by Kit Pearson
“Isn’t that touching?” said Aunt Mary when the message was over. “That must be a comfort to you, girls.”
Norah and Dulcie glanced at each other self-consciously. It felt both embarrassing and important to have a radio broadcast directed especially to them.
That night more neighbours came in to help celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. They ate turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, a new kind of food. Dulcie whispered that it wasn’t sweet enough and only touched the whipped cream, but Norah liked its raw, rooty taste.
AUNT MARY LOOKED SAD as Norah helped her close the shutters early Tuesday morning. “Gairloch always looks so desolate when it’s shut up like this. I hate to think of how long it will be until we come again.”
“When will that be?”
“The Victoria Day weekend in May. That’s when everyone opens up their cottages. There are fireworks and a big bonfire at the Kirkpatricks’.” She smiled. “I’m glad you and Gavin will be sharing that with us. And in June we’ll have three whole months! Just wait until you try the water—it’s so clean, you hardly have to wash your hair all summer.”
“But will we still be in Canada then? Dad said we’d stay for perhaps a year.”
“Oh, Norah … did you think it was only for a year?” Aunt Mary looked apologetic. “It could easily be for years, now. It looks as if this war will go on longer than any of us expected. Do you mind very much? It’s so hard for you, I know, but you already feel like part of the family. And every summer we’ll be at Gairloch. You do like it here, don’t you?”
“Yes. I like it here,” said Norah angrily. She ran away before Aunt Mary could say more. Sullenly she helped load the boat. All the way back to Toronto she ignored Dulcie’s hurt look as she refused to talk the way they had earlier.
“For years.” That was an eternity. Surely Aunt Mary was wrong. As soon as they got back to Toronto Norah took out her family photograph again, but the faces looked too far away to be real.
17
Paige
After Norah’s outburst, Aunt Mary began to pay more attention to her, as if Norah were as much her concern as Gavin was Aunt Florence’s. Every night she came up to the tower to say good-night, which made Norah feel guilty when she switched on the light later to read. She inquired about Norah’s bed-wetting, which had returned, and took her to see a doctor. They told Aunt Florence they were going for a drive.
“That’s not really a lie,” said Aunt Mary in the car. “We are driving, and after the doctor I’ll take you along the lake.” She tittered nervously; Norah was amazed at her defiance.
“There’s nothing physically wrong with her,” said Dr. Morris, after an examination that made Norah blush all over with shame. “I’m sure it will disappear in time.” He advised nothing to drink from dinner until bedtime, and occasionally that worked.
“Mary thinks you should get to know more children your own age,” Aunt Florence told Norah one Saturday morning. “I’ve been meaning to have you meet the children of some family friends, but they’ve been away, visiting in Massachusetts. Frank Worsley was my son’s closest friend; he’s the editor of one of Toronto’s newspapers. They only live a few blocks from here, and you and Gavin have been invited for lunch today. They have three little girls, aged ten, eight and seven.”
Norah had planned to sneak off to a Gene Autry movie with Bernard. “I have something to look up in the library for school,” she tried.
“It can wait. Go and change, please. The Worsley girls are always perfectly dressed.”
They sounded awful. Sulkily, Norah stood beside Gavin a few minutes later to be inspected.
“I wish you’d let me buy you some clothes, Norah.” Aunt Florence sighed at the skimpy Viyella dress that Norah wore every Sunday for church. “Wouldn’t you like a pretty new dress?”
“No, thank you,” said Norah haughtily. She was not going to be beholden to Aunt Florence for more than she had to.
They were allowed to walk by themselves to the Worsleys’. Aunt Florence gave them directions and waved goodbye from the steps. “Remember to say thank you,” she called. Norah scowled; did she think their mother hadn’t taught them any manners?
She shuffled through the crunchy carpet of leaves on the boulevard. Some drifted down from the tall branches, turning slowly in the sun. “Fall” was a much better word than “autumn”, Norah decided. The air was acrid and smoky; it reminded her for some reason of the downed Nazi plane, but then she realized it was only the smell of the heaped, burning leaves in the street. She and Gavin dawdled along the curb, poking sticks into the smouldering piles. A man walked along the other side of the street with a wheelbarrow, calling out “Dry wo-ooo-oood!”
