The Sky is Falling (2 page)

A government leaflet was attached to the tree trunk: “If the Invader Comes”. Her eyes focused on the words, “If you run away … you will be machine-gunned from the air.” Again, Norah felt as if there were a weight on her chest.

“Whose turn is it to keep watch?” asked Harry.

“Mine,” said Norah, glad of a diversion. She squatted on the edge of the Lookout, pressing her father's old field glasses to her eyes. They were so heavy they made her arms ache, and after a few seconds she put them down and scanned the sky and landscape without them.

Below her stretched the rolling Weald, dotted with sheep and the gleaming white caps of oast houses. She could just glimpse where the land levelled off, like the edge of a table, as it dropped to Romney Marsh. Beyond that was the Channel and from across the Channel the Germans came…. West of the Lookout was the village, its
stubby church spire poking up past the rooftops. Norah could even see her own house and her brother Gavin playing with his wagon in the garden.

She stared so intently at the dazzling sky that her eyes watered. Never before had the weather been as consistently clear as in this summer of 1940. “Hitler and the rain will come together,” the grown-ups predicted.

Then, for the last month things had been falling out of the sky: stray bombs meant for the coast or the airfields; German propaganda leaflets that ended up being sold at raffles; and distant, floating parachutes like tiny puffballs. During the air battles, showers of empty cartridge cases tinkled on the roofs of Ringden; last week one had splashed into Mr. Skinner's bucket as he was milking.

Yesterday a pilot's boot had plummeted into the grass behind the Lookout: a worn, black leather boot with the imprint of a man's big toe creasing the top. They were certain it was a Nazi boot, and it now had the place of honour in their collection.

Every day this week they had seen dogfights, as the clean sky became covered with a cobweb of the tangled white contrails of fighting planes. This morning's battle had been the most exciting. The planes had come lower than usual, and they could pick out the tiny, silvery Messerschmitts circling protectively around the moth-like Dorniers. Then they had heard the growl of RAF fighters tearing in to give battle. For once they were Spitfires instead of the more familiar, humpbacked Hurricanes.
The graceful Spits had tilted and twisted, machine-gun fire had sounded faintly and the children had cheered so wildly they'd almost pushed each other off the platform.

That was when one of the German planes had dropped through the blueness. The Skywatchers had scrambled to their bicycles, but it had taken hours to find it. While they'd paused to eat their sandwiches, a passing boy had told them the plane was in a field at Mr. Coomber's farm.

There was no more activity now. The only sound was the purr of threshing machines and the raspy quarrelling of rooks. The countryside had been practically empty of cars since gas rationing, and the church bells would not ring again unless there was an invasion. Norah's eyes kept closing as she tried to concentrate on the sky. She was glad when her time was up and Harry took her place.

Behind her, the others had been reading comics and mending their bows. “We should write to Pete and Molly and tell them about the plane,” said Norah. The Kemps had been active Skywatchers until, along with several other members, they'd been evacuated to Wales. Norah missed Molly; she had been her best friend. Now she supposed Tom was, although he was sometimes bossier than she liked.

“It would be better not to tell them,” said Tom. “It'll just make them angry to know what they've missed.”

“The Smiths are being sent away, too,” Jasper said. “To Canada! My mum heard from their mum this morning.”

“Canada?” Norah sputtered. She took down the Boot and examined it again, trying not to listen.

Tom looked disgusted. “Anyone who leaves England is a coward,” he declared. “Derek and Dulcie and Lucy are so feeble, they probably
want
to go.”

Harry turned around from his post. “Mum and Dad thought Jasper and me might go to our auntie's in Devon if the bombing starts. Now they've changed their minds, because it's just as dangerous there.”

“
My
mum says that no place is safe, so her and me may as well stick it out together,” boasted Tom. “She wouldn't even
consider
sending me away. And Norah's parents wouldn't either. We're lucky!”

