‘Why are there all these flashes but no thunder, Miss Carson?’ I whispered.
‘I’m not sure, but I think it’s just that it’s still so far away. It might not ever get to us.’
When she’d gone out, I got up to draw back the curtains of my window, and I decided to open it again. I put my pillow on the sill so that I could lean on it and get really comfortable for a long look out. The other boys were fast asleep, and it was lovely to wait for the storm to come in the middle of the night all by myself. Everybody but me was completely missing it. I prayed that the storm wouldn’t pass us and go somewhere else. I wanted it to shock us and scare us and become a huge adventure that we could talk about for days and days.
Each time the flashes came, the river sparkled as though someone had thrown millions of diamonds into it. I could see right across to the flat plain on the other side and then up to the hills miles and miles from us, way in the distance. I saw tiny flying shapes close to the window, caught in the lightening. At first I thought they might be the house martins, but I think they were tucked up in their nests for the night trying to ignore it all. They’re not the type of birds, like owls, who are flying about in the middle of the night, and they’re so busy during the day it must be that they need to have a good long time of resting. I do know for a fact that there are bats who live up in the roof of the school; they are night time animals, so you never get to see them unless they’re lit up by the lightening or passing a lamp on the street. I’m sure it was them flying around and getting excited. They probably like slightly scary things like storms, because they are slightly scary themselves.
I was straining to catch the sound of the thunder, but I couldn’t. I listened to the river, gurgling and splashing away, and the three big trees where the rooks sit, which were just beginning to rustle a little because of a tiny bit of a wind that had started up. It was a gentle friendly little breeze, and it blew on my face and made me smile with the new coolness of it.
I was sleepy again after a while. The storm was going to take a long time to reach me if it came at all, and my eyes were beginning to close even though I was telling them not to. I put my pillow back on my bed and lay down to watch the patterns the flashes were making on the ceiling.
My face was wet when I woke up again. I thought I’d wet the bed, and the worry of that immediately made me wide awake. But my pajama bottoms were quite dry and something else was happening. Someone was screaming as loud as can be. The shadow of Henry Pugh was standing over me, wearing a huge billowing cloak that covered half my bed. He started to say something to me, but then there was the biggest bang I’d ever heard, and I pulled the sheet over my head. When I looked out again, I could see that it wasn’t a cloak he was wearing but the curtains from my window that were wrapping themselves around him. It was the wind that was screaming, with massive claps of thunder in between.
‘Help me close the window, Teasdale, before we all blooming drown…’ he shouted. We had to lean right outside which was very frightening because the wind was so bad it could have picked us up and thrown us out, and I knew that at any time we might be struck by the lightening. There were great forks of it, some starting at the ground and some coming from the sky. The rain was not coming downwards like it usually does, but straight at us and a bit from below as if the river was being picked up and thrown into the dormitory. While Pugh and I were trying to close the window, I saw that there was someone else helping us and then, when there was a flash of lightening I saw that it was Tom Whickham. He was smiling and enjoying it all while I was thinking about how silly I’d been to want the terrible storm at all. Even when we’d closed the windows, it didn’t seem to make much difference to the noise. They were rattling as though a giant was trying to get in, and the wind was so strong it was still coming through the sides so all the curtains were moving as though we were living in a haunted house. In the gaps between the thunder, I could hear things being blown along and banging and crashing into each other, and I thought about what we would all do if the massive trees were blown over and hit the side of the school.
I was wet through from leaning out of the window. So were Whickham and Pugh. They were a silvery colour from the rain when the lightening lit them up, as though they were eels that had come up from the river. Tom went to the light switch and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. It seemed as though this was getting to be a more and more dangerous situation what with all the electricity having probably been sucked right up back into the sky. Tom was laughing out loud and shouting ‘It’s the end of the world—it’s the end of the world!’
The flashes got closer and closer together, and I could see that Lucky Lorrimer had wound all his bedclothes around himself and was just one big lump on his bed. Simon Chirl was sitting dead upright with his sulky expression on which I think he also does when he’s frightened. Nick Earl didn’t seem to be at all worried and sat cross-legged on his bed with his arms folded just staring straight out of the window. I think he was making notes about it all in his head as though he was an explorer on an expedition who is used to frightening things happening all the time.
Theo knelt on the floor beside his bed, covering his face with his hands, and I think he was crying. I couldn’t hear him properly, but it sounded like he was saying ‘Get Matron, get Matron,’ over and over again, and then, when there was the hugest clap of thunder, he screamed and scrambled right underneath the bed.
It seemed like the storm went on for ever such a long time, but actually it wasn’t that long. After a while, the wind wasn’t so bad, and the rain that had been bashing against the windows started to calm down. Then the noise of the thunder got a bit less, and there was a gap between the sound of it and the lightening. All of a sudden, it started to get lighter outside, and I realised that it wasn’t the middle of the night but quite early in the morning. Then the lights flickered a bit and came back on, and I knew we were getting to be out of danger. Tom was still laughing about it all, and I started laughing with him. ‘Wow! That was incredible! Truly incredible!’ he kept saying.
