No Stars at the Circus by Mary Finn Page A

notice if they walked into the kitchen, but I didn’t believe it myself. Anyone would see I was a boy. The dog would tell them. And if they had bayonets they could find out for sure.

AN EMERGENCY
    Then I heard the Prof. He was in the hall too, and he was shouting above the noise of the boots tramping around.
    “Who are you? How dare you break into my house!”
    He sounded really brave. After all, they must have all had their guns pointed at him. And I’d never have thought he could shout like that. He sounded scary when he should have been scared, like I was.
    The boots stopped right where they were, just before they’d reached the steps to the kitchen.
    Then someone said, “We apologize, Monsieur. But your neighbours said you weren’t home and this is an emergency. There’s a bad leak on the street and that means trouble with your inflow pipe. If we don’t fix it the street pipe will fail, and so will yours, and your house will be destroyed.”
    It was the fire brigade! Not the Germans. Not the police. And the dog that barked must have been just a normal dog walking by who didn’t like all the racket.
    But what could I do now? I couldn’t come out because the firemen would know there was a boy in hiding, someone who didn’t answer the door even when someone else was battering it down. And the poor Prof standing out there in the hall didn’t even know where I was.
    But he was smart. He guessed I’d stayed in the kitchen. I don’t know how. That Prof was as smart as any spy.
    He said, “Give me one minute to move a few things I have in the kitchen.”
    I didn’t move, even when I heard his step. Then he was right beside me. He picked me up carefully and threw me across his shoulder and then he reached in for more sheets and put them over me so that they hung down. Then we were out in the hall and we were going up the stairs and he said, “Go right ahead, gentlemen. And thank you for allowing me to save my wife’s best linen.”
    He brought me up to his room, set me down on the bed and lifted the sheets and towels from me. He kept one finger stuck to his lips. Not that I needed to be told
that
. Then he pointed me towards his wardrobe. I climbed into it and he piled the linens in on top of me.
    “Stay brave, Jonas,” he whispered. Then he was off downstairs again.
    I took the sheets away from my face. I could breathe again, just about, even though there was a fur coat brushing against my face and tickling me. It was very dark in the wardrobe and there was nothing to hear.
    I think I fell asleep then, which was a pretty stupid thing to do because if anyone had opened the wardrobe they’d have seen my face shining out of the dark like a moon. But I woke up when the Prof touched my shoulder and told me I could come out.
    “They’ve gone, Jonas. They’ve managed to shore up the leak too. It’s all right, it’s just a bit damp down there. We’ll take care of it after we get something to eat.”
    When I came out my legs were too wobbly to work properly. Jean-Paul and I used to make our legs go all shaky when we were playing soldiers and falling down on the ground and dying. But it isn’t funny when it’s real and you can’t control it.
    The Prof told me to take my time so I sat down on the bedroom floor and stretched out my legs and gave them a good bashing with my fists, the way I’d seen Signor Corrado and La Giaconda do every Sunday afternoon before the circus opened. Then my legs were all right again and I was able to walk downstairs without falling.

AND THE DATE WAS …
    The Prof didn’t say anything cross to me. He made us both some strong coffee. He put honey into it to make it sweet. He said if he’d had any brandy he’d have used that too, even for me.
    “I wasn’t able to get cheese, after all,” he said. “But look – chicken livers!”
    He fried the liver with some flat rissoles he’d made with leftover turnips. He says there are women in the queues who tell him how to cook things,