Blitz Next Door (9 page)

Pete had spent so long in the shelter with the Milligans, he expected Mum and Dad to bombard him:
What were you talking about? What were you doing?
Instead, he found them snoring on the sofa in front of the telly, Jenny sound asleep between them.

Could’ve run away and they wouldn’t have noticed
, Pete had thought. This was while he spooned cold soup from the pot and swigged milk straight from the carton since there was no one about to tell him he was being disgusting.

Now, back in his room, he had his head against the wall. He was moving his ear from place to place like a doctor pressing a cold stethoscope to sound different parts of his chest.

“Hello?”

“Beth?”

“Are you there?”

But all he could detect was… What was Mr Milligan’s word?

Nothingness
.

Pete could almost hear it whooshing. A shored-up, derelict gap site.
That
was all that remained on the other side of the wall. Beth was gone.

Pete slumped onto his bed. As he pulled his duvet over his legs, he spotted Beth’s notebook. It had fallen
open on two pages bordered with dozens of drawings.
New ones
. Pete was sure. Men, women, children, their likenesses all created in a few clever strokes.

Mummy
, Beth had written underneath the sketch of a smiling woman with dark curling hair. Beside her a solemn man with a pencil moustache leaned on a cane and stared out at Pete with stern eyes:
Dr Aidan, my daddy
.

There was a chubby baby next to Dr Aidan whose eyes were screwed up and whose mouth gaped in misery. Beth had drawn flying teardrops and exclamation marks all around the baby’s head and filled its mouth with the words,
Jamie Wah-wah!!!!!
instead of teeth.

Looking up at this picture and wearing, Pete thought, the same frazzled expression as Mum after an all-nighter with Jenny, was a young woman with long, loose hair.

Aunty Mary
, was written on the apron she wore.

Mrs Milligan
. Pete wondered if the very old lady who’d kissed him goodbye would manage to see this young version of herself if the light was good enough. Or if she would recognise the uniformed sailor grinning beneath her, raising up a salute. His image was framed in a pencil love heart:
Captain Hugh
.

Looks like a hero, or a film star
, Pete thought, moving on to the column of smaller drawings running down the margin of the other page. These were all boys and girls about his age: Simon’s age, Alfie’s, and Beth’s. Dark, fair, speccy, cute, smiley, swotty, chubby: all different and detailed.
Like they’re real people, not cartoons
. Around three of these faces Beth had drawn
thick, black tombstone-shaped lines and written beneath:

Harry Small. R.I.P. Katy McNamee. R.I.P. Mickey Kelly. R.I.P
.

Like they WERE real people
. Pete gulped. He made himself focus on the diary entry.

13
^th
March 1941, 4am,
Beth had headed her final entry.

When Pete flicked through the remaining pages to check they were all blank, a musty, damp smell rose from them. The paper felt swollen and soft between his fingers as if it could shred if he handled it too much.

Horrible in here tonig
—

It sounds like the end of the world —side. Explosion after expl—

When Pete started to read, he remembered poring over this same page with Dunny in the shelter. Pete had been intrigued enough at the time: with Beth’s story. Though it had felt like little more than history. School-project history. Last century. Last millenium. Not any more: now it was Beth Winters’ real life he was sharing as he tucked his duvet around him and heard her voice in his head:

The ground keeps shaking. Everything’s rattling. Even Mr Lyons’ teeth.

Dear Jesus, please keep Mummy and Daddy safe. And Hugh
.

Aunty Mary’s scared. I asked her and she says she’s not but her face is twisted like she’s crying and smiling at the same time. Why can’t my mummy be here, like baby Jamie’s? It’s not fair. I still need to say sorry for being crabbit when she told me to leave my packing. Even the special box with
the
napkin that smells of the kitchen and my postcards and my elephant and the china bell from the hall. Mummy promised if I ring it in Beauly she’d hear it all the way down in Clydebank. I told her that was stupid and impossible, and she looked so sad. Sorry, Mummy. I wish you could hear that from the shelter, because you’re so kind. Especially buying me a land girl’s outfit for my going-away surprise. I didn’t say thanks, though it’s the best thing ever. Got a tie and a jacket and breeks that button up below my knees. Daddy says they’ll think I’m the real thing when I get to Aunt Katy’s and they’ll put me to work on the farm mucking out dung. Hurray! Then I won’t need to start a stupid new school.

