At the Firefly Gate

by Linda Newbery

  He’d show that stupid girl!

  He disentangled the reins, then turned the pony’s head and clucked with his tongue the way Grace did. Obediently, Amber started to walk away from the gate, towards Grace, who was half running across the field.

  She was laughing, doubling up as if she had a bad stitch. ‘You did look funny, Strawberry Pip! Hanging round her neck like a monkey up a stick. I thought you’d end up in a pile of dung. Wait till I tell Tracy!’

  Henry wasn’t going to let her know how terrified he’d been or that he knew what she’d tried to do.

  ‘It was all right,’ he said coolly. ‘Once I got the hang of it.’

  Grace giggled. ‘Next time, I’ll put up some jumps,’ she said. ‘If you think you’re so good.’

  Henry slithered to the ground, landing on wavery legs that only just held him up. Next time. There was going to be a next time. And Henry knew he’d have to come or Grace would think he’d chickened out. He’d managed to conceal his fear this time, but he’d have to do it again, and Grace would make it harder every time.

  They scraped him off the runway like a dollop of strawberry jam . . .

  NINE

  FLY PAST

  Each day, during the hours of sunlight, Henry found it quite impossible to believe that he’d ever really seen the smoking man by the gate, and the fireflies. The sense of being inside someone else’s body — in someone else’s clothes and shoes — had been so strong that he must surely have dreamed it. Only when dusk fell over the fields and woods, and he was alone in his bedroom or with only Pudding for company, did he start to feel edgy and anxious. Every few minutes he had to go to the window, to check there was no one by the orchard gate.

  Already, though it was nowhere near dark, something was pulling him to the window. Everything looked normal. The lightest of breezes ruffled the long grasses in the orchard, stirring the leaves of the apple trees; a wood pigeon cooed from the roof above him; he heard a train, a long way distant. No one was out there; he was quite sure of that. Then, looking to his left, he caught his breath as he saw someone farther along, by the gate of Number One. Dottie. Only Dottie, steadying herself with a hand on the fence. But she was looking intently towards Henry’s gate, towards the place where the young man had stood.

  Maybe she’d seen him too! Why hadn’t he thought of asking? Henry ran downstairs — almost tripping over Pudding, who had decided to curl up and sleep two steps down from the landing — and let himself out into the garden. He pushed open the gate to the orchard, noticing that the grass was now flattened where he’d trodden on it last night. He was about to call out to Dottie when he saw that she had turned and was going back towards the house. Voices floated out into the garden, Grace’s and Pat’s, arguing.

  Henry couldn’t help creeping closer along the orchard fence to hear what the fuss was about. A few moments later he wished he hadn’t — they were talking about him.

  ‘No, I don’t want him to come!’ That was Grace; he could imagine the sulky face, the defiant posture. ‘I have to put up with him every day after school, don’t I — can’t I have a day out for once, just Dad and me on our own?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Grace.’ Pat. ‘Try to think of someone else, for a change. Henry’s just moved here, he hardly knows anyone, I’m sure he’d like to go —’

  ‘Henry? The Air Display? Oh, I bet he’d love it.’ That was Dottie’s warm voice with the chuckle in it. ‘You could have a lovely day, the two of you and your dad —’

  ‘No! I want to go with Dad, just the two of us! I don’t want to be lumbered with a little kid like Henry. It’ll all be ruined if he tags along!’

  ‘Don’t be so obstinate,’ Pat tried. ‘Why should it be spoiled?’

  ‘Because it will! If you’re so keen for Henry to go, tell you what, Henry can go with Dad and I’ll stay at home.’

  There was a silence then. Maybe Grace had stomped into another room or gone all huffy and refused to say any more. Afraid of someone coming out into the garden and seeing him sneak away, Henry crept back to his own gate. He felt hot all over with embarrassment and the sense of unfairness. A little kid like Henry — the cheek of Grace! After he’d trudged over the fields with her this afternoon, so that she could ride Amber! It must have been Pat’s idea for him to go to the Air Display; he hadn’t invited himself, had he? He wanted to go, really wanted, after hearing Simon and the others talk about it; but he knew that Mum and Dad would have to stay in tomorrow, because an electrician was coming and someone to fit carpet.

