Now he hasn't changed all that much. He's wearing a funny sort of knickerbocker suit but he's still got the same sort of face and the same short fair hair.

  'Poor little man,' Dardy says again. 'Your mummy led him such a dance when they were little.'

  'Why?' I ask. 'What did she do?'

  'She was always telling tales on him and getting him into trouble. She could be horrid when she liked. She was a spoilt cat, that was the trouble. Mr Parodi gave her every mortal thing she asked for.’

  She’s set me thinking. That’s just like me and little Pat. It’s a pattern. The first child gets hit, the second gets every mortal thing she wants.

  ‘Look at the time,’ Dardy says. 'You'd better get going or it'll be pitch dark by the time you're home and we don't want that.'

  We walk down to the Broadway together, all wrapped up against the cold. The bags are really heavy. By the time we get to the tube they're pulling my arms out of their sockets. And she's right about how late it is. It's getting dark already. We stop at the entrance to kiss goodbye.

  'Mind how you go,' Dardy says. 'You've got your ticket haven't you?' And as she's talking, the sirens start up.

  It's been such a long time since I last heard them they make me jump.

  'They're early,' Dardy says. 'They usually come a lot later than this. Never mind. You'll be safe in the tube. Mind how you go.'

  The sirens are still wailing as I leave her. But down in the tube everything's normal. You wouldn't know there was a raid on. I catch the right train. I'm really good at it now. And I sit by the door so that I don't have to carry the bags too far. And when I reach King's Cross I get out and follow the signs and I don't feel worried at all. Until I reach the escalator that leads up into the station.

  There's a barrier across the bottom and a man in uniform blocking the way, with people gathered round him all talking at once. 'Station's closed,' he says. 'Sorry sir. Sorry Madam. There's been an incident. You'll have to go via St Pancras.'

  I can't go via St Pancras. I don't know where it is. And what about my train? 'I've got to catch a train,' I tell him.

  'Where to?' he asks.

  I tell him and he says, 'I'd try in St Pancras, if I were you girlie. Just follow the others. It's not far.'

  I don't care how far it is. I can't go there, I've got to catch the train to Harpenden. But how can I do that if they won't let me up the escalator? More people are pressing in towards him so I have to move on with everybody else. Maybe I can find out where I am when I get there.

  It's a huge station made of dirty looking bricks and it's ever so dark and ever so tall. The ceiling's so high you can barely see it, what with the dim light and all the smoke going up from the engines, and the walls are enormous. If a bomb explodes in here it'll all come down on us and we shall be buried alive. I must get out quick. But how? There are so many people rushing about and they're all going in different directions. Which way's out?

  I try following people but none of them are going out and the light's so awful I can't see where I'm going half the time. In the end the bags are weighing me down so much I have to stop. I'm in the middle of this awful heavy echoing place and I don't know what to do. But while I'm standing still trying to get my breath back I see an arrow with the words 'Way out' underneath it. Why haven't I seen that before? I pick up the bags again and follow the sign.

  It's horribly dark outside the station and very noisy. I can hear the German planes and the place smells of bombs and the road is full of fire engines and people in uniforms and there are long hoses all over the pavement, curling over one another like black snakes. An ARP man comes up and shouts at me to take cover and I tell him I've got to catch a train and ask him how I can get into King's Cross. There's so much noise I have to shout too.

  'You can't,' he says. 'It's closed off. Go to St Pancras. That building there.'

  'I've got to get to Harpenden,' I say. 'How can I do that if I can't get into King's Cross?'

  'Go to St Pancras,' he says and now he sounds cross.

  So I have to trail all the way back again, into all that noise and smoke with people still rushing about everywhere and all those awful bricks still over my head. This time I look for a porter.

  'Yes,' he says. 'You can get to Harpenden from here. St Albans, Harpenden and Luton. Down that way. See? Only don't ask me what time it'll leave. It's mayhem here at the moment.'

  Is he right? Will this train really take me home? I can't believe it will. Not from the wrong station. But I struggle off to the platform because there's nothing else I can do and there's a train standing there waiting so I walk along until I find a carriage that isn't full and get in.