“I'm going to fetch some water,” said Norah abruptly, climbing down with the pail. She wove through trees heavy with ripening apples to the stream at the end of the orchard, thinking of everyone in Britain scurrying around like ants under a large, descending boot like theirs, all trying to find a safe place when there wasn't one.

She sat down by the water, took off her socks and shoes, and dangled her hot feet in the stream. She would linger here until they'd had time to finish talking about being sent away. For a few seconds the fleeting blue of a kingfisher distracted her. But she couldn't help brooding about evacuation.

Last fall her village had been considered safe. Hundreds of London children had been sent to the Ashford area, and one whole school had come to Ringden. They boarded with different families and had
their own classes in the church hall. For four months the'vaccies and the village children had waged a battle of hurled mud and words. The visitors complained about having to go all the way into Gilden to see the pictures; the village mothers objected to the bad language their children were learning. When nothing seemed to be happening in the war, the evacuees had returned to London.

But then the “phoney war” had ended and the danger had become real. When France fell and Churchill said the Battle of Britain had begun, Norah had helped pull up all the signposts in the village to confuse the enemy. “We shall fight in the field and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills,” Churchill's solemn voice chanted from the wireless.

Norah was proud that her whole family was helping to fight. In January her older sisters, Muriel and Tibby, had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service; they were stationed in Chester. “Not a nice thing for young girls, being in the forces like a man,” said nosy Mrs. Curteis next door. But Dad was proud. “My girls are as brave as any man,” he boasted. He was too old to enlist, so he joined the Home Guard. Mum spent every morning in the church hall, marking blankets and sewing hospital bags for wounded soldiers. Norah, besides performing her Skywatcher duties, had donated sixpence to the village Spitfire fund—enough to manufacture one rivet. Gavin wasn't doing anything, but he was only five—too young and silly to count.

The war was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in Norah's ten years, and this summer was the best part of it. Other summers were a pleasant, mild blur of building sandcastles on the beach near Grandad's house in Camber. But one day at the end of last August, Norah had found herself filling sandbags instead of playing.

Now there was a bright edge to everything; even the weather was exaggerated. The coldest winter in a hundred years was followed by a short spring and an early summer. As the war news grew worse and the grown-ups huddled anxiously around the wireless, day after day dawned hot and clear. At night, the sky's inky blackness was pinpointed with strangely brilliant stars, the only lights in Britain besides the searchlights that were not blacked out.

Every evening this week the news announcer had given out the “scores” of the battle in the sky as if it were a football match. Norah could hardly remember what life had been like before this war. How could anyone bear to be sent away from it? Tom was right—they were lucky that their parents were so sensible.

But then she felt afraid again, because she wasn't at all sure that
her
parents would remain sensible.

3

Little Whitebull

A
fter Norah had run back to the fort and swished out the lemonade cups, they all started home for tea. When they reached the middle of the village, Harry and Jasper gave the Skywatchers' secret signal—little finger and thumb extended like an aeroplane—and scampered down their lane. Tom and Norah put their fingers crossways under their noses and goose-stepped down the main street, singing loudly in time:

Whistle while you work!

Mussolini is a twerp!

Hitler's barmy

So's his army

Whistle while you work!

They passed the church and the stone vicarage beside it. The Smiths were probably inside, packing to go to Canada. Dulcie was in Norah's class. She was the sort of girl who fretted if she forgot her handkerchief. Lucy was a little older than Gavin and spent a lot of her time whining.

“Poor Goosey and Loosey,” mocked Norah. “I bet they'll be afraid of wolves in Canada.” Being nasty helped her calm down a bit. Then she felt sorry for them—they would be left out of the war.

She said goodbye to Tom at his mother's grocery shop and ran to her house. She was late for tea, but Mum probably wouldn't scold her.

That was part of Norah's increasing uneasiness. Her parents let her and Gavin stay up late, spoke to them in strange, gentle voices and gave them sad looks when they thought the children didn't notice. Gavin probably didn't. But every night Norah listened to Mum and Dad's worried murmur downstairs.