Couldn’t write for ages just then. Been a giganormous BOOM and lots of wee ones. I smell burning. Aunty Mary says she can’t, but she’s sniffing like mad. So’s Mrs Lyons. She’s saying the rosary and there’s glass breaking, and crumpy noises all round about. I’m so scared.

Mummy where are you?

I hate this war.

I hate this shelter.

It stinks of Jamie’s dirty nappy and Mummy’s out there. I wish I could go and find her. Maybe I will.

I wish I could help you
. Pete had snuggled under his duvet, making a tent of it so he could still look at the pages he’d just read.
I could go outside and dig about the rubble. See if the box is still buried there. Yeah. And get Dunny to help me. Maybe a bit late tonight though. And dark
.

Tomorrow. Definitely
. Pete yawned. Kicked off his shoes. “De-fin-itely.” He was fully dressed, toasty and cosy. And sleepy. He sank his head into his pillow,
which still smelt of London. He thought back over his first long, eventful day in Clydebank, his eyes roaming the drawing of Beth’s classmates until the faces began to swim in front of him and the notebook slipped from his grip.

“Mad day or what?” Pete told Simon and Alfie, turning round to whisper. That’s because he was back in his old classroom in London. Bossy Mira with the jangly bangles, who’d been moved to sit beside Pete because she never misbehaved or gabbed to her neighbour in class, was scolding – “Shhhh!!!” – just loud enough for Mr Fielding to twist round from the blackboard and cough “AHEM!” for attention.

“This is terrifically important,” Mr Fielding snapped in the clipped voice Pete recognised, although the teacher who was glaring at him seemed to have Dr Aidan Winters’ face, right down to the pencil moustache. “When soldiers were dying on the battlefield or the trenches,” he said, hopping about on one leg in front of Pete’s desk now, “their loved ones often reported seeing them back home. On the street, in their kitchens…”

Pete was trying to nod, although his head seemed to have set to concrete on his pillow. He was trying to answer too: “We learned that in our Great War project last term with Mrs Morgan.” But no voice came out. Pete tried again, throat straining and the words bursting in his head to be spoken: “She said maybe the soldiers were wishing so hard to be back home with the ones they loved…”

“…and were so bally desperate to be in the arms of their mothers or sweethearts or friends….” The figure in front of Pete had morphed from one-legged Dr Aidan to two-legged Mr Milligan. His quiff was shiny Elvis ebony-black instead of grey.

“Go on, Pete.” He whisked a silky red handkerchief from the breast pocket of the black leather catsuit he wore, like an Elvis-impersonating magician about to perform. When he pinched it by its top corners and lifted it up to cover his face, his eyebrows wiggling up and down, Pete assumed Mr Milligan was going to play his version of Dad’s trick.

He’ll be gurning or crossing his eyes or flabbing out his lips to try and make me laugh
, Pete was thinking as the handkerchief lowered.

But instead El Honcho turned into Beth. “Go on, Pete.” She repeated the last thing Mr Milligan had said. Her blue eyes were holding his gaze. “Tell me: why did dying soldiers keep appearing back home?”

“Because that’s where their hearts belonged, and that’s why you keep coming back for your box.” Pete knew his mouth was moving in his sleep, the effort of what he was trying to tell Beth making him gurgle and whimper.

“What on earth are you saying, silly?” Beth was tutting.

Pete tried again.

“
What
?” Beth was frowning. Shaking her head. “I’ve got to go now. Bye, Pete,” she said, fading from his dream. “I said,
Bye Pete
!”

This second time Beth spoke Pete’s name, her voice
split through his sleep. Loud and urgent enough to jerk him upright in his bed.

Pete was stretching out his hand in the dark.
Wait
.

