‘S’pose so . . .’ He left a long pause. ‘S’pose this is the best I can do,’ he sniffed.
‘The best for what?’
‘To be interested . . . to make friends . . . if you wanna . . .’
Connie’s ears tingled to the tips. She knew he was looking straight at her – she sensed his small grey eyes searching out her weakness and saw his outstretched hand from the corner of her eye. She hesitated. Maybe the stick insect deserved a chance – her dad would tell her so. She returned him a glance. ‘It depends,’ she said.
‘Yeah, it does, doesn’t it,’ faltered the boy. He pulled back his hand, a meek smile curving into one sickly coloured cheek. ‘I can try and make up for things. Then maybe we’re quits?’
Connie turned away, picturing the fleet of trucks and bulldozers ploughing through to the house at speed. She blinked and the scene of destruction flipped from her mind.
‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘It’s not fair,’ Kit said, closing her bedroom door, ‘Uncle Geoff and Auntie Evie can’t use the whole house any more – and it won’t be long before we have to—’
‘They were here first thing,’ Bert said. ‘I watched from the orchard.’
‘That’s what you were doing,’ his sister said.
‘Once I climbed the tree, I couldn’t get down without being noticed. It was jolly cold.’
Kit’s dimples rippled into a half-smile. ‘So did you work out what they were talking about?’
‘Er, no,’ he replied.
‘Bet it was top secret,’ Charlie-Mouse joked.
Bert, Kit and Connie stared. He shuffled back. ‘What are you saying?’
‘That you’re right,’ Connie said.
‘They’re arranging a secret operation,’ said Kit, raising her finger across her lips. ‘It’s been so hard not telling.’
‘Secret agents,’ whispered Bert.
Charlie-Mouse’s jaw fell apart. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I overheard Uncle Geoff,’ Bert said. ‘He sounded completely serious.’
‘What will you do?’ asked Charlie-Mouse.
‘Nothing,’ Bert replied. ‘Except move for a few months.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Kit said. ‘And Mummy will help.’
‘If only Daddy knew – I want to write and tell him, but I can’t,’ said Bert.
All this time Malcolm Mollet had said nothing. Every now and again he squeaked his hand back and forth over the condensation on the window glass. ‘How come we don’t know all this?’ he said.
‘Perhaps some of us do, and have hidden it on purpose,’ Connie directed.
‘If you mean Dad . . .’ His voice was breaking up. ‘ . . . if there’s any proof of it – we’ll have to . . . find it and take it back so that you can—’
Was she hearing him properly? She stared wilfully at the back of Malcolm’s drooping blonde head but he didn’t turn to her nor speak again.
Winter 1940
Chapter Sixteen At the far end of the house
‘Coast is clear,’ Kit called.
Connie adjusted the gas mask box across her body and pushed herself down the long, narrow hallway, feeling the sideways shift of wheels as they crossed uneven flagstones. She touched her hand against the dark oak panelling as it gave way to a tall leaning window leaking a patch of much needed sunlight to a picture adorned with holly and ivy. An icy draught chided by.
‘Be quick everyone,’ Kit called, as she opened the study door. ‘Or the heat will escape.’
The stale smell of cigar smoke flew into Connie’s face. Kit drew aside the long and lazy velvet curtains to reveal the garden in the crisp of winter and a room not long vacated – dents crushing into the cushions of the soft green armchairs. Connie’s eyes fixed upon the so-familiar shape of the cumbersome writing desk lodged in front of the French doors. Blue and gold spotted china cats lazed at each corner – one an inkwell, one a penholder.
‘I know it’s in here,’ Kit said, pulling hard at the drawers of the desk. ‘But these are locked and I don’t know where Uncle Geoff keeps the key.’
‘Feel the ledges,’ Connie said.
Bert started to run his fingers along the underside of the desktop. From the opposite side, Malcolm got onto his hands and knees and disappeared into the foot well.
Charlie-Mouse pressed against the narrow door to the little library room. Books spilled up to the ceiling. He crouched at the bottom shelf, checking in-between the gaps.