Norah paused at the front of her small, weather-boarded house. Its shabby exterior was brightened by the masses of zinnias and hollyhocks that flanked the door. A sign on the sagging gate said Little Whitebull in faded wooden letters. No one knew why their house was called that. It had been already named when her parents had bought it, just after Muriel was born.

The gate needed painting as well as mending, but Dad was too busy these days to do much work around the house. Norah studied the loose hinges; perhaps she could fix it and show them how useful she was. She could paint the sign again in bright red. And she would start to keep her room tidier and help with the washing up. Feeling more cheerful, she ran into the house.

“I'm home!” she shouted, clattering through the front room to the large kitchen where they spent most
of their time. “Sorry I'm late, Mum.”

Mrs. Stoakes came out of the scullery and wiped back the lank hair that always hung into her eyes. “Where have you
been,
Norah?” she asked anxiously. “You weren't anywhere near that German plane, were you? I just heard about it.”

“Not really,” mumbled Norah. Not near enough to touch it, she added to herself.

Her mother shuddered. “It was terribly close. The next thing we know, we'll have one on top of us. Sit down, sweetheart, there's sausages.”

Sweetheart?
Mum never gushed; she was usually quick tempered and brusque. Now she was like a person in disguise.

If she was going to play-act, then Norah would too. “Thanks, Mum,” she said politely. “Did you have to queue long at the butcher's?” She forced herself to eat slowly instead of wolfing down her food as usual.

Gavin was the only person who was himself. He sat at the table with his jammy bread divided into two, marching each one to collide with its twin and come apart in sticky strings. He hummed to himself with a dreamy expression, the way he always did in his private games.

Norah glanced at her mother. Surely she'd have to react to such a mess: there was jam all over the tablecloth. But all Mum said was, “Here, pet, let me wipe your hands.”

Norah sighed. Gavin usually got away with a lot, but not sloppy eating. She bent over her milky tea, her brain buzzing. Something was definitely up.

The hens in the back garden chittered indignantly as Dad pushed through the scullery door. He removed the bicycle clips from his trouser legs, kissed Mum, ruffled Gavin's hair and grinned at Norah. “What have
you
been up to today? Seen anything interesting?” His green-grey eyes, which everyone said were exactly like hers, teased her as usual.

Norah forgot to be polite. “Oh, Dad, there was a crash-landed plane—a ME 109! You could see the bullet holes and the swastika and everything!”

“I passed it on my way home—the lorry was taking it away.”

“Norah!” snapped Mum. “I thought you said you weren't close! You have to be more careful or I'll make you stay in your own garden, like the Smith girls. I really don't know what to do with you these days—the war is making you wild.”

“Now, Jane, she couldn't come to much harm looking at a plane that's out of commission,” said Dad mildly.

This was more normal. Norah relaxed and concentrated on her sausages, as Dad collapsed in his favourite chair with a groan. “Come and pull my shoes off, old man,” he said to Gavin. He had only an hour between arriving home from his bookkeeping job in Gilden and setting out for his Home Guard duties.

Gavin picked up his small worn elephant and went over to his father. “Creature will pull your shoes off—he's very strong.”

What a baby Gavin was, still playing with toy animals. Jasper was only three years older, but he was as brave as Tom. Gavin was such a namby-pamby brother. Everyone said he should have been a girl, and Norah a boy.

Dad looked up from the pages of the
Kentish Express
. “They're letting the hop-pickers come from London as usual,” he said to Mum. “It says arrangements have been made for protection in case of air raids.”

Mum opened the scullery door to cool off the steamy kitchen, which smelled pleasantly of hot fat and the clean clothes airing in front of the grate. Dad switched on the wireless and Gavin curled up in his lap. The familiar voice of Larry the Lamb filled the room.

Norah pretended to be too old for “The Children's Hour”, but she still liked hearing Dennis the Dachshund talk backwards. As she listened, she surprised her mother by first helping dry the dishes and then sitting down to struggle with her knitting. The oily grey wool, which was supposed to be turned into a “comfort” for a sailor, cut into her hands.