Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh Read Free Book Online Page A

key, as always, wedged between the doorpost and the wall, where the fit was bad. I turned it in the lock, and let us in.
    It was dark. The bomb blocked out a lot of the light. Its nasty snout was nearly resting on the draining board beside the sink. Broken glass from the window lay across the floor, and dust lay thick on the table and the dresser. Julie was shivering. I heard her teeth. You know people say teeth chatter, and that’s just what hers were doing. I don’t know what came over me, but I looked and looked, and saw how she was, shivering, hugging herself round with her arms, her eyes looking huge and dark, and it made me feel cruel.
    â€˜I want a cup of tea,’ I said. ‘I’m going to shave. Make me a cup of tea.’
    We both looked round the place, seeing the horror of what I had just said. There were tile cups and the teapot on the dresser; about five steps away. Then five steps back to get the kettle from the stove. Then the tap, about three inches from the surface of the bomb. Then the stove again.
    â€˜The gas!’ she said, very breathlessly. ‘They’ll have turned off the gas! They must have turned it off, must have! It might explode,’ she added in a more normal tone.
    â€˜It’s an electric stove,’ I said brutally. ‘And the mains switch is just above it,’ and full of manly strength I went off up the stairs, three at a time, to the bathroom.
    I was sorry by the time I had lathered my face. I hoped she would come up and join me, but she didn’t. I hoped she wouldn’t set it off; I supposed she would kill me too if she did, and that made it all right to be up here, shaving. It wasn’t as if I was safe. My razor blades had got rusty while I was in Wales, and the water was cold, so it took some time. Then I went and fetched my torch and penknife from my room, and some clean socks while I was at it, and a shirt, and that copy of
Kidnapped
that I had pretended to read when I was angry with my aunt. Then I went downstairs to the kitchen.
    She had the tea made, cups laid on the table. The table had been dusted too. She had even found a packet of biscuits in the larder and put them out. Her own tea was poured out, and she was sitting reading one of my aunt’s copies of
Picture Post
.
    I stood in the, doorway, looking at her. I expected her to be triumphant, gloating; or maybe, to reproach me for my monstrous behaviour, sullen stares like the ones my aunt was so good at. Instead she looked up and grinned at me, and said, ‘Come and have some tea! Look at this.’
    â€˜This’ was a picture in the magazine, of St Paul’s Cathedral. The heading was UNEXPLODED BOMB THREATENS ST PAUL’S. We could see a great yawning black hole in the pavement outside the south transept. Heads together, while we drank tea, we read about the bomb disposal squad, who were trying to deal with the bomb. They had dug down thirty feet before reaching it, and were still trying to defuse it when the paper went to press.
    â€˜You know,’ she said, ‘it’s supposed to be good.’
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜St Paul’s.’
    â€˜How do you mean, good?’
    â€˜It’s supposed to be good architecture. People who know think so. And I’ve only seen it once, when I was quite young, and I didn’t like it much then. I’d like to go and see it again, just once more, while it’s still there.’
    â€˜It’ll still be there,’ I said. ‘These bomb gangs are dealing with it.’
    â€˜Bill,’ she said, slowly. ‘Do you know anything much about bombs?’
    â€˜Well, no, only what I’ve read in the papers.’
    â€˜My father used to do them in the first war. Get the fuses out, you know. It’s very dangerous.’
    â€˜Well, as long as you don’t give them a great knock on the nose-cone. That’s what makes them go off, isn’t it?’
    â€˜You’ve got it a bit