Catching Falling Stars

by Karen McCombie

  “– and now we’re here. So I’ll take the blame, not Lil.”

  Harry is grinning. Lil is giggling girlishly. I’m so cross with her for choosing a boy over me and Rich that I could throw this lemonade all over her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, could you take your seats, please!” Reverend Ashton calls out. “The film will be starting in two minutes.”

  “Excuse me,” I say flatly and swan past my self-centred sister.

  “I’ll come soon – I promise,” she calls after me. “I’ll catch you at the end of the film and we can talk about it.”

  Red rage clouds my eyes as I walk back to my seat, and it takes a second to see where Auntie Sylvia and Rich are … and then I spot them. The row of mismatching chairs looks different now that some other people have shuffled into our row.

  “Excuse me,” I repeat myself, and realize that the three people now standing to let me get through are Archie, Mr Wills and Lawrence.

  Archie smiles, Mr Wills awkwardly touches his cap, and Lawrence whispers, “Didn’t expect to see you here, Glory!” as I squeeze by him.

  “Glory – look! It’s your friends!” Rich yelps, as I reach past Auntie Sylvia to pass him his cup of lemonade.

  “Quiet, Richard,” Auntie Sylvia admonishes him. “And those boys are not her friends; they’re simply her classmates.”

  If only she knew…

  “Here’s yours, Auntie Sylvia,” I say, passing her a cup and sitting down in the free seat between her and Lawrence.

  I notice her hand trembles as she takes the cup from me.

  “Are you all right?” I ask in a low voice, knowing that no one will hear us in the hubbub of people excitedly settling themselves.

  “Yes, thank you, dear,” she whispers back. “I’m just a little startled to have that man sit so near me.”

  “That man”; she must be referring to Mr Wills. I wonder why she dislikes him so much? Enough to make her tremble with … with what? Rage? Fear?

  But whatever the problem is between Auntie Sylvia and Mr Wills, at least she won’t have to see him. Reverend Ashton has just flicked the lights off and expectant “Ooh!”s and “Aah!”s fill the room as the screen flickers into life.

  “Hey, you forgot something,” I hear Lawrence mutter in my ear, his breath warm on my skin.

  In the dark, I feel his hand lift mine, and his thumb press against my thumb.

  He holds it there for what feels like a moment too long, and I pull my hand away quickly, feeling strangely shy and unsettled…

  “Pow-pow! Take that, injun! Aaarghh! Pow-pow!”

  “I think I prefer it when you’re the cowboy’s horse, Richard,” says Auntie Sylvia, gently placing a hand on my brother’s shoulder. “The gunslinger is rather noisy for church, don’t you think?”

  She moves off to her seat behind the organ and I slide into the nearby pew, while Rich gallops in beside me.

  “Neigh!” he says, a touch too loudly.

  “Shush!” I tell him.

  Same as last night, people are shuffling into the rows, taking their seats, though of course this morning we’re waiting for Reverend Ashton’s Sunday service to begin, not a rip-roaring western adventure.

  “Sorry,” says Rich, and instead begins to amuse himself by drumming his hands on a hymn book to make the sound of horses’ hooves.

  “Richard,” Auntie Sylvia calls out, beckoning him to her. “How would you like to have a very important job? Would you like to turn my music for me?”

  Rich acts like he’s been given the biggest bar of chocolate in the world, and goes whooping up to join Auntie Sylvia at the organ.

  And now I’m left in the pew, feeling slightly alone and self-conscious.

  A burst of laughter makes me jump, and I turn to see several people silhouetted against the doorway of the church. It’s Lil – Lil and Sally, standing with Mr Wills, Lawrence, Archie and Reverend Ashton. Lil and Sally are the ones laughing, clapping their hands together excitedly as the vicar shakes hands with Mr Wills, seemingly thanking him for something.

  What’s happening?

  Again, I feel a ripple of irritation at my big sister. She’s only just arrived here in Thorntree, and yet Lil’s already made herself quite at home. She’s even making heads turn; the congregation are staring and smiling at her and Sally as they file in, as if they’re rare birds of paradise.

