by Kit Pearson
Three was a perfect number for games. Besides the Three Musketeers, they often played they were Sir Launcelot, Sir Galahad and Sir Gawaine, or the army, the navy and the air force. Gavin was the best at making things up, Roger knew the most facts, and Tim was the most daring.
“Should we stay with you while you give Mick the money?” asked Tim as they approached Prince Edward School.
If only they could; but Gavin shook his head. “Mick wouldn’t like it if he knew I’d told you.”
“Then we’ll hide behind the fence. Come on, Rog!”
“No snowballs!” Gavin called after them. He watched them push through the excited crowd of kids playing in the snow. Then he went up to the flagpole—no Mick. He stood there alone for a long time, wishing he could be invisible like the Shadow.
“Hi, Gavin.” Eleanor Austen came up to him.
“Hi, Eleanor.” Gavin forgot his fear for a moment as he smiled at her. Eleanor was even smarter than Roger, and she was the prettiest girl in his class. Her eyelashes were so long she could balance eraser crumbs on them; last year she’d demonstrated. This morning her cheeks were the same colour as her red tam; her long brown braids hung in neat polished ropes from under it.
Some girls were unbearable. Like Lucy Smith. She was a grade ahead of Gavin and also a war guest, from the same English village as him and Norah. She and her sister and brother, Dulcie and Derek, had come over on the same ship. Now Derek had gone back to England to join the army, but Lucy and Dulcie still lived a few blocks away from the Ogilvies’, at Reverend and Mrs. Milne’s.
Lucy acted as if she owned Gavin, bossing him in front of his friends. And Daphne Worsley, Paige’s youngest sister, was even worse; Aunt Florence called her “a holy terror.” At least Daphne went to a different school.
Eleanor, however, was interesting. She wrote dramatic stories, which she sometimes read aloud in class. And instead of a dog or a cat she had a pet monkey called Kilroy, which she had once brought to school.
Eleanor looked at Gavin urgently. “Quick!” she whispered. “They dared me to kiss you! So I’m just going to pretend, okay?” She smacked the air in front of his cheek, then rushed back to her friends watching from the girls’ playground.
Gavin did what was expected of him. “Yech!” he cried, pretending to wipe off the kiss. The girls giggled.
Gavin’s cheeks burned as much as Eleanor’s had. Girls often dared each other to kiss him—him, Jamie and George, whom they had decided were the best-looking boys in grade five. Gavin had never liked it—but it had never been Eleanor before. He almost wished she hadn’t just pretended.
A teacher came out and rang the first bell. The snowball fights stopped and everyone began to line up at the boys’ and girls’ entrances.
Where was Mick? Gavin was just about to dash into school when a rough voice behind him snarled, “Hand it over, Stoakes.”
Gavin tore off his mitt and held up the red two-dollar bill. He was ashamed at how much his hand trembled. Mick grabbed the bill.
“Okay. You’re safe. For now …” Both of them ran to their classrooms.
“DID YOU DO IT?” Tim whispered to Gavin, as they stood beside each other during “God Save the King.”
Gavin nodded, trying to catch his breath. “But now I wish I hadn’t. It’s so unfair that he gets away with it!”
“At least you won’t get beaten up,” said Tim.
Mrs. Moss directed one of her piercing glances at them. They clamped their mouths closed, then opened them again to chant “The Lord’s Prayer.”
“Any more talking, Tim and Gavin, and you’ll be visiting with me after school today. Do you understand?” the teacher said after roll-call.
“Yes, Mrs. Moss,” they murmured. Mrs. Moss was a new teacher this year and they still weren’t sure whether to rate her as “nice” or “mean.” She smiled more than “Sourpuss Liers,” whom she’d replaced, but she was also strict; she always meant what she said.
“Now, because we had no school for the last two days, I wonder how many of you remembered to bring your quarters …”
Gavin had been so busy worrying about the money for Mick, he’d forgotten his war savings stamp money. He watched as some of the pupils exchanged their quarters for a stamp. They were allowed to paste it on one of the squares drawn over the large cartoon drawing of Hitler’s face. Since September they had covered up almost half of it.
