Catching Falling Stars

by Karen McCombie

  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—

  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.”