Free Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh

hailstones from a great height. And once we walked down a street with shops on either side, and there was a big window broken, knocked inwards most of it, but a little glass across the street. And then a little way further down, there was another, on the other side, and all the windows between were all right. Then on our own side again, another window gone, about fifteen yards further down, and then on the other side, and so on like that all down the street. At the bottom of the street was a great yawning bomb crater; the blast had ricocheted, zigzag down the road.
    I suppose we must have known, somewhere down inside, that we ourselves might get hurt. We can’t really have believed that it could go on for ever, all that freedom, that we could go drifting through the city for ever, like birds. We must have known there would be trouble coming. But I don’t remember knowing. I remember running, playing hide-and-seek in St James’s Park, eating at Marco’s and other places, sleeping in shelters, selling oranges, and laughing.
    And when trouble came, I hardly recognized it at first, and wasn’t on my guard at all.
    It came with a young man in a brown tweed jacket, who came and sat beside us at the foot of the escalator at the Strand, when we were settling down for the night. Of course, I should have known it was odd; there were not many new faces down there, and almost no young men at all. He kept looking sideways at us, as we got rolled into our blankets, and got more or less comfortable. I picked up my copy of
Kidnapped
, to read while I fell asleep.
    â€˜You’re nice and cosy for the night,’ said the young man to us, suddenly. ‘But what do you do all day?’
    â€˜We manage,’ said Julie, curtly.
    â€˜Not bored at all?’ he asked, smiling.
    â€˜No,’ she said, and turning her back on him, lay down, and pulled the blanket over her head.
    â€˜What school were you at, before the war?’ he said to me.
    I told him.
    â€˜Grammar school?’ he said. ‘And you look almost a young man. You must have been in the sixth form.’
    â€˜I would have been, by now,’ I told him. ‘I was going to try for a scholarship to university.’
    â€˜That’s too good a chance to miss,’ he said eagerly. ‘Look, I’m a schoolmaster …’ (I should have known. One look at that tweedy jacket should have told me.) ‘… and I and some others are back in London, looking for boys to teach. You shouldn’t be running wild on the streets. We have a cellar, and some desks. We’ll keep you going, and find someone to coach you for those exams. Your sister can come along too, till the girls’ school gets going again. Now just give me your names, and your address, and I’ll go and see your parents about it.’
    Julie sat up, wide-eyed.
    â€˜No,’ I said, reaching for the rucksack with one hand. The worst of it was, I liked the snooping rotter in a sort of way, and he was reminding me about that scholarship …
    â€˜Come on now, old chap,’ he said, ‘be reasonable.’
    â€˜I’m over fourteen,’ I said. ‘You can’t make me go back to school.’
    â€˜If you were at a Grammar school, your father signed you up for longer, I’m sure,’ he said, getting curt and angry now. ‘And your sister
is
under leaving age. Come on now, your name and address.’
    By this time we had got our hands on all our possessions, and we just dashed for the escalator, and made a run for it.
    â€˜Come BACK!’ he bellowed, making everyone look around at us, and he started after us, yelling all the way. ‘It’s no good running! You can’t go out with a raid on! We’ve got someone in every shelter for miles, do you hear?’ He began to get short of breath, and his shouting had gaps in it. ‘We … are … looking … every night … in all the shelters … one of