Someone
had
called his name.
Really
called his name. He could almost feel the echo of the fading cry singing round his room.

“Mum?” Pete’s voice piped small and thin. His alarm clock glowed. 4.30 am. So whoever called him wasn’t likely to be Mum, no matter how much Pete wished it could be. What’s more the voice wasn’t even coming from inside the house.

“
Pete!
”

Eyes darting and flicking, Pete froze in his bed. His heart was knocking against his ribs. This voice wasn’t hissing at him through the wall.

“Pssst.
Pete
. Please help me.”

It sounded as if it was coming from outside.

“Psst, silly. Down here.”

Pete’s legs were wobbly as he stumbled in the dark to his window. At first he could see nothing unusual outside. Only the soft rounded shapes of the trees in his garden, painted blue-black by the night, and on the horizon the creeping pinks of dawn. When he peered harder though, and scrunched up his eyes, there she was. Beneath the window. Beth Winters, passing her hand back and forth from her forehead to where her home used to be.

“Look what they’ve done…” Pete heard over and over as he was fumbling with his window catch.

A stiff breeze was whipping escaped strands of hair from Beth’s plait across her cheeks and into her mouth. Pete remembered the sting of the plait when
she’d stalked past him in the shelter, bold as brass. There was nothing bold about her now. She just looked crumpled and lost; her face streaked with dirt, her eyes wild and tearful.

“Look what they’ve done…” Beth swept her arm behind her now. And as Pete tracked her movement, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Jagged buildings stood as far as his horizon. Ruined, smouldering. Like a weaving grey dancer, smoke swirled the air. And everywhere, fires licked the pinking sky.

No way. This is bonkers. It wasn’t like that a minute ago
. Pete dug his fists into his eye sockets. He’d seen pictures on telly. Towns blasted to rubble in foreign countries far away. Boys and girls left homeless, orphaned, terrified. Staring out from the other side of a cameraman’s lens. In foreign countries far away, though. He’d seen old pictures too. The First World War. The Second World War. Prisoners of War. Captured soldiers. Evacuees. The Home Front.
But nothing like this. Here! Poor Beth
, he was thinking just as she called up, “Pete, can you
please
help me find my box tonight?”

“Do my best!”

Without waiting to check if Beth had heard him, Pete groped his way downstairs, across his dark kitchen to the back door.

“Locked,” he hissed at the silhouette bobbing on the other side of the frosted glass.

“Unlock it then, silly. You must be millionaires. We never lock ours,” Beth tutted. She twisted and rattled the handle.

“Can’t. No key.” Pete clambered up on the kitchen
drainer to try the window. “And this is jammed too. If I go to the front, Mum and Dad’ll hear me.”
And if I say what I’m up to they’ll think I’m sleepwalking. Or nuts. Keep me in either way
.

“Well, use the tunnel then, silly.” Beth was still rattling the handle. “Or are you too feart?”

“The tunnel?”

“Where we met.” Beth’s voice seemed to be coming straight through the keyhole. “In fact,” Pete heard her clap her hands, “that’s where I last had my box. Remember? It must still be there.”

How can it be?
Pete was grateful for the frosted glass between himself and Beth so he didn’t have to look her in the eye when he said, “But your house is bombed to bits.”

The silence that followed seemed to last for ever. In fact, Pete wondered if he’d been sleepwalking and woken up talking to a door, because he couldn’t even see Beth’s shape moving through the glass any more. When she did speak, Pete had to strain to catch her words.

“Please help me find it anyway,” Beth said. “Because I’ll never, ever, ever be back here again.”

“Why not?” When there was no reply, Pete prompted Beth, “Have you not been coming for years?”

Beth tutted, “And a fat lot of good that’s been. So are you just going to stand there asking silly questions after all, silly?”

“Arggggh! Cobwebs. Gerroff!”

Pete was groping his way through the cupboard under his stairs. The cupboard that was still without a light bulb. By the time he reached the back of it, he’d caught the outside of his foot on something jaggy and knew it was bleeding. Worse than that, something with far too many legs for his liking had scuttled across his hand. He’d reared back, cracking his head off the low ceiling – yikes!

