Catching Falling Stars

by Karen McCombie

Auntie Sylvia’s eyes cloud over a little. “Well, yes, though it was … difficult at times. Anyway, all this chatter isn’t getting these last things moved, is it, Glory?”

  She disappears back down the ladder. As I wait for her to lift the last box up, I flick through a pile of old frames next to the sewing machine. Most of them are dark brown and empty of pictures, except for the occasional stained and faded watercolour.

  And then there’s this one.

  “Here!” Auntie Sylvia wheezes, slapping the box up on to the attic floor.

  “Miss Saunders—”

  “I thought we’d agreed on Auntie Sylvia?” she says, with a faint, hopeful smile.

  “Oh, yes!” I laugh shyly at my mistake. “Auntie Sylvia, if you don’t mind me asking, who’s this?”

  I turn the sepia photograph of a handsome young man around towards her. He has a dark moustache, laughing eyes and is wearing a soldier’s uniform.

  And straight away I wish I’d left it alone.

  The smile slips away from Auntie Sylvia’s face, and the sunshine feeling of the morning goes with it.

  “He was … well, my sweetheart, Glory. But the war – the last war – came between us.”

  I shouldn’t have asked! Here’s some young local man who might have married Auntie Sylvia and given her a new surname. She might have had children galore in a happy, noisy house instead of being stuck here in silence looking after her elderly parents. Her beloved must have died in some foreign field, taking all her dreams with him. And now I don’t know what to say to make everything better. I’ve cast a shadow over the nice time we’ve been having.

  “I think I should go and look for Rich – he’s been gone a long time,” I say, delicately placing the portrait against the eaves.

  “Yes. Yes, you probably should, dear,” Auntie Sylvia agrees, and backs down the ladder so I can clamber after her and escape.

  And outside I run, run, run to the shop, glad of the sudden autumn chill in the air. After her kindness and apologies, the last thing I want to do is upset Auntie Sylvia. So if I can help Rich carry the groceries home from the shop, we can start afresh. I see the way Auntie Sylvia looks at him, in that same adoring way he looks at his Duckie and now Mr Mousey.

  But wait … the Closed sign is on the shop door.

  I whip around, looking for Rich on the green, chasing butterflies amongst the cabbages or throwing stones in the pond.

  He’s not there.

  He’s nowhere.

  “Rich?” I call out.

  Where IS he? If I lose him, Mum will never forgive me. Same goes for Auntie Sylvia, I suspect.

  “RICH!!”

  “Looking for your little brother, are you?” someone calls out.

  I glance around and see Jess from school, leading – of all things – a grunting, fat pig out from behind the pub.

  “Yes,” I answer cautiously, as if I expect her to trip me up with a tease or some meanness. “Have you seen him?”

  Jess stares hard at me. Her eyes – a strange pale, glassy green – are small in her pinched face. I can’t tell whether she hates me or simply thinks I’m less important than the pig at the end of the rope she’s holding.

  “He went up Eastfield Farm,” she says finally, chucking a thumb over her shoulder, as though Rich and Eastfield Farm couldn’t be of less interest to her.

  “Why?” I say out loud, but soon realize it’s pointless; Jess isn’t going to give me a straightforward answer.

  Sure enough, all I get is a shrug.

  I whirl round and run, leaving Jess to walk her pig who knows where, and head in the direction of the lane and the farm.

  It only takes me a couple of minutes to sprint as far as the sign. And as soon as I take the turning, I see the five-bar gate where Lawrence and Archie were sitting staring that first day – and hear boys’ voices coming from the messy yard beyond.

  I’m too breathless to call out for Rich, but reach the gate and see him anyway.

  And what I see makes me gasp.

  “What’s going on?!” I yelp.

  The three of them glance round, and at least Lawrence and Archie have the decency to look embarrassed.

  For some unknown reason, they have brought Rich here and persuaded him to take his clothes off! He’s standing there – in the yard – wearing just shorts, boots and socks, with his jumper, shirt and vest piled up on the straw-and-mud-covered ground.

