The Sky is Falling (19 page)

“Isn't Hallowe'en super? We're all film stars—I'm Betty Grable.” Behind her lurked Babs and Ernestine, their galoshes peeking out from under their long gowns.

Babs frowned at Norah and Bernard. “Come
on
Dulcie, we have to go home now.”

“
We
refused to accept candy,” said Ernestine righteously,
at the sight of Norah's bulging pillowcase. “You're supposed to be collecting money.”

“I did!” Norah shook her bottle of coins angrily.

“Dulcie …”
Babs was moving away. “Don't you remember the party at my house? Mum's made scads of fudge, and we're going to bob for apples—you'll like that.”

Dulcie hesitated. “I don't feel like going in yet. You go ahead. I'll see you there.”

Her friends looked surprised but left quickly. Dulcie seemed surprised herself at her daring. “Can I come with you for a while?” she asked timidly.

Norah grinned. “Sure!” She introduced Dulcie to the Worsleys. Paige inspected her warily, but soon forgot Dulcie as they collected more candy.

When their bags were almost too heavy to carry, they rested under a streetlight and compared their booty. Best were homemade popcorn balls; worst were ordinary apples you could get anytime.

“We still have an hour before we have to go home,” said Paige, pulling out a long string of toffee from her teeth. “I know something you'd like, Norah. Why don't we have a bonfire? Then we could celebrate Guy Fawkes too.”

“But we don't have a Guy!” said Norah.

“And we don't have matches,” said Bernard, looking worried. “Anyway there's nowhere safe to make a fire.”

But Paige, as usual, was unstoppable when she had an idea. “I took some matches from the living room before
we left. And I have a Guy.” Out of her pocket she pulled a small, wilted rag doll. “It isn't very big, but it'll do.”

“That's mine!” protested Daphne.

“You haven't played with it for years—you never did. It doesn't even have a name. Wouldn't you like to see it burn up?”

Daphne thought for a second and then nodded, a wicked gleam in her eye.

Up to now, Dulcie had seemed to be enjoying herself. Now she looked scared. “I think I'll go to the party, now—Babs's house is just around the corner.” She hurried away.

“She's a chicken,” remarked Paige, digging in her pockets again.

Norah thought of how Dulcie had done what she wanted in spite of her friends' disapproval. “No, she's not. She likes doing different things than us, but she's all right really.”

“If you say so. Now watch.” She had found a pencil and marked a moustache under the doll's nose. “There, we'll turn him into Hitler—then it will be even more fun to burn him. We'll make the fire by the fort. If we pile dirt around it, it'll be safe. Come on, while we still have time!”

Bernard still looked reluctant and Norah felt a twinge of fear. But the Worsley girls were at their wildest. They whooped and pranced as they ran along the streets and into the ravine. It was difficult to find their way to the fort in the darkness and they held onto one another as they
slithered down the bank. Gradually their eyes adjusted and they could see by the dim glow of the streetlights on the bridge above them.

“I'm freezing!” complained Barbara. “Hurry and make the fire, Paige.”

First Paige ordered them to gather up twigs and branches while she and Bernard dug a circular trench with a board from the fort. When they had a large pile of fuel she struck a match on a rock and held it to the smallest twigs.

The flame flickered and went out. Norah breathed easily again, but Paige looked around impatiently. “Paper … that's what we need. Can we use some old comics? We've read them all.”

Before they could answer she had grabbed an armful of comics from the fort. She tore out the pages, wadded them up, fit them under the kindling and tried again.

The wind rose and the paper caught at once and whooshed into a blaze. Soon the twigs ignited, then the larger branches. The sparks flew up into the darkness and the dancing yellow flames illuminated their grimy faces.

“Yaaay!” Paige threw the doll into the fire and seized Norah's hand. Hollering like banshees, they all circled the flames as they grew stronger.

The crackling fire made Norah feel reckless and powerful. She stopped being afraid. She almost forgot she was in Canada and for a few seconds was at home in Ringden before the war, dancing around the Guy.

Guy, Guy, Guy

Poke him in the eye.

Put him in the fire

And there let him die.

