Catching Falling Stars

by Karen McCombie

  “Uh-huh,” he mutters distractedly.

  And then I plunge from the sunlit green into the more dimly lit shop, the bell on the door jangling noisily.

  “Hello!” says a man behind a thick wooden counter. His hair is Brylcreemed and black, shiny as shellac. “What can I do for you, dear?”

  My eyes adjust and I see that the shelves here are just as packed with tins and packages as the front window.

  “Could I have some sugar, please?” I ask.

  “Yes, of course, dear,” says the man, picking up a paper bag in readiness to fill. “How much?”

  I’m suddenly confused, uncertain what I’m doing. I didn’t ask, and Miss Saunders didn’t tell me. We were probably both a little out of sorts.

  “I don’t know,” I reply, feeling my cheeks burn pink. “It’s for Miss Saunders at the cottage on the other side of the green…”

  “Ha! Fancy Miss Saunders having visitors.”

  As soon as the words are out of his mouth, it’s the shopkeeper’s turn to have pink cheeks.

  “Not that I mean anything by that, dear. It’s just that Miss Saunders is usually one to keep herself to herself…”

  He quickly scoops sugar from a big wooden box and presents the filled bag to me, twisted shut.

  “That’s how much she normally takes. I’ll put it on her bill.”

  “Thank you,” I say, taking the bag and hurrying out of the shop.

  Seems as if Miss Saunders is a bit of an odd fish. Mum will have found that out by now, I’m sure, while we’ve been away. We might be going home after all!

  At that thought, my spirits lift a little, and I untwist the bag, thinking I’ll let Rich lick his finger and dip it into the bag as a treat…

  “Ha ha ha! Go on – higher!” I hear a girl’s voice call out.

  Glancing quickly around, I see Rich leaping, like a wonky jack-in-the-box, trying to touch or grab at one of the many butterflies in the air above and around him.

  I also see the skinny girl from earlier, the one who was sneering out of the upstairs window of the pub. Her hair is dirty-dishwater brown and looks like it could do with a brush. And her bottle-green jumper and kilt-style skirt are a bit shabby and ill-fitting, as if they might be hand-me-downs worn by several girls along the way.

  “Jump! No, not like that. Higher, higher!”

  She’s laughing at Rich, egging him on.

  “I am jumping high,” Rich yelps as he leaps. “Hey, c’mere, Mr Butterfly!”

  “C’mere, Mr Butterfly!” the girl repeats.

  I can’t bear it. I can’t bear people mimicking my brother, and I can’t stand this place.

  “Come on, Rich,” I say, grabbing his hand without looking at the girl.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with you?” I hear her call out, but don’t respond.

  “Bye, bye!” Rich turns and yells to the girl, as he skips and hops to keep up with me. “Why are you cross, Glory? I was having fun!”

  He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t always see that people are making a fool of him, which is why he needs me.

  “I’m not cross,” I fib, as we approach the cottage. “I’m just thinking that we have to get back.”

  “Yes!” says Rich, brightening. “The lady might have biscuits!”

  I hadn’t meant get back to the cottage. I meant home, London.

  That’s where we need to be, bombs or no bombs.

  But then I spot something through the cottage window.

  Miss Saunders is sitting stone still, owl that she is, while Mum is smiling and has her hands clasped in front of her chest.

  I don’t need to read her lips to realize she’s saying a heartfelt thank-you to Miss Saunders.

  And I don’t need to be a mind reader to know that a decision has been made while we were away.

  It’s one that I really don’t think I’m going to like…

  “Bye! Bye, Mum!” Rich yells, waving as the bus pulls away. “Bye! Bye!”

  Mum’s hand is pressed on the window and she’s frantically blowing kisses at us. She’s all smiles, but crying too.

  I’m not smiling, or crying, because I’m in shock; shocked at Mum for leaving us here. I know that was the plan. I know that’s why we came here. But everything feels upside down and awfully wrong.

  “Well, then,” Miss Saunders says briskly, as the bus chugs off past the church.