  Anyway, he thought with a rush of defiance, I’d rather miss it than go with that nasty, spiteful user.

  As it turned out, a lot of the Air Display came over the cottage, so Henry didn’t miss it after all. He was helping Dad to clear the garden, sorting out broken flower-pots and bits of glass and tangles of ivy and cobwebs, when the Red Arrows zoomed overhead. They flew over with a tearing swoosh, so low that Henry couldn’t help ducking; then they fanned out as if unzipping the sky into three sections.

  No more garden clearing took place after that. Henry and Dad stood by the back gate, peering into the sky, waiting to see what would happen next.

  ‘We’ll definitely go next year,’ Dad said. ‘But it looks as if we’ll get quite a good view from here.’

  Mum came out, bringing the binoculars, and they took turns at squinting into the sky and trying to focus. ‘Our own private air-show!’ Mum said. ‘No need to queue in traffic or search for parking places or toilets. And it’s free!’

  Later, when they heard the jangle of an ice-cream van outside, Dad bought choc ices, so that they really could pretend they were having a day out. Getting neck ache from craning upwards, they watched helicopters, a pair of stunt biplanes with people standing on the wings, then fighters with an ear-numbing thunderclap of jet engines. Next — getting a cheer from Dad — Spitfires and a Lancaster, two small planes and a large one with a blunt nose.

  ‘Old war planes,’ he explained. ‘Grandad worked on Spitfires in the war, as an engineer. Here, have a good look.’

  Henry adjusted the binoculars and saw the two small planes like clockwork toys flanking the bigger Lancaster. The drone of their engines, he thought, was even more exciting than the great whoosh of the jets that had flown over earlier. The din of the supercharged jets had made the whole sky shake, but the sound of these engines — old wartime engines — was somehow more thrilling. It made the planes seem brave and determined, pushing against the sky.

  ‘There were lots of airfields round here in the war,’ Dad said. ‘Because it’s so flat, and so near the coast. Lakenfield was one. Grandad worked at Waddington, up near Lincoln.’

  He had once shown Henry a photo of his grandfather — Henry’s great-grandfather — as a young mechanic in overalls, winding up the propeller of a Spitfire. In the cockpit sat a faceless figure in goggles, muffled up in a scarf. How odd that a fighter pilot was what Grace wanted to be! In his imagination, he substituted her for the goggled pilot in the photograph. She looked ludicrous. Girls might be able to train as fighter pilots now, but they certainly hadn’t fought in combat in the Second World War. Henry knew that much.

  ‘Afternoon, Dottie!’ Dad suddenly called out, above the retreating drone of the aircraft as they flew into the sun. ‘Enjoying the show?’

  Henry looked along in the direction of Pat’s garden. Dottie was by the washing spinner, holding it with one hand to steady herself. She held up the other hand to shield her eyes as she gazed towards the aircraft being swallowed up by the sun’s glare. She didn’t hear Dad at first; after a few moments she turned, blinking and confused, like someone waking up slowly. Then Pat came out of the house and called to Dad across Number Two’s garden: ‘Come and have a cup of tea. I bet you could do with a break.’

  Dad explained about the electrician and the carpet fitter, but Pat told him to leave a note on the front door saying Please knock at Number One, and they all went along — Mum, Dad and Henry. It was much nicer, Henry thought, goi
ng to Pat’s when Grace wasn’t there.

  ‘Wotcha, Henry,’ Dottie said, giving him a huge wink. ‘We get just as good a view from here, don’t we?’

  Henry kept thinking about what Grace had said, that Dottie was going to die. She might be making it up — you couldn’t tell, with Grace. But if it was true, what did it mean? Would Dottie carry on getting thinner and thinner and smaller and smaller? Would she be taken away to hospital? Or would she simply not be there one day? But whenever Dottie spoke to him and looked at him with those amazingly bright blue eyes, she seemed far too full of life to be at any risk of dying.

  ‘Takes me right back, seeing them planes,’ she said, as Mum and Dad sat down. ‘That was the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, did you know that? That Lancaster’s one of only two in the world that can still fly. The other one’s over in Canada or somewhere. Apart from that, you only see them in museums.’ She sighed. ‘Think of all that effort, making them. They used to fly right over here, them Lancasters, three or four times a week. I used to count them out as they flew off towards the sea, and count them safely in when they came back. Enormous, a Lanc seemed then. Course, if you saw one now, next to one of them big Jumbos, it’d look like nothing at all.’