“What’s it like at school, Norah?” Gavin asked suddenly.
Norah shrugged. “As boring as school usually is. You’re lucky you don’t have to go this year.”
“I’d like to,” said Gavin.
Norah glanced at her brother’s wistful face; it was like looking at a stranger. She was almost never alone with Gavin any more. When she got back from playing with Bernard she went straight to her tower and the rest of the time they were with the Ogilvies. Could Gavin be unhappy? Of course he wasn’t—he was being given treats and outings every day. “You said you didn’t like school,” she reminded him.
Gavin looked confused. “That was before. Norah, could you ask …”
But they’d reached the Worsleys’. “I know this house!” interrupted Norah.
It was the one where the friendly dog had greeted her on her first walk. What a long time ago that seemed! Now the dog yapped inside as they stood hesitantly on the doorstep. Norah lifted one leg at a time and brushed off the bits of dry leaves that stuck to her socks.
“Aren’t you going to knock, Norah?” asked Gavin, but he quickly took her hand when she did.
A very tall, narrow man holding a pipe opened the door. He looked as if he had been squashed vertically; even his hair was tall. “You must be Norah and Gavin,” he smiled. The wiry terrier leapt up at each of them, trying to lick their faces. Gavin pushed it away with a whimper.
“Off, Thistle!” the man ordered. The little dog ignored him and continued to bounce up and down as if it were on springs. Norah bent and picked it up; it wriggled in her arms and slobbered all over her face.
“I’m Mr. Worsley,” said the man. “Aren’t you brave to dare to eat lunch with my daughters! From the sounds of things, they might be planning to eat you! Follow me and I’ll introduce you.”
Gavin gripped Norah’s hand as they climbed a winding staircase. The inside of the house was as grand as the Ogilvies’, but its white walls and pale furniture made it seem airier.
Squeals and shrieks came from an upstairs room. “Peace!” laughed Mr. Worsley. “Come and meet your guests. Norah and Gavin, here are my three wild daughters.”
Paige, Barbara and Daphne Worsley were in identical tartan dresses, with navy-blue bows tied at the ends of their long blonde braids; they were like three matching dolls in descending sizes. But Daphne had ink smeared on her leg, one of Barbara’s ribbons hung in a streamer and Paige’s cheeks were daubed with slashes of red paint. Norah’s spirits rose—they looked as if their ladylike outfits were disguises.
“Be merciful,” admonished their father. “I’m going to pick up your mother from the hairdresser’s. Ellen is in the kitchen if you need anything. We’ll be back in time for lunch.” He left the room.
“Oh good, another small person!” The eldest, Paige, pinched Gavin’s thigh. “How would you like to be a dinner for cannibals? We’ve just finished eating Daphne and we’re still hungry.”
“No, thank you,” whispered Gavin, but Paige had already begun to tie him up with a skipping rope.
“Here, I’ll help you,” said Norah, delighted. “Don’t worry, Gavin, it’s only a game.”
Gavin was trussed and set in the middle of a table, while the cannibals leapt and whooped around it. He smiled uneasily, not sure if he was enjoyin
g this or not. Then they untied him and each chose a part to eat.
“Not as fat as Daphne!” said Barbara.
“I’ll take this arm,” said Paige, making munching sounds from his wrist to his neck. “Yum, yum!” Gavin looked relieved after all of him had been eaten.
“Let’s play cowboys now,” suggested Paige. “Norah and I will be the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and Barbara and Daphne will be our horses. Gavin, you and Thistle can be little colts who follow along.”
Gavin enjoyed being a colt much more than he had being a cannibals’ dinner. They fashioned reins out of dressing-gown belts and drove their horses up and down the stairs and all around the huge house, shooting imaginary guns all the way. Thistle raced circles around them, barking frantically and trying to grab the ends of the reins.
“Whoa!” said Mr. Worsley, as he came in the front door with his wife. “Chow time.”