  She doesn’t say any more than that or appear to be about to do anything.

  I think Miss Saunders might be in as much shock as I am. And Rich is bouncing up and down, waving too fast, like a mechanical toy that’s been overwound.

  “Rich, shh, steady,” I murmur, resting my hands on his shoulders to help calm him down. To anyone watching, he might look happy and excited, but I know he’s acting this way because he’s anxious and agitated.

  The last thing Mum had said to me was “I love you”, but the second-last thing was “Take extra-good care of your brother, Glory”. And that’s what I have to do, starting now. I mustn’t let Miss Saunders see how odd Rich can be, or she might go straight back to the vicar we all met with earlier and tell him she’s changed her mind. That he should get out all his documents about local evacuees and their host families and take her name off his register.

  Or maybe I should encourage Rich and his oddness, so that Mum or Dad will have to come back and collect us…

  Oh, how wonderful would that be?

  “Can we go home to the cottage, please?” Rich turns and asks Miss Saunders. “Now?”

  Miss Saunders looks bemused, as if she’s wondering what on earth she’s agreed to. She pushes her spectacles further up her nose, although they’re up as far as they can go. I know what she’s doing; a fidget can give you a moment of thinking time. And faced with two unexpected house guests, Miss Saunders, I suppose, definitely needs a moment to gather her thoughts.

  Especially when one of them has just described her cottage as “home”, as if he’s settled in already.

  “Er, yes, of course,” says Miss Saunders, and begins to stride off.

  Rich does his funny little skip-hop to keep up with her, while I follow behind.

  “Oh, butterfly, butterfly, high in the sky, high in the sky! Oh, butterfly, butterfly…”

  I stiffen, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “…high in the sky, high in the sky!”

  Teachers don’t have much patience with Rich when he does his sing-songing. Last year’s teacher, Miss Arnold, gave him a smack on the back of his legs with a ruler for “not calming down when I asked you to”.

  “Oh, butterfly, butterfly, high in the sky, high in the sky!”

  Miss Saunders is a teacher. What will she be like with my brother? Impatient, weary, same as the others?

  “Oh, butterfly, butterfly…”

  “Rich, Rich!” I hiss at him, trying to get his attention before Miss Saunders becomes irritated. I know I wanted to go home just now, but we can’t let Mum and Dad down. I’d never want them to be ashamed of either of us.

  “…high in the sky, high in the sky!” he carries on regardless, throwing his arms in the air this time.

  With cheeks aflame, I glance at Miss Saunders and see her give Rich a sideways frown; the sort that everyone does when they’re thinking he’s … unusual.

  “Oh, butterfly, butterfly—”

  “It’s rather silly to make up a song about a garden pest, Richard,” Miss Saunders interrupts him sharply.

  “Butterflies aren’t pests, they’re beautiful!” Rich laughs, watching the cabbage whites dip and dance over the green.

  “Not when they’re destroying the vegetable crop that the villagers have grown for the war effort,” she tells him sniffily. “At least it’s nearly the end of the season. They won’t be around much longer.”

  “Oh! Where will th
ey go?” Rich asks her, as if he expects her to say the Isle of Wight or India or somewhere.

  “They will die, naturally. And meanwhile new chrysalises will grow and the life cycle will start again.”

  Miss Saunders sounds exactly like the teacher she is. Rich blinks up at her, taking this information in.

  “Miss Saunders?” he says, still skip-hopping beside her.

  “Yes, Richard?”

  “Can we go and see our bedroom the minute we get home? Can we?”

  Miss Saunders is taken aback, unprepared for this switch of topic. She’d better get used to it; that’s Rich all over.

  “Well, yes. Your room,” says Miss Saunders, a little flustered. “You children mustn’t expect too much. I haven’t had a chance to sort it out, since my mother only very recently…”

  Her voice cracks a little.

  “Died.” Rich says the cold, hard word in too loud and bright a voice. “Like Mrs Mann.”

  “Rich!” I hiss.

