicar looked down at the boy and smiled, baring his teeth like a shark before it takes a bite. Jack watched as a thought seemed to cross the man’s mind. Suddenly the vicar’s tone of voice completely changed. “Mr and Mrs…?” he began again, now sounding kind and caring.

“Bunting,” replied Mum and Dad at the same time.

“Mr and Mrs Bunting, in my many years as vicar, I have brought a great deal of comfort to the old folk of this parish, and I would love to help your elderly relative.”

“Oh, would you?” said Mum, immediately charmed by this slippery fish.

“Yes, Mrs Bunting. In fact, I know an absolutely smashing place he could be sent to. It recently opened after the previous old folk’s home was ACCIDENTALLY demolished by a runaway bulldozer.”