by Cathy Forde
Without answering, Pete flung back the door. “See!” he hissed. Pointed. At nothing.
“Knew it was a wind-up, Nigel. You’re good.” Dunny punched the side of Pete’s arm. “There’s your torch. Let’s go.”
Dunny was already at his hedge.
“But I saw her. I did.” Keeping one foot wedged in the shelter door so it wouldn’t slam behind him, Pete flashed the torch beam across the benches.
“She’s gone.”
“And I’m gone too,” Dunny called. “Coming, Nigel?”
“Coming.” Pete shone the torch around one more time. “But I swear she was sitting right…”
Pete had to let the shelter door swing shut to reach whatever was lying on the bench where he was still sure he’d seen Beth writing.
“Dunny!” he yelled. “Dunny!”
“Dunny answered Pete’s call by shouldering through the shelter door like a supercharged superhero to the rescue. Only to find Pete turning the pages of a notebook.
“My notebook. Why’s it out the plastic bag?” Dunny had to stop rubbing his shoulder to snatch it back from Pete. “That Wee Stookie’s one dead brother, broken arm or not.”
“It wasn’t him,” said Pete. “Beth was writing in it when I looked in.”
“Mince and tatties, man. Fresh air up here must be going to your… Wait a minute.” Dunny was beside Pete looking over the same pages Pete was turning. He stopped Pete’s hand. Turned back a page. Another one.
“None of this writing was here before.”
Chapter 18
This notebook belongs to:
Miss Elizabeth Julie Winters,
14 Cairns Road,
Clydebank,
Scotland,
Great Britain,
Europe,
Planet Earth,
The Galaxy,
The Universe
I solemnly swear to write this diary for the rest of my life.
“Elizabeth Winters.” The name Dunny read in his girl voice was written in the same hand as the one Pete had seen on Wee Stookie’s plaster.
The boys were on their stomachs on the trampoline, Beth’s notebook open between them.
“Carry on.” Pete nudged Dunny. “You make a better she than me.”
“Cheers!” Dunny stayed in character, though he elbowed Pete in the ribs before he carried on reading:
“31st October 1940, Hallowe’en,
Going as a sailor to guise at Aunty Mary’s. Lucky for me Hugh was taking some girl to the Pictures so I could ‘borrow’ his uniform. Wee bit big!!! Daddy was Charlie Chaplin. As usual. Jamie was Shirley Temple. Frilly dress. Red ribbons!!!!! (Mummy’s right – Aunty Mary really DID want a wee lassie!)
Sirens just when we started dookin’ for apples. We’d to grab the basin and do it in the shelter. Oh, and Mummy was a witch – again. Her mask made Jamie blubber. I told her to go as someone pretty next year.”
“Who’s Shirley Temple?” Dunny asked in his normal voice.
“It’s a drink where I come from.” Pete shrugged. “Lemonade, grenadine to make it pink. Ice, cherry on top. Can have it as a float with ice cream.”
“No chance you’ll get away with that in Clydebank. Sounds like a pure lassie’s drink, man,” Dunny snorted.
“It’s not.” Pete was seeing Simon, Alfie, himself. Holding the weekly burping contest from their booth at Luigi’s cafe… Using the straw from the Shirley Temples they ordered after football practice as a pea-shooter – or a cherry-shooter. Seeing who’d be first to fire it across the table into the others’ glass, or hair or eye… No, it wasn’t a pure lassie’s drink.
“What if it is anyway?” Now Pete was thinking about Mr Milligan. His dad’s boss. In a frilly dress and ribbons. Hadn’t done him any harm.
This time Pete read, “8th November,
To Glasgow to see Hugh off at Central station. Aunt Katy came all the way down from Beauly. Gave Hugh three guineas and a gold cross. Wish she was my godmother. Hugh was right quiet till his Navy pals turned up and then he was cracking jokes non-stop in a big loud voice. Two different girls arrived to wave him off. ‘Too much red lipstick for their own good,’ Mummy said. Hugh just kept talking to me till they both left. Then he left. He said, ‘Don’t bubble, kiddo,’ but I couldn’t help it. Mummy and Aunt Katy looked so sad. I’ve to send him drawings.”
“Big brother?” Pete asked Dunny.
