‘Look out!’ Kit shouted, as someone tumbled over the top of the mound and landed with a bump at Connie’s feet.
Bert pulled the straw from the collar of his blue cotton shirt and ruffled his light brown curls to get rid of the bits. Connie ducked her head to hide her amusement.
‘See any nets on yer way down?’ chuckled Uncle Geoff.
Bert straightened up and brushed dust from his bare shins. ‘Yes, Sir,’ he said, with a wink.
Uncle Geoff took off his hat to reveal a kindly smile on a face crazed by the sun. Stretching out a browned arm to reach a collection of nets, he unlooped a length of rope and lowered two small pails. ‘Yer set,’ he said, ‘Apart from one thing. I’ll get some spare Mickey Mouse masks they’re all I ‘ave I’m afraid.’ He disappeared and returned a few moments later with two small cardboard boxes. ‘Want ‘em back mind, they belong to the school.’ The man retrieved a sturdy black bicycle from the shadows. ‘So many comings and goings,’ he sighed, and put on his hat.
‘Follow me!’ called Bert.
Charlie-Mouse gave Connie a lasting look, then ran after Bert at speed through a scattering of geese and ducks, with a sleek black Labrador in tow.
‘Let them go,’ laughed Kit.
It was far too sticky to follow at any other pace than slow. Kit opened the gate and they started to brush through the grasses in the direction of the stream. Warm summer scents swirled through Connie's throat as she wheeled through the turning stalks. Insects jumped, spiders scurried, flies hovered and invisible grasshoppers gently ground their back legs. The sun powered onto her forearms and pulsed her mind with questions she wanted to ask.
‘I think I saw you in school,’ she said.
‘Are you joining us?’ Kit said. ‘How lovely to hear it. I’ll introduce you.’
They crossed a dusty boundary, emerging on shorter, greener meadowgrass. Connie spoke again. ‘Do you think you’ll be staying at Claybridge for long?’
‘Gosh, we don’t know,’ Kit replied. ‘It depends how the war is going. We’ve been told to expect more bombing they hit Norwich last week and that’s the frightening thing. Some of the evacuees come from the centre of Norwich. Teddy Bacon’s grandpa is lying seriously injured in hospital. Teddy’s so worried he keeps crying in class. It makes us even more nervous.’
‘It’s hard to be away from home.’
‘So very hard. We miss our parents terribly. Mummy writes every week and we write back. We write to Daddy too. But he can’t always reply. But he’s fine because we heard last week,’ she said, taking charge of Connie’s handles. ‘Are your parents far from here?’
‘Oh . . . I really don’t know.’
‘Oh you poor thing – in the services are they? It’s so difficult.’
‘It’s OK,’ Connie replied, knowing she owed Kit a more truthful explanation.
‘We have to keep on being brave don’t we, like our parents and everyone else in this war. Daddy said he thought it would take a few years to reach peace. Mummy said it wouldn’t be as long. It’s good we have Auntie Evie and Uncle Geoff to look after us, but I do miss my normal life and I do so want to go home . . .’ She drew a long breath and closed her eyes. ‘One day soon, for all our sakes,’ she murmured, leaving her special dream floating in the air.
Kit’s dream drifted into Connie’s consciousness, filling her heart with fear. For she too wanted to go home, and it scared her she didn’t know when that might be. Pressing on, she summoned her resolve from somewhere deep inside, pulling new strength from the beauty around her. She curled to stroke the drying flower of a bee orchid peeping at her through the sweeping of grass. Quietly above, a formation of planes drew parallel lines across the vivid blue.
Now she heard Charlie-Mouse’s laughter and the sound of stones landing in water. A more sudden bark and a sharp crack from behind jumped her head towards the house. Several vehicles turned their wheels along the driveway.
‘Oh, it’s a meeting, I think. They come and go quite often now,’ explained Kit. ‘I don’t know who they are, and I don’t think Auntie Evie truly knows either. If so, she doesn’t say.’
Summer 1940
Chapter Nine Secrets abound
‘Oh fish, where are you?’ Bert sang out, dragging Connie’s attention from the driveway.