“There!” said Mrs. Moss. “The rest of you please bring your money tomorrow. Now … I wonder if by any chance anyone has any news for this morning?” She looked mischievous; of course, everyone had stories about the blizzard.
Mrs. Moss let six pupils recount their adventures of being stuck, looking for milk and bread, and shovelling people out. Gavin didn’t contribute; he was still seething over the injustice of Mick. It was much easier to feel revengeful now that he was safe.
“I’m sure that many people were very grateful to you for helping,” said Mrs. Moss. “And now I have some news. You’ve probably noticed that Colin Porter hasn’t been here this week. He and his sister Rose have returned to England. I just found out that they sailed last weekend.”
The room buzzed as everyone turned around to stare at Colin’s empty desk. But because Colin had been a prig and a tattle-tale, no one looked upset.
During arithmetic Gavin bent over his workbook, but he wasn’t thinking about addition. He and Colin had been the last war guests in grade five. In grade one there had been three others in his class, but in the past two years they had all returned.
“Are you daydreaming again, Gavin?” asked Mrs. Moss.
Gavin tried to concentrate. They were supposed to add a long column of three-figured numbers. He had always found it hard to think of numbers as just numbers. In grade one he had decided that some numbers were male and some female, and that each had a definite personality. He still couldn’t help thinking of Six as a prissy woman who didn’t like being next to pompous Nine. So how could he add them up?
They had to hand in their workbooks while Gavin was settling an argument between Three, a howling little girl, and Ten, a wise old man. That meant he’d have to stay in at recess tomorrow to finish it.
Next was a spelling test. Gavin waited for the monitors to fill his inkwell, rattling the little silver lid confidently. He’d had two extra evenings to study his speller and got every word right.
“When do you think you’ll have to go back to England, Gav?” Roger asked him at recess. His dark eyes looked worried again.
“Not for a long time!” said Gavin hastily. “Not until the war’s over. That’s what the social worker told us last month. Our parents don’t think it will be safe until then. There’s a new kind of bomb and lots of them fall over Kent.”
“Flying bombs!” said Tim eagerly. “I know about those. I saw them on a newsreel.”
“Maybe Colin will see a flying bomb,” said Roger. “I bet he’ll be scared.”
Tim gave Gavin a friendly shove. “I hope the war is never over, Gav! Then you’ll never have to leave Canada.”
“But then my father wouldn’t come back!” protested Roger.
“Oh yeah. Sorry, Rog.”
“Let’s stop talking about the war,” said Gavin desperately. “Want to build a snow fort after school?”
3
Neither Calm Nor Bright
Gavin and Tim and Roger were careful to stay out of Mick’s way for the rest of the term. Then the Christmas holidays started and they were free from worrying about him for a while.
Now there was lots of time to play in the huge amount of snow that still covered the ground. The three friends tobogganed, made snow forts and joined the highly organized snowball fights in the school playground. But as Christmas Day approached, Gavin became more and more uneasy.
“What’s wrong with you, Gav?” Tim asked him. “You haven’t been listening! I said, I think I’m getting a chemistry set. How about you? You always get such keen stuff.”
Gavin couldn’
t explain how everything was different this year. Although no one could bear to talk about it, everyone in the Ogilvie household was aware that this was Gavin and Norah’s last Christmas in Canada. It was hard to ignore the sad looks he kept getting, not only from Aunt Florence, Aunt Mary and Hanny, but from the five Montreal relatives who’d come to stay—”cousins” and “aunts and uncles” that he knew from Gairloch, the island they went to in Muskoka every summer.
On Christmas Eve afternoon Gavin sat in the living room having a game of checkers with Uncle Reg. Aunt Florence had managed to find a tree. It was much spindlier than usual but it still glittered with the same glass balls and bubble lights that covered it every year. The same angel perched on top and the usual hill of presents buried its lower branches. Gavin kept glancing at the tree, taking whiffs of its piney smell for reassurance.