‘You can come out now, Theo,’ I said to Theodorakis who was still hiding under his bed. ‘The bogeyman’s gone!’
I liked saying that to him. I think he’s a person who might not be very good at keeping my secret, and now I have a bit of a secret about him being really scared during the storm when I wasn’t the least bit. Well, I was a little, but I was the one who leaned right out of the window with Tom Whickham and Henry Pugh to close it and prevent further damage.
The storm was getting more distant and going off into Wales to frighten people and wake them up unexpectedly. If only they knew what a big shock they were in for!
After a few minutes, Miss Carson opened the door and came in holding Webster by the hand.
‘Everyone alright?’
‘Yes, thank you, Miss Carson,’ we all said at the same time.
‘Good. Nothing to worry about now; it’s all over bar the shouting,’ she said, and I wondered why someone was going to be shouting.
‘Is Webster alright, Miss Carson?’ I said, because I was remembering my promise to his mother.
‘He’s absolutely fine now, but he wasn’t too fond of the storm, were you?’
‘No,’ he said very slowly in his tiny whispering voice.
Before she went out, Miss Carson told us it was only half past six, and there was going to be another hour before she rang the bell, but everyone was far too excited to go back to sleep.
I stood on my bed and tried to open the window. Water had come through the side because it’s old and leaky and there was a puddle by my bed, which I thought might lead to a bit of teasing. When I was able to open it, another gush of water splattered onto the floor, and then the fresh air from outside came in.
It was like we were in a spaceship, opening the cabin door to peer outside at a new planet where no one had ever been before. Everything outside seemed diffe
rent. The air smelt tangy and mouldy, and there was the sound of the water gushing from the roof where the gutters couldn’t deal with all the rain and dripping from all the places where it had managed to get in. The sun was just beginning to come up from the other side of the river and shone on all the wetness, making it flash as brilliantly as the lightening, so that it was hard to look at anything without half closing my eyes.
The others were crowding onto my bed for a look, even Theo. There was a shed just by the river outside the school grounds that didn’t have its roof on anymore, and great branches from the trees that had been snapped off and were lying on the tennis court and practise nets. A big bit of the fence that had been between them was lying on Mrs. Ridgeley’s vegetable garden and had knocked down all her runner bean poles.
‘Oh wow! Incredible!’ Tom Whickham shouted when he looked out of the window by the washstand. ‘One of the trees isn’t there anymore!’
I’d been worried about that very thing happening during the storm. But it hadn’t bashed into the school like I thought it was going to. It had fallen the other way and was half drowned in the river. It was rocking to and fro in the big waves that the storm had made, and its branches were pointing up out of the water as though it was pleading to be saved. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. I thought about the squirrels and whether they’d been killed and also the rooks and where they would all go to now without their home. I wondered whether they could all squeeze up with their neighbours in the other two trees that were still there.
There was a massive gap because the tree that had fallen over was the biggest one, the one in the middle, and now there was a view from the window all the way down the river, right as far as the new suspension bridge at Chepstow, twenty miles away. It was like someone had taken down a pair of beautiful curtains, and now too much light was coming in. In the mornings when the other boys were still asleep, I used to like to watch the sun shining through the leaves of that tree. They’d be moving in the wind and sending patterns onto the wall on the other side of my bed, and I would watch them and get to be sleepy again. And now the tree has gone forever.
We’re meant to be completely quiet when we’re going down the stairs to breakfast, but everyone was talking about the storm, and the matrons didn’t say a word to stop it because they were talking about it like everybody else. It was kippers for breakfast, and usually when I smell them I try my hardest to be standing next to Nick Gower. By the time we’d sat down and I knew what we were having, it was too late. But no one took any notice whatsoever that I wasn’t eating the flipping thing, and that has never ever happened before.
There are three huge glass doors that open out from the dining room onto the balcony, which starts at one end of the school and goes right along to the other. They’re called French windows. We’re not allowed on that balcony. It’s only for teachers and parents when they’re here for Sports Day and Prize Giving so that they have a good view of the lawns and the river. The glass in one of the doors had a new crack in it that started down at the bottom and went right up to the top, and there was a little puddle of water where the rain had got in just the same as upstairs in our dorm.
There was a terrible mess on the balcony—lumps of mud, fresh green leaves, twigs and moss, and slate tiles from the roof. I wondered what would happen when it rained the next time because it seemed like half the roof had fallen off. Everyone was talking about it all so that even after grace was said and we’re allowed to talk, Mr. Burston had to bang on the table and tell everyone to be a bit quieter.