The boys braced the grassy bank looking into the sparkling water, and by the depth of it she knew the weather had been dry for a time.
Bert stripped off his shirt and jumped in. He stood motionless as his rough splashes turned to ripples and smoothed into the flow. He beckoned to Charlie-Mouse. ‘Come in quietly and we’ll catch them by surprise,’ he said.
Charlie-Mouse stretched his legs into the water. Connie saw by his grimace the cold bit cruelly into the backs of his knees.
‘There!’ Kit pointed. ‘Sticklebacks, and they’re coming your way.’
‘They’ll do,’ said Bert, poising his net.
Out of nowhere, the black Labrador nudged past her, leaping carelessly into the stream.
‘Hey!’ Charlie-Mouse exclaimed. ‘I’m soaked!’
‘He wants a game!’ Connie replied. ‘Can’t you tell?’
‘Not now!’ said Bert. ‘He’ll have to wait.’
‘Come on Solo,’ encouraged Kit. ‘You’re not wanted.’ She found a stick and hurled it. Eagerly, the dripping dog clawed his way to the bank and chased over the meadow.
Connie settled herself in the casual shade of a weeping willow. She kicked off her pumps and stretched her toes to tickle them in the grass. Rhythmically with her heel, she smoothed a patch of thicker green grass growing close to the edge of the water. She welcomed the cool touch of the blades under her legs. ‘It’s so peaceful,’ she said, her words blending with the breeze, ‘you wouldn’t guess . . .’
‘That’s the thing,’ said Kit. ‘At the moment it’s peaceful, but you never know do you, there could be air strikes anywhere and at anytime. Gas attacks, Uncle Geoff says. I wouldn’t want to be back in London right now either, but I do want to be with Mummy. She says we’re better off here.’ She rattled her sandals to let the grassy bits fall onto the water. Connie watched as the flecks moved with the flow, creating shadowy speckles on the gravel bed of the stream. Kit spoke again. ‘You know she’s been sleeping in the underground – one of the safest places to shelter, some say. And I’m glad, but I worry about her catching a chill, even so. I tell Lucy, sometimes, late at night.’
‘Who’s Lucy?’
‘My doll,’ she laughed. ‘Mummy gave her to me as a going-away present – she’s like a little sister to me and I tell her my worries about the war. It makes me feel better.’
Both girls turned to lie over the waterside. Connie dipped the tips of her fingers. ‘Where are your school friends now?’
‘My best friend Margerie was billeted to a family living north of Lyme Regis on the Dorset-Devon border. Mummy tells me the news. It was lovely at first, Margerie said, but now she is fed up with walking up and down the coast, and especially with the sight of the twisted coils of wire on the seafront. She wants to go home, and if you ask me I think her mother will collect her soon.’
‘Can she go home?’
‘There’s nothing to stop her is there?’
Connie didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know the rules of evacuation, if there were any. Her knowledge of wartime life had its limits and she couldn’t pretend she knew about the things going on around her. Butterflies danced in her stomach as she threw a small twig of willow into the water and watched it drift away under the brick-and-clay footbridge.
‘Do you believe in magic?’ she dared to ask. ‘Real magic?’
Kit laughed. ‘I believe in dreams coming true.’
‘Have you ever dreamed what life might be like at another time?’
‘I think I have wondered,’ Kit answered. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. I sometimes dream we are in the wrong time. That we’d been born long before the war. That we’d never left home. I som
etimes dream that the newspaper headlines read that war is over and we have won. I imagine I can see Mummy holding the paper to show us, and it’s as plain as day.’
‘That’s a good dream, and it’ll come, I’m sure,’ said Connie.
Kit started to pull strands of grass from a tussock. She built a small mound and covered it with daisies. ‘My dream castle,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll wish upon my dream castle.’
‘And if you realised you could see life in another time, without dreaming?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ giggled Kit. ‘My goodness, to travel through time, that would be headline news. Even more than victory itself.’
Connie’s fervent gaze had stopped her dead and she sat bolt upright, drawing both her hands up to her head and pushing her fingers into her hair. ‘Do they believe it in Canada?’ she asked, half laughing.