  “It’s all right, Gloria,” Miss Saunders says, glancing at me over her shoulder with her cold, grey owl eyes. “He’s only using the correct word. I just happen to prefer the term ‘passed away’.”

  “Glory,” I mumble under my breath. Mum told her I only answer to that.

  “Moany Mrs Mann passed away of a bomb blowing a wall down on top of her,” Rich babbles on. “What did your mother pass away of?”

  I feel another sudden shudder of embarrassment, same as Dad feels when Rich talks or acts just that little bit differently from everyone else. And then I’m immediately angry with myself. Me and Mum understand Rich, no one else. And with Mum gone, I’m the only one here who can stand up for Rich, translate for him, even.

  “Rich doesn’t mean to be rude,” I begin, hurriedly catching up with them both and putting a cautioning hand on Rich’s shoulder.

  “Yes, well. It’s very sad about your neighbour, Richard,” Miss Saunders cuts in tersely before I can say any more. “Your mother explained what happened. It must have been very frightening for you all.”

  “Very frightening,” Rich repeats, wriggling free of my hand and skip-running slightly ahead of us.

  Miss Saunders suddenly does something I almost hate her for; her nostrils flare.

  It’s such a tiny movement, but I’ve see it often enough to understand what it means. Already, she’s confused by my brother to the point of dislike. I bet she doesn’t approve of the sing-songing and skip-hopping, when a “normal” child would be sobbing at his beloved mother leaving, clinging on sadly to his big sister’s side.

  But I know Rich is covering up his feelings, not sure how to let them out without scaring himself. He did it back home, after the blast, when he was well enough to leave the flat. Schoolteachers and neighbours would ask if he was all right and he would just start whistling some song he liked on the wireless, or worse still, laugh and do these crazy aeroplane impressions, arms wide, running around, making the “whee!” noise of a bomb dropping. If Dad was there he’d hang his head, not knowing where to look. If it happened in class, Mum would be told by Rich’s baffled teacher.

  “My mother was very lucky, Richard,” says Miss Saunders, taking up his question again in her faintly sergeant-major, matter-of-fact voice. “She had been very, very ill for many years, and in the end she died quietly and peacefully in her sleep.”

  “In our bedroom?” Rich asks, glancing up at Miss Saunders.

  “Er, yes … you will be in her room. That’s the only place I can put you.”

  Miss Saunders’ poorly mother had been the reason the vicar – who was also the evacuation officer for Thorntree and surrounding area – hadn’t been able to place children at the cottage when everyone left London this time last year. I’d heard that much when I was in the vicarage sitting room, while Mum and Reverend Ashton and Miss Saunders had discussed me and Rich as if we were a couple of parcels to be signed for and handed over.

  “So your mother die— passed away in our bed?” Rich carries on questioning her.

  Oh, no. Now he’s realized that, Rich will never go to sleep in there! He’ll have a tantrum and Miss Saunders will see the worst of him and—

  “Well, yes,” Miss Saunders says crisply.

  “Quietly … peacefully…” Rich repeats the words Miss Saunders used about her mother’s death. “That’s nice. It sounds like a nice room.”

  I think I know my brother, and then he goes and surprises me. How can he like the idea of cuddling under the blankets in a bed where a dead lady lay? It gives me the creeps.

  “Actually, Mother’s room is nice, Richard,” Miss Saunders replies. “It has a lovely view of the garden. The apple tree is right outside and the blossom is very beautiful in May.”

  “I’ll like seeing that!” Richard smiles up at her.

  I don’t know who’s more surprised and unnerved by what Rich has just said: me or Miss Saunders. Blossom time is another eight months away. Surely we won’t be here by then?

  “Ooh, look! There’s that girl; hello! Hello!” Rich calls out, spotting the cheeky girl from the pub, dangling from a branch of the oak tree by her arms. In reply to my brother, she just grins and then sticks out her tongue.

  “Who is she?” I find myself asking. I must be pulling a face, because I feel a tug on the tight skin of my scar.

  “I don’t know her name,” Miss Saunders says, sounding uninterested. She’s quickening her pace now we’re in sight of the cottage door.

