Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh Page B

save coupons, but there wasn’t anywhere near enough to buy breakfast. Nearly everything was rationed, and one book wasn’t enough for us. We ate a lot of bread, but we had pitifully little butter and marge to put on it. I remember breakfasts of one rasher of bacon, sizzled in a pan and shared between us, and five slices of bread apiece, wiped round the pan in chunks until the last smear of bacon fat had been eaten.
    Another drawback was the raids. We could hear them much better on the surface. Instead of a distant thump or two, we could hear the crashing rumble of houses falling after the bangs. There was a warden’s post just beyond the other side of the square, round the corner from the houses opposite, and we could hear motor bikes roar by, carrying messages, and hear the alarm bells of fire-engines and ambulances, hear people running and shouting outside.
    But after the days we had just lived through, all drawbacks, all brief stabs of fear, were outweighed by a row of chestnuts roasting on the bars of our fire, and the feeling of wealth that having things that wouldn’t go in a rucksack gave us. It was absurd, really, when the house above us was in such complete ruin, that all the things for cleaning and house-keeping in it were still safely stored away downstairs, but we found everything we needed. Julie washed our filthy clothes, and ironed them, and hung them on a clothes-horse round the fire to dry. We couldn’t bathe there, but we found the Sunlight Soap van quite near us one morning, when the raids had been very near, and we got another bath from them.
    I don’t suppose it lasted much more than a week; at this distance of time I can only remember three evenings there. There was the jigsaw evening, and an evening when Julie had gone to Boot’s Circulating Library, with Cook’s ticket, and brought home books for us. She had chosen
The Master of Ballantrae
for me, because she knew I had brought
Kidnapped
away from home. Now I come to think of it, it must have taken me longer than one evening to read
The Master of Ballantrae
; but the bit I remember reading, with tingles of fear running down my spine, is the scene where they dig up his body in the moonlight, expecting him, hoping against hope for him to be still alive, and the Indian servant tried in vain to rouse him. I got to that bit late at night, when Julie was already asleep, and the fire had died right down to a mere smoulder, and the description of the pallor of death on the moonlit face gave me the creeps so badly that I found the sound of a raid outside almost a relief, since it took me out of the book and gave me something else to think about.
    The third evening I remember, I started myself, by bringing home a copy of the evening paper so that we could do the crossword after supper. I read the headline, but it didn’t mean anything special to me. It said CITY OF BENARES SUNK – ALL FEARED LOST. But when Julie saw it she went as pale as paper, and just stood staring at it.
    â€˜Whatever’s the matter, Ju?’ I asked.
    â€˜That ship,’ she said. ‘It’s the one I should have been on. It’s sunk.’
    I looked over her shoulder at the paper. The
City of Benares
had been carrying English evacuee children to Canada.
    â€˜Well, thank God you aren’t on it,’ I said. ‘Thank God you ran away!’
    â€˜Don’t you see?’ she said wildly, looking at me with eyes brimming with tears. ‘They think I am on it. Oh, my poor mother, she thinks …’ The tears ran freely down her cheeks. ‘Bill,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to tell her, I’ll have to go home now, I can’t let them think …’ She stopped. She saw the look on my face, and turned away. With her back to me, she said, ‘Don’t you think I should, Bill?’
    I didn’t answer. ‘Bill, I must, musn’t I?’ she said, pleading.
    â€˜You have to make up your