Connie’s silence was potent. Kit reached out with a quivering arm. ‘You’re scaring me,’ she said. ‘You look so very serious.’
Connie unhooked her pendant and laid it in the palm of her hand.
For Connie, 22 October 1997
Kit gripped at Connie’s hand.
‘It’s the day I was born.’
Kit sat back on her heels, her mouth gaping wide. ‘But it’s not possible. You haven’t been born yet!’
‘I’m not a ghost that’s for sure. I am real. A hundred per cent,’ Connie declared. ‘Just like you . . .’ She pulled a daisy and pushed it into the dream castle.
‘Real? Who’s real?’ came a voice. Bert splashed down a pail of water.
‘But . . . how? How on earth . . .’ Kit stumbled, dragging her auburn hair behind her ears. Moisture glistened in her green-flecked eyes and rising to her knees she clutched at her brother’s legs.
Connie watched her friends’ emotions chase to keep up as she spoke of the magic of the potter’s wheel, the Wendlewitch, and of a different time spent at Claybridge. Bert fidgeted, flitting his eyes between the circling fish and Charlie-Mouse. Whole tears clung in the corners of Kit’s eyes, and when at last they began to tumble to wet the corners of her smile, Connie floundered. She hated herself for even thinking she were able to explain about Malcolm Mollet’s dad, and bring yet another fear into their unstable world, right now. ‘We need your help,’ she said, when she could hold it in no longer. ‘We have to find out what’s happening here – it’s very important.’
The late afternoon sun stripped through the trees to dance across Connie’s face as she retraced her path over the shadow-draped meadow. Bert pointed to the two large cars starting up ahead – shrouds on their headlights and white paint along the edges of the wings. A man of imposing stature in military uniform nodded the peak of his cap in the direction of the front door of the farmhouse. He paused to light up a cigar, looking upwards to see the profile of an aircraft marking a trail across the early evening sky. He got into the back of the car and the vehicles moved off.
Once again, the dark green propeller aircraft drilled into her thoughts – it passed overhead, seeming to draw a shroud of dark cloud over the rich mauves above her. A chill took to the air. Connie rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms but as she raised her head, her senses swirled out of control. She thought she heard a girl’s voice but by now she was unable to place it.
Chapter Ten Missing you
Claybridge Farm
Tuesday, 17th September 1940
Dear Mummy,
It’s raining again and I feel many more miles away from you than usual. I can’t tell you how relieved we all were to hear your voice. We miss it very much, and Daddy’s too. Kit cried when you said that our street had been one of the lucky ones.
After your telephone call, Auntie Evie told us how Mr and Mrs Dougan’s house near the docks had disappeared in the smoke. I hope they are being looked after. How lucky nobody was hurt when the bombs blew the windows out at Buckingham Palace.
Kit says “thank you” for knitting her some new gloves. They arrived yesterday. Thanks very much for mine too. We will need them soon. We’ve already been busy helping Uncle Geoff to store everything for Winter.
We are having a good time back at school but we still have home work to do. This isn’t so good.
Hope you and Granny are well. Please tell us when you hear again from Daddy. He hasn’t been able to reply to us yet.
We hear the planes at night and pray that you’ll be all right.
Love from Bert xxxxxx
Chapter Eleven Back to earth
Something pulled them through the twilight chill and into the stuffy heat of the pottery shop. The noise of the aircraft dropped away and she found herself following the final few turns of the potter’s wheel before it stopped dead.
‘Oh no!’ Connie said, aghast. ‘It’s too early to be back.’
Charlie-Mouse sat entranced. She pinched him. ‘Charlie! Are you even listening to me? Spin it again!’
He shook his head. ‘We don’t know what’ll happen. We could end up anywhere.’
‘But we need to be there,’ she shouted. She put her hands up to her cheeks – heat burning through the gaps between her fingers. ‘We’ve only got until . . .’ Clay dust teased inside her throat and she coughed until she hurt. ‘Oh . . . why do you always spoil things?’
A hush fell between them and the cluttered room closed in on her. The sun-drenched china cats looked as if they would leap straight down into her lap.
