At the Firefly Gate

by Linda Newbery

  The cat butted its head into his hand, wanting to be stroked. He petted it for a bit, then — reluctantly — went downstairs to explain to Dad. Dad said that Pat ought to come round to check that it was Pudding, so that Jim Jessop could come and collect him.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s Pudding all right,’ Pat said, a few minutes later. Pudding was by now curled up on Henry’s bed, with no intention of moving, and only opened one eye when he heard the voices. ‘You know, I clean forgot to phone Jim, but I’ll go straight home and see if he’ll come and fetch him. P’raps you’d better keep Pudding shut indoors — we don’t want him disappearing again.’

  Henry stayed with Pudding, sadly stroking his black fur, thinking how he would miss the warm purring presence in his room. Later, just after Mum got in from work, Pat came back. Henry heard the three of them talking downstairs.

  ‘Well, I spoke to Jim’ — (Pat had a clear, carrying voice) —’and he was pleased the cat’s turned up, but it’s a bit of a problem. They’ve recently got themselves a dog, see — a rescue case, very nervy and temperamental, and Pudding hates dogs. Looks like poor old Pudding’ll have to go to the RSPCA, unless —’

  Henry was already bounding down. ‘We could keep him — can we?’ he pleaded, looking from Mum to Dad and back again. ‘He lives here! This is his home!’

  Dad looked persuadable; Mum shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had a cat — there’ll be hairs on the furniture and scratches on the woodwork. And we can’t leave him indoors when we’re all out.’

  ‘I could fit a cat-flap,’ said Dad. Henry had never felt more grateful for Dad’s new enthusiasm for DIY. ‘In the back door, so he can come and go as he pleases. And it wouldn’t be like having a kitten, that’d scratch and claw. Pudding’s already settled here.’

  ‘We-e-ll,’ went Mum, in the tone of voice that meant she’d more or less given in. ‘You’ll have to look after him, Henry —’

  ‘Great!’ Henry raced upstairs, two at a time, to tell Pudding the good news. ‘You’re ours now, Pudding-Cat!’ The cat looked at him through slits of eyes before curling himself more tightly to sleep. ‘We’ll get tins of cat food tomorrow,’ Henry went on. ‘And we’ll buy you a collar and name-tag, in case you wander off again.’

  Pudding showed no sign of wandering anywhere; he stayed on Henry’s duvet all evening and was still sleeping there when Henry went up at bedtime.

  ‘He’s not to stay on your bed all night, Hen,’ Mum called up the stairs. ‘I’ve found him a box and put an old blanket in it. Bring him down before you turn your light off.’

  ‘OK!’ Henry called back, reluctant to disturb the cat; but, abruptly, Pudding was awake, staring towards the window. In three bounds he was off the bed and up on the sill; then he crouched, still as a cat-statue, eyes and ears focused on something outside.

  Henry felt a tingling at the back of his neck. In the second before he went to the window and looked out at the dusk-shadowed orchard, he knew the strange man was back. And there he was, just as before: standing in the gateway, jacket over one shoulder, a cigarette raised to his lips. Henry saw the smouldering tip, and then, his eyes adjusting, the dance of the fireflies — glow-worms, Dottie had said, but he preferred to think of them as fireflies — flitting around the man’s head like tiny points of light.

  Henry opened the window wider and leaned out. ‘Hey!’ he shouted.

  The man turned his head and looked in Henry’s direction. Hardly breathing, Henry tried to memorise his appearance as best he could in the dim light: a smooth young face, hair cut short and neat, slim shoulders. Breathing out smoke that veiled his face, the man moved behind the hawthorn bush that grew beside the gate.

  Henry wasn’t going to let him slip out of sight. He hurried downstairs, quietly as he could; Mum and Dad were watching TV in the front room and didn’t hear him. The back door had been left open to the evening air; he paused there, seeing nothing, then darted out along the newly cleared flagstone path.

  Surprised by his own daring, he pushed through the gate — it hadn’t been used for some time and was snagged up with long grass.

  No one there.

  Henry looked around — at the stile on the farther side of the orchard and the footpath that ran diagonally across the next field; at the way back to the village, past Pat’s house, to where the path came out opposite the church. No sign of anyone. The grass wasn’t even flattened.

