Trouble in Paradise (3 page)

“Obviously you must not be much of a teacher if you need all these people to help.”

“We stick together.”

“Well … let’s see.” Jack started counting them. “Twelve of you … you sure you shouldn’t send out for more, just in case?”

“I think we have quite enough to give you and this little pipsqueak the thrashing of your lives.”

“Who are you calling a pip—?”

“Shut up, you little pipsqueak,” Jack said, cutting me off. “She didn’t kiss him, so let him go.”

“He’s not going anywhere. We’re not letting him run for help.”

“I don’t need any help to take you down,” Jack said. “But I guess you know that, or you wouldn’t need eleven people to back you.”

Why was Jack taunting them? He was just making them angrier … then I realized what he was doing. He was trying to shame them, make them feel bad about it taking
all of them to fight us. That could work—unless it only made them madder. Then again, how much madder could they get?

“So much for British fair play and all that garbage,” I said. “You’re nothing but a bunch of thugs. Good thing you’re smart enough to know you need at least a dozen Brits to take on two Canadians.”

“Brave talk, pipsqueak.”

“He
is
brave,” Jack said. “Brave enough not to need eleven guys to back him up. Tell you what, we’ll rather
enjoy
fighting all twelve of you.”

Before anybody could say anything more, Jack grabbed a piece of driftwood from the sand. Good plan, we both needed a weapon, and—He started drawing a line in the sand.

“Back up,” Jack ordered, and some of the boys shifted as he drew a big circle with me right in the centre.

“We’re going to fight all twelve of you, but two at a time … starting with you,” he said, pointing at the big guy who’d been doing all the talking, “and anybody else you want to bring into the ring with you … unless you’re afraid to fight a pipsqueak and his older brother … who’s still a couple of years younger than you.”

“Do you really think I’m afraid of you?” he demanded.

“Actions speak louder than words.
I’m
not the one who’s standing
outside
the ring. Pick who you want to come in
with you. And then decide which two come in after we dispose of you and then the next two and the next two … you get the idea.”

“And why shouldn’t we all jump you at once?” he asked.

“Like I said, if you don’t have the guts to fight me alone, then that’s what you’ll do. I’m even giving you an advantage, because you get to choose somebody else to come with you and all I’ve got is this little seventh-grade pipsqueak. We’ll wait here until you decide.”

They gathered together and started talking.

I leaned in closer to Jack. “We can still make a break for it,” I whispered.

“We’re not going anywhere. No point in running.”

“Do you really think we can beat them … beat all of them?”

Jack laughed—that was the last thing I’d expected.

“We haven’t got a
chance
of winning, but we’re going to take a couple of them with us,” he whispered in my ear.

The big guy, the bigmouth, came forward. With him was the second biggest of the group. They stepped into the circle.

“Let’s set the rules,” Jack said. “Anybody knocked unconscious or knocked out of the ring is out. Agreed?”

“Certainly,” he agreed.

“Good. Let’s get rid of these.”

Jack pulled off his school jacket and began to undo his tie. He turned his back so he was facing me. “We both go
for the loudmouth,” he whispered. “I’ll hit him high and you go low. Try to drive him out of the ring … okay?”

I nodded.

Jack spun around and threw his jacket at the one guy and threw a punch at the second, who was too stunned to move out of the way. I hesitated for a split second and then lowered my head and charged at him. My head and shoulder hit him square in the stomach. Jack hit him again and he crumpled over, falling backward and outside the circle.

Jack turned to the remaining guy. He looked stunned … no, scared.

“Look who’s outnumbered now.” Jack jumped forward and the guy leaped backward and out of the ring.

“Okay,” Jack said. “Who’s next?”

CHAPTER THREE

“HERE, TAKE THIS,”
my mother said as she pressed a cold cloth against my eye. Jack already had a cold cloth, holding it alternately to each of his eyes. We were sitting at the kitchen table, and very glad to be home.

“It’s bad enough that one of you was in a fight, but both of you!” she said, shaking her head.

“It’s not like we started it,” I protested. Although, really, Jack did start it … but he
did
get shoved first … so maybe he didn’t.