‘We’ll go in here,’ Kit said, beckoning Connie through the double doors to the dining room.
Kit pushed aside more curtains and the wallpaper pattern showered over Connie’s arms and legs in shades of green and white. It skipped from the crystals of a grand chandelier to the polished surface of the enormous mahogany dining table, laid with six leather blotting pads.
Connie shivered – a draught drew itself around her as she approached the sideboard. She pulled open a drawer. Letter opener, corkscrew, pile of tablemats . . . but no key.
A noise turned her attention to the window and she saw Uncle Geoff crunching across the snow to approach a stranger – a young airman dressed in a brown flying jacket. The airman stood lean and tall, listening with intent. He spoke a few words and the two men paced towards the house.
‘Who’s that?’ Connie asked.
‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen him before,’ said Kit, replacing a photo frame on the mantelpiece. ‘I expect he’s from the airfield.’
Connie heaved again at the drawer, and it rocked into place. The steady swing of the pendulum knocked within the grandfather clock – echoing over her ears and into the still of the moment that followed. The chimes churned, and she heard a crash.
‘It slipped out of my fingers!’ Malcolm said. ‘It was an accident.’
Charlie-Mouse glared. ‘Then you should be more careful.’
‘It’ll be all right,’ Kit said. ‘We’ll glue it.’
Connie looked at the three large pieces of blue, gold and white china cat, spread over the floor. The sparkle from the cat's eyes had all but disappeared.
Another glint caught her eye. It was the shine of a small silver key. Excitedly, she tipped forward to pick it up.
Winter 1940
Chapter Seventeen From one desk to another
With a click the key turned and Bert pulled open the desk drawer.
PRIME MINISTER
Dieu et mon droit
10, Downing Street,
Whitehall.
2 December, 1940
Dear Sir,
I am indebted to your kind agreement to vacate Claybridge Farm in the late Spring of 1941.
My Private Secretary will be in contact with you in the next few weeks to confirm the date, which will suit with the arrangements being made to requisition Audley End House. You will, of course, find excellent accommodation at Golden Hill Farm, Corberley Green.
Will you also please take this letter as recognition of my gratitude.
Yours faithfully,
Winston S. Churchill
‘Well! Nothing surprises me now!’ said Kit.
Charlie-Mouse bent over the letter, tugging at his fringe. 'There’s nothing in there about secret agents,’ he said.
‘Charlie, don’t be stupid!’ exclaimed Connie. ‘He couldn’t possibly write that down, could he? This is enough.’
She rushed through the prime minister’s words once more, feeling an anxious flutter of doubt as she stared at the black ink freshly imprinting the page.
‘You must take it,’ Bert said. ‘Borrow it, say. Put it in your pocket and take it to the future.’
‘Your uncle will notice . . .’ Charlie-Mouse said.
‘We’ll think of something,’ Bert replied. ‘Besides, you can return it later.’
‘Well . . .’ Charlie-Mouse began.
‘No we can’t. What I mean is – we can’t take it with us,’ Connie said. ‘You realise no one will ever believe it’s real – it’ll
be too new.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Kit.
‘Then we should hide it . . .’ Bert said.
‘What good will that do?’ asked Charlie-Mouse.
‘If we hide it well, it will survive . . . into the future,’ Bert replied.
‘And you can find it,’ Kit said.
‘Only if it stays in one piece,’ said Charlie-Mouse.
‘Don’t be such a pessimist, Charlie,’ Connie said.
‘It’s cool,’ Malcolm mumbled. ‘If we find somewhere safe and dry –somewhere only we know about.’
Connie flew at him. ‘Oh no, we won’t tell you where – you could ruin everything,’ she said.
‘No, it’s not like that,’ he said, bursting into tears. ‘I want to be part of this . . . you can trust me . . . pplease?’
She frowned, clasping the envelope to her body. ‘What makes you think we’re going to let this opportunity slip away.’
He didn’t flinch.
‘Or maybe we will trust you,’ she said, tempting the envelope straight to his shaking hands. ‘After all, you need to earn it . . . and we don’t have much choice.’