  But he could smell cigarette smoke. He stood there, breathing it in, and that strange feeling came back to him — the sense of being in someone else’s body. He felt the starched shirt collar stiff round his neck, his feet hot in wool socks, and a sore place on one heel where his boot had rubbed; he felt the flat weight of his cigarette lighter in his jacket pocket. He heard a girl’s voice humming, heard the creak of the Rectory gate as it was pushed open and felt a leap of joy as she came towards him through the trees. She wore the sky-blue dress he liked best, with the neat round collar, and her hair was clipped to one side, falling in soft waves.

  ‘You do like to keep me waiting!’ he called to her.

  ‘Sorry!’ She ducked beneath a low branch, then stopped, keeping a few yards between them. ‘But I can’t come yet — not yet. You’ll wait, won’t you?’ Then she stepped back, staring at his face. ‘Oh! I thought you were Henry, but —’

  ‘Course I’m Henry! Who are you?’

  ‘What do you mean, who am I?’

  He blinked and his eyes blurred, then cleared.

  ‘Durr-brain, Strawberry Pip! Why’re you pretending you don’t know me?’ the girl’s voice said, sharp and loud.

  Grace, unmistakably Grace, in shorts and trainers and a loose T-shirt. He blinked and shook his head — he must have dreamed the sky-blue dress, the wavy hair. She had scrambled up into one of the apple trees, clinging high, both feet on a low branch; she bounced on it, as if testing whether she could snap the wood with her weight. ‘You mental or something? Isn’t it past your bedtime — you sleepwalking or what?’

  ‘Well, what are you doing?’ he retorted, so confused that he wasn’t sure whether he’d sleepwalked out here or not.

  ‘Climbed out the bathroom window,’ Grace said. She chose a different branch, hooked both legs over and swung upside down, her arms brushing the grass. ‘I do that when I feel like it. Course, I could just walk out the door, but climbing down the drainpipe’s much more fun.’

  ‘Did you see —’

  ‘Did I see what, Strawberry Pip?’

  ‘Did you see anyone else out here? A man with a cigarette? And a girl — older than you, in a blue dress — coming through the trees?’

  Grace unhooked her legs from the tree and did a handstand on the grass, then flipped over and sprang to her feet. ‘No, didn’t see anyone. Just you, standing in the dark mumbling to yourself.’

  Henry breathed in slowly, closing his eyes. ‘Can you smell cigarette smoke?’

  She sniffed, this way and that, wrinkling her nose like a rabbit. ‘No.’ Then she punched his arm in delight. ‘What, you sneaked out for a secret fag, Midget? Is that what you’re up to?’

  ‘Puh!’ Henry retorted. ‘Why’d I want to fill my lungs with tar? And even if I was stupid enough, why’d I stand right here where anyone can see me from indoors?’

  But there was no stopping Grace in this kind of mood. ‘Ooh, what a little rebel! Mummy and Daddy won’t half be cross if they find out what their little Strawberry Squidge is up to! Better make sure they don’t, hadn’t you?’

  Henry had had enough of Grace. ‘See you tomorrow. If I have to,’ he flung at her, and stomped through the gate, dragging it shut behind him.

  ‘I thought you’d gone up to bed!’ Mum said, indoors. ‘And was that Grace I saw you talking to? Told you you’d soon be friends, didn’t I?’

  EIGHT

  AMBER

  By the end of the second day at Hartsfield High, Henry felt much less conspicuous and new — especially as the weather was so hot that not a single sweatshirt was
in sight, red, green or any other colour, so he didn’t stand out. He was almost sorry that he wouldn’t be at school with Simon and the others for the last week of term. But Simon was coming round on Sunday — it had been Mum’s idea for Henry to invite him — so there was now someone he could call a friend.

  On the coach home, the talk was of the Air Display next day at Lakenfield; Jonathan, Neil and Elissa were all going, with their families. Simon pulled a face and said that he had to go to a wedding, a friend of his mother’s he hardly knew. ‘Boring! I’d much rather go to Lakenfield. You going?’ he asked Henry.

  Henry said he would ask Dad, but suspected that there’d still be too much house stuff going on.

  Simon’s mother was waiting for him, as before, parked outside the village shop. As he ran across the green he called back to Henry, ‘See you Sunday!’

  ‘Come on,’ Grace said impatiently, as if Henry were a dog that hadn’t yet learned to follow at heel. Henry thought he might just dump his bag at Pat’s, then come back out to see if any of the other boys were playing football in the rec. But Grace had other ideas.

