The Last Train Home

Chapter Twenty-Two

More planes flew over when we worked and every time, Alec would go over to the door and watch them disappear into the distance. Sometimes they were coming into land at an RAF base and other times they were off on their way to the Continent. I tried to busy myself with drawing up a potential plan for the sign, but the planes were rather off-putting and even though Dad wasn't flying one, I couldn't fight the nerves that were starting to build up.

The war felt like it had progressed very little in the four months since it started, but Alec had a point in saying that the Germans wouldn't give up easily. Even if I wanted to believe that the war would be over in the year to come and that Dad would be home, I couldn't. The planes made the war feel real, like it wasn't just this distant event happening that had no bearing on any of us. It made the whole thing a lot more scary to think about.

I thought of Dad going through Navy training and getting ready for his first deployment. I wonder what he would be thinking of the moment he left and I couldn't stop my mind from wondering what would happen if he got hit. War could be a brutal mistress no matter which part of it a person chose to be involved in. Even though all we ever saw were planes, the seas were likely to be just as dangerous.

For the next two days, I would leave the Goodwin farm and head up to the Thompson's farm to use the workshop. Sometimes Alec would come out and join me once he's finished his chores, but most of the time I worked on my own. My first step was to sand down the wood I intended to use, making sure I had a smooth enough surface to work on. Once that had been finished, I set about carving the words on the wood with a chisel.

"Careful," Alec said, creeping up behind me. I lifted the chisel off the wood before I hit it, I wasn't going to mess the sign up because of him.

"If I messed up then, you'd be the one replacing all my hard work."

"Noted." He laughed. "How's it going?"

"I hate chisels. With a passion. They're really hard to move in a straight line."

"Thought you were going to paint the words on? That would be easier."

"Who wants to do something the easy way? Besides, this will mean it lasts long and it won't have to be redone every year."

"Or you're showing off."

I grabbed the cloth I used to clear off the chiselled bits of wood from the sign and threw it at him. He turned his head just in time and I watched the small woodcuts fly off the cloth and land on the floor nearby. Alec laughed and dropped the cloth back onto the workbench beside me. A quick glare sent him scampering across the room where he leant against the wall and tried to busy himself with something else. He never offered to help me, but perhaps he knew better than to think I would accept help in the first place.

With Alec distracting himself by making a mess, I continued to use the chisel and mallet to chip away at the wooden board and create the letters. I had written the words on in pen beforehand so I had a guide to follow and I could make as few mistakes as possible. It definitely helped to guide my hand a little more and that the spelling was right. The last thing I wanted to do was spell it wrong, but Alec had written it down for me so I could copy it onto the board before attacking with the chisel. It's the only helpful thing he did.

The chisel chipped away at the wooden board, creating small curls of wood that I would occasionally pick up and throw at Alec for me. I had to be careful not to go too deep with the chisel since going through to the other side of the board would mean I'd have to start again and with time running out, I didn't want to do that.

Since time was of the essence, I ended up working through the letters as quickly as possible but trying to be as neat as I could. This was harder on the curved letters but I planned on sanding them all down to get the edges as smooth, and curved, as possible. Working my way through the letters, the chisel often became stuck and I had to twist it and manipulate it to get it free so I could continue. The chisel caught a small lip of the wood once more, partway through the letter 'w' and I twisted it to try and free it, but I ended up twisting it a little too hard.