Spying on Miss Muller (3 page)

There was another loud boom. Somebody screamed.

I'd never heard a bomb fall, but there was no mistaking what this was. My stomach began to cramp and I doubled over. My stomach always cramps when I'm scared or nervous. I'd never been this scared.

Now I could hear gunfire. Sharp little faraway pops like someone cracking her knuckles. They must be midget guns.

Lizzie Mag burst into my room. “Hurry, Jess. Come on.”

I snatched up my suitcase, grabbed Lizard's hand, and ran.

Ada and Maureen were already in line, along with some of the girls from the Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty dorms. They all had the same dazed, frantic look. Miss Hardcastle held up her hand and I saw that it was shaking, though her voice was calm. “Where's Daphne?” she asked.

Lizzie Mag stared at me. “Did Miss Müller not come back?” she whispered. “Oh, Jessie.”

Maureen Campbell turned around and said, “Hitler probably warned her about this. She's probably safe in a shelter already.”

“Sh!” Lizzie Mag said. “Hardcastle will hear.” But Miss Hardcastle was too busy to be listening to us.

“Don't be so daft, Maureen,” I muttered. But I was thinking muddled, scary thoughts. Miss Müller with her flashlight heading up to the roof. Planes over Belfast.

Lizzie Mag nudged me. “They couldn't pick her off the roof, could they? They wouldn't be able to land and take off—”

EeeeeeeBANG!
Another bomb.

We screamed, covering our heads with our arms. I didn't care about Miss Müller anymore. I didn't care about anything.

“Bengie!” Miss Hardcastle yelled. “Go back to Miss Müller's room. See if she's all right. I have to get these girls to the shelters. Hurry now.”

Bengie was a prefect in Sleeping Beauty. Her real name was Sheila Bengers, but everyone called her Bengie. Every dorm except Snow White had a prefect as well as a mistress. Prefects were specially chosen sixth formers with responsibilities and some privileges, too. But Snow White was so small we didn't need a prefect, which made it nice.

Bengie looked now as if she might argue, but even with bombs falling, nobody argued with Miss Hardcastle.

“Move along, girls. March.”

We cringed forward, waiting for the next bang that might be right here, right where we were walking, right on top of us. Lizzie Mag clung to my hand. “I want my ayah,” she whispered. The clips had come out of her pin curls, and little loops of hair stuck up all over her head. She could have been four years old.

“It's okay, Lizard,” I soothed, and soothing her made me feel better too.

We were halfway along the corridor when Bengie caught up with us. She ran to Miss Hardcastle.

“Miss Müller's not in her room,” she said solemnly. I squeezed Lizzie Mag's hand.

“Should we say?” she whispered.

I shook my head. “Not now.”

Miss Hardcastle was frowning. “Very well, Bengie. You go to the back of the line and bring up the rear.”

I could tell Bengie didn't want to do that either. She wanted to run and be the first one to get into those shelters. I didn't blame her. But she did as Miss Hardcastle said.

Another stream of girls from the fifth-form dorm straggled ahead of us, and on the right-hand side was a column of little second formers, crying hard, calling for their mummies. Another bomb fell, but it was closer, louder. The whole of Alveara seemed to shake.

“It's all right, girls, just keep moving.” Miss Hardcastle's voice was steady, but I knew the steadiness was fake. She was like the captain when the ship's going down, trying to be brave so everyone else would be brave too.

We were tripping over one another to get to those shelters. The locks on someone's case burst open and clothing fell out.

“Leave it, leave it,” Miss Hardcastle shouted.

I could see the dining-room door and the basement steps that stretched down beside it. Coming in the other direction from the boys' wing were the boy boarders, their pajama legs wrinkled under their Burberry raincoats, their gas masks in cases just like ours. I'd never thought of them as like us in any way. It took my mind off my stomach. Boy boarders in the middle of the night? It was almost as incredible as an air raid.

The girls' lines and the boys' lines met at the basement steps, and there was Old Rose herself in her tatty fur coat, her hair rolled in metal curlers, shouting directions.

“Mr. Atkinson, hold your boys back,” she called. Mr. Atkinson was headmaster of the boys' school.

“Little girls first, down the stairs now. Nobody push. We are in no danger.” Old Rose waved her arms like a traffic policeman.

