I slept badly in the same narrow bed as Rosie. She kicked and wriggled when she was asleep, like Mavis did, and before that she whimpered for ages and kept asking about her mum. I couldn’t tell her the truth. She must have heard it anyway, surely? Why did she have to keep asking? She wasn’t going to believe me. So I said yes, we’d go and find her in the morning, though I knew I was lying. Sometimes that’s alright, my mum said.
When she’d finally gone to sleep I started to cry again. It was too quiet now apart from the murmuring of the grown-ups through by the stove and the unfamiliar noises outside the window, and the creaking and moaning of the hut. Too strangely calm and scary at the same time. I was tired of it all. It was time for all this malarkey to stop and everyone to come out and say it was over, it was just a game and look there’s your house and your mum and your sister. But no-one did.
I tried very hard to think about the rope swing and the lily pond and how I was going to bring Mavis and my mum out here and we’d all be happy, and my dad would come, but every time I closed my eyes to try to imagine it, all sorts of other things got in the way, and every time I fell asleep I saw things I didn’t want to see, things I’d been told not to look at, things I’d only myself to blame for seeing, and for seeing again and again in the dark.
So I kept waking up just as I was drifting off to sleep and once when I woke up I saw Miss Weatherbeaten in the other bunk bed. Her head was sticking up above the covers and her lips were dark, her hair tied over her ear with a clasp and her eyes weren’t properly shut. I got out of bed to shake her but instead stood over her peering to see if she was breathing. The only light we had was a glimmer of moonlight through a small pane in the door. She didn’t seem to see me, even though her eyes were half-open.
I was still upset with Miss Weatherbeaten for slapping me, even though she was a grown-up and a teacher. Only my gran who came last summer ever did that, apart from my mum and that’s different, and my mum nearly slapped my gran back. I was scared Miss Weatherbeaten might do it again, but I also wondered if she was sleeping the sleep of the dead, like the lady in the sea of bricks, so after a bit I gave her a little poke and she sat up and nearly bumped her head on the top bunk. She wasn’t happy about that but she didn’t slap me again. I got back into bed with Rosie feeling better now that I knew Miss Weatherbeaten was alive.
The next time I woke up Miss Weatherbeaten was gone but I could hear her in the stove room putting coal on the fire and sniffing. Mr Tait must have been in the big double bed. So I went back to sleep and dreamt about Mavis and my mum buried in bricks or with their hands off, or my mum’s legs lying on the road, crossed like when she’s in bed, but with blood on them. When I woke up that time Miss Weatherbeaten was back in the bunk bed, looking just like she had the last time so I had to tell myself she was alright over and over again, over and over again.
The next time I woke after that I smelled smoke and whisky, and I had to get up and check round the whole hut to make sure it was alright and no-one was going to fall through anything or be gobbled up by big orange flames. I had a good look at the door to outside with the little pane of glass, just to make sure it was still there. Miss Weatherbeaten was awake too when I went back to bed. She smiled at me but I was too busy tucking myself in, and Rosie was crying again. I couldn’t smell the smoke and whisky any more. Maybe the smells were just in my head.
In the morning the room had changed. It was full of sunlight which danced in little splotches in a square on the floor. There was a faded rag rug in blue and brown and yellow and under that it was wood. The walls were wooden too but painted white and the bunk beds were white too. The bed Miss Weatherbeaten had slept in was empty, its covers flung back against the wall, whitish sheets crumpled where she had lain. Rosie was gone and I was cold even though our new blue coats were piled on top of the blankets on top of me, cold without Mum or Mavis. There was a funny smell, like the inside of Mr Tait’s shelter, dank like dungeons, a mouldy wet smell even though the room looked as fresh as daisies, as my Auntie May would say.
Through in the stove room the grown-ups were talking again. I could hear them say Rosie’s name but not Rosie, and I could hear the wind outside and guessed there were trees nearby, perhaps the one with the rope swing. Something thudded against the outside wall, a little thud, perhaps the size of Rosie, but then Rosie reappeared beside me from the stove room, so it couldn’t have been her.
She was swinging from one foot to the other. She had her new blue dress back on and her dark hair was sticking out at either side of her face like my dad’s sidies (that’s sideburns in case you didn’t know). She was fiddling with her earlobe again and had another big snotter bulging down from one nostril.
‘Can we go and find my mum now?’ she said.
‘Rosie . . . .’
‘I need a wee.’
‘Good for you.’
‘You have to come with me.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Ask Miss Weatherbeaten. Miss Weather . . . .’
