JOE AND NELLY A World War Two ghost story
CHAPTER 12

Nan sat in the parlour, sobbing into her green checked apron. In the corner, the door to the cage yawned open. Joe’s quick eyes checked the curtain rail and the pipe rack but there was no Monty. He ran upstairs, from room to room, and then back down again. He stood in front of Nan, who was wiping away her tears with an embroidered hanky, and stared at the pocket of her apron. It was empty.

‘He won’t survive out there,’ muttered Nan from her hanky. ‘Even if the other birds don’t get him, another V-1 attack might. He’s quite old for a budgie– we bought him a couple of years after you were born. Besides, what would he eat?’

‘Now don’t tie yourself up in knots, love,’ Granddad said, rubbing her shoulder and giving her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Joe and I can replace Monty.’

‘Yes, we can,’ Joe added. Granddad didn’t seem to mind, so he continued. ‘We have our map and we can always go back to the places where we’ve already looked. We’ll replace Monty for you.’

Nan forced a whisper of a wobbly smile. ‘Of course you will,’ she said.

Joe and Granddad agreed it would be best to take a slow walk up to the school, checking the main road first, and then making their way back through the alleys and bomb sites. Joe’s stomach grumbled. Granddad raised his untamed grizzled eyebrows in sympathy.

‘I don’t think Monty will be too far away, so long as a stray cat hasn’t got him.’

‘Don’t say that, Granddad!’ As they plodded past stretches of wasteland and bomb sites, Joe thought of Monty stuck outside in a world he didn’t know. And then he thought of Nelly standing in the garden with a tea towel in her hand, wondering why the door was locked. Albert the air warden had said that all the neighbours joined in to search houses that had been destroyed in the Blitz, just like him and Nelly looking for marbles and things, and they too had found nothing. The authorities decided that Nelly was dead and included her name on her parents’ grave. They were too busy with putting out fires and rescuing survivors to keep looking for her.

A sudden flash of green startled Joe out of his thoughts. He stopped walking and waited to see if it appeared again. A green feather fluttered past him and landed in the dust.

‘Grandad! I think we’ve found Monty!’

The flash of green landed on a nearby fence for a moment, flapped its wings and swooped off again.

‘I’ll follow him,’ said Joe, going as fast as he could on his sore ankle.

It wasn’t easy keeping up. While Monty fluttered through the wire fences and over the wooden ones, Joe had to take the longer route around them. He’d forgotten what a maze the back alleys were and it was even harder to replace his way when most of the houses were unrecognisable ruins. Not only that, Granddad had the map. Far behind him, Joe could hear him shouting ‘Wait for me!’

He slowed down and stopped in front of what had once been a terraced house with the usual yard at the back. The house was completely destroyed but the outhouse was still standing. There was a tin bath still attached to a nail on the wall. It looked like a giant grey snail. Monty was sitting on top of it. Joe chuckled and Monty whistled back. Joe edged towards him, hand outstretched.

‘You cheeky budgie. Come on, boy. Good boy. Hop onto my finger.’

Monty’s scratchy little claws gripped his finger. Joe was about to turn around, go back and replace Granddad, and tell him everything was alright. But it wasn’t. There on the outhouse roof, just above the tin bath, was a bundle of rags.

Joe knew it was her straight away: he recognised the pattern of her dress and the one tatty old shoe that dangled from the roof. In his head, he heard Nelly singing:

She had a little hole in her frock,

Hole in her shoe,

Hole in her sock...

...where a bone peeped through. It wasn’t a foot – it was just bones. Nelly’s bones.

Granddad wheezed as he came up behind Joe, grabbed him and pulled him around to face towards him, away from the bundle on the roof. But he wasn’t quick enough. Joe had seen her and he could never, ever un-see her. Like the time he stared at the sun for a few seconds and closed his eyes. Even with them shut, he still saw bright spangles. He knew the image of Nelly’s body on that roof would be engraved in his head for ever.

Grandad took the startled budgie from his finger and slipped him into his Joe’s pocket, where Monty would feel safer.

‘You take Monty home and let Nan know that we’ve discovered Nelly. There’ll be some supper waiting for you, if you can manage it. I’ll fetch Albert and we’ll get Nelly’s body off that roof.’

Joe stumbled blindly through the alley, dusty weeds and tumbledown walls swimming around him in a blur of tears. Acid burned in his throat and his nose was so blocked up he had to breathe through his mouth. He would never understand why Nelly had to go out in the garden that day to fetch the tea towel from the line. Surely they had another tea towel – Nan had loads of them. If only she’d stayed indoors with her mum and dad, he wouldn’t have had to see her like that. All the time they had spent together looking for his things in the crater, they were having fun. Joe didn’t know what had happened to her. Neither did Nelly. It was better when they didn’t know.