“Looks like it. Wonder what happened to him.” Dunny cleared his throat. “Just finding my lassie’s voice. “9th November…” he piped, reading on:
“Aunt Katy still here. Mummy and her whisper in the front room all the time. When I keek round the door they start talking about rationing. Aunt Katy brought eggs from the farm and we made mirangs. (Is that how you spell it?)”
“No,” said Pete. “That’s wrong too: DEEEEEEE-LISH-USSSS.”
“So what?” said Dunny. “I can’t spell for toffee. Doesn’t make me a bad person.” He went on reading:
“Mummy told Aunt Katy about saving those six eggs for my birthday cake and cracking the rotten one in last and spoiling the mixture. Aunt Katy said I’d be having fresh eggs coming out my ears if she’d her way. Mummy got cross and sent me to my room – What for? Unfair!!!! – but I stood outside the kitchen and heard her tell Aunt Katy she hadn’t ruled it out: ‘But Beth knows nothing about it, so keep it that way, alright, Katy?’”
“That’s them planning Beth’s evacuation.” Pete flicked to the next entry. A month later.
“8th December 1940,” Pete read. “Letter from Hugh. Torpedoed last week, but he made it to the lifeboat. Won’t be home for Christmas. Hate this war!!!”
“Me now.” Dunny read the next entry, dated a week later:
“School panto. Choir sang flat and Mrs Banks blamed me for singing out of tune on purpose. I was not!!!! Was just singing loud because she said sing up. At least I don’t have a giant jelly bottom and a mustash.”
“Is that how you spell moustache?” asked Pete, but it didn’t matter either way. Dunny wasn’t listening.
“Giant jelly bottom!” He’d flipped round to bounce in time to Beth’s insult:
Giant!
Jelly!
Bottom!
Pete gripped the notebook to stop it dancing off the trampoline.
“18th December,” he read on.
“Going to Aunt Katy’s for Christmas. Mummy says we could be doing with the fresh Highland air and I might like to stay there till the war’s over. When I said, ‘No ta,’ she said, ‘It’s not really up to you, Elizabeth.’”
“Where are we: Downton Abbey? ‘It’s not really up to you, Elizabeth!’” Dunny bounced.
“Looks like it was.” Pete had turned to the next entry. “She’s back at her school in this one.”
“15th February 1941,
Someone sent me A VALENTINE. Yukky. See if it’s Mickey Kelly I will DIE. Anna says he’s always making googly eyes at me and staring with his mouth dreeped open. His breath stinks of rotten kippers. Boys make me boke.
Ps – Valentine from Hugh…”
“…covered in rosebuds,” Dunny simpered before Pete had read the words out. “I’m sorry, but that is sick in a sick way, man. Vally from your brother?”
Pete said nothing. He could see why he might send Jenny a card. Why not? Also, he was thinking of those faded scraps of flowery pink wallpaper on the ruined walls of Beth’s old house. How sad it made him feel. But if he’d spoken up, his voice would have come out all chopped up and distorted like a Doctor Who baddy because Dunny was bouncing rings round him, reading the next entry.
“10th March 1941,
I’ve to write out a hundred times: ‘I must remember my gas mask every day for it could save my life.’ Stupid old Jelly Bum Banks.”
Dunny flopped down next to Pete. Both boys were laughing at Dunny’s breathless piping voice. On a roll, he sucked in his cheeks, cleared his throat and went on:
“11th March 1941,
Was in the shelter nearly all last night. B
ombings and raids for hours and hours and hours. Terrified. Mummy stayed with me and I fell asleep for a while. Jamie was sick in the toilet bucket and—”
“Hang on,” Dunny broke off. “Never read this before.” He flicked over the page. “Or this: I’m leaving in two days, the 13th.” He said in his own voice, “The night of the 13th was the Clydebank Blitz.” He pushed the notebook towards Pete. “Don’t want to read on.”
So Pete took over:
“Mummy said last night was the last straw. She’s sent Aunt Katy a telegram to meet me off the train at Inverness. Last night the streets where Mickey Kelly and Francis McGraw live copped it. I don’t know if they’re alright because Mummy’s keeping me off school till I leave. I’ll need to start a new one in Beauly. I won’t know anyone and worse than that, Hugh won’t know I’ve gone away. I’m taking his Valentine, and Mickey’s. When I think about leaving Mummy I just want to cry. So why am I so horrible when she talks to me and tells me to pack? Speaking of which…”
There was nothing else written. Dunny rolled on to his back and Pete did the same, hugging Beth’s notebook to his chest. Neither of them spoke as they stared up at the cloudy sky. A plane crossed overhead, low enough for Pete to see its orange livery.