‘I don’t like Miss Weatherbee.’
There was another thump against the outside wall. We held our breath to listen.
‘What’s that?’ she said in a loud whisper, a stage whisper as my . . . .
‘What’s that?’ she said louder now, pulling at her earlobe.
‘Stop it, Rosie,’ I said. ‘You’re scaring me. It’s only other kids playing.’
‘What are they playing?’
We listened again.
‘War,’ I said. ‘They’re playing war. Get back into bed Rosie. It’s cold.’
‘I need a wee,’ she said.
Resigned now, I got out of bed and pulled my new green dress over my head, over the cut-off petticoat that I’d been wearing. My shoes were by the stove, along with my socks, too far away to be of use. The rag rug was soft under my naked feet and cold, but not half as cold as the dewy grass between the little door with the pane of glass and the cludgie. We checked left and right to make sure it was safe, no killer bees or gypsy moths, no Gerry invaders. The sounds of boyish war raged on from distant trees and huts.
‘Hurry up!’ I said, once Rosie was up on the throne, which is what our neighbour called it. ‘Hurry up!’
She whined and kicked the door.
‘Come on!’ I said. I didn’t want to think about the neighbours at home.
‘Rosie!’
Two boys suddenly appeared round the corner of the hut, their arms outstretched like wings, engine noises spewing from their mouth, then ‘ack-ack-ack-ack-ack!’ they went, with nasty mean looks on their faces. They screeched to a halt beside us. Rosie was on her feet and decent in double-quick time.
‘Well, look who’s here,’ said one of the two. It was the older bad boy from the canal, the baddest bad boy. The other, Sandy, I recognised from Mrs Mags’s hut the night before.
‘Sorry,’ said the other one. He had sandy-brown hair and was tall, once he’d stopped stooping to be a plane. He looked at me and Rosie, standing in the wet grass holding onto each other. ‘Sorry!’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ said the bad boy. ‘That’s the girl who pushed me into the canal, only now she’s a boy so we can hit her if we like . . . .’
‘Shut up, George!’ said the sandy-haired boy.
George the bad boy drew out a pretend machine gun and blasted us away, ‘ack-ack-ack-ack-ack!’ and ran off round the hut again. I had been going to point out that I hadn’t actually pushed him in the canal. It was his brother I’d pushed. He’d fallen in all by himself, with no help from anyone.
The sandy-haired boy stared at me. I must have been a sight, and I know he didn’t mean any harm and was trying to be nice but I wished very much that he would go away, or at least look at something else.
‘Sorry,’ he said again.
‘You can’t help being stupid,’ I said, before I could stop myself. He looked stung and immediately I wanted to say sorry but he’d already said too many sorrys and I thought he might think I was copying him if I did, but I heard it inside my head. Once he was round the corner I could hear his bomber bee plane start its engines again. Yes, stupid. I was right.
Rosie tried to insist on the cludgie door being wide open while I went to the toilet but settled finally for it being open about as wide as my hand. I let her watch me so that I couldn’t disappear. Then we went round to the front of the hut.
This is what we saw.
Green.
Green, pale green and lots of it but some brown and brownish-yellow and a bright-blue sky with white wispy clouds overhead as if nothing had happened.
There was grass everywhere, short winter grass, green but winter yellow too, not like the stuff in the park at home. Some of it was thick and long as if it would tangle itself around your ankles if you tried to run across it and it was sprinkled with big juicy drops of dew. There were trees all around the edges of the field, trees with just the beginnings of their new spring leaves twittering in the wind as if they had been shocked awake by the day. Berry bushes raged like fires blown in the lightening breeze, shaking off their last rotting berries, or reaching out to the new sunshine for its tiny bit of warmth. Yellow broom gathered in thickets here and there between the huts.
The huts were green too, but a different green. They were green like window frames, green like park benches, green like my new green dress, and they were sprinkled across the field all any old how, this way and that, and in between them were other newer huts, some half-built with jagged bits of wood sticking out, and sky where the roof should have been. These new huts were different colours, the softer colours of wood, some old and some fresh, some with words on them that I couldn’t make out over the distance. One was an old bus and not a hut at all, but it had curtains in the windows and a chimney on its roof.
Away up at the top of the hill and over to one side was a big wide tree, looking like the one we’d leant against on the way over from Clydebank, a beech probably. There were huts on either side and kids like me all around it. The tree was shaking at one side and I realised it was the rope-swing tree!