“What does she mean, ‘no danger'? Is the woman mad altogether?” Maureen hadn't penciled in her eyebrows and she looked like a fish. I felt like one.

Miss Gaynor was waiting at the bottom of the steps. “Each of you put your case on a bunk. Sit quietly beside it. Be orderly.” Miss Gaynor was our domestic economy teacher. She was famous for making the worst scones. Bombs, we called them, as we tossed them into the wastebasket. We'd never joke about bombs again. Never.

Canvas bunks lined the basement walls. Lizzie Mag and I took two that were side by side. Everything smelled musty. The gray blankets folded on the bunks were damp—wet, even. It was dim as a cave with only two hanging yellow bulbs strung on two wires. Voices echoed.

“Are you okay, Lizard?” I asked softly.

She nodded. Strange how she'd wanted her ayah and not her mum. Once she'd whispered to me that she loved her ayah more than anybody in the world. “Except you, Jessie. And my mother and father, of course,” she'd added.

Big bottles of water stood between the rows of bunks. Shovels and picks leaned in a corner. In case we have to dig out, I thought. And I imagined us, the concrete ceiling fallen on top of us. Tables and chairs, too, because wasn't the dining room right above our heads?

But there hadn't been a bomb for a while now, and it felt safe down here. It felt like a place the Germans couldn't get to. There was a big white chest close to us with a Red Cross emblem on its side. That would be for the bandages and the iodine in case anyone got injured.

And there was Nursie. I hardly recognized her in her gray-checked dressing gown instead of her stiff, white uniform. Nursie fixed all our complaints with milk of magnesia for our insides, iodine for our outsides. She had a long horse face and a horse-whinny laugh. She was not laughing tonight.

Looking past Nursie, I saw that all the boarding mistresses were here now—but not Miss Müller.

“Maybe it's over,” Lizzie Mag said. “I don't hear anything.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you don't hear when you're down in the shelters.”

I was thinking now about my mother and father. The Germans would never bomb our little town of Ballylo, would they? They probably didn't even know it was there, with just thirty houses and the church and school and the four pubs. It wasn't even on the map of County Derry, not unless you looked at a big, detailed one. Would my mum and dad know what was happening in Belfast tonight? They might even hear the bombs falling. If they did, they'd be scared out of their minds about me.

Greta Ludowski sat alone on the bunk next to us. She leaned against the wall, and I thought she was half smiling. Greta was Polish. She had been smuggled out by her parents when the Nazis invaded their country in 1939. Greta had been through so much, she probably thought this air raid was nothing. She probably thought we were a bunch of rabbits even to be scared.

“Jess.” Lizzie Mag dug an elbow into my side and wiggled to the edge of her bunk. “Here come the boys,” she said.

I forgot about Greta Ludowski. We stared at the boys as they straggled along with the boarding masters. Mr. Stinky Larrimer, who taught chemistry and always walked with his nose twitching as if he smelled a bad smell; plump, dear Mr. Bolton with his round face and round glasses, always nice, especially polite to the girls. His Burberry was wet, his glasses misted with rain. I guessed he'd been out to the shed by the Latin room to get his stirrup pump in case of a fire. There was Mr. Guy, who taught English and was handsome as anything. When he read romantic poems by Robert Browning or Swinburne, we swooned away. We dreamed about Mr. Guy falling in love with one of us, deserting his wife and two children.

“It could happen. Jane Eyre was a lot younger than Mr. Rochester,” Ada assured us.

“But it's not too likely.”

“What a ‘guy,' ” we'd say, and dream on.

Mr. Guy looked pale and sick tonight, probably from worrying about his wife and children in Bangor, not too far from Belfast as the crow flies. Or the Germans.

Some of the boys grinned bravely at us as they passed. I could feel us all perk up. Usually we saw the boys only in class or at mealtimes, and if we were caught talking to them, well, it was big trouble. And here they were in the almost dark, close enough to touch. They were real now; the air raid wasn't.

“There's Ian,” Lizzie Mag whispered.

I was watching for him. His name was the one I muttered in the dorm after lights-out when we played Truth or Dare. “Which boy do you like best, Jessie?”

