At the Firefly Gate (6 page)

Nine.

Nine.

Nine.

Nine.

Nine.

Twelve out and only nine back.

Your turn next.

Thirteen.

He counted them back in. Three planes went missing that night and one of them was Henry.

ELEVEN

HENRY’S HAUNT

Monday, and Henry was almost wishing he could go to school with Simon and the others. It didn’t feel like the summer holidays, not yet; not with everyone else still at school. When he’d been with Simon and the others, or with Mum and Dad, all the strangeness of dreams and coincidences seemed less important — just stray thoughts. When he was on his own, he couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Where was it all going? Where was it taking him? What was it all
for
? Sometimes he wondered if he was seriously losing his marbles — he must be, if he couldn’t even tell what was real and what wasn’t.

There was a papery clatter of post through the letterbox. Going to pick it up, expecting the usual dull stuff for Mum and Dad, Henry’s eyes went straight to a letter with his own name on it, and four Arsenal stickers. Nabil! Inside was a postcard of a brontosaurus and one of Nabil’s cartoons. He’d drawn Henry up a haystack with a snorting bull at the bottom and himself perched on the very top of the London Eye, each looking at the other through a telescope. Nabil was good at cartoons. ‘The dinosaur’s from the Natural History Museum,’ he had written on the back of the postcard. ‘Dad’s taking us there when you come — we thought it’d be nice for you to meet some relations. Hurry up and get your email sorted out!’

Henry felt cheered up by that, less anxious about being in the house by himself, even if Nabil was miles and miles away. Officially, Pat was in charge of him till Mum and Dad came home, but Mum had asked him to sort out his old toys and games and given him a list of things to get from the shop. He spent an hour or two rummaging through the things he’d stuffed into a cupboard until it was time to go out.

His crossing of the green was carefully timed to coincide with playtime at school. Just as he’d hoped, Simon and some other Year Six boys were in the playground, leaning against the wall, as it was still too hot for football.

‘Hey, Simon!’ Henry yelled, and Simon came over, followed by Neil, Jonathan and Elissa.

‘Aren’t you bored, hanging round at home?’ Neil asked.

Henry shrugged, not liking to be the centre of attention. ‘S’all right. But I’d rather be here with you lot.’

‘Can’t you come in with us after play?’ Elissa suggested. She had her long hair in two plaits today. Jonathan waggled the end of one and said, ‘Don’t be daft, Liss.’

‘You could, though, on Wednesday!’ Simon gave his big Rusty Dobbs grin. ‘Miss Murphy always goes on a course, Wednesdays.’

‘Mrs Mobbs takes us, she’s a supply teacher. She can never remember all our names,’ Elissa joined in.

‘And Tim’s away this week, so there’s an empty place next to me,’ Simon finished.

Henry thought about it, liking the idea. ‘But how can I? I won’t have any books or anything, will I?’

‘No prob,’ Simon said, with the air of someone who had everything sorted. ‘We don’t work in books any more. We’re doing stuff on paper, for a special folder that goes to our new school.’

‘And we’re not really doing proper work now, anyway,’ Elissa added. ‘Only quizzes and team games and things, cos it’s nearly end of term.’

‘Well, I think you’re all off your trolley.’ Jonathan put a finger to the side of his head in a
screwy
gesture. ‘Trying to smuggle someone into school! If I had an extra week’s holiday, I wouldn’t be moaning about it.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Henry began, but all the others were so pleased with the plan that they began saying, ‘Henry the Stowaway!’ and looking round for other people to let in on the secret.

‘And, Henry,’ Elissa pleaded, her small face earnest, ‘will you be in our relay team on Saturday? Simon, Neil and me?’

‘What’s Saturday?’

‘It’s the village fête and sports,’ Simon told him. ‘Everyone’ll be there. There’s all sorts of stalls and games and competitions — it’s great!’

By the time the bell went for the end of break, Henry had agreed not only to smuggle himself into school but also to join the relay team on Saturday and have a go at Wellie Whanging. He felt much more cheerful as he walked home.

Later, when he’d finished sorting and went round to Pat’s, Dottie was out in the garden. Although she looked pale and tired, she was sitting in her chair as usual, knitting. Her twiggy fingers moved without stopping, pushing the wool forward, dipping a needle to catch the new stitch, passing it on. On the garden table, the Scrabble board was set out, in the middle of a game. Pat had gone in to answer a phone call.

‘Well, Henry love, and how you keeping?’ Dottie asked.

‘OK, thanks.’ He knew he ought to ask how she was, but couldn’t. Her illness and oldness frightened him, as if she hovered on the edge of something he couldn’t understand. ‘It’s the village fête on Saturday,’ he told her, for something to say. There were questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t come straight out with them. ‘Will you go?’

