Catching Falling Stars (8 page)

Oh.

What’s that sticking out from under the bed frame? Of course; it’s Lil’s brown-paper parcel, her leaving present. Mum popped it under the bed when she took our things up here yesterday, while we were sitting at the kitchen table finishing our milk and biscuits.

“You must write and tell me what your silly sister’s surprise is!” she’d said as we walked her to the bus stop. “Trust her to make a mystery of it all.”

The mystery had started when Lil wrote me and Rich a letter, after Mum told her we were being evacuated.

Typically, it was short and sweet – Lil probably had a million other things to do, like find a way to wriggle out of working, or try a new hairstyle.

Dear Glory and Rich,

So you're off to the countryside, just like me! You HAD to copy your big sister, didn't you?

Have a whole lot of fun, try not to miss home too much and see you back there sometime soon.

Rich - be good for Glory.

Glory - don't go chasing too many handsome country boys!

Kisses and hugs galore,

Your ever-loving sis,

Lil xx

PS Glory - I have a gift for you. There's a parcel at the back of our wardrobe. Take it with you. DO NOT OPEN IT TILL YOU ARE SETTLED AND ALONE IN YOUR NEW HOME! Hope you love it.

Well, I’m not totally alone – it’s very hard to be anywhere without Rich by my side – so I’m just going to open it now.

“The flowers wobble when I shake my head like
this
,” Rich is saying, but I’m too busy picking at the tight twine knot of the string around the parcel to take much notice.

“Hmm? Actually, Rich – did I see a vanity set on the dressing table? Could you pass me down some nail scissors if there is?”

“Here,” says Rich, handing me a tiny pair of scissors with mother-of-pearl handles.

Snip.

“Thank you,” I say distractedly, setting the scissors down on the floor and tearing the package open.

Oh…

It’s as if it’s suddenly growing in size.

Set free from the string and strong brown paper, the soft, sheeny material inside puffs, flops and slithers around, like white silk lava.

“What is it?” asks Rich, sitting down cross-legged beside me.

“It’s … it’s pieces of parachute silk,” I tell him, holding one ragged offcut in my hand.

“Lil gave you bits of parachute as a present?” Rich frowns, and I frown too. I know exactly what this is and what Lil’s done. Mum said that some of the younger girls working at the factory would steal leftover bits of fabric and use them to make blouses or even underwear. Lil had been one of those girls, it seems. And she didn’t want Mum to find out, which is why she told me to wait till I was alone to open it.

But why did she think I’d want her stolen parachute scraps? Because Lil was thinking of
herself
, as usual. She gave me a present
she
would want. Same as she warned me not to chase handsome country boys – and no guessing which of the two of us would be more guilty of that…

“Glory, Glory,
Glory
!”

Uh-oh. Like an air-raid warning, Rich’s cry escalates from mild panic to high-pitched panic in the space of three words.

“What?” I say, glancing up sharply.

“I forgot!” he wails, tears pouring down his face. “I forgot Duckie!”

“What on EARTH…!” Miss Saunders bellows from the doorway.

I see it through her eyes straight away.

An open window, waving curtains.

An upended mattress.

Jumbled sheets and blankets in messy piles.

A slithery pool of silk rags all over the floor.

A crying boy wearing her mother’s prized hat and dressing gown.

The last time Miss Saunders saw her mother’s room it was neat and tidy, prim and proper.

Now it must look like a German pilot took a wrong turn after dropping his load on London and was hell-bent on destroying all traces of Mrs Saunders Senior with his last remaining bomb.

“I can explain,” I say hurriedly as I stand – and instantly feel the nail scissors pierce the skin between my toes.

Howling, I crumple to the ground, only dimly aware of the red bloom on the ripple of white satin nearest my feet…

I stare at the knobs on the wireless, wishing I dared turn it on and find out if there’s any news from London.

“How’s the foot?” asks Miss Saunders, as she clatters down the narrow stairs with the bundle of wet bedding in her arms. Quickly, I snatch my fingers away from the polished walnut of the wireless casing.

“Fine. Better,” I tell her, though it’s still nipping a bit. I’m glad she didn’t see me touching her stuff. After what’s just gone on upstairs, I don’t dare put a finger on anything.

“That’s called a
wireless
.”

Oh, so she
did
see me. And she thinks I don’t know immediately what it is, as if my family is too poor to have one. Some of my old school friends who came back after the Phoney War said that a lot of people in the countryside have this idea that evacuees all live with penniless families in slums back in London.

“Yes, I know. Our one at home is a bit bigger,” I say, exaggerating just a little because I’m cross that Miss Saunders jumped to conclusions and cross that she caught me out.

“Really,” Miss Saunders says curtly and takes a few steps towards the passage.

“I just wondered…” I hear myself say, my heart pounding.

Miss Saunders stops and stares intently at me through her round wire spectacles.

“Yes, Gloria?”