At lunch, each Worsley girl competed to say something in a high, shrieking voice. Norah sat beside Mrs. Worsley and answered the usual questions.
“I’m sure you’ll like it in Canada,” she said quietly. She was a glamorous woman, with large green eyes and thick smooth hair like a movie star’s. “We’re delighted you’re living so close. I hope you’ll consider our house yours, although you might find my girls overwhelming.” She gazed at them with puzzled affection, as if she were not sure they were really hers. They were badgering their father loudly for their allowance.
“Come on, Norah,” said Paige, who had already claimed her as her property. “Let’s leave the babies and go to my room.”
Paige’s bedroom was a wonderland of every conceivable toy, game and book that anyone would want. As in Norah’s room at home, there was a shelf of pristine dolls and some model planes hanging from the ceiling.
“I have planes like this!” cried Norah.
Paige took out her collection of coloured pictures of British aeroplanes. “They’re free—just ask your cook to save your syrup labels, and you can send away for some too.”
Norah told Paige about the Skywatchers and the crashed plane. Paige was entranced. “We could start something like that here, except there aren’t any enemy planes to watch for. You were lucky, being right in the middle of the war.” She made Norah feel like a hero and said nothing about anyone being a coward for leaving England.
“What school do you go to?” Paige asked.
“Prince Edward.”
“I wish I could go to a public school. Brackley Hall is really strict—I’m always getting into trouble. There’s lots of sports, though. I’m very good at basketball because I’m so tall. If only we went to the same school! All the girls in my class are so boring.”
Norah thought of Dulcie, Babs and Ernestine. “They are in mine, too.”
“I tried to make friends with some of our war guests. A whole school of them came to Brackley with their teachers. But they stick to themselves.”
Paige then startled her by climbing onto a stool and hanging upside down by her knees from the door of the wardrobe. The ends of her braids trailed on the floor. “How would you like to be friends with me?” she asked casually.
They were so easy together already that it seemed unnecessary to ask. But Norah felt an uncomfortable twinge of betrayal: what about Bernard? He was probably in the library right now, wondering where she was.
“Sure,” she answered, just as casually. She paused. “I have one friend at school who’s not a bore. He’s a boy.”
Paige put her hands on the stool and flipped her legs off the door to the rug. “Well, obviously he is!” she panted, her face red. She didn’t seem to find it unusual to be friends with a boy.
“And he’s … German,” continued Norah. “His parents came from there, anyway. But he’s not a Nazi,” she added hastily.
“A Nazi! I wouldn’t think so. Lots of Germans have come to Canada. Dad has a friend called Mr. Braun who works with him at the paper. Sometimes he gets threatening phone calls telling him to leave the country—and he’s a Canadian! People are so dumb.”
“Aunt Florence—Mrs. Ogilvie—doesn’t like Bernard. I don’t know if it’s because of his last name or because his mother’s a cleaning lady.”
“Probably both! Dad says she’s a terrible snob. When he and her son Hugh were young, there were boys he wasn’t allowed to see and he had to meet them in this house—Dad grew up here.”
“That’s just like me!” Norah felt a sudden link with Aunt Mary’s brother. “Aunt Florence says I’m not allowed to associate with Bernard. But I do anyway—we meet secretly at the library. Maybe you could meet us there too and we could show you the fort we’re building.”
“Sure! Or you and Bernard could come here!”
“We couldn’t do that—not when your parents know the Ogilvies. They might say something.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Paige eagerly. “We’ll give Bernard another name and pretend he’s my friend. Then if Mrs. Ogilvie ever hears about him she won’t know. Bring him over on Monday. I’ll show you our secret hideaway in the basement.”
Paige was certainly bossy, but she was bossy in such an enthusiastic way that Norah couldn’t help being swept up in her plans. She took Norah up to a cavernous attic, where they tried on old clothes from a trunk. Barbara followed them and the three of them played gangsters. Paige and Norah put on slouchy hats and talked out of the sides of their mouths. Barbara wanted to wear one of the elegant dresses and be their girlfriend. “She’s sometimes like this,” Paige apologized. “It’s handy, though, when you need a girl. She’s always Maid Marian when we play Robin Hood.”