Voices drifted across, shrieks of delight and fear. I so wanted to run across that yellow tangly grass and leap onto the rope and swing from one side to the other, and to have all those kids shrieking for me because I was going too high, higher than all the others, higher than all of them, right up into the branches and then down to the ground and back up again. But they’d all laugh at me, a boy in a dress who couldn’t hang on to a rope to save her life, as my dad used to say.
‘Brruumm-brruumm-brruumm!’ The boys came round the hut again and some others flew down the hill towards them. Rosie and I collapsed in a little heap, boom-crash against the front door, hearts pounding. ‘Brruumm-brruumm-brum-de-brum!’
The door opened and we fell back inside.
‘How did you get out there?’ said Miss Weatherbeaten. She helped us up while I waited for my heart to be still. It hurt to beat so hard and I felt silly for being scared of two stupid boys.
‘Stupid boys!’ she said as if she’d heard my thoughts.
‘Stupid boys!’ said Rosie in her wee girl’s voice, fumbling for my hand.
Mr Tait got up out of the rocking chair by the fire, and came over.
‘Lenny,’ he said. ‘Rosie. How are you this morning? What did you find out there? Anything interesting? Apart from stupid boys, I mean. Rabbits? Anything?’
An adult doing his best, I suppose. He was trying to be friendly but he still had his stick. I could see it next to the chair where he’d left it.
‘No, nothing,’ I said.
‘Nothing?’ he said.
Miss Weatherbeaten laughed, but only for a second.
‘What did you see out there, Lenny?’ she said.
‘It’s sunny.’
I went back into the little bedroom with the bunks and put my cold bare feet on the soft rag rug.
‘Lenny,’ said Miss Weatherbeaten.
She’d followed me in there. She was too tall for that room. She shouldn’t have been in there.
‘Lenny,’ she said again. ‘I know this is hard but there’s no need to be rude to people.’
‘I’m not being rude.’
‘Well, actually you are.’
‘No, I’m not. Leave me alone.’
‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’ she said.
‘I’m not at school and you’re not my mum.’
Mr Tait appeared over her shoulder. Miss Weatherbeaten straightened up with a sharp intake of breath. He tapped her gently on the arm and she left the room with a snort. I could hear her talking to Rosie. Worry prickled at my neck.
Mr Tait stood there a minute or two.
‘What a nice little room!’ he said after a bit. ‘Where does this door lead to?’
‘What? I mean, pardon?’ I said. ‘The cludgie.’
‘Well, that’s handy!’ he said in a cheery voice. ‘I thought you had to go out the front and round. Can I open it?’
I nodded. He opened it. The door had a brass, oval door handle with a string bag hanging from it that I hadn’t noticed before. It squeaked a little when he turned it. A blaze of sunshine burst through and lit up the white walls so that I was suddenly dazzled. His shadow was like balm on my eyes as he moved into the light and then he slipped through and the brightness hit me again.
‘You didn’t tell me about the bench,’ he said.
What bench? I thought. I didn’t see a bench.
‘Bit rough and ready but very comfortable.’
There was a big gust of wind in the bushes and some dry leaves floated past the door.
‘Oh, dear, I left my stick,’ he said. ‘I’ll never get up again.’
No stick?
‘You didn’t tell me how lovely it was out here. How lucky we are to have such a beautiful day!’
The drones of the far-off killer boy bees came closer again. I sat on the edge of the bottom bunk and leant on my hands. I put my fingers in my ears. I didn’t like that sound. It was making me feel sick and I didn’t like to feel sick like that. I had to listen really, I knew I had to, just in case, but I had to not listen too, so it made a whirlpool in my stomach and I put my head down onto my knees and my palms flat over my ears and when that didn’t work I put both thumbs onto the little extra flap bits at the front of my ears and pressed hard right inside until all I could hear was my breath, fast breath, fast and shallow, and in my breath I could hear the squeaky seesaw in the park at home and that made me feel not sick again.
When I took my thumbs off my ears again I could hear Mr Tait talking to someone outside.
‘Perhaps you could play something else, just for now?’ he was saying. ‘Would that be alright? What about cowboys and Indians? It’s just the girls, you know . . . .’
‘What’s that got to do with us?’ It was the big bad boy, George. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me.
‘Well, quite a lot actually,’ said Mr Tait.
‘Yeah?’
‘Shut up, George.’ It was the other boy, Sandy.
‘Oh, now, shut up is not very nice either,’ said Mr Tait. ‘How old are you two? Eleven, twelve? And I thought you were about fourteen. Deary me, Mr Tait, you are losing your touch!’