‘Ooh yes! Wouldn’t miss it for anything.’ Dottie yanked at her wool, which had got hooked round the chair leg. ‘I do like a nice fête!’

‘I’m going to run in the relay,’ Henry told her.

‘Good! I’ll be there to cheer you on,’ Dottie said. ‘Long as you don’t expect me to run in the grown-ups’ race!’

Henry laughed. She gave him one of her straight looks and said, ‘You won’t believe it, but I used to be a fast runner, in my day. I could run faster than any of the boys in my class.’

‘Like Grace,’ Henry said. Simon had told him that she’d been the fastest runner in the school when she was in Year Six.

‘Well, I was quite like Grace when I was her age,’ Dottie agreed. ‘She reminds me of me.’

Henry was shocked into silence. How could that be true? Grace was horrible, and Dottie was Dottie — he couldn’t see any likeness.

‘You’ve got to admire her spirit, haven’t you?’ Dottie went on. ‘If she wants to do something, you can bet she’ll do it.’

Henry sat down on the grass and picked at a daisy stem. An unpleasant feeling fizzed in his chest.
You’ve got to admire her spirit.
Grace’s spirit? All Henry could think of was Grace’s mouth and the mean things that came out of it. It wasn’t fair that Dottie should say such nice things about her! He’d never heard Grace say a kind word about Dottie. Not once.

Dottie looked at him, and said softly, ‘You want to stand up to her a bit more. Give her as good as she hands out.’

‘She calls me names,’ Henry grumped. ‘Strawberry Pip and Squidge.’

‘I used to be called Pipsqueak at school,’ Dottie said, ‘because I was so small. That’s not to say people didn’t like me. I think most of them
did
like me. What d’you reckon?’

Henry didn’t answer. He couldn’t imagine anyone not liking Dottie; but she’d got it completely wrong if she was trying to say that Grace liked
him.
She’d called him a little kid, hadn’t she? Hadn’t wanted him to tag along at the Air Display. How could she make it any more obvious?

‘Grace is all right,’ Dottie said; ‘just going through a spiky stage. Now look at this.’ She waved her knitting towards the Scrabble board. ‘I’m on a winning streak here. All my letters out in one go — that’s fifty extra points!’

Henry looked at the tiles that spelled out THIRTEEN along the bottom of the board.

‘I had “THIRTEE” sitting on my rack and then Pat went and put down that “N” in just the right place where I could use it. And it’s a triple word score,’ Dottie said proudly. ‘Thirty-six for the word and then the extra fifty — that’s eighty-six. Best score I’ve ever got!’

‘That’s brilliant!’ Henry said, kneeling up to look at the score-sheet.

‘Don’t you go jogging the board now, spoiling it,’ Dottie warned. ‘I’ve never managed that before.’

Henry sat down again. He wanted to ask Dottie whether she’d heard the aircraft noise in the night. Stupid question, because how could she have heard twelve flying Lancasters? Instead, he said, ‘You know the other day? You started telling us about meeting someone called Henry when you came to live here?’

Dottie’s fingers carried on knitting and she looked at the Scrabble board without showing any sign of having heard. Then she said, ‘Didn’t I finish telling you? Thought I had. Yes, Henry the Navigator. That’s what I called him.’

‘Why?’ Henry remembered maps of the world he’d seen on the wall of his old classroom, with arrows across the seas showing voyage routes. ‘Was he an explorer?’

‘No, love,’ Dottie said. ‘Not like you mean, anyway, though I suppose he was in a way. He was in the RAF. He flew in them Lancasters.’

‘Oh, like Simon’s grandad — great-grandad! Was he at Lakenfield?’

‘No,’ Dottie said. ‘He was based at this other airfield near here. Risingheath, it was called. It’s all derelict now.’

Coldness fluttered down Henry’s spine. ‘Was he a pilot?’

‘No, love.’ Dottie shook out her skein so that a length of green wool unravelled itself. ‘He was a navigator. Henry the Navigator. He was the one that worked out the maps and the wind and the speed and suchlike and told the pilot where to fly.’

Of course. Simon had told him about the different jobs people did, seven crew to every Lancaster. Henry was Henry the Navigator. Henry’s brain was working rapidly — like puzzling away at something in maths when the beginning of the answer dangled itself in his mind and he had to cling tightly to the thread of thought, because if he let go, it would slip away and be gone.

‘Did everyone here have something to do with the war?’ he asked.