  “We ain’t – we ain’t—” Archie garbles uselessly, his blue eyes staring pleadingly at me like a stray dog that’s just stolen someone’s dinner.

  I realize I’ve never heard Archie talk at school, only snigger at something either Jess or Lawrence has said or done. Well, if he makes as little sense as this, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything.

  “Rich, get your stuff and come here now!” I order my startled brother.

  His face whiter-than-white, his eyes filling with panicky tears, Rich does as he’s told, scooping up his clothes and scrabbling over to me.

  “Hurry!” I hiss at him, helping him over the gate.

  “Look, we didn’t do—”

  “I don’t care what you did or didn’t do!” I yell over my shoulder at Lawrence as I hurry away, hauling Rich with me by the hand. “Just stay away from my brother!”

  That’s it.

  It doesn’t matter how nice and kind Auntie Sylvia has turned out to be, there’s no way we can stay in this stupid village with these mean children (and teachers!) a moment longer than we have to.

  The minute we get back to the cottage, I’m writing a letter home, telling our parents we need to be rescued…

  “You and Richard must simply stay away from them,” says Auntie Sylvia, taking her long strides towards church this Sunday morning, her head held high.

  She keeps her gaze directly ahead, catching no one’s eye, as if she’s got blinkers on, same as a racehorse.

  “Those boys are no good,” she adds. “The whole family is no good.”

  I told Auntie Sylvia something about Lawrence and Archie yesterday, but not all of it.

  I told her I’d caught them teasing Rich, but ended it there.

  I meant to say more; I’d planned on ratting the boys out, hoping she’d go storming up to Eastfield Farm and give them and Mr Wills a piece of her mind, same as she’d done with Miss Montague at the school. But when me and Rich got back to the cottage, we’d found her sitting staring at the sheet music on the piano, her hands in her lap, not playing.

  It was my fault, of course. I’d reminded Auntie Sylvia of her long-ago love, the boy snatched away by war. And suddenly it didn’t seem right to make her angry as well as sad.

  “Richard, please keep up, dear,” Auntie Sylvia turns to say. Rich gives up his sulky stone-kicking and hop-skips to her side, clutching Duckie and Mr Mousey.

  At the same time, he gives me a hurt puppy look, knowing I’m cross with him but not really understanding why.

  “I was only showing them my chest!” he’d said yesterday when I hurried him back to the cottage.

  “Well, that’s not for strangers to see,” I’d said briskly, bundling him back into his vest, shirt and jumper. “And anyway, those boys are silly and just want to laugh at you. All right?”

  “But, Glory—”

  “You don’t have to understand,” I practically snapped at him, I was so cross. “You just have to do as I say, Rich.”

  Of course, my brother isn’t used to me talking that way, which is why he’s acting upset and wary with me now.

  And Auntie Sylvia might be upset with me too, if she knew what the letter in my hand actually said…

  “Is it all right if I go and post this?” I ask Auntie Sylvia, holding up the stamped envelope.

  Last night she dared to try the wireless, and was delighted to find it still worked. So while we list
ened to a show, Rich read one of his old comics, Auntie Sylvia darned, and I wrote to Mum and Dad with my “news”. News that secretly contained the “come get us” plea.

  Because comfy as we are at the cottage, I know I need to protect my brother from mean and hurtful people, like those awful boys at the farm.

  “Yes, certainly,” says Auntie Sylvia. “Richard – can you stay with your sister? I want a quick word with Reverend Ashton before the service starts.”

  With that, she hurries around the green towards the church, while Rich and I take a shortcut through the cabbages to reach the postbox outside the grocer’s shop.

  But now I wish we hadn’t – I’ve just spotted Jess sitting with her back to the oak tree, as the pig she seems to be in charge of crunches at acorns scattered on the ground.

  “Hello!” Rich says brightly to her.

  “Hello to you, Titchy-Rich!” says the girl.

  Titchy Rich? She has a nickname for my brother? I didn’t even know she knew what his first name was. That suddenly makes me mad. She has no right to act like she knows him so well!