  I slink down in my lonely pew, hoping she doesn’t see me, but it doesn’t work.

  “All on your ownsome?” Lil says brightly, walking over and plonking herself down beside me. “What have you done to send everyone away? You don’t smell that bad.”

  She stops smiling at her own joke and her hand comes up to touch my face.

  “Poor Glory…” she says, her finger stroking the puckered red scar on my cheek. “I could give you some make-up to help cover that, you know.”

  I dip away from her hand and feel my cheeks flush. I hadn’t thought about my scar in ages, and now my gorgeous, popular, perfect-looking sister has to point it out.

  “Welcome, welcome, everyone!” booms Reverend Ashton from the pulpit. “Now today, before we begin, I have some rather exciting news.”

  A hubbub of anticipation ripples through the church.

  “It seems that up and down the country, communities are hosting fundraising events, to pay for additional Spitfire planes to be built for our brave RAF pilots and crews.”

  More chit-chat rumbles around the old building.

  “And we here in Thorntree are going to host our very own event – a barn dance next Saturday!”

  Cheers and applause break out, as if we were back in the church hall last night, watching The End roll up on screen.

  “Now, we have a couple of people to thank for this happening. First of all, a new member of our congregation, who brought the Spitfire fundraising endeavour to my attention –”

  Reverend Ashton pauses to hold his hand out towards the pew I’m sitting in – and Lil gives him a wiggle of her fingers in return!

  “– and as well as the lovely Miss Lillian Gilbert, we must thank Mr Joseph Wills, who has agreed to have this event take place in his barn.”

  I lean back and look round for Lawrence’s dad, and see him holding his cap to his chest and looking embarrassed at the attention.

  “And on that cheerful note, let us sing!” says the vicar, nodding at Auntie Sylvia to start playing.

  Buoyed with excitement, voices boom all around, louder than in the previous Sundays I’ve been here.

  “It’ll be fun, won’t it?” Lil leans over and whispers in my ear.

  Not for me, it won’t, I think to myself.

  There’s no way Miss Saunders will let us go anywhere near the barn or Eastfield Farm in a million years…

  “It’ll be fun, won’t it?” says Lawrence, echoing Lil’s very words from earlier, even though he doesn’t realize it.

  I glance back through the tangle of tree branches and ivy, ready to run to Auntie Sylvia when she finishes her conversation with Reverend Ashton and comes out of the church. I don’t want her to catch me talking to my friends.

  And another reason I’m here is that I don’t want to talk to Lil. I’m cross with her for pointing out my stupid scar and not having dinner with us last night and being surrounded right now by half the village, all simply dying to talk to her about the Spitfire fundraiser and how Little Miss Popular came to hear about it.

  Through narrowed eyes I watch her in the middle of the throng, chatting brightly with her arms around Rich, as though she’s the most wonderful, caring sister in the world…

  “I bet Harry’s got a Sunday-best shirt he’s outgrown.” Lawrence continues talking about the barn dance. “Maybe he’ll have two – so we both’ll look smart, eh, Arch?”

  “It’d be b-b-better than this,” Archie laughs, showing us t
he worn and frayed cuffs on his current shirt.

  “Well, how do you like my party clothes?” Jess jokes, pointing at the tired and badly fitting jumper and kilt she nearly always wears.

  “Maybe Charlie and Mary will buy you something new,” Lawrence suggests.

  “And maybe I’m Cinderella and one of those cabbages on the green will turn into a carriage,” she says with a playful snarl on her face.

  “Have you got a party dress, then, Glory?” Lawrence asks me, holding my gaze just a second too long and making me think about our thumbs touching in the darkened hall last night…

  “No,” I answer him quickly, hoping I’m not blushing. “Anyway, I don’t suppose we’ll be going.”

  Because Auntie Sylvia doesn’t like your father, I don’t say out loud.

  “Of course you have to come!” says Lawrence, looking crestfallen. “It won’t be the same if you’re not—”

  “Glory? Glory!”