  While Pat and Dottie asked Henry about his day, she changed into jeans, made herself a peanut butter sandwich, gulped down some lemonade and told Pat, ‘I’m going to see Amber.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Pat said. ‘I’ve told you before, you’re not walking across the fields by yourself. You’ll have to wait till Tracy can go with you.’

  ‘She’s at the dentist,’ Grace said sulkily. Then she brightened. ‘I know! Henry can come.’

  ‘Who’s Amber?’ Henry asked.

  ‘A pony I ride sometimes. It’s not far. You can have a ride if you like.’

  Henry knew she was only offering because she wouldn’t be allowed to go otherwise, but he said, ‘OK, then.’

  He and Grace walked across the field behind the church, Grace still eating her sandwich. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon, with midges in clouds beneath the trees by the stream. The grass had been cut for hay, and the stalks crunched stiffly under Henry’s trainers as he walked. He wondered why Pat wouldn’t let Grace come out here on her own — Crickford St. Thomas was such a quiet place, not like London, where Mum and Dad had always been warning him about being careful and not going off with anyone or getting into strange cars. As if he would! Here, the only lurking stranger was the man at the firefly gate, and he never seemed to appear in daylight.

  The path across the hayfield led to a stony track. Her sandwich finished, Grace picked up a twig and thwacked it at the flowering grasses and nettles by the ditch, humming a tune Henry recognised. Then, looking at him, she started singing the words.

  ‘He landed on the runway like a dollop of strawberry jam . . . Do you know that song, Strawberry?’

  ‘The tune,’ Henry said. ‘Not the words.’ Was she going to keep going on about strawberries for ever and ever? Strawberry, Pick-Your-Own, Milkshake, Squidge: she and her friend Tracy seemed to find endless amusement in thinking up new variations. It annoyed Henry that he minded. Why should he?

  ‘It’s your song, Squidge,’ Grace said, giggling. ‘It’s an old RAF song. D’you know how it starts?’

  ‘No, I just told you. I don’t know it.’

  ‘It goes like this.’ Grace stopped walking and faced Henry squarely. ‘He jumped without a parachute from forty thousand feet . . .’ She frowned. ‘Actually I got it wrong just now. It goes: They scraped him off the runway like a dollop of strawberry jam . . .’

  ‘So what?’ Henry said. He didn’t know how she expected him to react, but to his annoyance he felt his face flushing, hot red like a ripe strawberry.

  ‘I’m going back,’ he told Grace, ‘if you’re going to keep going on at me. Didn’t have to come, did I? And you won’t be able to ride your stupid pony if I don’t come. So shut up about strawberries.’

  Grace looked down, scuffing her shoe on the gravelly path. ‘If you don’t come with me I’ll tell your Mum and Dad you were smoking.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Henry said, pretending to turn back. ‘I wasn’t, and they’ll believe me, not you.’

  ‘OK, don’t get in a strop!’ Grace called after him. ‘Come with me and I’ll stop calling you names — promise. But Amber’s not stupid.’

  ‘Well, you are. Anyway,’ Henry said nastily, just to make sure he had the last word, ‘you’re the one who wants to be a pilot. You might be the one who crashes on a runway. If you ever get as far as being a pilot, that is. Your mum says you’ll be too tall.’

  Grace gave him a snooty sideways look. ‘That’s what she says. That’s cos she doesn’t think I can really do it. But tall people can be fighter pilots — I’ve found out. So don’t start talking as if you know more than me, Midget, cos you don’t.’

  ‘Still,’ Henry persevered, ‘just anyone can’t do it. You have to pass loads of selection tests first and it’s really hard.’

  ‘I know that! I’m going to pass them all. And I’m not going to crash. I’m going to be the best pilot ever. You don’t believe me, do you? Girls can do anything better than boys.’

  She whistled a snatch of her strawberry song in an absent-minded way, though Henry knew she was doing it on purpose. Then, not looking to see if he was coming, she broke into a jog-trot across the next field. Henry knew that if he ran too, she’d run even faster; he was a good runner, but she had much longer legs and would easily beat him. For a few seconds he considered going home after all, but by now he was curious to see the pony, so carried on walking at his own pace.

  At the end of the next field, Grace sat on a five-bar gate, swinging her legs. ‘Come on, snail. What kept you?’ She turned and pointed to a fence with a gate beneath a tall tree. ‘That’s Amber’s field.’

