Bomber Overhead

by Graveyard Greg

  Chapter 12

  The following day all the Burnetts, brothers, wives and children trundled themselves off to church. Jeffery's clothes had been repaired and, as usual, he accompanied the Burnetts. Mrs. Burnett always insisted he go to church. He never really knew if her concern came from a desire for his religious instruction, or for fear of leaving him in the empty house. In any case, it didn't bother Jeffery. He enjoyed the hymn singing and the vicar often gave an interesting sermon by bringing up the subject of the war. This made Jeffery think deeply about the war.

  And the war went on. Jeffery settled into his Saturday job at Selkirk's Farm, and always kept a careful lookout for Tommy Thorne. The work of cleaning out the chicken houses wasn't too hard. The chickens were kept at the side of a field in a row of coops similar to the one at the manor. Each coop had its own small area fenced off with chicken wire for the chickens to run in. He would trundle a wheel barrow up to the door and shovel the bran, dirty with chicken droppings, into it. Then he wheeled the barrow to a heap at the corner of the field where he emptied it before re-filling it with clean bran from a small barn next to the heap.

  Farmer Selkirk seemed in no hurry to give the kitten back. He had a daughter about eighteen years old, and sometimes Jeffery saw her outside the house carrying the kitten. He wondered if they'd ever get it back. He wanted to get it back, and Ginger and Arthur kept asking about it. But they still had nowhere to keep it.

  At the beginning of December the government announced an extra ration of tea and sugar for Christmas. In spite of the war, the school managed to organize a Christmas party. It was held in the assembly hall where chairs had been placed in rows and the students were seated rather than standing, as at assembly.

  It wasn't really much of a party. One of the teachers played a few Christmas records on Mr. Perkins gramophone, and the women teachers urged them to sing along. Plates with a few fish paste sandwiches were handed round and each student received one cup cake. At the end came a surprise treat. All the children were given an apple, an orange, a big package of raisins and also, to their joy, a large bar of Cadbury's chocolate. From the stage where he'd stayed throughout the party, Mr. Perkins announced that the fruit, raisins and chocolate were a gift from the people of South Africa.

  But true to form, even at the Christmas party, Mr. Perkins was unable to stop being headmaster. "There has been some petty thievery at a local farm," he announced. "Chickens and eggs have been stolen. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that theft is a crime, and anyone caught stealing will be severely punished by the law."

  And Christmas at the Burnetts wasn't much for a young boy. They did buy him a present, an adventure book about an Ace Pilot in China who helped the Chinese government against rebels in the north. He quite enjoyed it, and it was a change to enjoy something given by the Burnetts. He began to think that they weren't such bad people after all.

  Gordon belonged to the Boy Scouts and Mr. Burnett had earlier thought it a good idea for Jeffery to belong, and he was happy to do this. There was no money for a uniform, but many of the other scouts were also without uniforms. Of course, not having a uniform meant there was nowhere to sow any badges he'd earned. Eventually shirts were found somewhere for the boys, and some rather faded scarves.

  Apart from the skills needed to earn the badges, such as tying knots, they also played lots of games. Some of these were rough and tumble like Jeffery's favourite: British Bulldog. In this game all the boys gathered to one end of the hall where the scout meeting was held, and then one of the bigger boys was chosen to stand in the middle of the hall. At a signal, the boys would rush from the one end to the other. The boy in the middle grabbed one of these and trted to wrestle him to the floor. If he succeeded, the second boy joined him in the middle so that there were two boys there. Then the signal was given again and the boys rushed again. This continued until only one boy remained uncaught. He was declared the winner. Bruises were a common result, but none of the scouts cared.

  Before Christmas, all the scouts in Jeffery's patrol went around singing Christmas carols in aid of Mrs. Churchill's Red Cross aid to Russia campaign. They toured houses and pubs and sang at the tops of their voices. Then they knocked on doors, or shoved their heads inside a pub but nobody gave very much. Jeffery thought it might be because no one in the choir had a good voice and few nobody seemed to know all the words to the carols. At one pub the landlord, shouting, ran them off. At the end of an evenings singing, any money collected was turned over to Gordon who was the scout patrol leader. What happened to the money, Jeffery never found out.

  After Christmas, but before the New Year, Wilfred Burnett and his family moved into a small, rented house not far away. The Wilfred Burnetts invited the Donald Burnetts over and they, of course, took Jeffery with them. For him the event was quite boring as the adults sat around talking. While they were doing this the undulating wail of the air raid sirens told them that the German bombers were busy again. Eventually the adults talked themselves out and the Donald Burnetts left for home. The Germans had been making a hard incendiary attack on London. As they walked home the huge fires burning in London made the sky glow a vivid red like a magnificent sunset. Although they were more than twenty miles from the city the glow extended over their heads as large areas of the city burned to the ground. The Guildhall, where children from Jeffrey's school went to sing patriotic songs on Victoria Day, burned that night.