“Ian McManus,” I'd say, my face squished hot against my pillow. I definitely wouldn't have paid sixpence for anybody else's picture. Especially since we saved all our pocket money to buy war bonds.

I tried to smooth down my hair, something which is just never possible. There he was, not tall, dark, and handsome, the way the movie magazines describe movie stars—more like medium tall, blondish, but definitely handsome. Ian had gray eyes, a sharp little chin, and a beauty mark at the side of his mouth. Some people might call it a mole, but Lizzie Mag and I decided it was definitely a beauty mark.

“He looks glamorous even in the middle of an air raid,” Lizzie Mag whispered.

I nodded. For a minute we forgot about bombs or being killed or injured.

I saw Ada's brother, Jack, tramping in carrying his case. He and Ada looked so alike, they could have been twins. But they weren't. Lizzie Mag once said a giant must have put a hand on each of their heads when they were born and pushed down. Even their legs were a little bendy, and their heads were perfect ovals, like rugby balls. They even had identical dimples in their chins. They waved to each other as Jack passed.

“Look,” Lizzie Mag whispered. I looked and saw Miss Müller. She was wearing her black silky dressing gown, her black pajamas, and her black slippers with the little silver beads on them. Lizzie Mag and I were so close, we could hear Old Rose's voice, cold now and accusing.

“I understand you were not in your room when the air-raid siren sounded, Daphne.”

Miss Müller faced Old Rose with her head up. “When the sirens started I remembered we had made no provision for the safety of Boots.” Miss Müller paused, then added, “Boots, the caretaker who is deaf.”

“I know very well who Boots is. Go on.” Old Rose was making no effort to speak softly, and everyone was listening.

“I knew he would be unable to hear the sirens,” Miss Müller said, “so I simply ran as quickly as I could to get him and bring him here.” She pointed. “Poor old man. Indeed he had not heard. I had to shake him to get him awake.”

Old Rose and Lizzie Mag and I and all the mistresses and just about everybody within hearing distance turned to look. Boots sat on the last bunk. He looked dazed. His gray hair stood on end and his hands dangled between his striped-pajamaed knees.

“That was very commendable, Daphne.” Old Rose's voice was warmer, and she actually put a hand on Miss Müller's shoulder.

“Do you think Miss Müller really did go for him?” Lizzie Mag whispered to me.

I nodded. “Maybe. When she came down from the roof. But it still doesn't explain why she was up there in the first place.”

Maureen had opened her case and was rooting through it.

“Do you know what time it is?” I asked her. She shook her head.

Ada, who wore her watch night and day, said, “It's twenty past four.”

“In the morning?” Maureen asked.

“No,” Ada said sarcastically. “In the afternoon.”

“Oh.” Maureen had found the mirror she'd been searching for and her soft 2B pencil. She drew in her arches and carefully rubbed a little Tangee lipstick over her mouth.

I thought back to before the air raid. I didn't know what time I'd drifted off to sleep, but Miss Müller had been gone for hours. It would have taken her only five minutes, maybe ten, to go to Boots's quarters.

I looked at her sitting there in her black dressing gown, blending into the shadows behind the hanging yellow bulbs. Up on the roof against the night sky, she would have been invisible, except for the light from her flashlight. Dit-da-dit. Dit-da-dit. And the sky itself dark with German planes.

“Don't you think it was a bit of a coincidence that Miss Müller was up on the roof on the very night we had our first air raid?” Lizzie Mag whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “A bit of a coincidence.”

A
LOUD, ONE-NOTE WAIL,
long and earsplitting, sounded from outside. The all-clear. We heard it on Fridays at five minutes past noon, so we recognized it right away.

“The all-clear,” Old Rose called, in case we were too far gone to remember how it had sounded in the practices. She was standing on the bottom step, beaming down on us. “We shall have to give heartfelt thanks to the Almighty at morning prayers.” Old Rose had been in amateur dramatics when she was a girl, and she never missed the chance to declaim.

We jumped off the bunks, cheering and clapping and hugging one another. “It's over. It's over.”

Someone started singing, “We're gonna hang out the wash on the Siegfried Line.” It was a Gracie Fields song that made fun of the Germans' first line of defense, which was supposed to be so strong nobody could get through it. And suddenly the boys came rushing up, singing and cheering too.