Doodlebug Summer (2 page)

It's very scary. I pull the bedclothes over my head and curl up like a caterpillar,
though I know it's useless. It takes more than an eiderdown to keep you safe, but having something close and warm round you makes you feel better.

The noise is coming closer –
du-du-du-du-du-DU
– it's stopped.

BANG!

The explosion comes at once this time, and even louder.

Mum opens the door. She's in her dressing gown, and Ian's beside her, clutching his old bit of blanket and Bun, this rather bald rabbit that he has to have at night.

‘Katie, love, we'd better get downstairs,' Mum says.

‘What was it?'

Stupid question – she can't know.

‘Could have been a damaged aeroplane that crashed. Only I can't see why there should be two. Come on, quickly.'

The noise is starting up again.

‘Bring something warm,' she calls back from the landing.

I know the drill, we've rushed for the shelter often enough in the night raids. I grab my dressing gown, push my feet into
my slippers, gather up my eiderdown, and stumble down the stairs after Mum. The noise gets louder and I grab the banister in case an explosion should throw me off my feet, but the thing passes overhead and goes on. When the bang comes, it's a more distant one, and I'm standing safely in the hall. Mum's pulling things out of the cupboard under the stairs, a bit hampered by Ian, who is clinging to her dressing gown and getting in the way.

I take his hand and say, ‘Where's Bun? Oh, you've got him safe. That's good.'

‘We can't go out to the shelter,' Mum says to me over her shoulder. ‘It'll be in an awful state, unused for so long, and anyway—'

I know what she means. It's too dangerous to go out across the garden.

‘This'll be fun,' I tell Ian. ‘We'll get in the cupboard and pretend it's a stable. We'll be horses.'

‘Why?'

‘Because that's where horses sleep. In stables.'

He frowns, but he's interested. ‘What are their names?'

‘I don't know. Think of something nice.'

‘Dan,' he says.

‘That's a good name.'

‘How many horses are there?'

‘Two.'

‘That's not enough.'

‘OK, we'll have more. How many would you like?'

‘Seventy-three,' he says.

Mum's handing stuff out to me: the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, flowerpots with dead hyacinth bulbs in them. I stack them against the wall. The noise is starting again.

‘In, quickly,' she says. ‘There's another one coming.'

Ian starts to cry again. We bundle into the cupboard and I sit on the shoe-cleaning box, hugging him tightly. Mum pulls the door shut. It's pitch black, and Ian wails louder.

There's another heavy explosion, but not terribly close.

Mum's listening. Everything seems quiet, so she opens the door again. A bit of light comes in from the hall, but the depths of the cupboard are still dark.

‘You've got your horse rug,' I say to Ian. ‘That's good.'

He's not in a mood for pretending. ‘It isn't a horse rug. It's my blanket.' He rubs his tearwet face with Bun. That rabbit gets in a dreadful state, but he hates Mum washing it.

I keep going with the horse game.

‘This is our stable,' I tell him. ‘I'm Black Beauty.' I do a whinny. ‘Hello, Dan, it's good in here, isn't it.'

‘Don't want to be Dan.'

‘Be a pony, then. Be Merrilegs.' I've been reading
Black Beauty
for the umpteenth time. It's terribly sad, but somehow I have to keep reading it.

‘Don't want to be a pony.'

‘What about an elephant?'

He ignores that. ‘Switch the light on,' he says, instead.

‘There isn't a light in here,' says Mum. ‘I'll go and find a torch. Stay where you are.'

The cupboard smells of furniture polish and old rags. Ian is shivering a bit. He's heavy on my lap, and the edge of the shoe-cleaning box is cutting into my legs, but it's all right. This is my job to do,
looking after my little brother. I can see why Pauline doesn't mind being in charge of the little ones. It makes you feel better if someone's depending on you.

Mum comes back with an armful of rugs and blankets, and two pillows.

‘Where's the torch?' asks Ian.

‘You can have it in a minute,' she says. ‘Katie, hand me out some more stuff, see if you can make space to lie down. Oh, hang on, there's another one coming.' She crouches down beside us, and pulls the door to again.