“People will think we’re a bunch of savages,” she said. “Here barely a week and already you’ve both managed to get into a fight. I think we should march over to the homes of those boys and you will both apologize to them.”

“We don’t even know all of them,” Jack said.

“All of them?” she exclaimed. “How many were there?”

I looked at Jack and he looked at me.

“Answer my question,” she said. Her tone left no doubt that she wanted an answer.

“Well … there were a lot of people there,” Jack said.

“You mean watching the fight?” she asked.

“Some
of them were watching.”

“Some? How many people did you two fight with?” She looked directly at me. “George?”

I wouldn’t lie to my mother—not after all the things we already had to keep from her because of the Official Secrets Act.

“Six kids.”

“Six people!” she exclaimed. “That’s not a fight, that’s a mob!”

“And we didn’t know them because they were in older grades,” I said.

“Older than your grade?” she asked.

“No, older than Jack’s.”

Now she looked horrified. “I’m going to contact the headmaster and possibly the police and—”

“But it wasn’t like they were bigger than us, and we only fought them two at a time,” Jack said.

“So you two were in three
separate
fights?” She sounded incredulous.

“Not really,” Jack said. “It was all sort of the same fight … we just took them on two at a time, that’s all.”

“What?” Now my mother sounded incredibly confused. I didn’t blame her.

“The next two didn’t start with us until we were finished with the two we were fighting,” Jack explained.

“That … that makes no sense.”

“Those were the rules,” Jack explained. “It made it, you know, more fair. It’s not like we had to fight all six of them at once.”

“But why would six boys want to fight you two?”

“Actually there were twelve of them,” I pointed out.

Jack shot me a nasty look. “But we only
fought
six.”

“Why would
twelve
boys want to fight you two? What did you do to bring this on?” This time she looked right at Jack.

“It wasn’t his fault,” I said, defending him. “Or mine. They wanted to fight us because Jack had talked to some girl that they thought he shouldn’t talk to.”

“All this trouble … over a girl?”

“It wasn’t about the girl,” Jack said. “Not really. It was about people telling us they’re better than us, telling us what to do. We’re fighting the Nazis so people can’t do that. Anyway, it’s all over now.”

“So tell me, did somebody—an adult—intervene, or did you all simply come to your senses?” our mother asked.

“No, it just got sorted out.”

“And we’re going to see them again on Monday morning … at rugby practice,” I said.

“They asked if we’d join the team,” Jack explained.

“You two are going to play on the rugby team? You’ve never played rugby in your lives. Do you even know what the game is about?”

“We’re not really sure,” Jack said, “but they told us that the way we take and give a hit, we’re bound to be naturals.”

“They said they’d explain the rules to us as we go along.”

Mom sat down at the table. She didn’t look pleased.

“It did stop the fighting,” I said, trying to make her happier about it all.

“I guess that’s because we’re sort of teammates now,” Jack added.

She shook her head slowly. “Why didn’t I have girls? Pummelling each other one minute and teammates the next. Sometimes boys and men make no sense to me at all.”

“That’s how I feel about girls,” I said.

“At least they don’t go around punching each other.”

“I’d rather they just punched, instead of stabbing a guy in the back,” Jack said, and we all knew what he meant—that girl, that spy, who had tricked him. That must have hurt far more than any punch.

“Not all girls are like Liesl,” Mom responded.

“We know all girls aren’t spies,” Jack said.

“That’s not what I meant. I mean, just because you were deceived once, don’t look for deception from everybody.”

That was easier said than done. After everything that had happened to us over the past months, I looked for spies, enemy agents, Nazis, secret codes and coincidences everywhere I went. I didn’t even like somebody walking behind me. I checked behind doors and scanned every room I entered, just to make sure. When I read a newspaper, I looked for the Ireland Code, checking to see if the first letter of each word, when taken together, spelled out a secret message.

“The important thing is that it’s over,” Jack said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” my mother said.

“Aw, come on, Mom.You’re not really going to make us apologize, are you?” Jack asked.