Burn his body from his head,

Then you'll say Guy Fawkes is dead.

Hip, Hip, Hooray!

The others joined in with her chant. “Then you'll say that
Hitler's
dead!” added Paige. The flames leapt defiantly and they hurled wood on the fire to feed its mounting rage. Even Bernard had lost his usual calm. “This is Charlie!” he shouted, throwing on a large branch.

Norah added more comics. “And this is Aunt Florence!” she screamed. Even Paige looked a little shocked at that. Then she grinned and shouted, “School! Dresses! GROWN-UPS!” They circled and jumped and shrieked, the fire roaring with them.

Suddenly Bernard gave a different kind of scream. “LOOK!” He pointed and they froze. Part of the fire had leapt across the trench and caught on one of the cardboard boxes they used as a table. The dry box flared instantly and then the flames travelled to the fort itself.

“Stop it!” cried Paige. “Put dirt on it!”

They threw on handfuls of dirt and tried to beat down the flames with branches. But the fire continued to snarl like an angry beast at the wood of the fort.

Daphne sobbed hysterically and Barbara clung to her,
her face white with terror. “
Do
something!” she entreated the older children.

Bernard turned to Norah. “Run up to the Ogilvies' and call the fire department. Hurry! Paige and I will keep throwing dirt on it.”

Norah didn't know how she made her legs work. She tripped and stumbled up the steep bank. When she reached the front door, she felt as if she were suffocating and struggled for air.

“Norah! What's wrong?” Aunt Mary sprang up as Norah appeared in the den.

“Fire. In the ravine,” Norah gasped. “The others—are—down there.” Then her arms and legs turned boneless and she collapsed in a chair.

The rest of the evening had the foggy, unreal quality of a dream. The fire engines came quickly, their whining wail as insistent as an air-raid siren. In a daze, Norah stood in the backyard and watched as long hoses sprayed onto the flames from the bridge. The firemen led or carried Paige, Bernard, Barbara and Daphne up the hill as the fire was extinguished.

None of them could speak. When Aunt Florence and Gavin got home, all five children were sitting in the kitchen, with Aunt Mary and Hanny trying to get them to have some cocoa. The firemen were standing in a corner drinking theirs, looking sternly at the children.

“
What
is going on?” the majestic voice asked. Aunt Florence directed her question to Norah, after glaring first at Bernard.

Fortunately Mr. Worsley arrived before Norah had to answer. “Are you all right?” he cried, inspecting each daughter as if she might be broken. Then he looked grave. He said he would drive Bernard home and hustled him and his daughters out the door.

“Obviously there's a lot of explaining to do,” he said to Aunt Florence, “but I think it can wait until tomorrow. They'd all better stay home from school. I'll ring you in the morning and we'll try to sort out what happened.”

Norah was sent to bed. She didn't even wash her filthy face and hands but curled up into a tight ball and tried to quiet her breathing. The dangerous, leaping flames and Aunt Florence's outraged expression filled her dreams.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, it all came out. The Worsleys arrived after breakfast and the girls had to stumble through the story together in front of the four adults.

Aunt Florence blamed a lot of it on Bernard. “I told you he was unsuitable! And why were you with him at all, Norah, after I forbade you to see him?”

Then she discovered that Norah had been seeing Bernard all along. “We didn't know she wasn't allowed to play with him,” said Mrs. Worsley timidly. “We thought his name was Albert. He seems so sensible for his age, it couldn't have been his idea.”

“It was
my
idea,” said Paige. “Not Bernard's.”

“I'm sure it was,” said her father grimly.

But Aunt Florence didn't seem to believe her. “Now, Paige, you couldn't have thought of such a dreadful thing
by yourself. And it was extremely deceptive of you, Norah, to pretend Bernard was someone else.”

Mr. Worsley gave them a long, serious lecture on how foolish they had been. He told them exactly the same sorts of things Norah's father would have. It was painful to listen to—Barbara cried and Paige pressed her lips together and pretended not to—but everything he said was so true that Norah felt cleansed at the end.

Then Mrs. Worsley and Aunt Mary had their turn. They wrung their hands and carried on about how they might have been burnt to death. Then Norah and Paige were told they weren't allowed to see each other all weekend.