I
must
ask her not to call me that. But it’ll have to wait; I need to ask her a favour and don’t need to make her any more riled than she already is.

“I – I couldn’t sleep last night, and I looked out of the window and saw fire in the distance, in London, I think,” I say fast as I can, trying to get to my request. “I just wondered if we might listen to the news? To see what’s been happening?”

“I’m afraid we haven’t had the radio on in this house for years. My mother couldn’t bear any noise whatsoever,” Miss Saunders replies. “It probably doesn’t work any more.”

That explains the silence of our Saturday night, I suppose. No cosy evening around the fire, listening to
The Children’s Hour
, like we do at home. I bet the gramophone hasn’t been touched in years either, or the beautifully polished piano.

“Anyway, I’m quite sure everything is all right, Gloria,” Miss Saunders adds. “If there was any problem…”

Her voice tapers off. I bet she was going to say that if there was any problem, we’d have heard, that someone would come and tell us. But if another bomb fell on our street, and Mum and Dad … well, how would anyone know where me and my brother were? The details of Miss Saunders’ address, of Thorntree, would all have been turned to dust. Neighbours might tell the authorities that they heard we were in Essex somewhere, and checks would be made, but it would take for ever for anyone to track us down and break the bad news, wouldn’t it?

No.

Stop.

I don’t want to drive myself crazy by thinking about all that, so instead I decide to see how Rich is getting on. Awkwardly, I push myself up off the armchair, but Miss Saunders sees and waves me down again.

“No, no. I don’t want you walking that mess all over my rug, thank you very much!”

She’s had enough of mess this morning, what with the upside-down bedroom caused by my brother’s “accident”. “A big boy of seven being scared of going to the W.C. in the dark? What nonsense,” she’d tutted disapprovingly when I explained what had happened.

But this particular “mess” Miss Saunders is talking about is a paste she made of Epsom salts and hot water and dabbed on my cut foot.

I do as I’m told, flopping back down into the padded chair, my nightgown puffing as I do, and put my foot back up on the stool that’s covered with an old tea towel.

“But Rich needs me,” I say, pointing in the direction of the kitchen.

“I think your brother can manage very well on his own,” Miss Saunders replies, giving me a stern schoolteacher-knows-best look over the top of her spectacles.

Sure enough, I can hear him singing in the tin bathtub by the range, sounding as happy in his few inches of hot water as Cleopatra would’ve been lounging chin-deep in asses’ milk. Still, Miss Saunders doesn’t know Rich like I do and he’ll need me to help him get out and dried off.

“Yes, but, I think I’d better just—”

Miss Saunders sighs impatiently, realizing I won’t take no for an answer.

She deposits the laundry on to the stone passage floor, then walks briskly over to me.

“Here, let me wipe that off,” she grumbles, lifting my foot and the towel, and settling herself on the stool.

I feel uneasy with this arrangement, but Miss Saunders rubs away at my foot in her lap with the speed and efficiency of a nurse. Which she was, in a way, if she cared for her poorly mother for so long.

Not knowing what to say or where to look, so I find myself glancing around the room, my eyes alighting on the certificate above the piano. She catches me at it again.

“I was a teacher once,” she says, gazing over her shoulder and then back at me. “But I had to give up a long time ago, once my mother became ill.”

Should I say something? But all I can think of are questions that might sound cheeky, like how she can manage without working. Maybe Miss Saunders’ father died too and she’s been left money? I can’t be that rude. Still, Mum would say it’s
also
rude to stay silent when you’re being spoken to.

“Did – did you teach here, in Thorntree?” I finally ask, as Miss Saunders pulls a small bandage out of the pocket of her pinny, quickly wrapping and fastening it around my foot.

“At the primary school, yes. A Mr Harris took over after me for a few years. Since he retired it’s been young Miss Montague. You’ll see her today; she plays the organ at church…”

Miss Saunders’ thin lips go ever thinner, even more of a tight line, and I can see she doesn’t think very much of the school’s current teacher or her musical skills.

“Right, you’re done,” she announces suddenly, setting my bandaged foot down on the ground. “Oh, look at the time! With all this palaver, we’re going to be late for church if we don’t get a move on. Can you go and get yourself dressed and decent, please, Gloria?”

“But Rich—”

“Upstairs, please,” Miss Saunders says again in her best stern schoolteacher voice. “I’ll see to your brother. There’s a towel warming for him by the range.”

She holds a hand out to help me up, then points me in the direction of the stairs.

As I hobble over, I pause to watch as she bends and scoops up the washing in the passage. But in the second she straightens up, a look crosses her face that I don’t much care for.

She’s staring into the kitchen, presumably at my brother in the tin bath.

The look on her face; it’s one of disgust.

My brother and his odd ways; this boy who wet the bed in her beloved mother’s room, he disgusts her.

Oh, yes of course; I mustn’t forget that me and Rich, we’re completely unwanted guests.

To Miss Saunders, we’re only a couple of scruffy, dirty evacuees who’ve been dumped on her…