Uncle Reg reached down and fondled one of Bosley’s ears. “Well, Boz, do you miss me?” Bosley raised one paw and shook hands politely, but then he pushed under the table and put his head in Gavin’s lap.
“He certainly prefers you now,” chuckled Uncle Reg. He jumped his checker over one of Gavin’s, then looked up, unusually serious. “Gavin, I want you to know that when you have to return to England I would give Bosley to you for good—if he was allowed to go.”
A flash of hope filled Gavin. “Is he?”
“I’m afraid not, son.” The old man looked sorrowful. “I even made inquiries. Dogs aren’t allowed into Britain without going into quarantine for months. We couldn’t do that to Boz.”
“No,” agreed Gavin sadly. “He’d be too lonely.” He swallowed hard. “I know I have to give him up, Uncle Reg. You said that when you lent him to me. It’s okay.”
Uncle Reg smiled at him. “You’re a brave boy.” Then he sighed. “I think Florence was probably right. I shouldn’t have given Bosley to you in the first place. I should have realized how hard it was going to be when the time came for you to go back.”
“But I’m glad you gave him—lent him—to me! He’s one of my best friends!” Then Gavin couldn’t help sniffling.
Uncle Reg handed him a large, soft handkerchief, looking as if he were going to cry too. “I promise you I’ll take very good care of him and I’ll always think of him as your dog—as if you’ve lent him to me! I’ll send you reports and pictures of him.”
Gavin blew his nose, handed back the handkerchief and tried to smile. Then Uncle Reg might stop talking about Bosley.
“I have a perfect word for charades this year,” chuckled Uncle Reg. “Let’s try to get on the same team.” Gavin cheered up as Uncle Reg told him how he planned to use the word to trick Aunt Florence.
THAT EVENING a crowd of visitors filled the living room. At one end the teen-agers gathered: Aunt Florence’s great-nieces, Flo and Janet, Paige, Paige’s sister Barbara, Dulcie and Norah. They shrieked with laughter as Paige, the tallest and wildest, imitated the headmistress at her girls’ school. The adults sat with their drinks and cigarettes at the other end of the room, praising Uncle Reg for managing to get a bottle of rye.
Gavin was stuck with Daphne and Lucy. He slouched between them while they chattered about tomorrow morning.
“I always get up at five o’clock and open my stocking,” declared Daphne, spitting out crumbs of shortbread as she spoke. “They make me go back to bed until seven, but then we run downstairs and rip open all the presents.”
Lucy looked prim. “We have to wait until Uncle Cedric gets back from early service, then we have to get dressed and have breakfast before we have the tree. Then we go to church. That’s exactly how we did it in England.”
Daphne pinched Gavin’s leg. “Ouch!” he protested. “I wish you wouldn’t always do that, Daphne.”
“I bet you’ll miss my pinches when you go back to England,” she smirked.
“That’ll be the only good part about going back,” he retorted.
“But don’t you want to go back, Gavin?” Lucy asked him. “I can hardly wait to see my parents again! I’ll miss Canada and the Milnes, of course, but England is our real home.”
Everything Lucy said always sounded like something she was copying from the grown-ups. Gavin shrugged. Daphne pinched him again and he got up indignantly.
If only the Montreal cousins who were his age—Peter and Ross and Sally—had come this year. He found a chair in a corner and curled up in it, thinking of all the good times he had with those three at Gairloch every summer. But if the war was over by next summer—and everyone seemed to think it would be—he wouldn’t be in Canada.
In August Norah and Gavin had walked around the island by themselves on the morning they’d left. Norah had been in tears. “This is going to be the hardest part of Canada to give up,” she said, gazing greedily at every rock and tree. “It’s probably the last time we’ll ever be here.” Gavin hadn’t believed her. Now he did.
And if he would probably be back in England this summer, that meant he’d be there for sure by next Christmas … Gavin glanced at the brown paper parcel from his parents under the tree. It always looked so plain compared to the other presents in their bright paper and ribbon. Next Christmas, when he and Norah were with their parents, would all their presents be wrapped in plain brown paper?