  “I’ve got to go,” I mumble, hearing Auntie Sylvia call my name.

  I hurry over to her, brushing my hair back into place where the tree branches messed it up as I ran, and hope I don’t look too discombobulated.

  But I’m surprised to see that Auntie Sylvia is looking rather discombobulated herself.

  “Well!” she says, with cheeks that are surprisingly pink. “It seems that I’ll be requiring your brother’s services as my page turner at the barn dance next Saturday…”

  “We’re going?” I practically squeak in surprise.

  “Just for a short while,” she explains, trying to tuck her wavy hair behind her ears. “Reverend Ashton has persuaded me that it really is my civic duty to play some uplifting, patriotic music on the piano, to raise spirits.”

  I feel my own spirits rising, as I realize I won’t miss out on the party after all. Though how I can be with my friends – especially Lawrence – without her noticing, I’ll have to figure out later.

  “Miss Saunders,” a man’s voice interrupts us, and we both turn to see Mr Wills tipping his cap our way as he hurries by.

  Auntie Sylvia’s face darkens.

  I wonder why the farmer, of all the villagers, bothers her the most.

  But that’s one question I think might be too impolite to ask…

  I tried very hard to say no. Honest I did.

  But Lawrence, Jess and Archie just wouldn’t listen.

  “What do you think? Am I a Roman emperor, or what?” says Lawrence, draping a length of the white parachute silk around him. “You lot had better say yes, or I’ll have you all thrown to the lions.”

  “Take it off – don’t mess everything up,” I tell him, making a grab for the cloth. Auntie Sylvia let me store it – Lil’s useless present – up here in the attic.

  “Snobby Saunders is in Basildon,” says Jess, crawling across the floor to investigate a battered suitcase full of old-lady underwear. “She can’t see us, Hope ’n’ Glory.”

  Auntie Sylvia taught in school for the first time today, and Rich stayed with her the whole time, through the lessons with both evacuees and locals. And then they both went straight to the bus stop and headed for town and the music shop there. Auntie Sylvia wanted to buy new sheet music for the upcoming barn dance, she said.

  My job was to come up to the loft and rummage for more clothes to turn into bunting. We made a start yesterday, bumping the heavy sewing machine down the ladder steps and then lifting it one more flight down to the sitting room.

  It’s now perched on Auntie Sylvia’s father’s writing desk with a pile of fabric triangles beside it, ready to be stitched on to lengths of rope.

  And I’m not only looking through the old clothes up there for possible pieces of decoration. Auntie Sylvia says she’ll make some new, smart things for me and Rich to wear on Saturday.

  She’ll think I’m here on my own, maybe setting aside an old pair of trousers of her father’s to cut down into shorts for Rich, or an old crêpe de Chine dress of her mother’s to make me a pretty blouse.

  But instead, I’m with my friends, who persuaded me to let them “help”, though they’re actually just mucking around and driving me crazy.

  “Now I’m an Egyptian mummy … woo!” says Lawrence, throwing the end of the sheet of parachute silk around his face and shuffling on his knees towards me with his arms outstretched.

  I duck away from him, feeling shy – and worried. Auntie Sylvia and Rich won’t be back for at least another hour, I think, but it’s going to take me for ever to tidy up the mess that my friends are making.

  “What about this?” says Jess. “Does it give me an hourglass figure?”

  Lawrence bursts out laughing before I can see what our friend’s doing, so I know it’s going to be bad.

  It is.

  Jess is holding an oversized, boned, pink corset around her waist. Old Mrs Saunders must have been a big woman, totally different from her tall, slim daughter.

  “Take it off,” I say, though I can’t help giggling.

  “Look at all this s-s-stuff!” says Archie, who’s flipping through the picture frames leaning against the walls. “My mum and me, we don’t have ‘stuff’. Our f-f-flat’s too small.”