I was the very first one to notice. I was sitting right by the window at the end of one of the long benches, staring out at how different it all looked outside. I was feeling so sad about it all, especially the big tree not being there anymore, and at the same time it was great that I wasn’t having to eat the blooming kipper, and no one was taking any notice.
Suddenly I saw something moving in all the dirt on the balcony. At first I thought it was a little mouse or something, but I wasn’t quite close enough to see properly and it was difficult anyway because the window was so dirtied up with splattered bits on it. And then, when I looked up at the sky, I could see all the house martins flying backwards and forwards and diving down towards the balcony and racing around as if they were in a panic. It was a bit odd because you don’t usually see them so low. They like to be high up where their nests are, and they only dive down when they’re by the river where they catch most of their food. Some of them were flying so close to the windows that they were hitting themselves on the glass, as though they didn’t know that it was there. I was certain that they were going to be quite badly hurt.
When I looked down again at the balcony, I could see there were some dead ones there already, lying amongst all the mess. Then I knew that the big lumps of mud were the house martins’ nests that had fallen all the way down from the eaves up by the dorm windows.
The little moving thing was a tiny chick that hadn’t been killed when its home crashed down. There were two or three others in all the muck that must have been its brothers and sisters, but they weren’t moving at all. They must have been killed when they fell all the way down with the nest.
But it wasn’t the only survivor. When my eyes got used to what they were looking at, I could see that there were lots of them, slowly trying to move themselves away from the rubble of their homes.
‘Look at all the chicks!’ I said and stood up. I must have said it very loudly, because quite suddenly the whole dining room went quiet, and there was no noise at all apart from the sound of the house martins bumping into the glass at the windows and baby Mark banging his beaker on his high chair on the Headmaster’s table.
Q
The sun has travelled right over the roof and is trying to beam in through the top of the tall windows, which means that it really is the afternoon now, and I’m still waiting for Mummy. It’s windy outside. It has been ever since the storm and that’s nearly two weeks ago. It’s making that whistling sound in the keyhole that I had to tell Webster not to take any notice of. I think that’s the reason that some boys talk about this part of the school having a ghost. The key’s hanging down just by the side on a chain, and there’s enough wind coming through for it to be moving ever so slightly from side to side and clinking against the door frame. There are great grey clouds in the sky, rushing from England across into Wales and bringing showers with them. It’s like the sun is in a battle with them, and sometimes it manages to charge through and shine like crazy for a little while before it’s beaten back again. While I’ve been sitting here, the hall has gone very dark and then changed to light and then back to dark as though I’ve been sitting here through whole night times and day times.
Right now, the sun’s shining onto the biggest print of them all, which is of King George IV at the battle of Waterloo. It’s a made up picture because I know for a fact that the last king who was in a battle was George II. His face is all lit up, and he looks as though he’s staring at the front door, waiting, just like I am for Mummy to arrive. There’s a sword in his hand, which he’s waving above his head. He’s like one of those people who wave a flag at the end of a motor race, and when Mummy opens the door, he’s going to swish his sword about to let everyone know that she’s here.
That’s if she ever comes, of course.
All my worry’s come back. It’s much more than ten minutes since Mr. England went to take his class. He’s not been back to check on me like he said he would, and that means I’m all forgotten about again. I wish he’d come back and tell me what to do. I don’t want Mr. Burston to come along and make me feel bad by saying those things he thinks are funny, but which actually means he’s cross with me that I’m not gone even though it’s not at all my fault.
It really is the oddest thing ever that Mummy’s coming without my dad. It feels all wrong because she never really goes anywhere all by herself. The only time that ever happened—an
d then she did go away for ever such a long time—was nearly the whole of the summer term last year. It was when my dad had been away on a massively long business trip, and she didn’t want to be alone at home. She loved the place she went to more than anywhere she’d ever been in her life. She told me she only came back because she wanted to see me when I came home for the summer holidays.
I was so excited when she told me about it because I could see that it made her happy, and I loved asking her questions and dreaming that one day we might really go there together.
It was an island in the Mediterranean, not so far away from Beirut where we used to live, and when she got there she met some Americans who were running away from the war in Vietnam and had become poets and musicians. They had long hair and stayed up all night drinking wine and dancing round the fires that they made on the beach, and when the people who lived in the village shouted at them to be quiet because of their guitars they’d laugh and stop playing for a bit and then carry on again. They made lovely jewellery that they sent home to be sold in their old colleges in America. They took Mummy with them to see ruined temples and talked all day long about how the ancients had lived and how they wanted to be free like them. Mummy told me that those people were hippies, just like the ones who live in San Francisco and have peace marches against the war. She would have stayed with them if she could have. But she said she loved me too much not to come home to me, her ‘Only’.
She changed after that holiday. When she talks about that place, which was called Matala, her eyes fill up with tears, and her voice goes funny.
The House Martin Page 10