All for nothing, too, Pete realised while he probed the swelling egg on his temple. Because when he reached the little dwarf door at the back of the cupboard and pushed it, it refused to budge.
No bleeping wonder: a fallen-down house on the other side
. If Pete could have leaned back on his hunkers and sighed, he would have done, but there wasn’t enough space for him to straighten up. Instead, and since he’d come all this way – and for Beth’s sake – he gave the door one more try, this time with welly –
Come on Smeato!
– and this time the door yielded. But not quite enough for Pete to wriggle through.

So he was stuck; his head half in, half out the door, his body hunched in his own cupboard. And the first thing Pete noticed was the smell gusting through from Beth’s side. Like cement blowing from a building
site on a hot day, mixed with a strong version of that sparky tang of dangerousness Pete could create when he flinted stones together. This smell was gritty too. Dirty. Itching his nostrils, clogging the back of his throat. Making his eyes water and his nose run when he peered through the crack he’d opened.

By the light of a strange orangey-pink sky that Pete could only see a chink of, he scanned a landscape that wouldn’t look out of place in a horror film: great hunks of fallen masonry everywhere. Walls on the ground. Ceilings on their side. Floors in the air. Jagged limbs of broken wood poking through at twisted angles. Fractured pipes dribbling tired streams of rusty water. There was something so raw and wrong about this nightmare scene that Pete wished he could run back upstairs, pull the duvet over his head and wake from it all in the morning.

But Beth Winters was calling his name. Pete could hear her; stumbling, slipping towards him. She was talking and crying at once, the jolting of her body over the bomb site distorting her voice, making it wobbly and hollow.

“Pete, see what they’ve done?” A pair of dirty scraped legs slid into view, Beth’s foot dislodging a fist-sized stone. It bounced towards the opening of the tunnel door and Pete just managed to pull his head back in time.

“Pete, I saw you there, silly. Are you not coming out?”

“I can’t.” Pete tested the weight of the stone that had missed him: heavy and sharp enough to brain him.
I’m scared
. “This door’s jammed. I’m stuck,” he
told Beth.

“No, you’re not.” Two sets of fingers curled round the top of the door. It shifted a fraction.

“You just going to let me do all the hard work? Push, silly,” Beth grunted. And even though he didn’t really want to whatsoever, Pete shouldered the door again. And again, until it was wide enough for him to crawl into the space where Beth waited. Above them both, two floors of teetering, groaning stonework loomed and – it seemed to Pete – only just balanced.

“You’re crazy climbing down here.” Pete was almost scared to move his eyes in case he dislodged something. He was wishing he’d grabbed Dad’s hard hat from the hall table. And one for Beth. “It’s not safe.”

“Well why are you standing here blethering, silly?” Beth was already scrambling over the stones. “Let’s go hunting for my—” she was calling back when a groan that wasn’t human drowned her out.

“LOOK OUT, BETH!”

Pete had never moved so fast nor shoved anyone with the force he used to push Beth Winters from the path of the beam that was falling, pointy end down, towards her.

He heard the
dhoof
of all the breath being knocked from her back as she bellyflopped across the top of a table and flew off the other side, landing on a pile of wet rubble with her legs in the air. On another day, in Pete’s safe world, the whole routine would be one of those you wished you’d videoed and put on YouTube or sent to
You’ve Been Framed
. Or at the very least boasted your head off to Simon and Alfie about:
I was a real-life
superhero
last night
. In Beth’s world, though, this near miss left Pete bent double with shock. Sickness rising in his throat.

“What… the… heck… was that for, silly?” Beth panted. Her tone was snappy, but there were tears in her eyes and she was pointing at Pete’s leg.

He had felt the falling beam glance off him, but was too intent on pushing Beth to safety to care that he’d been wounded himself. One look down at what was happening – and pouring – behind the long rip in the leg of his jeans was enough. Pete didn’t want to look twice. He wasn’t a fan of blood at the best of times, especially his own. He wasn’t a superhero kind of boy.

