My
homework by Micky Edwards (aged 7)
23, Latimer Rd., Southampton, England, April 1943.
My
Dads Boss
Mr Sneads fat and shorter than my Dad. Hes got a red,
round face and a mousetash like Adolf Hitlers, and a pot belly with a watch chane
hanging over it from one pocket on his waistcoat to another. Dad says the chanes
made of real gold. Mr Snead always wears
the same dark blue suit with light brown shoes, which Mum says look low-class
and dont go together.
Dad works for Mr Snead at Westminster Bank. Hes the
chief clark and Mr Sneads the manger. The bank looks after peoples money so it
doesnt get stolen by burglers and people like that. When the custermers want
some money to spend, they write out a check saying how much they want and then
the tellers give it to them.
Mr Snead and Dad keep all the money in a great big
safe in the cellar that has an iron door on it that ways about a ton. Nobody
can go into the safe if they dont know a secret number and a special key thats
made in two bits. Dad has one bit and Mr Sneads got the other one, and when
they want to get more money they have to put their bits together to make one
key that opens the lock.
Dad doesnt like Mr Snead very much,
and gets angry when he plays golf on work days, leaving Dad to look after the
bank and tell all the people what to do. Sometimes he plays too days in a week.
He tells Dad he only does it to build the business, so he can make friends with
people who could be custermers. Dad says hes a lazy bugbear, and that when the bank
inspectors come every year Mr Snead pretends he does all the work, and never
tells them how hard Dad and everyone else does.
Mr and Mrs Snead havent got any children, but every Christmas
they have a party in there big flat over the bank. The kids of all the grownups
who work at the bank come, and lots of others from custermers families. There
are little sardine and tomato sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and lemonaid
and brandy snaps and playbox biskets and scones with goosberry jam on them. They
used to have ice cream but now the wars on you can't get it any more. Mum says
we wont see any ice cream again till peacetime comes.
Sometimes Mr Snead has a conjerer at
the party who can turn sheets of white paper into five pound notes with a
little machine. Once my brother David, whose eleven, asked him for one of the
notes, but the conjerer said he couldn't have it. David said why not, wouldn’t it be easy to just
make himself another one? But the man looked really cross and went as red as
his Turkish hat with a tassel on. Then
he put the fiver in his pocket, made a mouse disappear and took a pigeon out of
Mrs Sneads purse.
The best thing about Mr Sneads
Christmas parties comes just before we go home. We all go downstairs into the dark
spooky bank. Mr Snead gets out a cart
they use to take the money in a lift from the safe to the counters where the tellers
hand it out to the custermers. You can get four or five kids on the trolley,
and we take turns. When wear all on it Mr Snead pushes us round behind the counters
really really fast. He shouts out all
aboard, and then zoom, zoom, zoom as we go along, and turn the corners so fast
you think your going to fall off. Because
we can't see over the top of the counter, it's like rushing through a dark scary
tunnel in a fairground.
But last Christmas the party was
different. We were playing musical chairs just before we started tea when the
air raid warning siren went off at the bottom of Canal Street. Mr Snead got up
on a chair and told us not to worry and everything would be all right, and said
to follow Dad down into the cellar where weed be safer. He said not to run, but
to walk down the stares where weed be told what to do.
We went down lots of stares and it was
a bit dark down there. Dad and another man were lighting candles to make it
look more Christmassy, and someone else carried down the gramophone and started
playing records. Mr Snead got us all singing songs like Run Rabit Run and the White
Clifs of Dover and Therell Always Be An England, and when weed sung for a while
we heard guns firing. A few girls cried a bit but David and me started going back
up the stares, hoping we could see the searchlights and the shells going off,
but Mrs Snead ran after us shouting and made us go back in the cellar.
There must have been a lot of germans flying over on
their way up the river to London, because the guns went on and on. By then, the
grownups had brought all the food down and we played blind mans buff and
charades and games like that. But then all of a sudden there was a great big bang
not far away. Everything shook and little bits of whitewash and stuff fell off
the ceiling.
Dad and Mr Snead must have thought a bomb might land
on top of us, because they put their bits of the safe key together and unlocked
the safe. They pulled and pulled to get the heavy door open, and then Mr Snead
said come in boys and girls and dont touch anything.
So we all went inside and it looked like a sort of Alladins
cave. There were shiny metal shelves with thousands and thousands of pounds of
bank notes in bundles with paper bands around them. There were also little sacks
of pennies and shillings and things, and lots of drawers with keyholes in them.
We all sat on the floor talking and the conjerer came
in and told us jokes. They kept the door open and it was fun in the safe, and
sort of exiting. But we hadnt been there long before we heard the all clear
siren. Everybody walked out and went upstares again and Dad and Mr Snead locked
the safe up. Dad told us later that Mr Snead wouldve lost his job if anyone
knew hed broken the rules and let us go in that safe full of money. Dad said it
was reprahensable.
Before we went home Father Christmas came and gave us
presents. He was a fat little man with a red face and Peter said it was Mr
Snead, but I knew it was really Santa. I got a kit to make a Spitfire and Peter
got one for a Junker 87 Stuka dive bomber, the one with the funny turned-up
wings.
On the way home we walked along Market Street and
there was smoke going up in the air on the corner of Park Road. A bomb had
dropped on Mr Gladwyns grocery shop at the corner of Park Road and Market
Street. The shop was still burning and a fireman told Dad that Mr Gladwyn was
all right but his wife was dead. She was sitting listening to the wireless in
their sitting room above the shop when the bomb came through the roof. There was an ambulance outside with its
lights flashing and another fireman said theyd put Mrs Gladwyn in it.
Mum said we didnt need a big supper after eating at
the party all afternoon, so when we got home she made us a fried Spam sandwich
and a mug of cocco.
When I said my prayers at bedtime I said one for Mrs
Gladwyn but David said that was silly, because she was dead. I really liked Mrs.
Gladwyn. She was kind and nice and I cried a bit before I went to sleep, but
quietly so David wouldn’t hear me.
THE
END
Micky Edwards
Michael
Edwards: Good story, but very poor spelling!
See
me.
Mr. Smales
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