  ‘You were here in the war?’ Dad asked.

  Dottie nodded, holding out her cup to Pat for a refill of tea. ‘That’s right, love.’

  Henry thought it was funny the way she called Dad ‘love’, as if she thought of him as just a boy.

  ‘Evacuated from the East End, I was,’ she went on. ‘Me and my sister. Came to live at the Old Rectory just behind the church.’ She nodded in the direction she meant. ‘You know the house with the big lime trees? Fell on our feet, we did. Not like some. They treated us like family at the Rectory. Even though they was so posh, and us just a couple of scruffy Bethnal Green kids.’

  ‘So you never went back to London?’ Mum asked.

  Dottie shook her head. ‘Betty married and settled in Ipswich. I was going to get married too, only it never came off. But I liked it here in Suffolk, so I stayed. I worked in the NAAFI canteen for a bit, then later I got a job in the aircraft factory. After the war I learned to type and got an office job. Me, I never did get married, but I got a job in Ipswich, to be near Betty. She was the only family I had after Mum and Dad died.’

  Henry twiddled a stalk of grass, sitting by Dad’s feet with a glass of Coke. He couldn’t imagine someone as old as Dottie having a Mum and Dad. Or making aircraft in a factory. He’d seen pictures — rows of girls and women working away, wearing overalls and turbans, singing while they worked to make the hours pass. Making bits of Spitfires and Hurricanes.

  ‘You know what?’ he said to Dottie. ‘You could have made a bit for one of those Spitfires that just went over!’

  Dottie smiled at him. ‘Maybe I did, Henry love. Who knows?’ And she gazed into the sky where the planes had been. ‘Just seventeen, I was, when I moved out here. East End girl straight from the Blitz. Glad to get grass under my feet instead of pavement.’ Then she looked at Henry in an odd way, that made him think it was someone else she was seeing, not him at all. She went on, ‘We hadn’t been here long when I met him, on the airfield.’

  ‘Met him?’ Mum asked. ‘Who?’

  ‘Henry,’ Dottie said. For a second she sounded like Grace — impatient, answering in a who-did-you-think-I-meant sort of way. Who did you think I was talking about? Henry stared at her, and Mum echoed, ‘You met Henry?’

  ‘Yes, he —’ Dottie began. But at that point another aircraft came over, drowning what she said, and they all looked up at what Dad said was a Hercules, a huge, bulky plane that looked too heavy to get off the ground. Then, when the noise faded, there was a loud ring at the front door followed by an impatient rapping — someone had obviously been waiting to be heard for a while. It was the electrician and the carpet man, both at once.

  Later, when the new carpet had been laid in the front room and the air was full of tiny fibres that got into his nose and tickled, Henry went outside in case any last aircraft displays or parachute jumps could be seen. Mum and Dad were making sandwiches for tea in the kitchen.

  ‘Do you think she’s a bit gaga? Dottie, I mean?’ Mum asked. She was speaking in a low voice, but Henry could still hear.

  ‘Talking about Henry, you mean?’ Dad said. ‘I shouldn’t think so — she’s sharp enough otherwise. But she does seem to have taken quite a liking to him.’

  Dottie, gaga! Henry wanted to rush in and shout at Mum, ‘Of course she isn’t! She’s as clever as you are, and much better at Scrabble!’

  Gaga!

  But he didn’t go in. It would be difficult to explain why he liked Dottie so much — more than anyone else he’d met since moving to Crickford St. Thomas. He looked across at Pat’s garden, but they’d all gone indoors, taking the chairs and the Scrabble with them — there were only a few starlings on the lawn, pecking at cake crumbs. He felt cleverer than Mum and Dad: obviously Dottie hadn’t meant him. There was another Henry.

  He would ask her on Monday.

  TEN

  COUNTING THEM OUT, COUNTING THEM BACK IN

  Sunday afternoon was so hot that when Henry stepped outside it felt as if the sun was melting him into gloopiness, like a wax candle. Even Mum and Dad tired of gardening and sat reading the Sunday papers in the shade outside the back door. Henry had thought he and Simon might play football at the rec, but it was far too hot for that.

