Catching Falling Stars (7 page)

But I’ve been curled here by his side for at least two hours or more, with dark, unhappy thoughts swirling in my head which have made sleep about as far away as home right now.

Wide awake, I finally give up and get up.

I don’t want to wake Rich, so I inch out of the big bed, trying not to set the springs squeaking.

Once I’m out from under the heavy covers, the chill hits me, and I feel around in the dark for the armchair and the cardie I left on there when we got changed into our nightclothes.

Shrugging it on, I tiptoe over the wool rug and the cold wooden floor to the far wall. Feeling around, my hands land on what I was searching for: a small, cane-seated chair beside the dressing table. I lift it and place it by the window, then pull aside one of the thick chintz curtains, securing it with its matching tie-back.

And then I sit.

Sit and stare out into the black of the countryside night.

Of course, there’s a blackout here, same as in London, with not a peep of a lamp or light allowed to show, in case it brings enemy planes screeching out of the sky with bombs as their unwelcome gift.

But I’m surprised by how much I can see in the moonlight. There’s the long, fruit-tree-filled garden, with the big square that’s the henhouse and distant rectangles in the ground where Miss Saunders’ carrots and potatoes grow in the damp earth. Then there’s the uneven dense outline of a low stone wall, and beyond that, fields roll endlessly into the distance like different shades of bottle-green and inky black velvet.

Even the bedroom looks better in the dark. I hadn’t liked it when we saw it in the daytime, overstuffed with ornaments and doilies, banks of powders and potions, and too many mirrors to catch sight of my stupid scar in. It was like a museum to old Mrs Saunders, who’d lived and died in here. But seen in shadows, the clutter vanishes and the room seems blank. Just a box with a bed for me and Rich to share.

I feel my shoulders sink for the first time in hours, letting the strain of the day fade and my muscles melt.

“What are you looking for, Glory?” Rich’s little voice pipes up from the bed.

So I woke him after all.

“I’m not looking for anything,” I tell him in a soft voice, so Miss Saunders won’t hear us from her room across the tiny landing. (I heard the creak and clunk of her door as she went in there not so long ago.)

What I’ve just said, it’s a bit of a lie.

I’ve been lying awake looking for something all right. Looking for a way out of here. But I couldn’t find one. Like I say, if we deliberately misbehave, we’d shame Mum and Dad, and I’d never, ever do that to them. And if I write to my parents and beg them to let us come back, every second we were in London Mum would be living on her nerves, searching the skies for planes, blaming herself for not being able to keep us safe.

So we’re stuck with no way home … unless Mr Hitler decides to stop this stupid war and stop destroying people’s lives.

“Did you like our dinner?” asks Rich, throwing the covers back and padding over to join me. “I thought it was the best dinner ever!”

I’m used to Rich’s odd ways, but even
I’m
struggling to understand what he’s thinking and feeling. Since we got back to the cottage after waving Mum off he’s acted like it was Christmas, his face wreathed in smiles. At home he eats like a bird, but as soon as Miss Saunders laid the table tonight, he ate everything in sight and asked for seconds.

“Yes, dinner was nice,” I say, patting my lap for him to sit.

Dinner wasn’t nice. Well, the food was, but the silence wasn’t.

Another clock tick-tocked; cutlery clattered discreetly on plates.

Miss Saunders said things like, “More potatoes? More blackcurrant crumble?”

We said things like, “Yes, please!” (Rich) and “No, thank you” (me).

Apart from that there was no conversation. Which was the opposite of home, especially when Lil’s there. She talks nearly as much as Mum, so Dad is always jokily rolling his eyes and telling us his ears are ringing.

“Do you think we’ll get eggs for breakfast
every
day?” Rich asks as he settles himself down, curling his arm around my neck.

“Maybe,” I answer, gently cuddling his skinny, warm body close to me. I have to be gentle – his patchwork of cuts and bruises is still tender in places. And Rich can sometimes be a bit funny about cuddles. He’s like a cat; he has to be in the mood.

“I love the chickens…” he sighs happily.

“But Miss Saunders says you’re not allowed to touch them, remember?”

Before our dinner, Miss Saunders gave us a short but stern list of house rules. Besides the one about not touching the chickens, apparently we must…

1) not wear muddy shoes in the house

2) tidy up after ourselves

3) help out with chores around the house

4) remember our pleases and thank-yous.

How does she think we live back in London? Like messy, ungrateful little thugs, giving cheek to our parents?

“I don’t mind. I will just
talk
to the chickens. That will be nice,” says Rich, resting his tousled head on my collarbone.

“You’re being very brave,” I tell him. “It’ll be hard, missing Mum and Dad and Betsy and Buttons…”

I don’t want to upset Rich, but I need to sense how he’s doing, how he’s coping inside with this strange day of ours – without letting him know that I’m struggling too.

“Oh, I don’t feel brave, Glory. I just feel happy,” he says matter-of-factly.

My brother’s reaction is puzzling me more than ever. Being away from home, parted from Mum especially, I had expected something different. Maybe jangled nerves and overexcited babbling at best, tears and panic at worst. I just hadn’t expected plain “happy”.

“What’s that light over there, Glory?” Rich suddenly asks, before I can work out a way to weasel into his mind some more. “Is it the dawn already?”

Sure enough, there’s a soft, orange glow on the horizon.