  Some of the people in the carriage say they think it's going to Harpenden, 'if it ever gets started' and an old lady says she's sure it does, it's the stop after hers. And after a very long time the engine starts to chuff and the wheels squeak and we're off. It's too late to change my mind now but being on the move makes me feel panicky. What if it's the wrong train and it doesn't take me home after all? What shall I do then? I look out at every stop but there are no signs up anywhere and I don't recognise any of the places the porters are calling out. It is the wrong train. Perhaps I ought to get off and go back again.

  'My stop next,' the old lady says. 'And yours after that. Don't worry.'

  I do worry. I can't help it. I worry until I hear the porters calling 'Har-pen-den! Har-pen-den!' And I worry even more when I'm out on the platform because this isn't my Harpenden. It's a big station with four platforms that I've never seen before.

  When I ask the porter, he says 'Yes, that's right. This is Harpenden.' So perhaps there are two stations and I'm at the wrong one. I remember we saw a station when we drove down. It could be that one. But what am I going to do now?

  I walk out of the station entrance and down a dark sloping path because that's the only way I can go. Then I don't know which direction to take because I'm in a road with shops and it's very dark and I don't recognise it at all.

  I turn left because it seems more likely and after a little while I find myself in the High Street and that's better because I recognise that. The trouble is I can't think how to get home from the High Street so I turn left again. I walk and walk for ages but I don't recognise anything and it's getting darker and darker and soon there are no more houses and it's pitch dark and I think I must be on the common. I'm so frightened I want to cry but I don't because it wouldn't do me any good. I pray. 'Oh please God, don't let me be lost. Please God.' But I am lost and I know I am.

  There's a little striped light flickering along the path towards me. For a minute I can't think what it is, then I realise it's a bike and call out into the darkness. 'Hello! Hello! Is there anyone there?' And a voice answers 'Who's that?' and the light swerves and heads towards me a bit faster.

  It's an old man in a cloth cap. He bends across his handlebars to see me. 'What's up?' he says.

  I tell him I'm lost and he asks me where I live.

  'Crossways.'

  'That's over Manland way issen it?'

  I'm so relieved my legs are shaking. 'Just round the corner from Manland School,' I say.

  'Well you are out of your way,' he says. 'Then he notices the bags. 'And what have you got there?'

  I tell him it's shopping and he says he should just think it is. 'Come on,' he says. 'I'll give you a lift home. I can't have you wandering about the common all night.'

  I can't see how he's going to give me a lift on a bicycle. But he does. He hangs my bags on the handlebars, one on each side and when they're balanced he tells me to jump up on the crossbar. So I do and he puts his arms on either side of me and we go wobbling off, back to the High Street, along the road to the station, under the railway bridge. Then he turns left and we wobble along beside the track, then right into a very dark road. It's a very long way. I'd never have walked this far. Not with that load.

  Then, suddenly, we're skimming downhill and I can see the outline of the senior school looming out of the darkness and I know where I am. 'I shall be all right now,' I say. 'It's just round the corner.'

  He stops pedalling and balances the bike. 'You sure?'

  I'm already scrambling off the crossbar, eager to be home. 'Thank you ever so ever so much.'

  'That's all right,' he says, handing over the bags. 'My, they're a weight. Mind how you go.'

  I walk the last few yards as quickly as I can. Won't I have a tale to tell when I get in? Now that it's nearly over I can make it feel like an adventure.

  They're all sitting round the fire when I come into the room, Dad in his chair and Mum and Gran huddled over the grate, and they've got the wireless on really loud. They don't even look round at me.

  'You're late,' Mum says. 'Did you get all the things?'

  The day falls apart all round me like a house of cards. I feel broken, lost, defeated, as if she's been caning me. She doesn't care about me at all. I might as well not be there. I'm tired and cold and hungry and I've had an awful journey and I could have been killed and she can't even make room for me by the fire. She can't even look at me. I know if I stay in the room I shall rage and scream. I want to rage and scream, to say, 'Look at me, why don't you. Notice me. Love me. I've done all this for you.' But I don't because I couldn't bear to be caned on top of everything else. I put the bags on the table and go to bed.