‘We can wait,’ Charlie-Mouse said.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she growled. ‘Right now I’m hot, tired and I need a drink.’
‘Then I vote we go home.’
‘Well it won’t be for tea.’ She pushed her watch in front of her brother’s face. ‘No time has passed at all!’
They made their way along the shaded pathway. Connie tickled her toes in the itchings of grass wedged into her pumps, Kit’s pretty voice replaying in her mind. So immersed was she that she nearly collided with two removal men coming around the corner with a large piece of furniture. She reversed hurriedly, knocking into the notice on the gate. ‘Good,’ she said.
Mum looked more cheerful, meandering between assortments on the lawn. ‘Sally Army collectors,’ she explained. ‘Taking away a few things that won’t fit in. Someone will want them. Now where was I?’ She pointed at the piles. ‘Charity, rubbish, recycling, and Wendy will have that I’m sure,’ she said, putting down an oversize copper kettle. ‘I should have done this years ago. I don’t know quite why we’ve been keeping all this stuff.’
‘Because it might be useful some day?’ offered Connie.
‘It might be, or it might not – I have a new philosophy anyway,’ said her mum.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Connie. ‘Out with the old, in with the new?’
‘Precisely.’
A good attempt at putting on a brave face
Her mum bent to kiss her forehead. ‘I’ll bring you a cold drink and a piece of flapjack,’ she said. ‘Your dad’s getting some papers together for the planning office. In case. But we’re running out of days.’
Connie got out of her wheelchair and sat with her head resting against the tree trunk at the foot of Dracula’s Castle. She could hear her dad in the study, rustling papers, but she couldn’t see him. The dark emptiness of the room lunged at her through the open French doors. She strained her eyes further. Charlie-Mouse’s rugby trophies and her riding rosettes had been tidied from the mantelpiece and her dad’s disordered piles of books and stacks of papers were gone, replaced with a neatly positioned collection of packed boxes beneath the fireplace and around the desk.
One of her earliest memories was of crawling in from the garden to look at the shining brass microscope on the enormous study desk. How exciting it was when her dad opened the bottom drum to reveal a secret compartment of homemade slides.
‘The sign of an enquiring mind,’ the vicar said to his children. ‘Shall we see what’s inside? Bat Hair,’ he read, taking out the first one. ‘Or there’s Bee’s Wing and t
his one is Horse Hair. Which do you fancy first?’ Four-year old Connie placed them on the heavy writing desk. ‘This one,’ she said. Their dad put Bat Hair on the circular plate under the lens and tilted the mirror to catch the light.
‘There it is,’ Charlie-Mouse said. ‘Looks fluffy.’
‘Poor, poor bat!’ Connie remarked and crawled underneath the desk. And while her brother looked at the slides, she happily slipped her tiny hand behind the drawers and into all the darkest nooks and crannies to explore for hidden treasure. She found a shiny coin. ‘Daddy, Daddy, let’s put this under the magnifying glass,’ she said, emerging with renewed excitement to sit on top of the desk and look into the microscope.
Now the microscope was packed, along with the trophies and the rosettes, and the desk surface was bare. She slipped off her shoes and closed her eyes – for a moment or two. The house whispered to her, and her mind started to play with the conversations she had shared with Kit, and with image of the two large cars pulling away from the driveway.
Chapter Twelve Gathering pace
The next day she couldn’t get Charlie-Mouse out of bed early enough. When at last she heard him thumping about, it sounded as if he were scrambling over an assault course.
Something made her look out of the kitchen window. She clasped her hand over her mouth. There was Malcolm Mollet climbing down from Dracula’s Castle with a sleeping bag cast over one shoulder. She flung open the kitchen door and pushed herself onto the path.
‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Get out of there, now!’
Malcolm turned his head but didn’t connect.
‘What are you doing? This is still our house, you know!’
Still no reply. Malcolm dragged the sleeping bag over the rosebeds, catching it on thorns as he headed towards the gate.
‘Come back and explain! Coward!’ she called out.
A mumble met her ears. ‘Dad,’ was all she caught.
‘Can you believe it!’ she said. She looked up at Charlie-Mouse’s window. He stared down at her, and vanished.