She held tight to a bubbling excitement, skimming her eyes over the crisp, undulating ground – the snow glinted every now and again as the sun attempted to polish the angular stone of the Norman church tower, then with a change in the wind, it spat across the gravestones. Ice laced the cast iron clock hands as they pointed at ten to one.
‘But we need to hurry up and decide where,’ she said.
Bert unlocked the French doors. ‘OK – who’s coming?’
‘You boys – you go,’ Kit said. ‘We’ll make soup.’
Connie watched the three small figures running across the snow-covered garden and through the back gate to the church. The icy cold bit beneath her borrowed cardigan, and she rubbed at her arms.
Winter 1940
Chapter Eighteen Wish me luck . . . Malcolm’s journey
His heart was thumping hard and fast against his chest wall. Malcolm glanced silently from one end of the church to the other, upwards at the shining red and blue of the glass windows, along the white painted walls, and down at the polished brass on the floor. He shivered as his gaze came to rest on the altar, and gave a quick cough.
Bert gave him a rough tug. ‘We’re going this way,’ he said, pulling him over the stone steps.
Malcolm stumbled into the church and onto the shiny path rubbed away by centuries of parishioners. He imagined them following close behind – touching him on his back and patting his hatted head. He didn’t dare look up. Their whispers gatecrashed his head – they passed through his guilt-ridden body, spiralling up to the beams and sweeping down and around the pillars – taunting from the aisles before escaping into the spin of the winter world outside.
But still in his mind, the church was far from empty. With his eyes clinging to the floor, he shrunk past the stern looks of the men leaning over the gallery balustrade; he avoided the eyes of the villagers bowed forward from the walls; and did his best to ignore the children turning with their looks of disapproval.
For all the bad things he had ever done.
They were waiting. Perhaps God was waiting. And for the first time he sent a prayer they wouldn’t judge him yet.
The others had raced ahead and Malcolm too looked for an escape. It was a small Norman archway leading to a narrow spiral stair. He put his foot on a step and grasped the centre pillar. He counted as he rose, to drown out his haunting echoes.
Following a trail of wet prints, he grew closer to the chatter of Charlie-Mouse and Bert. Forty five, forty six. His feet worked faster to meet it. Fifty three, fifty four. His echoes trailed further behind him. Sixty.
The freezing wind bellowed and the tower staircase sucked him upward, pushing him towards an open window. He struggled to stay standing. A scattering of butterfly wings swirled in front of his face, and with a tug his body was dragged backwards. The church seemed to let out a sigh. And it was still. He tripped with exhaustion into the dust-laden patterning of an old floor rug and over the wet-booted feet of Bert and Charlie-Mouse.
‘You made it this far,’ Bert said.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock – the sound boxed at his ears. The clock room was empty of any furniture, apart from the brass workings of the clock on the wall, and a chair draped with a fading union flag. Bert gripped him under the armpits.
‘You mean this . . . isn’t it?’ he asked, struggling to get his words out – his throat raw as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper.
‘No,’ Bert replied. ‘There’s a stairladder to the belfry.’
He lifted his eyes to the hole above his head. ‘Bells?’ he sniffed.
‘Don’t worry – they won’t ring, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Bert said. ‘It’s not allowed. War and all that.’
Suddenly, the war became very real. He stood, shaking, underneath the rickety stairladder.
‘There’s a pocket between the bell frame and the wall,’ Charlie-Mouse said. ‘Connie used to post secret messages for the angels.’
He swallowed hard, and looked up, just making out an edge of a brass bell and part of a large wooden frame.
Bert put his hand against the stairladder and pushed. It shook and the rafters rattled. ‘One at a time,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it will take any more weight.’
‘Can I go?’ asked Malcolm.
He couldn’t see it directly, but he felt the tension firing from Charlie-Mouse’s stare.
Malcolm strung an empty gas mask box across his thin body and put the letter inside. Pitching his eyes skyward, he caught his breath with a cough and grasped hold of the outside edges of the ladder with both his hands.