Dunny scissored his legs at it.
“Beth wouldn’t have been able to do that,” said Pete. “All those German planes swooping down.”
“Must have been kinda exciting sometimes.” Dunny was pretending to shoot a machine gun at the sky. “Teaching the enemy a lesson.”
“But you and me wouldn’t’ve been soldiers.” Pete raised Beth’s notebook above his head. “We’d be like Beth. Refugees, or evacuees.” Or casualties. “Sitting targets on this trampoline.”
Pete closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop thinking about Beth. In that shelter. A sky full of hostile Luftwaffe droning overhead.
“Nyaaaach-ch-ch-ch.” Dunny’s fingertips dive-bombed Pete’s stomach.
“Oi.” Pete rolled away to dodge the next attack.
“Nyeaw! Nyeaw! Nyeaw!” Dunny was on his feet, bouncing, air-shooting. “Just think: sky glowing, shells exploding like giant fireworks, sirens screaming. Sick, man.”
“So long as you didn’t get killed or bombed.” Pete was easing himself off the trampoline, cradling Beth’s notebook.
“BOOM! SPLAT!” Dunny flung himself high, throwing star jumps.
“You seasick, Nigel?” he called down to Pete.
Pete didn’t admit to Dunny how he was really feeling: disturbed, fascinated, sad… All because of a girl. A girl from… A girl who was probably…
“Better check in,” he said.
“See you, then.” Dunny was back-flipping. “Borrow the notebook, s’long as I get it back. I’ll come round for you later, yeah?”
Chapter 19
Pete was double chuffed. Not only did he have the chance to pore over Beth’s notebook in private, but he’d a new mate who seemed to like him enough to lend it. This time when he tried his back door, it opened, which made him hope Mum or Dad might be in the kitchen, their spat over. But only Jenny was there, strapped into her car seat on the floor. From the sitting room Pete’s parents’ voices carried, raised in argument again. This time it seemed to be about why Dad had told Mr Milligan to call him into the office any time, so Mum never knew when she’d have a chance to use the car… or something stupid and grown-up like that.
Pete sighed. He hunkered down to Jenny and stroked her cheek. “Want to see Beth’s diary?” Pete unclipped his sister. “Don’t cry then. Come on,” he whispered and tiptoed upstairs. He propped her beside him on a pillow on the floor so she could play with his fingers while he read back over the notebook. To keep Jenny cooing and gurgling, Pete hummed ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ over and over under his breath. This seemed to be doing the trick, Jenny’s big eyes exploring the room with calm interest. Until, that is, Pete sensed her body stiffen as if she’d turned into a plastic doll. Her gaze was fixed on the wall through to Beth Winters’ old room.
“What’s up?” Pete gathered his sister in his arms. Jenny’s answer was a whimper and a cry. And then his own stomach lurched.
Pete could hear a siren wailing. Not an ambulance or a fire engine, but an air-raid siren; the pitch rising, then rising more, until the air, until the space inside Pete’s head, his thoughts, the blood running through his veins, were one almighty white-hot screech. Pete shook himself to rattle away the drilling, but the pitch and volume only rose. In his arms, Jenny was wailing too. Mouth gaping, cheeks scarlet. But her distress and terror were mute. Which made it worse somehow, because Pete could do nothing to comfort her.
And through the wall, there was panic. Thumping, clattering, objects being flung about. Pete could only feel the vibration of this activity rather than hear anything specific, but he could almost taste a sense of urgency.
Then he heard Beth Winters. Straining to howl over the siren. Furious. Hysterical.
“I heard you the first time, Mummy! I want to take my box to the shelter. So stop shouting at me; not deaf.”
Oooh. Pete actually winced. If he dared to spit his mum a mouthful like that…? Siren or no siren.
But Beth was in some temper, kicking things about now.
“I said I’m coming, Mummy!” Her voice was raw: “Don’t nag!”