  The news from the war is getting bad again. Germans are fighting us in North Africa now and they're not giving in and running away like the Italians, they're fighting back and winning. In February we'd reached a place called El Agheira and the newspapers were saying how wonderful it was, and now it's April and we've been pushed right back to Tobruk. I've had to start a new map to show what's happening because there isn't room to draw all the new lines I need now we're retreating. It must be awful advancing all that way and then being pushed back again.

  But here in Harpenden, something rather nice has happened. Mum’s found a music teacher and she’s going to teach me and Pat piano and violin. Her name’s Miss Merritt and she’s a lovely teacher and ever so patient and anyone she teaches can be in her band, which is really fun. At the moment we're rehearsing for a concert we're going to give at the National Childrens' Home and we meet on Saturday afternoons in her house. She's got a big drawing room, like ours in Tooting, and there's just about room for us there. It's a bit of a squeeze and we have to be careful how we arrange the music stands or they get hooked up with one another and the music falls on the floor, but we make a really good sound when we're all playing together. There are one or two little'uns, like Pat, who just play open strings when they can, but the rest of us play like a proper orchestra, first and second strings, violas, cellos, woodwinds and percussion. We've even got a girl who plays the harp. She has to sit in the bay window because she takes up so much room. I like all the pieces we play but especially Schubert's 'Marche Militaire' and it's much, much nicer at Miss Merritt's than it is at home. Nobody shouts at you there and there aren't any flies.

  They're crawling all over everything at home, swarms and swarms of them. You have to flick them away when you're eating or they land on your plate and crawl over your food. Mum puts fly papers up every morning but they're black with bodies by the evening and Dad's been waging war on them for ages. He rolls up his newspaper as soon as he gets in the evening and swats them when they settle on the wall. His target is fifty dead before tea. The wallpaper's covered with red and black marks where he's squashed them but it doesn't make any difference. They still keep coming. Mum says it's because of the Aaron's rod in the garden. She says it attracts them. But I think it's the scrap pail and that ghastly preserving pan and all the stinking chicken food that's stuck to the edges of it.

  The weather's been really warm all week and one of our hens has gone broody. She walks about in the run making funny crooning noises and ruffling up her feathers all the time. Mum's making her a coop out of chicken wire and she's going to put it on the lawn so that she can sit on her eggs in peace and we can keep an eye on her. I wonder whether any of them will hatch. It would be lovely to have some chicks.

  They've been cutting the grass in the school field because it’s May now and that’s the time for it. It's called haymaking and it smells lovely, all sweet and fresh and clean. They've gathered most of it up and taken it away to feed the cows but there's enough left to play houses. Marie says they play every year and it's a really good game. You get armfuls of grass and arrange it like little walls until you've made a house or a palace or whatever you want and then you live in it all playtime. We've made a palace with a banqueting hall and I've got a throne of grass where I sit and tell them stories I always begin ‘Once upon a time' and it's always about three girls who walk through a door with an emerald embedded in it and have adventures in faraway places, like ancient Egypt or Stonehenge or a tropical forest or a desert island. We call it 'Behind the Emerald' and lots of the others are joining in now so as to hear it. They run up at the start of play and say, 'Where we are going today?' It's really good and the best of it is they won't let Pat interrupt me when I'm in the middle of a story. So yah-boo-sucks to her.

  Mum’s in a better mood because of the good weather too. She keeps taking us for walks up the hill and she's never done that before. Sometimes we go after school and sometimes it's just before dinner on Saturday but the funny thing is we always meet the Italian prisoners. They come round the corner just as we reach the stile and Mum waves and then we sit under the oak tree and talk to them. It makes her really happy. She flashes her eyes at them and arches her back the way she used to do to that smelly dancer and they tell her how beautiful she is. 'Bella,' they say. 'Bella signora.' We stay there for ages talking to them and they sit at Mum's feet and gaze up at her or lean over her with one hand resting on the tree trunk so that she has to gaze up at them, and she giggles and flashes her eyes and tells them she's Italian too.