Throughout all this, Aunt Florence was suspiciously silent. Norah guessed she was saving the rest of her comments for her alone.

Sure enough, after Paige, Barbara and Daphne had been marched home again, Aunt Florence had her say. She kept Norah in the living room for half an hour and told her over and over how ungrateful and disobedient she was.

She even brought up Norah's bed-wetting. Before breakfast, as if she had decided to pick a time when Norah was already in everyone's bad books, Edith had come to Aunt Florence to tell her she refused to wash Norah's sheets any longer.

“What kind of a girl wets her bed at age ten?” said Aunt Florence, looking disgusted. “I think you must be doing it on purpose.”

The more her icy voice droned on, the less Norah listened. Something inside her had turned to stone.

“Norah! I said, would you like me to have you transferred to another family? I'm not at all sure I want to continue to try to get along, when you make absolutely no effort yourself. I'm not even sure that Gavin should be around you. Perhaps you would be better apart.”

Norah fastened her own grey eyes upon Aunt Florence's granite ones. “I don't care. Do whatever you like. May I go to my room now?”

Aunt Florence seemed about to say more. Then she took a deep breath and nodded. “Very well. We'll discuss this again later, when we've both cooled down. You'd better go to school this afternoon. Wash your hands for lunch and I'll write you a note.”

Norah sat on the window seat of the tower. She struggled through five short minutes of indecision, then she dumped her books out of her schoolbag and began to pack.

19

Gavin

“
A
re you sure you feel up to going back to school this afternoon, Norah?” Aunt Mary asked anxiously. She adjusted her hat at the hall mirror. “You must still feel shocked from last night—I know I do.”

Her mother bristled. “Of course she can go back. There's no point in missing a whole day of schoolwork. Why are you wearing that dreadful hat, Mary? Go and put on your new one.” She and her daughter were going to a lunch party.

Before Aunt Mary scuttled upstairs, Norah tried to smile at her. Then she met Aunt Florence's haughty gaze with one just as cold. There! That was the last time she would ever see either of them.

“I'm glad you didn't get burned up, Norah,” said Gavin, as they ate alone at one end of the dining room table.

Norah was too distracted to listen. “Aren't you going to finish your sandwich?” When Gavin shook his head, she stuffed the remains of his lunch and three of the apples from the sideboard into her schoolbag.

“What's that for?” asked Gavin.

“Just a … picnic. We're having one after school. But don't tell, or I'll get into trouble.”

“I won't. Can I come? Will you have it in your fort? When did you build the fort? Can I help you fix it?”

“No you
can't
! Leave me alone, Gavin! Why do you always have to bother me? Can't you see I'm trying to think? Go and find Hanny—I'm going to school now.”

Gavin's big eyes filled with tears. Slowly he got down from his chair and trudged into the kitchen.

Norah almost cried herself, with frustration. Why did Gavin always have to make her feel so mean? And shouldn't she say goodbye to him? She wouldn't see him again until the war was over and he was sent back to England. It would just upset him, though, if she told him she was running away. He might even tell the Ogilvies.

The front hall was as soundless as an empty church. Norah pulled down her new snowsuit from the closet and struggled into the leggings and jacket. The weather wasn't cold today, but she didn't know where she would be spending the night. She checked her schoolbag one more time: toothbrush, pyjamas, an extra sweater and her shrapnel; the five pounds she'd held onto all this time and, for some reason, the old doll Aunt Mary had given her. She'd also squeezed in her latest library book. That felt like stealing, but she could mail it back from England.

She breathed in one last whiff of furniture polish and roses and said a silent goodbye to the sombre house
that always felt too hot. Then she shut the door softly behind her.

It was difficult to walk fast in the bulky snowsuit. Norah decided to inspect the fort and rest there until she calmed down. This was much scarier than skipping school; scarier, in fact, than anything she'd ever done before.

In the sunlight the charred wood of the fort looked sinister. But the damage wasn't as bad as it had appeared to be last night. Norah sat down beside the damp, sooty circle where they'd made the fire. It seemed years ago that they had all danced around the flames.