Uncle Reg went over to the piano and everyone gathered around to sing carols. Gavin tried to make himself feel Christmassy, especially when they sang “Good King Wenceslas.” It had become a family tradition for Uncle Reg and Gavin to sing the parts of the king and the page. Usually this was Gavin’s favourite part of Christmas Eve, imagining himself following a king “through the rude wind’s wild lament / And the bitter weather.”
Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind grows stronger:
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer
sang Gavin when it was his turn. But this year the song seemed unbearably sad, even after the king’s reassuring answer.
“That was wonderful, pet!” Aunt Florence whispered. “You really made the words come alive!”
They had just begun “Silent Night” when all the lights in the house went out.
“Oh, no! Not on Christmas Eve!” someone cried.
The girls giggled in the darkness and Daphne pinched Gavin again. But soon one of the adults had found candles and the living room became a soft, flickering cave.
“Let’s carry on,” said Uncle Reg. “I can see well enough.”
“All is calm, all is bright,” they sang.
“It certainly isn’t calm and bright tonight!” laughed one of the aunts at the end.
The family sat down and sipped eggnog. Gavin snuggled up against Aunt Florence. In the last few years Toronto had often had power failures. He liked the way the house seemed to shrink around him, enclosing him in a safe cocoon.
“This is what it must be like all the time in England,” said Aunt Mary.
“I remember,” said Dulcie. “We had to cover every inch of the window with black curtains. People came around and inspected to make sure not one chink of light showed.”
“Well, soon they won’t have to do that any more,” said Mr. Worsley. “Just like that song—what is it?”
“When the Lights Go On Again,” said Lucy importantly. “We sing it in school.”
“But then you’ll all have to go back,” said Janet. She clutched Norah’s arm as if she’d never let her go.
That made everyone look sadly again at Norah, Gavin, Dulcie and Lucy. Gavin shivered. He never wanted the lights to go on.
CHRISTMAS MORNING was different too. Usually Peter and Ross shared Gavin’s room and they inspected the stockings on the ends of their beds together. This year he opened his stocking all by himself. After he had spread everything out on his bed—a cap gun, pencils, comics, a package of Chiclets, two rolls of Lifesavers, notepaper, and an orange in the toe—he put it all back carefully in the stocking and went up to the tower. There he spilled it out again with Norah, Janet and Flo.
; As in Lucy’s house they had to get dressed and eat breakfast before they had the tree. Gavin always relished the delicious suspense while they waited for the adults to finish. This year, at least that part was the same. As he waited on the stairs in front of the closed living-room door he felt Christmassy for the first time.
But when they were finally allowed to dash in, he tried to hide his disappointment. Usually there was something large under the tree for him: one year it had been skis, another year a new bike. But this Christmas all his presents were wrapped—and small.
The presents themselves were okay: a baseball glove, several airplane models and some books he had wanted. But he’d hoped for a new hockey stick. And his present from Aunt Florence was baffling: two tiny, engraved gold circles lying on cotton batting in a small blue box.
“They’re much too old for you, pet,” said Aunt Florence. “But they’re very valuable and I want you to keep them safe until you’re grown up. They belonged to my husband.”
Aunt Florence looked so proud he couldn’t hurt her feelings by asking what the strange objects were. “Thank you very much,” he said. “I’ll take good care of them.”
“I’m sorry that all your presents are so small, sweetness,” she said. “But we didn’t want to give you anything this year that you couldn’t take home with you.” Then her strong face crumpled.
So that was why. Gavin tried to be grateful. After all, he already had plenty of stuff—more than most boys his age. It wasn’t that he didn’t like what he’d received; it was just the change.
Norah, too, got something that was old, but at least you could tell what it was: a short string of pearls.
“They were given to me when I was your age,” smiled Aunt Mary.
“They’re real, so take good care of them,” warned Aunt Florence.
“I will. Thank you!” Norah tried on the pearls while Janet admired them.
At ten o’clock they all gathered around the radio for the King’s Christmas message. The young people squirmed but the adults listened intently.