  ‘We could go over to the stream,’ Simon suggested. ‘There might be sticklebacks.’

  ‘Can we?’ Henry asked his parents. He knew by now that Simon liked wildlife of all sorts, particularly frogs and toads.

  ‘How far is it?’ Mum asked Simon.

  Simon made a vague guesture. ‘Not far. That way, out in the fields. There’s a footpath.’

  Once Mum had satisfied herself that they wouldn’t have to trespass or cross any fields with bulls in them, she agreed. ‘Don’t get too hot,’ she warned.

  It would be impossible not to get too hot, Henry thought, unless you stood up to your neck in a river. He felt the sun striking through his T-shirt and prickling his bare arms as Simon led the way along the footpath beside the church and out into a grass meadow.

  ‘I’ve been this way before,’ he told Simon, recognising the way Grace had brought him on Friday. The stream — the tree-shaded part of it Simon was making for — was down in the dip to their left; ahead, over the brow of a rise, was the stony track that led towards Amber’s paddock. It would be fun, Henry thought, to show Amber to Simon, and impress him with the story of the wild gallop. He’d call Amber a horse, he decided, rather than a pony; she was almost big enough to pass for a horse. He could make it sound like a one-horse Grand National. ‘Let’s go this way first,’ he told Simon.

  A flurry of birds flew out from the low trees beside the stream and the water glinted coolly, making him wonder for a moment if it wouldn’t be more fun after all to paddle and look for sticklebacks. They reached the stile that led to the stony track, which they followed until it forked by a barn. Here, Henry soon realised that he must have taken a wrong turning. There was no shelter, no pony. Instead the field-edge was rising slowly towards a rusted gate. The rough path under their feet ran beside a dry ditch fringed with poppies and nettles, then became concrete, cracked and broken, with grass pushing up through the cracks. Henry and Simon climbed the gate and stood looking at the flat, open area, bordered by shrubby trees. The track widened, joining another at a sharp angle.

  ‘You know what this place is?’ Simon whispered.

  Henry had no idea why Simon felt he had to keep his voice low — there was no one around — but he found himself whispering too. ‘No. What?’

  ‘It’s the old airfield. This is one of the runways. And that building over there must have been some sort of control tower.’

  Henry looked at the crumbling brick building with broken steps leading up to a doorway. ‘How old?’ he asked. ‘This place doesn’t loo
k as if it’s been used for centuries.’

  ‘There weren’t such things as aeroplanes centuries ago, dingbat.’ Simon gave him a friendly shove. ‘It was used in the war. I know cos my grandad was here, Grandad Dobbs.’

  ‘What did he do in the war, your grandad?’

  ‘Actually he’s my great-grandad — my dad’s grandad. He’s ancient, eighty-something. He flew in a Lancaster. But he wasn’t a pilot, he was a flight engineer. He told me all about it. There were seven of them, in a Lanc, all with different jobs: pilot, wireless operator, rear gunner — I forget the others. And all Grandad’s crew were killed one night, only Grandad wasn’t there cos he was in sick bay, with flu. They all died, all his best mates he’d been with since he trained. For a long time, he said, he wished he’d died with them. He felt guilty, for getting flu. He should have been there.’

  ‘To get killed? That’s a weird thing to wish.’

  Simon shrugged. ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘So didn’t he fly any more after that?’

  ‘Course he did! The war was still on. But he got transferred to some other airfield, with another crew. He was lucky, he said. One time he was due to fly, only there was something wrong with their plane so they couldn’t go, and seven out of the twenty planes got shot down that night. And another time he’d just left his position to go for a pee — they had this chemical toilet thing in the back, he said, it stank something awful — when a stream of bullets from a fighter tore through the fuselage right where he’d been sitting. That’s how he got his nickname. Lucky Dobbs. Before, he was always called Rusty.’

  ‘Rusty? Dobbs?’ Henry’s mind snagged on the names. For a second he felt his feet hot in boots and smelled crushed grass and doughnuts. Next moment that thought had flittered just out of reach, like a piece of thistledown on the wind. If only he could catch and hold it . . .