  Archie’s getting really excited about his mum coming now, since she’ll be here the day of the barn dance. Charlie and Mary at the pub even offered her a room for free, so she can stay the night if she likes. “Hey, they can afford to,” Jess had said when she passed on the message to Archie. “Think of all the money they save getting me to skivvy for free when they could be paying someone…”

  As I shove the corset back in the suitcase, I see Archie has moved on to something else.

  “Oh! Please don’t,” I say, not wanting my friends to see the photo of the soldier.

  They all think so little of Auntie Sylvia that it feels like treachery to let them see her precious portrait, her lost love.

  “What, what is it?” says Lawrence, clearly sensing it might be something interesting from my reaction.

  Jess’s already there, staring at it with Archie.

  “Who is it?” she asks.

  “Please be careful with it,” I beg them. “It’s Mrs Saunders’ sweetheart. He died in the Great War.”

  “Er, I don’t think he did,” says Archie, raising his eyes from the photo to look at us all.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, frowning at him.

  “He didn’t die,” Archie says plainly. “This – this is your d-d-dad, Lawrence!”

  “What?” says Lawrence, grabbing the frame and staring at the young man’s face, his dark, bright eyes. “It can’t be!”

  “Turn it round – see what’s on the back,” says Jess, scrabbling at the reverse of the frame, flipping the tiny catches so the backboard comes away. “Usually there’s the name of the photographer’s studio, and sometimes the sitter. Yes! Look – see?”

  Three sets of hands turn the frame around. And there, on the back of the photograph, is more than just a name. Written in faded, scratchy copperplate lettering, are these words…

  To my dearest Sylv,

  With love and affection always,

  Your Joe

  My mind is racing, running, twisting itself in knots to understand this. And Lawrence isn’t finding it any easier.

  “Joe,” he mumbles. “My dad’s name is Joe…”

  “T-told you!” says Archie.

  “And if you still don’t believe it, look at this,” says Jess, grabbing the picture and now holding up the soldier’s face next to Lawrence’s. The brown, laughing eyes are the same. There’s no doubting the resemblance, scribbled love note or not.

  Even Lawrence can’t deny it, now that I’ve grabbed an old rust-spotted mirror and held it in front of him.

  “It IS my dad!” he whispers, shocked.

  So … the soldier in the portrait didn’t d
ie.

  He’s Lawrence’s father – Joe Wills – and he survived the war and went on to be a farmer.

  Mr Wills was Auntie Sylvia’s sweetheart.

  And now they act like they never knew or liked each other ever.

  What happened to change—

  I pause, spotting that Lawrence, Archie and Jess have gone silent, and are looking at something behind me.

  Slowly – with a tight knot of dread in my tummy – I turn and see Auntie Sylvia staring at me, her head and shoulders rising through the attic hatch.

  “Would you care to explain what on earth is going on here, Gloria?” Auntie Sylvia asks in a voice so cold and angry it chills me. She’s using my full first name too.

  “I’m sorry, they came to help me and—”

  “I told you before – I don’t want you associating with children like this, never mind inviting them into my house and letting them rifle through my private things!”

  Auntie Sylvia is right to be angry, I know.

  But suddenly I’m angry too.

  A coiled-up spring snaps inside me and I can’t help the words that come out next.

  “You don’t even know my friends; you won’t even give them a chance!” I yell. “Archie has a stammer that everyone teases him about, and so they don’t know how kind and sweet he is. Jess is treated like a slave at the pub, and she’s lovely to Rich because she has a brother just like him. And Lawrence has to put up with people like you being snobby about his mother leaving, and he can hardly help that, can he?”

  “Gloria!” barks Auntie Sylvia. “Stop it this instant or—”

  “And you’re not perfect either. In fact, you’re a liar. You said your sweetheart died in the war, but he’s not dead and he’s Lawrence’s dad!”

  “Gloria, I did not – at any time – tell you he was dead,” Auntie Sylvia hisses at me through tight lips, as if she’s struggling to hold her temper.

  My own anger fizzles away as I consider what Auntie Sylvia has just said.

  Sure enough, she never mentioned that he’s been killed, only that the Great War had got in the way and ruined everything.