Dottie nodded. ‘Felt like that, sometimes! The pub was full of RAF folk every night — there was people billeted in the village. It went on for nearly six years, you know, got to be a way of life. Even farming was war work, then. Told you I worked in an aircraft factory, didn’t I? Girls and women did all sorts of jobs, it wasn’t just the men. Girls did driving, engineering, aircraft maintenance, things we hadn’t dreamed of doing before. Course there was the army and the navy as well, but up here in Suffolk it was all flying. Handy for the coast, you see. It’s just across the North Sea to Germany.’

‘To drop bombs?’

‘That’s right. Awful, it was. People over there getting bombed, same as we was in the Blitz, and our young lads being sent off to drop bombs over their side. You’re lucky,’ Dottie said. ‘You won’t have to live through anything like that, fingers crossed.’

‘He must have been brave,’ Henry said, in a small voice.

‘Brave?’ Dottie tilted her head on one side, considering. ‘Yes, he was. And you know what was so brave? It was because he was scared to death every time he climbed into that plane. He never told me, but I knew.’

‘But how could he be both?’ Henry couldn’t help asking. ‘Brave
and
scared?’

‘Well, who in their right mind wouldn’t be scared? Knowing the odds?’ Dottie said, a touch sharply. ‘You wouldn’t
need
to be brave if you didn’t see the dangers, would you?’ Then she gave him a sideways look and said, ‘Odd thing is, you remind me of him. Reminded me soon as I saw you. And not just being called Henry. Same dark hair, same brown eyes. Same cheeky smile.’

Henry couldn’t get his head round that. Henry the Navigator was a grown-up man, an RAF man in uniform, a man who could find the way to Germany and back in the dark in a Lancaster bomber. How could Dottie see Henry in him?

‘Was he the one you were going to marry?’ he asked. He glanced at the kitchen door, hoping Pat wouldn’t come out. Not till Dottie had finished telling him.

‘Yes, love, he was.’ Dottie stopped knitting for a moment and looked over the garden fence towards the orchard. ‘Met him over at Risingheath. I used to help out in the NAAFI van at the airfield.’

‘Naffy van?’ Henry repeated.

‘Yes, that’s right — sort of mobile canteen. It stood for . . . now, what was it? . . . Navy, Army, Air Force, Something-or-other . . . First clapped eyes on Henry when I served him a mug of tea and a doughnut.’

‘It cost tuppence,’ Henry said. The words were out of his mouth before he knew he was going to say them.

‘Well, and how would you know that?’ Dottie said, staring.

‘I — I just guessed.’ He could have said: and Henry dropped his change in the grass and had to grovel about to find it.
I was there!

‘Two old pence, it would have been,’ Dottie said. ‘That’s — what? A bit less than a penny now. Anyway, that’s how we met. He kept coming to the NAAFI van. I liked him but I was too shy to tell him. Then we met again at a dance. He came over and asked me to dance and from then on I never wanted to dance with anyone else. He was only a boy really, not much older than me. And then, when we got to know each other, he used to come over to the village to meet me, when he had nights off flying. It was a long, hot summer, just like this one. We’d go walking together in the woods and down by the stream. Courting, we called it then. Sounds so old-fashioned, doesn’t it?’

Henry unravelled a creeping buttercup that had flattened itself among the grasses. A dizzy feeling came over him as he thought of his dream. ‘What happened to him? Why didn’t you get married after all?’

‘He never came back,’ Dottie said. ‘He’d flown twelve times, him and his crew. Twelve times over the North Sea or right over Germany, with the anti-aircraft guns and the fighters. Each time, he was so relieved to get back safely, but he knew he’d got to do it all over again and again and again. Once you’d done thirty, you’d be stood down for a rest. Well, they’d done twelve and they was getting themselves a bit worked up about Unlucky Thirteen. Nineteen forty-three, this was. Come to think of it, it was just this time — middle of July. Well, Henry always said he wasn’t superstitious, but you couldn’t blame him, could you? Knowing what the odds were. “If I get back from this one,” he said, “we’ll go into Ipswich and get you an engagement ring”. And I said, “
When,
you mean, not
if
”. And he just shook his head. He’d been trying to look cheerful, but all of a sudden this look came over his face and I could tell.’

‘Tell what?’

Dottie looked across at the orchard again. ‘All of a sudden he knew. He knew he wasn’t coming back.’

‘What happened to him?’ Henry asked.

‘I never found out,’ Dottie said bleakly. ‘No one ever knew. They just flew off that night, the seven of them in that Lanc, and never came back. I watched them go from my bedroom window in the Rectory. Lancs taking off, climbing, one after the other. And I listened for them coming back over, in the early hours. I’d counted them out and I counted them back in. Three planes went missing that night and one of them was Henry and his crew. No one knew what happened. No one saw anything. No radio message.’