And on Beth’s last word, the siren stopped. There was silence, although Pete’s ears would still be pounding from the ghost-echo of the siren hours later. In his arms, Jenny caught her breath, her eyes cutting from Pete to the wall as if to say, “What was that all about?”
But before he could even think straight to try and find out, all the lights in Pete’s house snapped off.
Chapter 20
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken Jenny upstairs? I was terrified I’d trip over her.”
“And why the hell did you leave my torch down in the shelter? How am I supposed to see the circuit board?”
And what d’you think you’re playing at? Scaring the life out of me, teeny-tiny little me, letting me hear that siren through the wall? Jenny didn’t actually make it a hat-trick of pelters for Pete, but she might as well have.
Everyone else was mad with him: Mum calling him thoughtless and Dad warning him to be a bit more of a team player, Mac.
Now Pete was fumbling and stumbling in the dark through the unfamiliar layout of his new hallway and kitchen out into the garden. He could see the shape of the shelter silhouetted in the dusk of the evening sky. He did NOT want to go in there. But Dad wasn’t letting him off the hook:
“I know it’s getting blooming dark out, Mac. That’s why I need my torch and you’re the only person here knows where it is. So vamoose! Do your talking as you’re walking.”
As Pete plunged his way through the unkempt garden, chilly stalks and grasses stroked and grasped his hands like cold fingers. He was shivering even before the air-raid shelter door scraped the ground. Inside was pitch dark.
Pete drew in a big breath. With one giant stride he lunged into the shelter, trying to keep the door open with the heel of his other foot and trying to remember where he’d last seen Dad’s torch.
There.
Pete squatted. Patted the ground. Nothing. He patted further. Still nothing, and he was at full stretch now, practically doing the splits – ooyah! – still trying to keep the door open.
Pete’s teeth were chattering as the door scraped shut behind him, sealing him in darkness. Despite this, he closed his eyes, then swept both hands in wide circles across the floor, moving all the time towards the back of the shelter.
The torch isn’t here. He touched the far wall. Dad’ll freak, but it’s gone. Pete was on his feet, arms outstretched as he stumbled towards the door. Just then, to the side of him, he heard something being shoved. An object dropped to the floor with a clatter and rolled until it struck Pete’s foot.
The torch.
Pete picked it up. Flicked the switch. Opened his eyes, even though he didn’t want to. When he saw what he
saw next he definitely wished he hadn’t.
Inches from Pete, heat pulsed from a small stove. Like that smelly one Simon’s dad brought camping. Its dim orange glow flickered through the shelter revealing a tin kettle, a tea caddy and a collection of mismatched cups and saucers on the bench nearby. By the door, a stack of suitcases teetered. On top of them a box spilled with what Pete recognised – thanks to Veronica Mason’s ‘Show and Tell’ at his old school – as gas masks. Blankets and coats and bedspreads were piled up on the section of the bench nearest the door, and at the far end, a sheet was strung from the roof. A tin pail sat on the floor beside it. A roll of toilet paper.
And there were people. Beth Winters was the only one he recognised, huddled in a blanket, feet on the bench, knees hugged to her chin. Beside her a woman who looked about the same age as Pete’s mum was whisper-singing to a grizzling baby:
Clappa, clappa handies, Daddy’s comin’ home,
Pennies in his pockets for Jamie alone.
The woman clasped the baby’s hands in her own, swinging them in time to her song, and her voice was cheery. Her eyes, though, weren’t on the child, but stared upwards towards a sky she couldn’t see. On the bench opposite, an older group – two couples, draped in blankets – watched the baby, unsmiling.
By the tired sickly light of the brazier, Pete was only just taking stock of this scene when the biggest explosion he’d ever heard shook the shelter. Then another. Another. All of them far too close.
“Mummy,” Beth cried. “Daddy.”
Keeping hold of her baby, the young woman gathered Beth against her. At the same time, a man from the older group crossed the shelter to sit next to the terrified girl. He patted her knee. None of the adults spoke. They just glanced upwards, eyes cutting left to right, wincing as the next blast and the next rocked the shelter, shaking the walls, rattling the crockery. They were in the eye of a bombardment now. The bull’s-eye, Pete was thinking as he watched baby Jamie’s face crumple into a silent scream. He thought of Jenny. How he would hate her to be in the middle of this.