But it’s nowhere near dawn; I don’t know the time exactly but there’s still two or three hours till midnight, I’m sure.

And then, with a stab to the heart, I understand two things very clearly.

Rich might not know why he’s happy, but suddenly
I
do. Away from the constant war chatter and sandbags and air raids of home, he’s relaxing. Instead of looking out at the rubble of our back garden and beyond, today he’s been laughing at the sight of knobbly cabbages on a village green, dancing with butterflies, chatting with chickens, eating two bowlfuls of hand-picked and home-made blackcurrant crumble.

For the first time in a very long time, Rich feels safe.

Which is why I can’t tell him the
second
thing that I know for certain.

That the burning glow we can faintly see is London far, far away – and on fire.

“Yes, it’s the dawn, so we better get back to sleep for a little while longer,” I lie, standing him up and pointing him in the direction of the bed.

Before I join him, I draw the curtain and hide away the glimpse of the distant city, bombed and burning…

I’m cold, I’m wet, and someone, somewhere is sobbing.

The floor of the Anderson shelter is soaked with rain, and I don’t know why I’m lying on it. Mum will know, but I need to find Rich first.

“Rich… Rich?”

I sense him trembling close to me, and my eyes flip open.

It’s dark, but a vertical chink of light tells me I’m not in the Anderson shelter back home – I’m in Miss Saunders’ mother’s bedroom. I’m not asleep and dreaming any more, I’m wide awake and lying on damp sheets.

“Rich?” I say, sitting up quickly, throwing the covers back to see how bad the damage is. “It’s fine. It’s all right. I’ll sort this…”

Rich is curled up tight, his arms around his knees, head buried into them as he cries and shakes.

“Let me get some daylight in here,” I mutter, bouncing out of the bed in a squawk of springs and hurrying to the window.

Outside, the world is green and sparkling with dew. Birds are singing. Chickens are pecking and preening. The sky is blue and cloudless – with only a haze of grey smoke on the horizon.

The sight of the smoke makes me stop dead and my tummy heaves.

How bad
were
the raids last night? And where exactly were they? Please,
please
let it be nowhere near Mum and Dad … not again.

How can I find out? I know; I could ask Miss Saunders to put on her wireless later, when the news comes on. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. Though the bomb that killed Mrs Mann never made the headlines…

“Glory, Glory, Glory?” whimpers Rich.

All right. Until I can find out any news about home, I just have to push the thoughts of bombing to the back of my head and try to will away the sick feeling in my stomach.

Because right now there’s nothing I can do about London, and a lot I can do to help my little brother.

On the way back over to him, I catch a fleeting glimpse of myself in the dressing table: bobbed brown hair messy with sleep; pale, tired face; red spider of a scar sitting on my cheekbone. I look like I could audition for the part of a ghost in a production by the sweet factory amateur dramatic society back home.

I grab my cardigan and, with a quick fling, throw it over the mirror.

“Sit up, sweetheart,” I say, as I perch on a dry patch of bed and stick my fingers under Rich’s chin. Head forced up, his tear-soaked, red-rimmed eyes look pleadingly at me.

“I didn’t mean to have an accident,” he snuffles, wiping his nose on his pyjama sleeve. “I was just scared to go out to the privy in the dark. There are cockroaches and things in there.”

To be honest, I had tried not to gasp when Miss Saunders showed us the cottage privy yesterday. At home, our toilet is just beside the back door, and is nothing special – just a white, porcelain loo with a polished wooden seat. But it’s like a throne in a palace compared to Miss Saunders’ privy. Hers is just a small shed in the garden, with a wooden plank to sit on. There’s a hole cut in the plank, and a deep hole dug in the ground below it. If that wasn’t awful enough, the door has a wide gap at the bottom, which all sorts of slithery and scuttly things make full use of. There should be a tiny welcome mat there for them.

“It’s my fault,” I tell him. “I should have taken you out to the loo when we were both up. Or I should’ve asked if we could have a chamber pot.”

At the words “chamber pot”, Rich gets the giggles, which is an improvement.

“Let’s get you out of these,” I say, helping him off the bed and pulling at his pyjama top and soaking bottoms.

I need to get him washed, of course, but before I sort that out, I need to get him warm. Glancing around the room, I see a faded pink candlewick dressing gown hanging on a peg at the back of the door. Old Mrs Saunders doesn’t need this any more, but one shivering small boy does.

Rich giggles some more as he holds out his arms and the overlong sleeves flip-flap.

“Move!” I laugh, budging him out of the way as I strip the bed, and toss the sheets and blankets into wet and dry piles by the door.

Next, I haul the window open wide, then wrestle the heavy mattress off the bed and manoeuvre it over to the window. If I get a bowl of soapy water and scrub it, hopefully sunlight and a fresh breeze should help it dry out.

“Ooh, look! Look at me!” I turn and see Rich at the dressing table. He’s taken a round cardboard box down from a shelf and is now wearing the contents. It’s a black felt hat, a bit like the shape of a plate. A bunch of fabric pansies are sewn on one side, and a crinkled panel of black netting hangs over Rich’s blue eyes.

“Rich! Take it off!” I laugh. But Rich is turning this way and that, grinning as he pings the hat’s black elastic thread under his chin to keep it in place.

It’s good to see him cheerful again, so I decide to let him be. Now that I’ve got this mattress propped up safely, I’ll go downstairs with the washing and explain to Miss—