Catching Falling Stars (23 page)

So my brother
did
hear our conversation the other day, and he understood more of it than I gave him credit for. And now he’s blinking up at me, hoping I’m going to say that what he – what
Duckie
– did is fine.

“I don’t know,” I tell him, being honest. “Maybe—”

“Richard? Richard?”

I’m suddenly aware of Auntie Sylvia calling out, and the people in front of us parting to let him through.

“Ah, there you are – I need my page-turner for this next song!”

The parting of the crowd doesn’t just let Auntie Sylvia spot Rich; it lets a visibly startled Jess and Lawrence see that me and Archie are holding hands.

I let go straight away, just as the crowds shuffle back to their original positions, but denser than ever, blocking my view.

“Are you all right?” Archie asks.

“Mmm,” I say, not sure if I am. I quickly fake a bright smile and immediately feel the tug and twinge of the new speck of scar that’s formed on my cheek.

It’s a sign…

Like I say, I don’t believe in signs.

But what if it matters? What if…

I give myself a shake back to sense and concentrate on the pretty tune Auntie Sylvia is now playing.

“
If I was the only girl in the world
…” everyone in the barn begins to sing, their voices swelling and soaring.

At the same time, there’s also a shuffling, and a sense that something is happening.

Putting my hand on Archie’s shoulder for balance, I peek over everyone’s heads and shoulders towards the piano … and see that Mr Wills is now standing behind a pink-cheeked Auntie Sylvia, acting as her page-turner instead of Rich.

“Didn’t expect to see that!” Archie whispers to me. “It’s almost as if M-M-Mr Wills knows something’s changed…”

“He does,” I whisper back. “Rich just told him about the letter!”

And now my brother himself is the sudden cause of chitter-chatter, as Lil shoves him up on to the hay bale stage and swirls him into a waltz.

As the song ends, all eyes are still fixed on Rich and Lil, with everyone oohing and ahhing, commenting on what a sight for sore eyes they are.

Which means only me and Archie spot the surprising thing that’s happening over by the piano… Mr Wills has just bent down to give Auntie Sylvia a fleeting, tender peck on the cheek.

I’m still reeling at that wonderful scene when I realize people are turning to look and smile at me.

Why?

What’s happening?

“Hey, how about ‘Land of Hope and Glory’
next?” Lil is yelling out to thunderous cheers. “In honour of my kid sister, of course, as well as Her Majesty!”

Everyone is laughing, and when Auntie Sylvia launches into the first chords, the patriotic roaring nearly raises the rafters. It’s just as well the Luftwaffe only rely on maps and landmarks and lights. If they worked by sound, we’d have a squadron of Messerschmitts heading our way now…

“Glory!” Someone grabs my attention with an urgent tone to their voice.

It’s Jess. Her eyes rest on the hand I have placed on Archie’s shoulder; then she quickly lifts her gaze to my face. She seems anxious, agitated.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s Rich – he’s run outside. He’s looking for you, Glory. He thinks you’ve gone up to the sprout field.”

I think how dark it is out there, especially if the moon slips back behind a cloud. And the strange, waist-high spikes of sprouts might look almost comical in the daytime, but they’ll be positively eerie now.

“But why would he think that?” I ask her.

“I don’t know,” Jess replies with an urgent shrug. “I tried to stop him…”

“What’s wrong?” Archie asks, leaning in to hear, the sing-along is so ear-splittingly loud.

“It’s Rich – he’s gone up to the sprout field on his own. I
have
to get him.”

I’m out of the barn first, leaving whoever’s behind me to close the door.

“Glory?” says a figure outside. “I think I just saw Rich in the distance. Here…”

Lawrence holds out his hand and pulls me into a run.

What’s he doing out here
, I wonder, gathering up my rustling skirts in one hand so I can move more easily.

“Don’t worry,” Lawrence says breathlessly, “we’ll find him together, Glory.”

“And I’m h–here too,” Archie calls out from just behind us.

Lawrence makes a sudden noise that sounds a lot like a cross between a snort and a sigh. But it’s probably just because we’re running uphill now, up the back field.

“I see him!” Jess’s voice drifts in the chill air as she hurries to catch us up. “There – he’s climbing over the fence into the sprout field!”

She’s right – he looks so tiny and frail, like a stick man, a stick
boy
, now balancing on the fence and holding his arms out wide.

“What’s he doing?” I gasp out loud, my chest burning with the effort of running.

“Is he looking at the stars?” Lawrence guesses.

The sky is still dark with clouds, but he’s right – pinpoints of bright lights are glimmering.

Only they’re not just glimmering; they’re
moving
.

“They – they’re not stars!” Archie yelps, hurtling past us, as if Rich is the finishing post. “They’re NOT STARS!!”

Oh no … he’s right! What we’re seeing is strafing
bullets
glowing orange as they fly through the night sky.

And a rumbling and rattling – which I’d barely noticed in my rush and panic – is getting louder, as the dogfight above us draws nearer. Any second now the fighter planes will blast out from behind their cover of clouds…

“Rich! RICH!!” I screech, finally getting my brother’s attention as I stumble towards him.

There’s another noise now, a cacophony of drones, the moans of air-raid warnings overlapping in the surrounding villages.

