At the Firefly Gate (3 page)

FIVE

PUDDING

Henry wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, not even to Nabil, but he was scared of girls.

Not
all
girls. Some — like Zubaida and Winifred and Antonina, in his class at Strawberry Hill — were OK. But there was a particular kind of girl he had learned to fear. Older girls. Loud girls. Girls who huddled together in scornful, cackling groups. Girls like Grace. Not that he’d actually seen Grace doing any of that, not yet, but her sulky voice and snooty expression warned him that she could huddle and cackle with the worst of them.

Back in London there had been four Year Eight girls who always stood in the door of the video shop when he was on his way home from school. It was bad enough when he was with Nabil; worse every Wednesday, when Nabil went to his auntie’s and Henry had to go home on his own.

‘Oh, isn’t he
cute
!’ they’d call out, loudly enough for everyone in the street to hear.

‘Look at his sweet little face! Ickle Henrykins!’

‘Are you a trial size? A free sample?’

‘Watch out, Henrykins. Leanne gobbles up little boys for breakfast.’

‘Yeah, and big boys for dinner!’ Titter, giggle, shove.

‘Hey, I bet —’ And they would go into one of their whispering huddles, emerging from it with whoops and cackles that made Henry go scarlet as he scuttled past. That only provoked more taunts.

‘Ah, look, we’ve embarrassed him!’

‘Look at his little face! Matches his sweatshirt!’

‘Sssssss!’

‘Hurry home to Mummy — infants like you shouldn’t be out on your own!’

When Henry had tried to tell Dad about it, he couldn’t make it sound nearly as bad as it felt. ‘Answer them back!’ Dad advised. ‘Don’t let them get to you. Anyway, you won’t always be small. When I was a year or two older than you, I suddenly shot up about a foot, in a matter of weeks. They’ll soon drop it and start on someone else.’

‘Good things come in small packages,’ Mum would say, ruffling his hair.

Back in their London flat, there were pencil-marks on his bedroom wall to show his height, each line with a date written neatly beside. Although the marks were creeping up the wall, it wasn’t nearly fast enough to keep up with the rest of Year Six. Nabil, for instance, seemed to grow two or three centimetres for every one of Henry’s. Mum and Dad were always assuring him that he’d catch up eventually, but
eventually
seemed to be a long time coming.

Now, unwillingly, Henry trudged behind Grace to Number One. At the front gate she paused, and told him, in her throwaway manner, ‘You can talk to dotty Aunt Dottie in the garden, Midget. I’ve got things to do.’

‘She didn’t seem dotty.’ Henry thought of the old lady’s bright eyes and her friendliness. ‘Not to me.’

Grace shrugged. ‘Well, ill, then. I mean,
really
ill. That’s why she looks so incredibly old. I bet you thought she was a hundred, didn’t you? Well, she’s not.’

She pushed open the front gate. Pat was there at the door, smiling and cheerful in a bright yellow T-shirt with a blue whale on the front. ‘Come on through. We’re just having some tea.’

They went through the kitchen to the garden. A table and chairs were set out there, and washing on a spinner. The old lady was sitting in her padded chair, just like yesterday, having a cup of tea and a game of Scrabble with Pat. She smiled at Henry and said, ‘Henry. It’s Henry,’ as if she liked saying his name; as if he were the person she had most been hoping to see. Henry looked at her, thinking of what Grace had just said. Dottie couldn’t be
that
ill, could she? Or she’d be indoors, in bed.

Pat brought Coke and cake for Henry and refilled Dottie’s tea-cup. Dottie took a piece of cake too — a big piece — and said to Henry, ‘How’s things? Getting yourselves straight along there?’

Wondering how long he ought to stay, he took a gulp of Coke, too quickly; the bubbles fizzed up his nose, making him sneeze.

‘Bless you!’ said Dottie, and laughed. Henry’s wariness vanished as he looked at her, before another sneeze exploded out of him. She had an amazing laugh, rippling up from somewhere deep inside her, and she grinned at him as if she knew exactly what it was like to have Coke bubbles up her nose.

‘You going to play on the computer?’ Pat said to Grace. ‘Henry might like to join you.’

Grace shook her head. She stuffed cake into her mouth until her cheeks bulged like a hamster’s, then sprawled on the grass, facing away from everyone, to read a magazine.