  At least Miss Saunders and I have something in common: neither of us thinks much of the girl from The Swan.

  “She’s just some evacuee,” Miss Saunders adds dismissively.

  And just like that we don’t have anything in common.

  This tall, straight-backed, unsmiling woman is simply doing her civic duty, like Harry Wills the farmer’s son said she should. And she’s only doing it because my mum charmed her, and very possibly begged her to take us in.

  The truth is, me and Rich, we’re about as welcome in Miss Saunders’ spare room as an invasion of cockroaches…

  Tick … tock … tick … tock … tick … tock…

  The sound of the clock on the mantle is as loud as pebbles on a tin roof.

  Rich doesn’t notice. He was so bone-tired that I took him up here after tea and he was practically snoring before I buttoned him into his stripy flannel pyjamas.

  But I’ve been curled here by his side for at least two hours or more, with dark, unhappy thoughts swirling in my head which have made sleep about as far away as home right now.

  Wide awake, I finally give up and get up.

  I don’t want to wake Rich, so I inch out of the big bed, trying not to set the springs squeaking.

  Once I’m out from under the heavy covers, the chill hits me, and I feel around in the dark for the armchair and the cardie I left on there when we got changed into our nightclothes.

  Shrugging it on, I tiptoe over the wool rug and the cold wooden floor to the far wall. Feeling around, my hands land on what I was searching for: a small, cane-seated chair beside the dressing table. I lift it and place it by the window, then pull aside one of the thick chintz curtains, securing it with its matching tie-back.

  And then I sit.

  Sit and stare out into the black of the countryside night.

  Of course, there’s a blackout here, same as in London, with not a peep of a lamp or light allowed to show, in case it brings enemy planes screeching out of the sky with bombs as their unwelcome gift.

  But I’m surprised by how much I can see in the moonlight. There’s the long, fruit-tree-filled garden, with the big square that’s the henhouse and distant rectangles in the ground where Miss Saunders’ carrots and potatoes grow in the damp earth. Then there’s the uneven dense outline of a low stone wall, and beyond that, fields roll endlessly into the distance like different shades of bottle-gr
een and inky black velvet.

  Even the bedroom looks better in the dark. I hadn’t liked it when we saw it in the daytime, overstuffed with ornaments and doilies, banks of powders and potions, and too many mirrors to catch sight of my stupid scar in. It was like a museum to old Mrs Saunders, who’d lived and died in here. But seen in shadows, the clutter vanishes and the room seems blank. Just a box with a bed for me and Rich to share.

  I feel my shoulders sink for the first time in hours, letting the strain of the day fade and my muscles melt.

  “What are you looking for, Glory?” Rich’s little voice pipes up from the bed.

  So I woke him after all.

  “I’m not looking for anything,” I tell him in a soft voice, so Miss Saunders won’t hear us from her room across the tiny landing. (I heard the creak and clunk of her door as she went in there not so long ago.)

  What I’ve just said, it’s a bit of a lie.

  I’ve been lying awake looking for something all right. Looking for a way out of here. But I couldn’t find one. Like I say, if we deliberately misbehave, we’d shame Mum and Dad, and I’d never, ever do that to them. And if I write to my parents and beg them to let us come back, every second we were in London Mum would be living on her nerves, searching the skies for planes, blaming herself for not being able to keep us safe.

  So we’re stuck with no way home … unless Mr Hitler decides to stop this stupid war and stop destroying people’s lives.

  “Did you like our dinner?” asks Rich, throwing the covers back and padding over to join me. “I thought it was the best dinner ever!”

  I’m used to Rich’s odd ways, but even I’m struggling to understand what he’s thinking and feeling. Since we got back to the cottage after waving Mum off he’s acted like it was Christmas, his face wreathed in smiles. At home he eats like a bird, but as soon as Miss Saunders laid the table tonight, he ate everything in sight and asked for seconds.

  “Yes, dinner was nice,” I say, patting my lap for him to sit.

  Dinner wasn’t nice. Well, the food was, but the silence wasn’t.