  That same night Mrs. Burnett's sister, was bombed out and came to live with them. This caused more turmoil because Mrs. Burnett and her sister did not get along very well.

  There was nothing much for Jeffery to do during the Christmas and New Year holidays, so he and Arthur explored further afield than normal. Scrambling over fallen bricks, they went through the gap in the wall at the back of the Manor, and pushed through the undergrowth in the woods until they reached the far edge. As they broke out of the woods, to their delight, they saw a large, apparently abandoned tower. It had heavy stone block walls that sloped slightly inward a metal cap at the top. Clumps of green moss peppered the walls. At intervals small, now dirty, windows had been set into the sides. Circling it they gazed in wonder, puzzled as to what it was for. In front a heavy, double wooden door with flaking green paint was held closed by a large rusty padlock. Then Jeffery looked up and noticed a shaft sticking out from the metal cap.

  "I know what this is," he declared. "It's a windmill, a ruined windmill. That's the shaft that turns when the wind blows, but the flaps are missing."

  "They're called vanes," Arthur said. "But I think you're right. Must be very old."

  There was no sign of the vanes that would have been mounted on the shaft to catch the wind. They moved on round the tower. On the far side, a large tree grew against the wall. Arthur pointed up.

  "Up there," he exclaimed. "There's a broken window."

  Jeffery looked up to where he was pointing and saw the window.

  "I'm going to shin up this tree," Arthur said. See if I can get inside." And he dashed over to the base of the tree and started to climb.

  For a moment Jeffery hesitated, then put his gas mask down on the ground and followed him up. Soon they were creeping around an upper floor in the derelict windmill's dim interior where the only light came through the broken window. There was not much to find. Odd pieces of wood and metal rubble covered the floor which was rotted through in places.

  "Be careful," Jeffery said. "Don't trip and fall through."

  In the centre they discovered a large hole and to one side a rickety staircase leading down. Everything was so dim the ground below could not be seen. They decided not to go down. Then they found more stairs leading up. These were also rickety, but they climbed them anyway. At the top they found a short passage that led to a small room dimly lit through one of the dirty windows. Arthur was delighted. "We can keep the kitten in here," he said.

  "We can't keep it locked up, Arthur," Jeffery protested. "It's not right."

  "It won't be locked
up all the time. I'll come over nights and smuggle it into the house. And Ginger will want to keep it company, too, when she has the time. You got a better suggestion where to keep it?"

  "Might not matter. I'm not sure Mr. Selkirk wants to give it up. I think his daughter Sylvia might want to keep it."

  "Don't think so," Arthur said. Sylvia's joined the WAAF's. She'll be leaving home soon."

  "I suppose Betsy told you that."

  "Nope. Heard Mrs. O'Brien tell Betsy. She said it as a sort of suggestion. I think she was hoping that Betsy would join up, too." He poked further into the room. "If we scrounged some stuff it'd be comfortable here. What about it, Jeffery? You work tomorrow. Ask Old Selkirk to give us back our kitten."

  At last, Jeffery agreed to ask about the kitten. But as it turned out, he didn't need to. Farmer Selkirk broached the subject.

  "Morning, Jeffery." Farmer Selkirk said when Jeffery turned up for work. "You lot decided about where you're going to keep that kitten?" He stood feet astride, hands on hips. "Sylvia's joined up. Going into the WAAF's. I only kept it because she was attracted to it." He took his left hand off his hip and waved it in the direction of the farm house. "My old cat and your kitten don't get along too well. Mrs. Selkirk doesn't want the job of keeping them apart."

  "We were thinking of keeping it in the old mill on the other side of the woods."

  "The mill! That place belongs to the Colonel. It's been locked up for years." The farmer's head jutted forward slightly and his eyes narrowed. "Did you young rogues break the lock?"

  "No, Mr. Selkirk." A vision of Mr. Perkins and his cane popped into Jeffery's head . "There's a tree growing alongside it. A window up top was already broken. We just climbed up the tree and got in that way."

  "Likely story" the farmer said in disbelief.

  "It's true." If there was one thing that Jeffery had learned since the evacuation it was to stand up for himself when he was in the right.

  "No harm done, I suppose, if you're telling the truth. You won't be keeping the kitten there forever." Just then Sylvia came out of the house carrying the animal and walked away from them, toward the barn. "Your kitten's growing fast. Soon be a cat. If you don't have a good home for it by the time it's full grown you'll need to let it run free. Cruel to keep it locked up all the time."

  Jeffery's whole body sagged and he became crestfallen for a moment as he thought of the kitten's future as a cat. No real home and nobody to care for it; bit like being an evacuee.