“Look, Glory!” Rich calls out to me, holding his hands to the heavens. “The stars are falling! I’m going to catch one, for luck!”

I’m just a few feet from him, but I think our luck has run out.

Thundering behind his head is the looming, growling black monster of a plane, coming down to earth any second.

“This was what the sign meant!” I whisper desperately to myself. “
This
is where we die.”

And then the explosion throws me and my parachute dress into the soft, dark earth…

Mine wasn’t the only parachute in Mr Wills’ fields on Saturday night.

There was Jess’s, of course, then the ones belonging to the pilot and his gunner, who bailed out and landed in the sprout field.

The two dazed and injured men found themselves surrounded by slightly drunk barn dancers, some brandishing guitars and fiddles – till the partygoers heard their Scottish and Liverpudlian accents and realized the plane that came down was an RAF Bristol Blenheim and on
our
side.

I don’t know what happened to the crew members after that, but I do know what happened to me and Rich. Neither of us have much of a memory of being rescued, checked over by the doctor and ferried back to the cottage and put to bed.

What’s clearer is that we spent all day at home yesterday, never getting out of our pyjamas once. We were fussed over and mended by Auntie Sylvia, fed sweet treats and hot milk in between, and allowed to read books and comics and play records on the gramophone as much as we wanted.

It would’ve been like heaven, if we hadn’t ached so much.

“Ka-pow, ka-pow, take that!” Rich yelps, dancing around me now as we walk across the green towards school.

“You look like a panda,” I laugh.

Which is bad, because it hurts to laugh with my cracked ribs.

“A panda
boxer
,” says Rich, throwing fake punches at me.

He arrived at the safety of Thorntree with one black eye, and has now survived two plane crashes (one enemy, one friendly) and has
two
black eyes and a scar over the ridge of his nose to prove it.

“Are you sure you’re all right, though?” I ask him, glancing back at Auntie Sylvia, who’s chatting to a neighbour about the events of the weekend. “I know she won’t mind if you stay off school today, Rich.”

“I’m fine, thank you. I like being with Auntie Sylvia,” says Rich, starting to skip-hop his way through what’s left of the cabbages. Some have been harvested and the more rotten ones simply left to the very last of the butterflies. “Are
you
all right, Glory?”

“Yes. Auntie Sylvia has bound me up nice and tight,” I tell him as cheerfully as I can, while delicately patting the bandages under my blouse.

I’m all right about my ribs, and the scratches and scrapes. They’re all a bonus, considering I’d expected to die when the force of the crashing plane flung us like rag dolls across the back field.

I’m actually
more
worried about going into school today, and seeing Jess.

I heard she was all right, the least bashed about of us all.

Lawrence got away with just scrapes too.

I’d love to see Archie, of course, but Mr Wills dropped by the cottage yesterday to chat to Auntie Sylvia, and told us that Archie is more or less fine but has possible concussion and might not be at for school for few days.

As for Jess … I don’t know what I’ll say to her when I see her. “So, you lied to me? And you lied to my brother and told him I was waiting for him in the field?”

Rich explained that much yesterday, when Auntie Sylvia asked us to talk her through what had happened the night of the barn dance.

Or maybe I could say, “I didn’t know you hated me so much to do that, Jess. Was it just because you saw that Lawrence liked me?”

But that didn’t make sense either. She’d spotted me holding hands with Archie later the evening. It must have been obvious right then that Lawrence wasn’t the one I was fond of in that way.

Maybe Jess was just angry with me for breaking up the Outsiders by letting feelings get in the way…

Whatever her reason, I’ll never forgive her for putting Rich in danger. Jess, of
all
people, should know what it’s like to have a brother even younger and more trusting than his years.

“Hold on,” I tell Rich now, as he nearly walks out into the road.

Typically, he hasn’t spotted the bus rounding the corner, drawing to a creaking, grinding stop by the gaggle of villagers waiting to board it and be taken to town.

“Careful, Rich,” I remind him. “You’ve got to keep your eyes open for—”

“GLORY! RICH!!”

The familiar voice … it’s like the sound of home.

You know, it
is
the sound of home.

“Mum?” I call out, aware of the quaver in my voice. “MUM!”

She’s just come off the bus, and hurries as fast as her Sunday-best shoes will let her across the rough road, her cobalt winter coat open and flapping like a bluebird’s wings as she runs to grab us in her arms.

“Mum!” yelps Rich, jumping up and down as she hugs him.

With streaming eyes, I turn to see where Auntie Sylvia is, and see her blurrily rushing towards us.

“Mrs Gilbert! What a surprise – how lovely to see you,” she tells Mum, hovering above us now and looking a little useless. “How … I mean, why…”

“Our Lil got a message through to us,” says Mum, on her knees and clutching us both around our waists, as if she daren’t let us go.

“How did she do that?” asks Auntie Sylvia, bemused. “The telegraph poles have been damaged. We had a plane come down and—”

“Indeed, Miss Saunders. But yesterday Lil persuaded Mr Wills’ oldest lad to drive her on the tractor to some neighbouring village around here,” says Mum, still locked in a hug with us. “She phoned our local civil defence HQ and of all the luck, her dad was on duty and took the call! And when he came home, of course I’m saying to him, first thing in the morning, Norman, I’m off to Thorntree to see the state of our little darlings.”