  I'm not sure I like the way Mum talks to them. It makes me feel uncomfortable but I don't know why. It could be the make-up. She's got lots of mascara and lipstick and powder on and it makes her look different, sort of hard and bright, as if she's posing for a photograph. And then she's bending the truth all the time. One of them asked her how old she is, and she said 'Guess' and he guessed much younger and she smiled as though he was right. And she isn't really Italian. She's half Italian from her father but she doesn't talk the language or anything like that. Still at least talking to them puts her in a good mood and that's a good thing because she doesn't cane me so much when she's in a good mood.

  We've had a letter from Dardy and she’s happy too because she thinks the blitz is over at last. They've been ten days without a raid. She says they hardly know themselves. I hope she's right and it really has stopped. It's been horrid going down to get the food ever since my raid. It would be nice to go and see her without being worried. Not that Mum cares as long as she gets her chicken meal and her butter and her pound of stewing steak.

  We've been playing houses for weeks now. There's hardly any grass left and it’s all brown and brittle like straw but it's such a good game we don't want to stop. Today we're putting two old houses together to make a new one and Marie's gone down to the edge of the field to see if any spare grass has blown down there, like it does sometimes. Me and Margaret are eking out the grass we've still got when there's the sound of a plane flying quite low and we look up to see what it is. It doesn't sound like any plane I've ever heard.

  At first we can't see anything because there's such a lot of low cloud but then the engine roars and the plane's suddenly dipping out of the cloud and flying straight towards us, right over our heads. And it's a German. I can see the swastika as clear as anything and the crosses and everything.

  Everyone's screaming and running away but I can't move. I stand where I am and just look. I can see the pilot as clear as clear looking down at me through the glass dome of his cockpit and I know I ought to run because he could kill us all and I don't want to be killed. But I don't run. I just look. And he's just looking too. He's a young man. I can see that. He looks like our pilots in the R.A.F. with a flying jacket on and a leather helmet. Then he pulls the plane up so that the engine screams and it banks away into the cloud and disappears. It's all over. The boy who has fits is lying on the ground and there are teachers running about all over the field urging the kids indoors. As I walk towards the school, the sirens go and that makes me run even though I can't hear any more planes. Mr Smith's at the doorway telling us we're to go and sit in the corridors, so we do. It's a real squash and they're all making such a noise, telling one another how awful it was, it makes my ears go funny. I think they're being silly. After all he didn't drop any bombs or machinegun us or anything and it's all over now. They should try being in a raid.

  The all clear goes after about half an hour and nothing's happened. So that was a waste of time. We file back into our classrooms and five minutes after that Mr Smith comes down and says can he have his little secretary and I remember that it's Friday.

  'You're all right aren't you?' he says as I follow him up the stairs.

  I say 'Course, sir.' Because I am. Quite all right. It's the others who are making a fuss.

  'You've got a cool head,' he says.

  It's lovely to be praised by Mr Smith. I say, 'I was in London during the Blitz, sir.' I feel proud because not everybody can say that and I know I'm a member of an elite. I don’t tell him I was caught in that raid because I don’t think Mum would like it.

  CHAPTER 13

  Alan’s come to stay with us for the summer holidays. He’s brought his ration book and his clothes and Mum's put the camp bed in our bedroom for Pat and he's going to have her bed. Now we're off to the lower field to climb our tree and after that we're going swimming in the river. It's going to be a really good summer. Our chicks have hatched. We've got twelve of them, seven hens and five cocks, which Mum says is a pretty fair balance. We're going to keep the hens and eat the cocks when they're big enough. I feel a bit sad for them because they're ever so pretty. They run about on their little stick legs like balls of yellow fluff, cheeping and pecking up the corn. Now we've got two more hens gone broody so Mum's going to let them sit too. She's making two more coops to put on the lawn and she's really happy about it. But then she’s always happy when Alan’s here. I think he brings out the best in her.

 

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