Remembering the cat, Henry told Pat and Dottie about it. ‘It’s not yours, is it?’

Pat shook her head. ‘No, we haven’t got a cat — John’s allergic to their fur. But from what you say, it sounds like Pudding, though it’s hard to believe after so long.’

‘Pudding?’ Henry echoed. The cat at home seemed far too dignified to be called Pudding.

‘Pudding belonged to the old man who lived in your house — Mr Jessop,’ Pat said. ‘Over a year ago he moved out, to a nursing home, and the house was empty from then till it was put up for sale and your Mum and Dad bought it. His son and daughter-in-law were going to take the cat because the nursing home had a No Pets rule. But he was nowhere to be found. They searched and searched, put notices up in the shop and on lamp-posts, but not a sign of Pudding. Seemed he’d wandered off.’

‘Cats sense things,’ said Dottie. ‘Sounds like he knew things was about to change, so he made his own arrangements. That’s cats for you. Independent.’

Pat nodded. ‘I’ve got Jim Jessop’s phone number indoors somewhere — that’s Mr Jessop’s son. He’ll be pleased to know Pudding’s turned up, if it
is
Pudding. White whiskers, you said? Two white paws? Must be. After all this time — well, I never!’

Henry was disappointed, thinking of the cat sitting smugly on his bed, as if they’d come to an agreement to share the room. He didn’t want Jim Jessop to come and take the cat away. He wanted it for his own.

Dottie looked at him. ‘Sounds like Pudding wants to move in with you!’

‘I remember hearing old Mr Jessop calling him in, last thing at night,’ Pat said. ‘ “
Puss
—
Puss
—
Pudding!
” he’d call, like that. Nine o’clock on the dot, he’d open the back door — you could set your watch by him. Nine o’clock, on the dot, “
Puss
—
Puss
—
Pudding!
” ’

Grace made a
phuh
sound — somewhere between a scornful laugh and a snort of disgust — and got abruptly to her feet. She went indoors, leaving her magazine on the grass.

‘You can go in too if you like,’ Pat told Henry. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be long before she was on the Internet. It’s John’s computer really, but we’ve had to put it in Grace’s room, up in the attic — there’s no space for it otherwise. She spends more time on it than he does. Go on up. She won’t mind.’

Henry shook his head. Grace
would
mind; it was obvious. If she’d been nicer, he might have asked if he could email Nabil; the computer at home wouldn’t be connected to the Internet till a phone engineer came to put in a new socket. But Grace could hardly have signalled more clearly that she didn’t want to be bothered with him.

He felt awkward and in the way. Was it too soon to go home or would that look rude? But Grace was far ruder and no one seemed to notice. He glanced at the magazine she’d left on the grass, expecting something girly about clothes and pop groups and make-up. Instead, to his surprise, it was
Fighter Pilot,
with a picture of a Eurofighter on the front. He wouldn’t have minded borrowing that himself.

‘That’s what Gracie wants to be when she grows up.’ Dottie saw him looking at it.

‘What?’

‘A fighter pilot,’ said Pat. ‘Funny, she’s had that idea in her head since she was about five. I wonder if she’ll end up too tall, though, if she takes after her Dad.’

‘But —’

‘Girls can be fighter pilots, you know,’ Dottie told him, with a touch of sternness. She seemed as good as Mum at guessing what he was thinking. And what Henry was thinking now was that Grace was the oddest girl he’d ever met.

‘In her dreams,’ he felt like saying; but Dottie picked up that thought, too.

‘We all have our dreams, don’t we?’ she said. ‘Even at my age.’ She laughed her infectious laugh that reminded Henry of someone else, and tapped the side of her head. ‘You wouldn’t believe what silly old nonsense goes on in here!’

SIX

STRAWBERRY

To Henry’s disappointment, Pudding — or the cat that resembled Pudding — was nowhere to be seen when he went back home, and did not return for the rest of the evening.

‘Early to bed for you,’ Mum told him, soon after the dishes had been cleared away from supper. Having spent all day shelving and sorting, she was now back into Work Routine, which meant that everything had to be organised and ready by bedtime: three packed lunches in Tupperware containers in the fridge, everyone’s shoes shined, her briefcase by the front door, ironed shirts on hangers and Henry’s rucksack packed with everything he might need during the day, from sharpened pencils to clean PE kit. No wonder Dad called her his Personal Organiser.

