Free Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

as bad as their fear of the Zeppelins. They bought dark blue holland from Leak and Thorp’s for the windows and were obsessive about the blackout, especially as poor Minnie Havis next door had to go up before the magistrates for leaving a light showing. Tom came to visit regularly, although he hardly ever brought his new wife Mabel. Lillian said Mabel was a wet piece of dough, although Nell quite liked her. Somebody asked them if their brother was a slacker and they were outraged, but secretly Nell thought it wasn’t very brave of him getting an exemption like that. Lillian said wasn’t it enough that they had one brother that might get killed? and Nell threw a cushion at her because she never, never thought Albert was going to get killed and it seemed dreadfully bad luck to say something like that. Tom helped them fix the holland blinds at the windows and laughed off the idea of a Zeppelin attack. He believed in them after his hand got blown off though, and they went to see him in hospital and at least now noone could accuse him of being a slacker, not with his hand like that. Nell was just about to write a letter to Albert telling him about all this excitement when he surprised them by turning up on the doorstep on leave. All Rachel said was, ‘More mouths to feed,’ but then she’d never liked Albert.
    They were convinced Albert had grown when they saw him; neither of them remembered him being so tall. He had fine lines round his eyes and would have slept all the time when he was home, if they’d let him. When they asked him questions about the war he always made some joke and never told them anything. They were greedy for Albert, they would have spent every minute with him, just looking at him, they were that happy to have him home. Albert had always looked after them and now they wanted to look after him and they hung around his neck and stroked his hair as if he was their baby not their great strapping brother. When he went, they waved him off at the station and they were still standing on the platform, looking at the empty rails, ten minutes after he’d gone. As long as they were still standing there they felt as if they hadn’t let him go and they had to tear themselves away to go home, where Rachel said, ‘He’s gone then, has he, the light of your life?’
    Frank thought it was probably the noise that got to Jack in the end. For three days and three nights the barrage never stopped and as the guns seemed to get louder, so Jack seemed to get quieter and quieter, although he didn’t go mad with it like some chaps, he was just too quiet. Funnily enough, the noise didn’t bother Frank so much any more, he thought it was because he’d got used to the constant booming of the howitzers although in fact he’d gone deaf in his right ear.
    It wasn’t the noise that bothered Frank anyway – it was death, or rather, how he was going to die, that worried him. There was no doubt he was going to die; after all, he’d been out here nearly two years and the odds were piled high against him by now. Frank had begun to pray his way through the war. He no longer prayed that he wouldn’t die, he just prayed he would see it coming. He was terrified of dying without any warning and prayed that he might at least see the mortar that was coming for him so he would have time to prepare himself. Or anticipate in some magical way the sniper’s bullet that would take his brain out before his body even knew about it. And please God, he begged, don’t let me be gassed. Only a week ago nearly a whole battalion in a trench that ran parallel to this one, a Pals’ battalion from a factory in Nottingham, had been taken by a low-level tide of gas that rolled quietly along towards them and took them before they realized what was happening. Now they were all quietly drowning to death in some field-hospital.
    The night before the attack nobody could sleep. At four in the morning, when it was already light Frank and Jack lolled against