really.â
I try not to sigh. âOK,â I say.
Pauline hates French. Sheâs good at maths, though, and Iâm rubbish, so I suppose itâs a fair swap. But that means weâll have to spend tomorrow afternoon doing homework. I usually leave it until Sunday night, but Pauline canât come round in the evening. None of us go out after dark on our own. Even though itâs been quiet for so long, you still never know if there might be a raid.
âThanks ever so much,â Pauline says. âAbout half-past two?â
âFine.â
Sheâs climbing out of the tree. âGot to go,â she says. âMumâs on early shift, and Chrissieâs going to the pictures with May. I said Iâd look after the little ones.â
Sheâs like a grown-up in some ways, getting on with whatever has to be done. I think Iâd grumble about it, but she never seems to mind.
Hedge has come to do the garden. I always know when heâs here. The smell of him reaches me as soon as I come round the side of the house. Itâs a mixture of earth andtobacco and dog â and of Hedge, who looks as if he never washes.
Dad calls him âHedgeâ. Mum says I must call him
Mr
Hedge, but somehow I canât do that. I donât call him anything.
His dog is here today, lying in the covered bit between the back door and the coal shed, on the jacket Hedge has taken off.
âHello, Kelly,â I say, but he doesnât wag his tail or even raise his head from his paws, just looks up at me with his yellow eyes. Heâs a big dog, brown and rough. I donât know what sort he is. Dad says heâs like liquorice. All sorts.
I go carefully past Kelly, into the kitchen.
âThere you are,â Mum says. âThatâs good. Run out and tell him his teaâs ready, will you?â
She doesnât call Hedge anything, either.
I skirt past Kelly again and walk across the lawn.
Ian is counting the flowers on the marigolds.
âTwo hundred and eighty-one,â he says.
âIs that good?â
âSeventeen more than yesterday. But I havenât finished yet.â
I donât know how he does this numbers thing. I just think of marigolds as orange â Iâve no idea how many of them there are.
Mum flaps a hand at me through the window.
Go on
, she means.
Tell him
. So I go on, over the bit of grass where we hang the washing and past the steps that lead down to our underground air-raid shelter between the fruit trees. Itâll be horrible in there after all this time of not using it, damp and musty. Itâs probably growing toadstools.
Hedge is squashing caterpillars on the gooseberry bushes. The creepies are striped black and yellow, and his fingers are all mucky with them. His sleeves are rolled up, and his brown arms are crisscrossed with blood-dotted scratches. He must have been pruning the roses that ramble over the fence â he never seems to mind their thorns.
He looks up and says, âTea time, is it?â
âYes.â
âThaâs good.â
He picks off a final caterpillar, crushes it and wipes his finger and thumb on his trousers, then sets off towards the house.I walk beside him. I canât help looking at the scratches on his arm.
âDonât they hurt?â I ask.
He glances at them. âNo,â he says, and laughs in a spitty kind of way because his teeth are all broken and gappy. âThemâs all right.â
Mum has put two big hunks of bread and cheese on a plate in the place where he sits, and a mug of tea. Sheâs given up asking if he wants to wash his hands, he never does. I donât know how she can spare the cheese from the ration, but she manages somehow. Hedge keeps hens, so he brings her some eggs sometimes, and lots of things like carrots and leeks and beetroot. Itâs a big help. Thereâs never much in the shops.
Itâs funny how you have to keep watching someone even if
Lisa Mantchev, A.L. Purol