  “Come on,” I order my brother.

  “Hee hee!” I hear him giggle. “I’m Titchy-Rich! Titchy-Rich!”

  “Rich – let’s go,” I hiss at him as I walk off towards the red postbox.

  “No, I want to say hello to the pig. Why do you have a pig?”

  “It belongs to Charlie and Mary, who own the pub,” I hear Jess say, while I keep walking. “It lives round the back.”

  “Can I stroke him, please?”

  Why isn’t Rich doing what I tell him? He always listens to me.

  “Sure. His name’s Popeye,” Jess tells him. “Here…”

  As I cross the road, I turn to see Jess scramble to her feet, and pass the pig’s ropelike lead to my brother.

  Oh, no … with that done, Jess starts walking towards me. What does she want?

  “Oi, Hope ’n’ Glory!” she calls out, just loud enough for me to hear but not Rich. “What were you playing at with Lawrence and Archie yesterday?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, trying to stand as tall as Auntie Sylvia, and adopting her tight-lipped owl glare. I hope Jess can’t see that I’m shaking like a jelly inside.

  “I mean, yelling at them like they’d kidnapped your brother,” she snaps, her birdlike dark eyes flashing menacingly. “It wasn’t their fault he came up to the farm – the shopkeeper sent him up there. He’d run out of chicken feed and told Rich he could buy some from the Willses!”

  I didn’t know that. Rich didn’t tell me. But that doesn’t change what they did when he got there.

  “They didn’t have to egg him on to take his clothes off and make a fool of him!” I snap back, as I fidget with the letter I’m still holding in my hand.

  Oh, no. Over Jess’s shoulder I can see Lawrence and Archie walking with Mr Wills and Harry in the direction of the church. And now the two younger boys have split off and are ambling our way. Lawrence is walking tall, a broad, cheeky grin on his face. Archie shuffles at his side, keeping his head down and peering over at me through the mop of dark, straight hair falling over his forehead.

  “They did not egg him on!” Jess barks at me. “They asked Rich about what it was like living in London with air raids. Next thing, he’s pulling off his shirt, trying to show them the scars he got when you lot got bombed.”

  Oh.

  I wince, which makes my own spider-legged scar tug at the skin on my cheek. The thing is, I could imagine Rich doing exactly that; trusting people a little too easily, and then taking it too far.

  “Well, fine … but they didn’t have to be cruel and laugh, did they?” I point out, noticing that the boys have stopped to talk to Rich and the pig.

  Jess turns to see what I’m looking at.

  “Hey, Lawrence! Archie! Did you two laugh at Titchy-Rich yesterday?” she bellows at her mates.

  “No!” Lawrence calls out, echoed by – of all people – Rich.

  Archie just frowns, like he wants to shout something pretty rude at me but is holding himself back.

  I quickly remind myself of what happened in the farmyard … and my tummy gives a lurch of embarrassment. They’re right; I heard boys’ voices, but no laughter.

  “I tried telling him not to take his stuff off,” Lawrence calls out, pointing his finger at my grinning brother, who’s now hugging the pig. “I said he’d catch his death of cold!”

  “I – I just thought—”

  “You just thought the worst of them, didn’t you?” Jess sneers in my face, putting her hands on her hips. “Just like all the snobs in this village.”

  “Jess!” Lawrence suddenly calls out, but his friend is in the middle of losing her temper with me, and is enjoying herself too much to stop.

  “Specially that snooty Miss Saunders you live with.”

  “Jess!”

  “She’s the worst, always looking down her nose at all of us!”

  I can’t get a word in edgeways, Jess is raging so.

  It’s as if her voice is a roar in my ears.

  Only it’s not.

  The roar is something else.

  I look up into the sky and see the dark shape of a plane against the blue sky.

  It’s low; way, way too low, skimming the treetops, looming over the village.

  I can make out the face of the German pilot inside, or his white teeth, at least, bared in fear at the prospect of crashing, or—

  THUNK!