“We need to get away. You want us killed?” Pete pointed down at his throbbing leg, still not looking at it.

“Oh, please. Not without the things Mummy packed.” Beth’s blue eyes, swimming with tears, held Pete’s.

Dunny’s right
, Pete thought to himself.
Girls are trouble
.

“Can you even remember when you last saw it?” Pete gestured around the bomb site. Chairs, curtains, glass from broken windows, glass from broken glasses, mattresses, wardrobes, pots, pans, a toilet pan, an upturned bath balanced on a broken sink, tins, books… Beth’s home was tumbled in one big mad jumble around her. Never mind needle in a haystack. Finding a box in this chaos was going to be impossible.

Pete didn’t know where to begin, but he dropped down to ground level –
Ouch!
His injured leg did NOT enjoy that! – and scanned the debris around him.

“I told you, silly. Near here somewhere.”

Beth crouched down beside him. Scanning wasn’t enough for her, though. She crawled away and started poking about in the nearest pile of rubble, flinging objects behind her as she went. A lamp, a vase. She picked up a pair of spectacles, one lens smashed.

“Oh, my daddy’s readers.” Beth dusted the surviving glass with the end of her kilt, then tucked the specs into her waistband. She moved forward – “Come
on
!” – scrabbling with both hands now. Delving deeper, probing a teeter of bricks, turning to squint at Pete as she felt about inside a gap.

“You shouldn’t be doing that. You’ll trap your arm. Or something could fall on your head. We should be wearing hard hats,” Pete warned.

Beth pulled out a sodden cushion and threw it at him.

“
What
hats?”

When she flung another cushion, Pete moved sideways to dodge it, his hip bumping against a pile of loose stones. Which gave way, sending a great cracking ripple up to the top of the ruin. Wobbling a chimneystack… Wobbling it more… Then…

Pete had a fraction of time to act.

“Quick! Under here.” He had to make Beth move fast. He grabbed her nearest plait. As the chimneystack made its way towards them, bringing any chunks of stonework it chipped down with it, Pete just managed to shoo Beth under the upturned bath and crawl in beside her…

KERRASSSHHHH!!!

The ground rumbled, tolling an echo through the enamel of the bath, raising a cloud of filthy stone-dust.
Pete winced and tensed and held his breath, expecting debris to smash their crowded sanctuary apart. Smash his head. But the bath held strong, and didn’t shift.

“Phew, that was close.” Still on hands and knees, Pete shuffled as far along into the bath as he could. He rapped the side of it and the enamel clanged back, solid and sturdy. Pete couldn’t help himself thinking of the fun he could have in here with Simon or Alfie. Or Dunny. Or maybe even Beth. Under different circumstances. Yodelling in Tarzan voices for the echo, kidding on the funny taps were controls, and the old bath a spaceship. Or a portal, time-travelling Pete and his pals to parallel worlds…

Though maybe not a parallel world as scary as this one Pete had found; a girl from the past cowering beside him, her breath rasping hot on his neck.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Well, you pulled my hair far too hard, silly. But I’ll let you off. Come on.”

Beth was already crawling backwards. Pete didn’t budge. Masonry was still falling outside, some of it clunking on the bath.

“Now
you’re
being silly. We can’t.” Pete was trying to shift into a hunched sitting position instead of a crawling one. With Beth alongside him there wasn’t much room and his arms were at full stretch behind him, his left hand actually sliding beyond the tap end of the bath and out the other side. His fingertips couldn’t seem to straighten though. They were bumping against something.

“Well, we’re not going to find my box hiding in
here like tumshies, are we?” Beth snapped. But Pete didn’t answer. He was turning again. Trying to flatten himself on the ground.

“So are you just going to lie here on your tum-tum, silly?”

Pete didn’t answer. Well, he couldn’t, because his face was mashed against the overflow grille of the bath as he slipped both hands under the lip of it now. He probed blind for something he just thought might, might,
might
have felt like a cardboard corner.

“What are you
doing
?”

