Part 4 (2/2)

He would ask her on Monday.

TEN.

COUNTING THEM OUT, COUNTING THEM BACK IN.

Sunday afternoon was so hot that when Henry stepped outside it felt as if the sun was melting him into gloopiness, like a wax candle. Even Mum and Dad tired of gardening and sat reading the Sunday papers in the shade outside the back door. Henry had thought he and Simon might play football at the rec, but it was far too hot for that.

*We could go over to the stream,' Simon suggested. *There might be sticklebacks.'

*Can we?' Henry asked his parents. He knew by now that Simon liked wildlife of all sorts, particularly frogs and toads.

*How far is it?' Mum asked Simon.

Simon made a vague guesture. *Not far. That way, out in the fields. There's a footpath.'

Once Mum had satisfied herself that they wouldn't have to trespa.s.s or cross any fields with bulls in them, she agreed. *Don't get too hot,' she warned.

It would be impossible not to get too hot, Henry thought, unless you stood up to your neck in a river. He felt the sun striking through his T-s.h.i.+rt and p.r.i.c.kling his bare arms as Simon led the way along the footpath beside the church and out into a gra.s.s meadow.

*I've been this way before,' he told Simon, recognising the way Grace had brought him on Friday. The stream - the tree-shaded part of it Simon was making for - was down in the dip to their left; ahead, over the brow of a rise, was the stony track that led towards Amber's paddock. It would be fun, Henry thought, to show Amber to Simon, and impress him with the story of the wild gallop. He'd call Amber a horse, he decided, rather than a pony; she was almost big enough to pa.s.s for a horse. He could make it sound like a one-horse Grand National. *Let's go this way first,' he told Simon.

A flurry of birds flew out from the low trees beside the stream and the water glinted coolly, making him wonder for a moment if it wouldn't be more fun after all to paddle and look for sticklebacks. They reached the stile that led to the stony track, which they followed until it forked by a barn. Here, Henry soon realised that he must have taken a wrong turning. There was no shelter, no pony. Instead the field-edge was rising slowly towards a rusted gate. The rough path under their feet ran beside a dry ditch fringed with poppies and nettles, then became concrete, cracked and broken, with gra.s.s pus.h.i.+ng up through the cracks. Henry and Simon climbed the gate and stood looking at the flat, open area, bordered by shrubby trees. The track widened, joining another at a sharp angle.

*You know what this place is?' Simon whispered.

Henry had no idea why Simon felt he had to keep his voice low - there was no one around - but he found himself whispering too. *No. What?'

*It's the old airfield. This is one of the runways. And that building over there must have been some sort of control tower.'

Henry looked at the crumbling brick building with broken steps leading up to a doorway. *How old?' he asked. *This place doesn't look as if it's been used for centuries.'

*There weren't such things as aeroplanes centuries ago, dingbat.' Simon gave him a friendly shove. *It was used in the war. I know cos my grandad was here, Grandad Dobbs.'

*What did he do in the war, your grandad?'

*Actually he's my great-grandad - my dad's grandad. He's ancient, eighty-something. He flew in a Lancaster. But he wasn't a pilot, he was a flight engineer. He told me all about it. There were seven of them, in a Lanc, all with different jobs: pilot, wireless operator, rear gunner - I forget the others. And all Grandad's crew were killed one night, only Grandad wasn't there cos he was in sick bay, with flu. They all died, all his best mates he'd been with since he trained. For a long time, he said, he wished he'd died with them. He felt guilty, for getting flu. He should have been there.'

*To get killed? That's a weird thing to wish.'

Simon shrugged. *That's what he said.'

*So didn't he fly any more after that?'

*Course he did! The war was still on. But he got transferred to some other airfield, with another crew. He was lucky, he said. One time he was due to fly, only there was something wrong with their plane so they couldn't go, and seven out of the twenty planes got shot down that night. And another time he'd just left his position to go for a pee - they had this chemical toilet thing in the back, he said, it stank something awful - when a stream of bullets from a fighter tore through the fuselage right where he'd been sitting. That's how he got his nickname. Lucky Dobbs. Before, he was always called Rusty.'

*Rusty? Dobbs?' Henry's mind snagged on the names. For a second he felt his feet hot in boots and smelled crushed gra.s.s and doughnuts. Next moment that thought had flittered just out of reach, like a piece of thistledown on the wind. If only he could catch and hold it . . .

*Yeah, Rusty, cos he had red hair just like me,' Simon explained. *But after all these lucky misses, it was Lucky Dobbs. His crew started to think he was their good luck mascot. He could fall in a dung heap and come up smelling of roses, they said.'