In the morning it had turned cool. Henry put on his Strawberry Hill sweatshirt over a plain white T-shirt, planning to take it off as soon as he could. Mum had to leave at 7:15 for her train and it was Dad who walked with Henry to the primary school. Henry felt himself shrinking beside Dad, growing even smaller as they approached the railings. They were so early that there was no one in the playground.

‘You’ll have a good day,’ Dad told him. ‘Don’t worry — just be yourself! People are sure to like you.’

But why should they?
Henry wondered.
They’ll all have their own friends already. They won’t want to bother with me.

‘Ah, yes. Henry Stirling? Miss Murphy’s expecting you,’ said a secretary in the tiny office inside. She checked his name against a list. ‘She’s in the classroom on the left.’

Miss Murphy was standing on a desk, pinning paintings to the wall. She was younger than Henry had expected, and wore smart black trousers, a striped T-shirt and trainers. Her auburn hair was cut very short; she had a small pointy face and an easy smile. Henry felt better as they all introduced themselves.

Dad stayed chatting for a few moments, while Henry looked around the room. The back wall was a mosaic of artwork — collages, prints, drawings and paintings. There was a coloured drawing of a frog that Henry thought particularly good; looking closely, he read the pencilled name
Simon Dobbs.

People started to come into the room — excited, jostling, looking curiously at Dad and at Henry. They all wore dark-green sweatshirts with an oak leaf emblem. Among them Henry recognised the grinning boy and the ginger-headed one he’d seen playing football in the playground. Dad said his goodbyes and left. Before Henry had time to feel like an abandoned infant, Miss Murphy clapped her hands and told them it was time to go out to the coach.

‘We’ll be sitting in the front seats,’ she told them, ‘so don’t go diving for the back. Henry’s joining us today — he’s just moved to the village and he’ll be starting Year Seven at Hartsfield High just like the rest of you, so I hope you’ll help him feel at home. Henry, you can sit next to Simon on the coach. Simon, come and say hello.’

‘Hi, Henry.’ Henry looked into the friendly, freckled face of the ginger-haired boy. How had he guessed that this must be Simon?

‘The boy Simon usually sits with — Tim — will be going to Stowmarket next year, not Hartsfield,’ Miss Murphy explained, ‘so Simon’s without a partner.’

‘Great frog,’ Henry said, gesturing towards the wall. To his surprise, Simon’s face went red, and he mumbled, ‘Thanks. What team d’you support?’

‘Chelsea,’ Henry told him, adding, as Simon obviously wanted to be asked, ‘You?’

‘Norwich. The Canaries. Where d’you live, then?’

‘Just off the green. Three, Church Cottages.’

Simon nodded. ‘Near Grace.’

‘Do you know her?’

‘Everyone knows Grace,’ Simon said, grinning.

As they followed Miss Murphy out into the playground and on to the street, Henry had the odd feeling that he’d talked to Simon before. Puzzling, he fell silent. Next moment he had a nasty surprise — there was Grace, waiting for the coach with a group of others in the grey uniform of Hartsfield High.

‘Midget!’ she called out. ‘What’s that you’re wearing?’ She nodded towards Henry’s scarlet sweatshirt.

His cheeks burned; he’d forgotten to take it off. ‘It’s my uniform. From my old school.’ Everyone had worn red sweatshirts at his old school, so no one thought there was anything hilariously funny about them. But he didn’t want to stand out like an enormous over-ripe strawberry, not on his first day.

Grace giggled. ‘OK if you don’t mind looking like a great squidgy dollop of strawberry jam. Or a walking advert for Pick-Your-Own.’

‘So what?’ Simon said. ‘Better than grungey grey, isn’t it?’

Grace’s chin jutted. ‘Who asked you, Gingernut?’

‘Who asked you, Stringbean?’

‘Now, now,’ said Miss Murphy. ‘We’ll have none of that on the bus, thank you very much.’

The coach pulled up and she made the older pupils stand back to let the Year Sixes on first. In London, coaches had only been for special outings; it would feel odd to travel to school in one every day. Seated next to Simon, Henry was about to pull his sweatshirt over his head, when he realised that Grace would know he’d minded what she said. He decided to keep it on.