‘I don’t care,’ said big bad George. ‘You shouldn’t be in there. It’s not your hut and they’ll be back here next weekend and you lot’ll have to be out.’
‘Shut up, George,’ said Sandy.
‘Shut up, yourself!’ said bad George.
Then the swish of the tangly wet grass told me George’d left.
‘Oh, dear, what a charmer!’ said Mr Tait.
‘Sorry about him, sir, Mr Tait,’ said Sandy.
‘Why?’ said Mr Tait, in his nice steady voice. ‘You don’t need to apologise for him. You didn’t do much wrong, only a couple of shut-ups. Apart from that you seem nice enough. His parents are still in Clydebank, so he’s bound to be a bit anxious.’
‘He’s always like that.’
‘Would you like to join me on this bench?’ said Mr Tait. ‘Lenny won’t come out. She thinks I’m a bad man with a big stick. So I have to sit here all by myself.’
How did he know I thought that? I kept very still on the bed, crouched because I couldn’t sit straight because of the top bunk. I pretended I wasn’t there.
‘She thinks I’m stupid,’ said Sandy.
‘Well, perhaps playing Gerries and Brits wasn’t the brightest thing to do, today, here. They’ve been through a lot.’
‘Lenny looks as though she’s been through a hedge backwards,’ said Sandy. ‘I thought she was a boy.’
‘She’s got the grit of a boy,’ said Mr Tait. ‘She’s tough like her mother but she’s seen things no-one should ever see. She’s run through fire, that girl, and walked on glass, and starved for a day-and-a-half, and then walked over the hill through the night. You should ask her and maybe she’ll tell you what else she did, how else she kept herself alive to tell the tale. What’s the point in surviving to tell the tale if no-one bothers to ask you?’
I didn’t really want to be asked. I just wanted to know when we were going to go and find Mavis and my mum. I didn’t want to have to tell some stupid boy, but I liked Mr Tait saying I had grit, even though it hadn’t felt like it at the time and I certainly didn’t feel like it right then.
‘She’s the bravest little girl I’ve ever come across, to tell the truth.’
I liked being brave, but I wasn’t sure about being the bravest little girl he’d ever come across. And after all, I wasn’t little, I was big, too big to be so scared right there on that bunk bed miles from any Germans or bombs or anything.
‘I don’t think she’d want me to ask,’ said Sandy.
No, you’re right, I didn’t.
‘Well, perhaps not today, but some day soon, if we’re still here. You don’t want us to leave before you’ve got round to it, do you? And then it’d be too late, unless we can find a way to stay longer.’
‘You can ask my dad when he gets here at the weekend,’ said Sandy, ‘or go and see Old Barney. He’s given us some more ground to build on, over the hill, in that direction, or you can stay here on this bit, Paterson’s Ground. It goes right up to the fence and down to the pub and a bit over that way too.’
‘Old Barmy? Not a name that bodes well,’ said Mr Tait with a laugh.
‘Not Barmy. Barney, like on a farm, like an owl, a barn owl,’ said Sandy. ‘He’s the gaffer.’
‘So you don’t own the hut?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the sandy boy. ‘We own the hut, everyone owns their huts, we built them after all, with anything we could find. I put the roof on the kitchen lean-to on ours. With my dad.’
‘But Barmy Barney owns the land, or this man Paterson owns this bit?’ said Mr Tait.
I got bored after a while. It was all too complicated, this hut business, with Patersons and Barmys, so I drifted off to consider whether anything I had done was as brave as Mr Tait had said it was, but that took me back to the things I shouldn’t have seen, things that it was my own fault that I saw, and that made me sick again, so I tried extra hard to listen to them again, and wished Mavis was there to look after.
‘So it’s your granddad, is it?’ said Mr Tait. ‘Well, I think they’re lovely. I must congratulate him on his expertise. I think my favourite is the one over the stove. Is that your cousin?’
‘Yes, that’s Izzie,’ said Sandy.
‘I do a bit of painting myself,’ said Mr Tait.
That was a surprise. He didn’t look like the sort of person who would paint pictures and get all messy.
There was a pause while no-one spoke. I wondered if they could hear my breathing. Some distance away I heard killer George in his pretend plane.
Then I heard Sandy taking his leave, and then it was just me and Mr Tait.
‘Oh, there’s a rabbit!’ he said.
I half-jumped up to go and see before I’d realised and stopped myself. I sat back down, my stomach all churning. The wind breathed through the bushes.
‘Actually my favourite is the one of the horse above our stove,’ he said. ‘Looks like it’s galloping in the wind. Which one’s your favourite?’