Got it! Into Henry's mind floated the grinning face from his dream, the bright eyes. Rusty Dobbs! But how - As soon as he'd grasped it, tried to make sense of it, he began to doubt his memory. Perhaps he hadn't dreamed the name Rusty Dobbs at all - had only heard it a few moments ago from Simon. Then another thought struck him. *You know what? The first time, when he had flu - if it wasn't for those flu germs, you wouldn't be here now.'

*I know.'

*You owe that flu bug.'

*Thank you, O generous germs,' Simon said solemnly, with a little bow. *Or if he hadn't needed to pee.'

They walked on, along the cracked runway. The air rose from the baked concrete in a faint s.h.i.+mmer of heat. Something about the place made Henry feel edgy. The words of Grace's stupid song ran through his head again: They sc.r.a.ped him off the runway like a dollop of strawberry jam . . . He hated that song, without having the faintest idea why it should bother him so much. But, in the war, it must have been real. People must have had to parachute out of flaming planes, had to decide: jump, or die in your burning aircraft.

He almost reeled with dizziness, facing himself with that choice. Blackness took over his mind, unfathomable, streaked with flares and tracer fire and explosions. It took an effort to bring himself back to now, his feet solidly on the ground, walking over the concrete and the thrusting weeds. Another runway swept across the middle of the airfield between big triangles of gra.s.s that had been cut for hay. Any minute now, he thought, remembering what Mum had said about only walking on proper footpaths, a farmer would drive up on a tractor and tell them off for trespa.s.sing. It felt wrong to be here. All the same, he'd rather face the angry farmer than the fear that was making his stomach churn and his legs tremble.

An old hangar loomed at them behind a dense belt of shrubs. Henry had a wild vision of it being full of brand new Spitfires, straight from the factories. He imagined young pilots in overalls running towards them and leaping into the c.o.c.kpits, the way he'd seen in the old films Dad liked to watch. He hesitated, but Simon walked straight up and looked in at the open front.

*Hay bales,' he said. He sounded disappointed, as if he'd had the same idea as Henry. *The farmer's using it as a barn.'

Henry felt as if they'd walked right out of the real world. He wondered if they'd be able to find their way back to the village, but when he turned and looked, he could see the church tower of Crickford St. Thomas rising above the trees of the Old Rectory, less than a mile away.

*Come on!' Simon shouted. *I'll be a Spitfire, you be a Stuka dive-bomber!' And he ran along the runway, arms out, making an *Eeeee-ow!' noise as he swerved and ducked. Henry tried to make Stuka noises and actions, but it didn't feel right in this strange place. He fended off the Spitfire attacks half-heartedly, and was glad when Simon tired, wilting in the heat.

*Let's go down to your stream,' Henry said. *Or I'll burst into flames.'

At home, tea was all cold things - ham and salad, strawberries with ice-cream, orange juice with chunks of ice. Henry told his parents about the deserted airfield, and after the meal Dad fetched the local map. Henry had the odd feeling that if he tried to return, he wouldn't find it.

*Yes, here it is.' Dad's finger pointed at the triangles of runway, not far from the orange lines of roads and grey rectangles of houses that marked the village. *Airfield, disused. Risingheath.'

Simon leaned over to point. *This green dotted line means public footpath - look, it leads there from behind the church, the way we went. So we weren't trespa.s.sing after all.'

*Risingheath. I remember the name now,' Dad said, peering closer. *I read it in some war book or other. But you know who you could ask, if you want to know more?'

*My grandad,' Simon said promptly. *Great-grandad, really. He was there.'

*Was he really?' Dad said. *I was going to say, ask Dottie. She was here in the war. She'd know about it. What did your great-grandad do?'

Simon was telling the story of Rusty Dobbs's flu when his mother arrived to take him home.

Although it was nearly half-past nine, it still wasn't dark. Henry felt too wide-awake for sleep; the back door was open and he wandered out along the flagged path with a gla.s.s of milk in his hand, putting off bedtime. Mum and Dad had been working hard at the garden and it was gradually getting tidier. Where there had been tangles of bramble and teasel and nettles, there was now dug earth. A huge heap of dried plants waited near the back gate to be turned into compost, in the compost-bin Dad was going to make as his next project.

By the gate at the end of the garden, Henry stopped and looked out at the orchard, through the bent, twisted shapes of the apple trees. On such a warm night he expected to see the fireflies, their points of flame flickering and weaving. He'd almost told Simon about them, as Simon knew things about frogs and newts and sticklebacks and probably glow-worms as well; but had stopped on the verge of asking, suddenly sure that these glow-worms weren't for everyone to see.

There they were, flittering and dancing, just as he'd been sure they would be. But there was no shadowy figure standing at the gate this time, no twist of cigarette smoke. Just the fireflies, dancing for themselves.

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