  Out of nowhere, Archie does a rugby tackle on me and Jess, his skinny body hitting us surprisingly hard. The three of us crumple into the recessed doorway of the grocer’s shop in a tangle of arms, legs and gasped “oof!”s – just as the rat-a-tat-a-tat of strafing machine-gun bullets pepper the dirt road where we were standing just now.

  And as soon as it happens it’s over, with the whine of the plane passing overhead.

  For a few stunned moments we three are in limbo. I feel Jess’s body shaking in shock under my arm, and the weight of Archie half-sprawled across us both, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath.

  Then there’s a sound: a dull thunk coming from the direction of the fields that are part of Mr Wills’ land.

  “It – it – it’s crashed!” Archie stammers in shock, scrabbling to his feet.

  “The pilot; he was trying to hit us!” I say, gratefully taking the hand that Archie is holding out to me. “Didn’t he see we were just kids?”

  As I say the last word, the blood drains from my face.

  “Rich. Rich! RICH!!” I yelp, shaking myself loose from Archie’s grasp and running over to the green.

  I can see no one.

  There’s only Popeye the pig, bucking and squealing, panicked and trying to free itself from the rope that’s holding it.

  “Lawrence?” Jess is screaming, running alongside me.

  We see Lawrence first, his head rising up from the cabbage patch.

  “Where’s Rich? Where is he?!” I demand, bounding through the cabbages towards him.

  “Here,” Lawrence replies, woozily getting to his knees – and I see that he must’ve thrown himself on top of my brother.

  I reach to help an equally woozy Rich to his feet, Duckie and Mr Mousey peeking out of his pockets, while Archie and Jess put their arms around Lawrence and lift him up.

  You know, when I first stepped off the bus in this spot, I thought Thorntree was unnaturally quiet.

  But now there seem to be people everywhere, streaming out of the churchyard and running and shouting in the direction of either us or the fields of Eastfield Farm.

  “Yay! Popeye’s all right!” Rich cheers, before the stampede reaches us. “I held on hard as I could to keep him safe!”

  He lifts a small hand to show the rope wrapped tightly around it.

  I’
d expected to find my brother shaking, a victim once again of the Nazis, but instead he’s smiling like a hero…

  Auntie Sylvia’s tin of Epsom salts is coming in handy again.

  She’s made a salve for the various burns on Rich’s hands.

  One is his hero burn, from the rope he had wound tightly around one hand to keep Popeye from running off and into danger.

  The others are stupidity burns. They’re dotted on his fingertips, where he picked molten-hot bullets from the road to keep as mementos.

  Rich seems to think the stupidity burns were worth it; he’s staring at the row of dark metal bullets laid out on the kitchen table as if they’re precious jewels. Duckie and Mr Mousey are standing guard over them.

  “My, my, will you look at that,” says Reverend Ashton, examining Rich’s injuries. “But you’re a strong little lad, Richard, and I’m sure those will heal in no time!”

  The vicar has come to check on us after this morning’s drama.

  And to let us know what happened to the plane – and its crew.

  “So, the plane landed in the Wills’ wheat field rather than in the cattle fields?” Auntie Sylvia comments as she nurses, displaying an impressive knowledge of Eastfield Farm. “Lucky for the cows, I’d say.”

  “And lucky for the crewmen that the field had just been ploughed,” adds Reverend Ashton. “They parachuted out seconds before the plane came down.”

  “Quite the soft landing,” Auntie Sylvia comments, now winding a bandage round one of Rich’s hands.

  “Yes, though it’s just as well I got to them at the same time as Harry Wills and the other young men,” Reverend Ashton adds with a wry smile, “or the airmen’s welcome might have been a lot more painful, what with the pitchforks and spades the lads were waving around!”

  “Would they have hurt the pilot and his friends?” Rich asks, alarmed.

  “Um, no … no, they wouldn’t, I’m sure,” Auntie Sylvia says quickly, to stop my brother from fretting. “They just had them as a precaution, in case the German pilot or his crew were armed.”

  “Will they lock them up in the Tower of London?” asks Rich, his blue eyes wide at the prospect. “And put them in chains?”