  Amber was a fat sleek pony, cream-gold, with a black mane and tail. She was dozing under a tree as they approached, but whinnied and came trotting when she saw Grace. There was a small wooden shelter by the gate, which Grace unlocked with a key she took out of her jeans pocket. Inside there was a saddle and bridle, brushes and buckets and a bin of horse feed. The pony pushed against the gate, eager for the sugar lumps Grace held out flat on her palm. She was bigger than Henry had expected, almost a horse.

  ‘Is she yours?’ Henry asked.

  Grace snorted, like a pony herself. ‘Course not. I can’t afford a pony. But I’m allowed to ride her. She belongs to the lady in the house over there but she’s out at work most of the time and only rides at weekends. You can help me brush her if you like.’

  Henry picked up a brush and started to groom Amber, so delicately that she swished her tail as if he were an annoying fly.

  ‘Not like that — like this,’ Grace bossed. ‘Brush hard. You don’t have to be scared. She won’t bite.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ Henry said. He liked the look of Amber. Her coat was beautifully shiny and her eyes were big and dark brown, with long eyelashes. Her body was as round as a barrel but her legs were slim, with small neat hooves. While Henry brushed her, she turned her neck and touched him softly with her nose. He didn’t need Grace to tell him she wouldn’t bite. It was obvious she was a gentle pony.

  Grace put the bridle on and fastened the straps. ‘I’ll ride first, then you can have a go. We’ll ride bareback, it’s more fun.’

  She vaulted astride, then gathered the reins and clicked with her tongue. Henry watched as she rode round the field a few times. It didn’t look very difficult; the pony looked calm and well behaved, not likely to rear up or bolt or do anything dramatic. But Henry felt a bit nervous about trying in front of Grace; she’d make fun of him as soon as he did something wrong.

  Grace cantered all the way from the end of the field, then pulled up and slid off. ‘Your go now.’

  As Henry wasn’t tall enough to vault on the way she had, she gave him a leg-up, nearly pitching him right over the pony and off the other side. Amber’s sides were warm and smooth, but there was nothing to hang on to and the reins got themselves into a tangle. He would have felt safer with a sa
ddle and stirrups.

  ‘Here, like this.’ Grace sorted out the reins for him. ‘I’ll lead you first, then you can try on your own.’

  Walking wasn’t too bad, though Henry felt very high up and tried not to look down at the grass or imagine falling off. They scraped him off the runway like a dollop of strawberry jam . . . The words of Grace’s stupid song kept going through his mind. But there was no runway, only soft grass; anyway, he needn’t fall off if he concentrated. Then Grace made her tongue-clicking sound to make the pony trot, with Henry bouncing almost uncontrollably, only a handful of mane keeping him on Amber’s back. They kept up this uncomfortable pace to the farthest corner of the field, till both Grace and Henry were puffed out. Soon, he thought, it would be over, and his feet would be safely back on the ground.

  But Grace hadn’t finished yet. ‘Now you can try a canter,’ she said. ‘It’s easy. Just hang on. She’ll stop at the gate.’

  ‘No! I —’

  Grace wasn’t listening. She picked a twiggy stick out of the hedge, let go of Amber’s reins, waved the stick wildly and yelled, ‘Go, Amber!’

  The pony leaped forward. Henry’s head jerked back and his legs shot out, but somehow he was still on, lurching forward to grab a handful of Amber’s thick mane. He was losing his balance, slipping off to one side and then the other, looking down at the pony’s hooves that pounded the grass. In a moment he would be down there, trampled. Panic clutched at him. The reins had slipped from his hands and he had no way to steer or make the pony stop. He heard Grace shrieking, ‘Go, Amber!’ and was suddenly determined not to fall off — that was obviously what Grace wanted. He found the strength to grip with his legs, grabbed Amber’s mane with both hands and, for a few seconds, felt in control of himself, rocking with the movement. The gate loomed and he hoped the pony wouldn’t try to jump — it looked terrifyingly high and solid. Then she swerved, almost throwing him off to one side, and came to a juddering halt, flinging up her head and nearly hitting him on the nose.

  Suddenly he was aware of the silence of the afternoon meadow, the bees drowsing in the hedge, a brown speckled butterfly settling on a bramble flower, as if the drama of the last few minutes hadn’t happened at all. His heart was pounding and his legs shaking, but he was still on the pony’s back.