The afternoon sped by so fast, Norah couldn’t believe it when Mrs. Worsley called up to them that it was time to go. Gavin waited in the hall, holding Mrs. Worsley’s hand. He looked as if he had been crying blue tears.
“That Daphne …” sighed Mrs. Worsley. “She tried to dye Gavin’s hair—luckily it was washable ink. But I’ve sent her to her room and we’ve had a peaceful time playing the piano together, haven’t we, Gavin? It’s such a nice change to have a quiet little boy in the house. I’m sure I got all the ink out, Norah. Please tell Mrs. Ogilvie that I’m very sorry and that I hope she’ll let you come again.”
When Norah explained why Gavin’s hair was wet, Aunt Florence just chuckled. “Frank’s children are certainly a handful—just like he was as a boy. How did you get along? Would you like to have them all over here sometime?”
“Not Daphne!” whispered Gavin. “I don’t like her, and Barbara tried to dress me up like a girl.”
“We won’t have them if you don’t want to, sweetness,” soothed Aunt Florence. “What about you, Norah? Would you like to invite Paige over? She would be a suitable friend for you.”
Norah didn’t understand how wild Paige could be more suitable than polite Bernard. But she smiled at Aunt Florence in spite of herself. “That would be nice, thank you.”
WHEN PAIGE AND BERNARD met on Monday, they took to each other at once. The two were so different that they filled in each other’s gaps: Paige’s loud and lively nature was balanced by Bernard’s thoughtful calm. Norah fit neatly in between, like the filling in a sandwich.
The three of them met almost every day after school and every weekend, sometimes at the library and more often at Paige’s. This was easy to arrange because Norah was allowed to go to the Worsleys’ whenever she wanted. They called Bernard “Albert”, his middle name, and said Paige had met him at the library—which was the truth, of course.
Mr. and Mrs. Worsley accepted “Albert” as easily as they did everything their daughters did and only interrupted their long afternoons of play to suggest snacks. Norah thought Paige’s parents were practically perfect. The only conflict Paige had with them was about clothes. Lined up in her wardrobe was a long row of dresses that matched her sisters’.
“When I’m thirteen I won’t have to look like Barbara and Daphne any more.” She sighed. “That’s still so far away. It’s such a trial, but it amuses Mot
her. You’d think we were the Quints!”
“Who?”
“The Dionne Quintuplets.” Now Norah remembered her mother mentioning them.
“We went to see them once,” said Paige. “We drove up north and lined up for hours, then we went through a kind of tunnel and watched them through a screen. They were riding around on five tricycles. It was really weird, like looking at animals in a zoo.”
“Are they really exactly alike?”
“Exactly. Like five Daphnes—yeech!”
Dressing alike seemed a small price to pay for belonging to such a happy-go-lucky family. If only she and Gavin had been sent here to live! Norah spent as much time as she could at the Worsleys’. So did Bernard; he told her he liked going there instead of to the empty house he came home to almost every day.
Paige had come over to the Ogilvies’ a few times, but it was hard to think of something to do in their silent house. And they all preferred to play outside, either in the ravine or in the Worsleys’ large backyard. Paige thought of a new, elaborate game each week. They played at being Captain Marvel, Knights of the Round Table and all the characters in The Wizard of Oz. They tried to train Thistle to be as obedient as Toto, but the stubborn little dog was as rowdy as his owners. At first Norah wondered if Bernard would think he was too old for pretending, but he joined in.
It was Norah who made up the game of Spitfires and Messerschmitts, but both she and Bernard insisted upon being RAF pilots.
“There’s no way I’m being a Nazi,” said Bernard quietly.
“It’s only a game,” said Paige. “Okay, I’ll fly a Messerschmitt—so will Barbara.”
It was only a game, thought Norah as they roared around machine gunning each other. It didn’t really matter which side she was on. But she thought of Tom and proudly piloted her imaginary Spitfire. Then she roared even louder to drown out the painful thoughts of what he and the other Skywatchers would be doing.