Hartsfield High, twenty minutes away, looked enormous. With its drive, vast playing fields and a bewildering number of buildings, it looked to Henry like a small town. Here, the Year Sixes were told to stay in their seats while the older children got off the coach first; and as Grace passed Henry, she hissed
‘Strawberry Pip!’
in his ear.

Fortunately, he didn’t see her for the rest of the day — apart from glimpsing her once across the big canteen at lunchtime. The group from Crickford St. Thomas were to be divided among six different form groups, joining children from various other primary schools, but Henry was relieved to find that he and Simon were together, in 7JM.

First, there was an assembly with the Head Teacher; next, a tour of the whole school and a sort of treasure hunt with clues to follow; then sessions with various subject teachers, finishing with a team construction game to see who could build the strongest bridge out of cardboard.

It felt like being in a small, vulnerable flock — shepherded from place to place, not allowed to stray, while older pupils looked at them with mild interest. What would it be like when they had to manage on their own? Some of the teenagers he saw around the place were huge — twice Henry’s size at least. As for the sixth-formers: some of them were so grown-up, and some of the teachers so young, that it was hard to tell the difference, especially as the sixth form didn’t wear uniform.

As they were led from the Main Hall to the Science Block, they passed a big gang of teenagers clustered around one of the mobile classrooms. ‘Year Tens,’ said Simon, who had an older cousin at the school. One of the girls went, ‘Aaah — sweet little things!’ to her friend, looking mainly at Henry, with a soppy smile on her face. It reminded him uncomfortably of Leanne and her group. He was doomed to be Cute Little Henrykins wherever he went! His only hope was to hide himself in a cluster of others — or to put on a growing spurt over the summer holidays.

The day seemed to go on for ever. On the coach home, everyone was talking at once about which form tutor they had and which sessions they’d enjoyed or found confusing. By now Henry knew quite a few names — there was Jonathan and Neil and Andrew and Elissa, whose hair was in a single plait right down to her bottom, and Jenny, who had a brace on her teeth. He’d taken off his Strawberry Hill sweater at morning break and stuffed it in his rucksack, so there were no more remarks about it from Grace, but she waited for him when everyone piled off the coach outside the village school.

‘You’re coming home with me,’ she told him. ‘Mum said.’

‘Same time tomorrow, everyone!’ Miss Murphy reminded Year Six. ‘And remember you’ll need PE kit.’

‘See you tomorrow, Henry!’ Simon called, and ran off towards a car waiting for him across the green — he lived in a different village.

Following Grace, Henry noticed the
Fighter Pilot
magazine poking out from under the flap of her rucksack. Abruptly, she stopped and turned to face him. ‘Yeah? What you looking at?’

‘Your magazine.’ Henry wondered if she might let him borrow it when she’d finished.

‘What about it?’

‘Dottie told me about — about you wanting to be a pilot.’

She began to walk on. ‘You can’t believe everything Dottie tells you.’ She looked at him defiantly. ‘Only this time you can. Go on, say it!
Girls can’t be pilots.
Well, they can, and I’m going to be one. I’m going to be in the RAF. When you see Tornados doing low-level flying stunts and zooming off to wars, that’ll be me.’

‘There might not be any wars,’ Henry pointed out.

‘Course there will! There’s always a war on somewhere. If there isn’t, somebody’ll start one. That’s just the way it is.’

‘But why do you —’

‘It’s the Air Display on Saturday. Dad says I can go in the flight simulator,’ Grace said importantly. ‘I bet you’d like to go, wouldn’t you, Strawberry Jam?’

‘What Air Display?’ Henry had never been to one. It sounded exciting, and just for a second he thought Grace was inviting him.

‘Lakenfield,’ she told him. ‘Haven’t you seen the posters? Must’ve been walking round with your eyes shut. Or are you too close to the ground to notice them? Me and Dad’s going, just the two of us. Mum would have gone, but now there’s Aunt Dottie.’ She kicked at a stone.

‘I like Aunt Dottie,’ Henry said.

‘Yeah, well. You know what?’ She looked at Henry and smiled pleasantly. ‘She’s going to die. Only don’t tell Mum I told you, right?’