The stuttering engine is getting louder. Our own guns have got going as well, with a barrage of sharp bangs.

Ian clutches me and says, ‘I don't like it!'

I jiggle him on my knee and say, ‘Never mind.'

It's funny how you can't go on being very frightened for too long. After a bit you just settle into waiting for it to end.

It's difficult to tell if the thing has exploded yet, because of the racket from the guns, but it's gone over, anyway. Mum goes on moving things to make space. I shift further in with Ian.

‘Mind your head,' I tell him, ‘the ceiling slopes.'

‘I
know
.' He sounds irritated. ‘We're underneath the stairs, so it has to.'

‘I'll get the cushions off the sofa,' Mum says. ‘They'll make a bed.'

Ian grabs at her. ‘Mummy, don't keep going out. Stay
here
.'

‘I'll only be a minute.' She's out in the hall again.

‘We're going to have oats and hay,' I tell him.

Mistake. He thumps me on the chest and says, ‘I don't
want
to be a horse.'

‘OK. Tell you what, we'll have a midnight picnic.'

‘Picnics are outside.'

‘Not always, you can have them anywhere.'

That cheers him up a bit. ‘With sandwiches?'

‘If you like.'

‘Jam sandwiches.'

‘Right.'

That's a relief, I thought he might want something impossible like eggs.
Hedge hasn't brought any for a while, and there are none in the shops.

‘Here,' says Mum, handing in the big cushions off the sofa, ‘wedge these side by side.'

I start wedging. ‘Ian's hungry. Can I make some sandwiches?'

‘I'll make them, you stay where you are.'

She crouches down beside us because there's another one coming. The gunfire had stopped, but it opens up again.

Mum says, ‘These things are going towards London.'

Dad's in London. I almost ask if she can ring him up, but that's silly. The switchboard won't be working at this time of night. Everyone's gone home except the two who are on fire-watch.

She hands me the torch. ‘Don't use it unless you have to, the batteries are almost gone. There are none in the shops. I'll make the sandwiches.'

‘Jam sandwiches,' says Ian. ‘I want
jam
sandwiches.'

Once he's got an idea in his head, he doesn't let go.

Will this night never end? I'm aching with tiredness but I can't imagine dozing off while all this scary noise is going on. Ian's asleep, thank goodness. I felt him jump when the biggest explosion came, and he muttered something but he didn't wake. I'm glad, because it was very close. The house shook and the light in the hall went out.

Mum took the torch and went to see if we'd been damaged, and when she came back she said the upstairs windows have been blown in. And the electricity is off.

The cupboard door is open. Mum's stopped diving in every time one of the things comes over. She put her daytime clothes on while Ian and I were eating the sandwiches, and now she's standing in the kitchen with a tin hat on, staring through the window. She's drawn the curtains back a bit – no need to worry about the blackout, since we can't put any lights on anyway. I can see her silhouetted against the flashes of gunfire. She's knitting as she stands there, with the ball of wool in her coat pocket. She's a good knitter, she never needs to look at what her hands are doing.

She's coming over to the cupboard.

‘You awake?' she whispers.

‘Yes.'

‘You want to see what these things look like?'

I nod and start to scramble up, being careful not to disturb Ian.

‘Don't come right out, just stand at the cupboard door.'

We watch together. Among the flashes of gunfire, a purposeful streak of orange light is heading towards us with the sound we've started to get used to:
du-du-du-du-du
. Whatever the thing is, it has a tail of flame. It passes overhead, and the noise is thunderous.

It's stopped.

Mum and I dive into the cupboard and pull the door shut behind us. It's quite a long wait for the bang this time, and when it comes, it's distant, though still heavier than the sound of the guns.

‘Someone else,' says Mum. ‘Poor souls.'

No need to ask what she means. Someone else's house destroyed, someone else killed or hurt. Not us. Not this time, thank
the Lord. We never say much about it. If we got upset, it would make everything much worse.

Mum goes back to the kitchen. She's still knitting.

I wake feeling cramped and stiff. My arm's gone numb because Ian's head is resting across it. Outside, the dawn is getting paler.