With every step, the warm smell of the wooden bell frame grew stronger. He did not look back, for fear of the height. Each foot movement was careful and slow. For fear of slipping. He held on tight. For fear of losing balance. He was halfway there – three more steps and he’d be able to see into the bellshaft. The ladder steadied as someone supported it from below.
Six bells rested downward. He leaned in to knock the brass of the shiniest with the knuckle of his forefinger. A dull note sounded. To be here when they rang at once must be mindblowing. To all the children around the world he read. Children with no choice but to be stuck in a war, but he didn’t dare dwell on it.
He craned his head towards the gap at the side of the frame. The wood curved to form a perfect pocket of a hiding place.
He shot a glimpse downwards. He saw feet, far below. But they weren’t following yet. He would go just a bit further – now he had got this far. He grasped for his inhaler, drew upon it and made his way up a second wobbly ladder to a trap door.
There was a sudden change in the air as propellers whirred overhead – the sound of the planes resonated through the bells and into his body – he no longer heard voices. Streaks of sunlight bounced into his eyes through the battlements. He shuffled across and dared to stretch his neck to see over to the rooftops of Claybridge. But he couldn’t look for long. A sick feeling bubbled in his stomach as he recalled his father’s glee at the prospect of pulling it down.
He brought his eyes to rest upon the pitiless body of a goldfinch lying frosted and motionless on the roof-felt in front of him. He fumbled to find the clean handkerchief Bert had given him, amongst the boiled sweet fragments and bits of paper crowding his pocket. He curled over to gather up the tiny bird. And as the afternoon sun warmed the snow, small drops of melted ice fell from the flagpole about them.
The steady rising call of an air raid siren stirred into his consciousness. He tumbled headlong into a maelstrom of purple.
Winter 1940
Chapter Nineteen Caught in the danger zone
The siren started up as Connie washed the mud from the last potato.
Kit dropped her peeling knife to clatter carelessly on the chopping board. ‘We have to go to the shelter,’ she said, controlling her voic
e.
Pulling open the understairs cupboard, she produced a neatly tied pile of clothes, and flew across the room to fetch an armful of coats and hats.
‘But the boys – will they know to come here? Does somebody go to get them?’ Connie asked, her thoughts firing in all directions.
‘Bert knows what to do, he’ll bring them back.’
Connie’s heart flipped over and over as she pushed herself along the corridor towards the entrance hall. She imagined her parents – their drawn, sleepless faces zooming in and out of her mind’s eye – they looked as if they were searching desperately for something. A certain relief rained over her when she saw the solid figure of Uncle Geoff appear at the other end of the corridor.
‘Enemy’s taking a risk with this snow, ain’t it?’ he said. ‘Scaremongering devils. It’s so we don’t get complacent.’ He lifted the red carpet runner and folded it back on itself. Grabbing hold of a large iron handle from the floorboards, he raised a trap door. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘It’ll be easier with the weather as it is. Evie’s in Corberley, she’ll be in the town shelter b’now. Where are the boys?’
‘At the church,’ Kit answered. ‘They went to the tower. They should be back.’
Uncle Geoff strode past. ‘I’m going over – you girls get down below.’
Connie abandoned her wheelchair by the cloakroom door.
One . . . two . . . three . . . four brick steps down, and . . . pitch black. The damp seeped into her anxious body as she crawled backwards to the bottom. Kit held a lamp aloft and explored for another. With a flick and a hiss, a match flared a sharp shock of brilliance into a passageway of about her own head height, illuminating a steady upward slope away from the house. The intensity of the matchlight fell and Connie followed the lampglow, crawling some way with her shadow hanging overhead. Soft planks of wood pressing into her knees.
After a little while, the gaslight fell into a small square space of an air raid shelter – its sidewalls supported with iron struts and concrete and brightened with hand-drawn pictures. A handful of Christmas stars, a small haversack, a collection of clean mugs and a bunch of keys hung from a metal wire beneath a white-painted shelf. In its darkest corner, Connie picked out a roll of carpet on its end beside several crates of what smelled like stored apples. A small bunk bed covered the end wall and above it, telling chinks of daylight marked the outline of another opening.