“Damn!” Pete muttered through gritted teeth. Whatever he’d touched had shifted away from him, just beyond reach, but it had definitely felt like a cardboard box. Should he tell Beth? He lay at full stretch now, fingers probing the ground beyond the bath for anything he could grip, then slide closer.

There it was again: pinch; grip; pull.

“Damn, damn, damn.”
Pull
. Pete had pushed his target out of reach again.

“Beth.” Pete couldn’t risk turning to look at her in case his fingers moved out of position. “You need to stretch your hand under the bath too.”
And please don’t ask why yet
, he was praying to himself.
Don’t get your hopes up
.

Too late: “You’ve found my box?”

“Just stretch. Quick.”

Beth didn’t need to be told twice. She wriggled down on to her stomach alongside Pete. But there wasn’t really enough room for two bodies. As Beth forced a space for herself, she pushed too hard against the enamel, and the bath shifted and rocked
for the first time. Above it the ruin shuddered and creaked.

“Damn.”

Pete’s back was in spasm, his hands slick. He forced himself to stretch until his shoulder screamed in its socket. Then s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d a little further still until the tips of three fingers and the top joint of his thumb were pinching what he hardly dared to hope was the corner of a box. Under the lip of the bath, the length of Beth’s arm was pressed to his, their heads so close together against the overflow that Pete couldn’t even turn to urge, “Listen, I’m going to push something and you grab it. Then we’re out of here. Whether we get it or not. OK?”

Beth’s temple nodded against Pete’s scalp, hair scritching hair. He heard her catch her breath and then he was counting: “Three… two… one… GRAB!”

Beth grunted, gasped, wriggled, then squealed “Yesssssss!” in Pete’s ear as the object he was touching slid away from him. Beside him, Beth crawled down the bath, her left arm crooked around…

Pete just had time to check as he followed Beth, with her grumbling, “No need to stick your face in my bottom, silly,” that –
result!
– she had found her box. Or at least a box. Then an avalanche broke loose above them: stones and boulders tumbling from the top of Beth’s ruined house, the biggest of them thundering down on the bath, splitting it in two.

All Pete could do was cower, protecting his head, Beth’s head, ducking bricks and twisted drainpipes and darts of sheared glass. Pete was so frightened that when he heard a high wail rising, like white noise, he thought he was making it himself, till Beth yelled,
“Hurray! That’s the all-clear. And that’s Aunty Mary.”

Beneath the siren Pete just about caught a woman’s voice calling Beth’s name over and over. He thought he could hear a baby crying too.
Not Jenny. Not here
, his heart was thumping till Beth yelled, “I’m fine, Aunty Mary. Don’t bring Jamie down. I’ll come to you.”

She was already picking her way over the shifting rubble.
An all-fours job. Tricky with that shoebox
. Pete was just about to warn Beth when she halted as if she could read his mind. Panting. Gazing up at the ruins she would need to scramble.

And then she was thrusting the box at Pete. “I’ll get this later. Need two hands to climb.” As she spoke, Beth darted forward and kissed his cheek. “And by the way, you shouldn’t say ‘damn’, silly,” she said. “It’s very rude.”

Then, with a switch of her plait, she was gone.

Pete could only gape as Beth zigzagged a path through the shifting ruins. He was stroking the spot she had kissed –
A girl?
– as if his cheek was burnt, when anything above him that had not collapsed decided to plummet to the ground. Pete dived to his knees and reverse-scrambled into the opening of his tunnel, cradling Beth’s box against his chest and protecting his head as best he could. A pipe was wedged in the doorway. Pete had to side-wind around it, sucking his tummy in and only just managing to shoogle Beth’s box to safety before he dealt with his upper torso. Now only his head and outstretched arms remained on her side.

“C’mon, push!”

Pete heard his own panic rise. Debris was clunking off his wrists and knuckles; bricks, metal fragments,
stones glancing his temples. No matter how hard he wriggled, he wasn’t moving through the doorway fast enough. So he never saw the brick that struck his head just as he withdrew into the dark cavity between Beth’s world and his own. As he passed out, the dead weight of his unconscious body slumped against the tunnel door, closing it for ever.