“Or call the headmaster or the police?” I added.

She shook her head. “No, but your father will be home soon, and he’ll have more than a few things to say about this.”

For the first time since he’d returned from overseas, I thought that it might be better if he were still in Africa. Jack didn’t look any happier than I felt about our father speaking to us. Dad wasn’t somebody who wasted a lot of words. Farmers were like that.

“Here, let me have a look at your eye,” my mother said.

I lowered the cloth from my face.

“That’s looking pretty bad.”

“It feels pretty bad,” I said.

“It’s already coming up black and blue. It’s going to look even worse by tomorrow. You’ve got yourself a first-class shiner,” Jack said, and he laughed.

“You should talk. You have
two
black eyes.”

“And some really sore ribs … at least I’m pretty sure my nose isn’t broken, just a little swollen. But you know,” he said, holding up his hand to look at the scrapes on his knuckles, “we gave as good as we got.”

“Yeah, I guess we—”

“There is nothing to be proud about in this!” my mother said, cutting me off. “I can’t even look at the two of you … it hurts my heart. I’m going to finish making supper, and you two need to go to your room and wait for your father to get home, so we can continue this discussion.”

“When will supper be ready?” Jack questioned. “I’m really—”

“I haven’t decided yet whether you two will be having supper. Now get to your room.”

I sat on my bed, balancing the book on my lap. A little reading helped take my mind off the situation. And if I didn’t move very much, it didn’t hurt too badly. Not only my eye was sore, but also my jaw and places along both ribs. Slowly, deliberately, I balled the fingers of my
right hand into a fist. That hurt, too, especially along the knuckles. The whole baby finger was swollen and felt as thick as the next one over. Sometimes punching hurt as much as being punched.

I eased myself up onto one elbow so I could see Jack. He was lying on his back, but his eyes were open, so I knew he wasn’t sleeping.

“Jack?” I said quietly.

He didn’t answer.

“Jack!”

“What?”

“I was wondering … how mad do you think Dad is going to be?”

“Don’t know. Pretty mad, I guess.”

“But it really wasn’t our fault,” I said. “It’s not like they were just going to let us walk away.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth.”

I shifted around and stifled a little yelp from the jolt of pain in my ribs.

“George?” he said.

I looked over at Jack, who was now sitting on the edge of his bed.

“You done good,” he said and gave me a smile.

He lay back down, as did I. Somehow, it didn’t seem to hurt as much now.

CHAPTER FOUR

I WAS GETTING
pretty hungry by the time I heard the sound I’d been waiting for—our front door opening and closing with a soft
click
, followed by my father’s cheerful, “I’m home!” and his footsteps heading toward the kitchen. I wondered if I would ever get over the feeling of deep relief whenever I heard those sounds. They announced that all was right with the world again. I’d missed them during the time my father was fighting overseas. I smiled, and when I looked up, I could see that Jack was smiling softly, too.

And then came the sound we could have lived without: my mother’s raised voice explaining, in exasperated tones, what “your sons” had been up to
now.
The poor guy had barely had a chance to loosen his tie before getting the news of the day.

I climbed off my bed and went to the door so I could hear better—though I really didn’t want to hear it.

“I know none of this has been easy for any of you, Betty … all these moves. Tell you what, you go and make yourself a cup of tea and leave me to
deal
with the boys.”

I didn’t like the way he emphasized the word “deal.”

“This needs to be a talk … father to sons,” he said. “No room here for a woman and her emotions. You just skedaddle.”

They continued to talk, but all I could hear was a buzz of words.

“What are they saying?” Jack asked.

I shook my head. “I can’t hear them right—” I heard footsteps down the hallway toward our bedroom. I ran back and got onto my bed, grabbing the book so it looked like I was reading.

“It’s upside down!” Jack hissed.

I quickly spun the book right way up as the door opened, and suddenly there he was, filling the doorway.

“Dad!” I exclaimed. “It’s good to—oww—” I groaned.

As I tried to stand up, my rib cage reminded me of what had happened and why I maybe shouldn’t be so happy to see him.

“Where does it hurt?” he asked.