Henry was too shocked to reply. Grace whistled a tune as she pushed open the gate to Number One.

Just as before, Pat and Dottie were in the back garden, with the Scrabble board on a low table.

‘Hello, you two. Had a good day?’ Pat asked, as if they were the best of friends.

‘Yes, thanks,’ Henry said, while Grace just shrugged.

‘What was it like, then — did you feel like a very small fish in a very big pond?’ Dottie asked. ‘I remember what
that
feels like. Course, I never did get very big. Not like you will. They used to call me Pipsqueak when I was at school.’

‘Mm,’ was all Henry could say. He
had
felt like a little fish, trying to keep to the shallows, to avoid being gobbled up. But after what Grace had said, he could only look at Dottie with a sort of fascinated horror, as if she might go transparent, then slowly fade away altogether. Grace must have made it up! People who were about to die didn’t sit in gardens playing Scrabble, looking perfectly cheerful. Reproachfully, he looked round at Grace, but she’d already gone indoors.

‘Now, where were we?’ Pat said, looking at the Scrabble board. ‘Or p’raps we should start again and Henry can play?’

‘Oh! Just seen something!’ With thin hands, Dottie picked the ivory-coloured tiles off the rack in front of her, leaving only one behind. With an air of triumph, she placed them on the board so that her word finished with a Y that was already there. ‘Good one!’ She smiled mischievously. ‘Look, Pat. That’s 4-5-6-7-11-12-16 — and a double word score as well. 32 altogether! Not bad, eh?’

Henry knew the rules of Scrabble; they played it sometimes at Nan and Grandad’s, at Christmas. Moving closer to look at the word Dottie had made, he read FIREFLY.

He stared, remembering the dancing specks of light by the orchard gate.

‘I saw some of those,’ he said. ‘Fireflies. The other night.’

Dottie turned stiffly in her seat to look at him. Her blue eyes were round and surprised. ‘Did you really? I used to see them, years and years ago, when I first lived here. But I haven’t seen them for ages now. Glowworms, they are, really. You don’t get real fireflies, not in this country.’

Henry noticed that she was looking past him, towards the orchard, towards the gate.
She knows,
he thought.
I didn’t say anything about
where
I saw them. She’s looking at the exact place.
And he felt the prickling of goose-bumps at the back of his neck.

That man — Henry knew by now that he didn’t live in the row of cottages. The people in Number Two were away on holiday, and Number Four belonged to an elderly couple. Perhaps it had been Jim Jessop, looking for his father’s cat? But no, the smoking man hadn’t been calling; and no one would come in search of a lost cat a whole year after it went missing. He was on the point of asking Dottie if she’d seen the man lurking, when she beckoned him to move the spare chair closer to hers. ‘Come on, come and give me a hand. You’ll be good at this, I bet,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to start again, now I’m doing so well.’

‘That puts you in the lead,’ Pat said, writing down the new score. ‘Take your letters, Dottie.’ She held out the bag of tiles and Dottie dipped in and picked out six, to go with the one she had left. Henry looked as she moved the seven letters around, forming bits of possible words.

‘I can see one!’

‘Go on, then. Show me,’ Dottie said.

Henry slid three spare tiles to one end, out of the way, and rearranged the others to spell GATE.

Dottie nodded. ‘That’s good, Henry! We’d get an even better score with this, though.’
We.
They were a team now, Dottie and Henry. She picked up two more tiles, and moved them to spell GRATES.

But somehow the letters wanted to spell GATE. Dottie accidentally jolted the rack with her hand, and the R and the S fell off, landing on their faces on the white plastic table and skittering on to the lawn underneath. ‘Oh, dear,’ said Dottie. ‘What a clumsy ha’porth! All fingers and thumbs, I am!’

Where had he heard that before? Something flitted into his mind, almost letting itself be caught before darting out of reach. Henry got down on his hands and knees to pick up the spilled letters, coming face to face with the word that remained: GATE.

Dottie moved the tiles one at a time to the board. ‘Firefly. Gate,’ she said. Then she rummaged around in the bag of tiles. ‘What’s coming out next, I wonder?’

She looked at Henry. He felt that they shared a secret, if only he knew what it was. When she picked out her new letters and turned the rack to show him, they spelled ESMIROP, nothing that made any sense at all.