Mum's opening the back door. The guns have stopped, but there's a quiet rattling sound, very close to the house. It could be dangerous. Surely she can't be going out?

She laughs. What on earth is she laughing at?

I creep out and join her.

‘What is it?'

‘Look!' she whispers.

There's a hedgehog by the doorstep. It's got its nose stuck in a golden syrup tin. Syrup's not rationed, so we get it whenever we can, and a hedgehog often comes to lick the empty tin. But this one's jammed himself in. He's blundering about with the can over his head, bumping into things.

Mum and I are falling about with laughter, hands over our mouths in case we wake Ian.

‘I heard all this clattering – I thought it was another secret weapon,' Mum says.

Gently, she pulls the tin off the hedgehog's bristles, and after a rather puzzled pause, it shuffles off round the corner to the garden.

‘Glass of milk and a biscuit?' Mum asks.

I shake my head.

‘Tired?'

‘Not really.'

I know I won't go back to sleep again, but there's nothing else to do. I crawl back in beside Ian. It's not exactly comfortable, but it's warm. And out there, everything is quiet…

I'm awake again. There are voices in the kitchen. It's Mrs Potter from next door, talking to Mum.

‘Ted says he reckons they're rockets,' she's saying. ‘Inhuman, I call it. I mean, what can you do against rockets? They don't give you a chance.'

Ian's sitting at the table, eating cornflakes. He looks pretty normal, but I feel stiff and tired and grubby. I'm still in my pyjamas and dressing gown.

‘They say there's a terrible mess up by Park Road,' Mrs Potter goes on. ‘Two people were killed.'

‘Yes, I know.' Mum gives her a tiny shake of the head, warning her not to go on about
it in front of Ian. She turns to him and asks, ‘Have you finished your breakfast?'

He nods and gets down from the table. ‘I'm going to look for shrapnel in the garden,' he says. He always used to do that after the night raids. ‘I've got twenty-three bits.'

He fishes the tin bowl out from under the sink and shows Mrs Potter his collection of jagged metal fragments. They're shell-bursts from our guns mostly, red-hot when they come down, but they're rusty now. Those ordinary raids seem quite cosy compared with the weirdness of the night that's just gone.

‘This is the best one,' Ian says, holding up the biggest chunk. ‘Look, you can see the grooves. Dad says they put those on the shells to make them twist, so they keep in a straight line.'

Dad
. A worry jumps back into my mind.

‘Did you phone Dad?' I ask Mum. ‘Is he all right?'

‘The phone lines are down,' she says.

Ian goes to the back door and opens it.

‘If you're going out, stay in the back garden,' Mum warns. ‘Don't go round
the front. And if you find anything unusual, don't touch it.'

He looks at her pityingly. ‘Of course not.' He turns at the door, suddenly doubtful. ‘There aren't any more of those things coming, are there?'

Mum and Mrs Potter glance at each other, but only for a moment.

‘No, it's all quiet just now,' Mum says. ‘But if you hear one coming, run in here, quickly.'

He nods. He stands at the door for another few moments, then he closes it and comes back to the table. ‘I think I'll stay here,' he says.

‘All right,' says Mum, not making any fuss about it. ‘Katie, I put clean clothes for you next door in the dining room. Be careful where you tread. All the upstairs windows have gone, and there's broken glass all over the place.'

The kitchen light suddenly comes on.

‘That's the electricity back,' says Mrs Potter. ‘Try the radio – there might be some news.'

Mum switches on the radio, but it's just playing music.

It seems funny, getting dressed in the dining room. I almost pull the curtains across in case Hedge is out there watching me, but it's all right, this isn't the morning when he comes. I've got my slippers on, but Mum's put my school shoes out, I suppose because of the glass. I put them on and lace them up.

In the hall, it seems lighter than usual. There's a wind blowing down from the top of the stairs. I want to see what's happened up there.

The stair carpet is crunchy under my feet because the window at the top of the stairs has blown in. There's a lot more glass on the landing, mixed with flat bits of white plaster where a patch of the ceiling has fallen down. It'll be a huge job to get it all cleared up.