The Sky is Falling by Kit Pearson Read Free Book Online Page A

exploring the ship. But Miss Montague-Scott had other ideas. You could tell she was a teacher; she seemed to forget that it was still the holidays. Some of the other escorts were lax and spent a lot of their time in the lounge or flirting with the officers, but Miss Montague-Scott made her group conform to the ship’s schedule. First there were prayers, then a lifeboat drill, then a different activity each day: singalongs on the poop deck, art classes, spelling bees, Physical Training or memorizing poems. “No grumpy faces allowed in my group, Norah,” she cried heartily as they performed their morning jack-knives. “ One, two, one, two …”
    Then Miss Montague-Scott got seasick. So did Lucy and many other children. Some threw up on the deck as they ran around, but most spent their days moaning in bed.
    Now Norah was free to do as she pleased. Dulcie wasn’t seasick either, and when she wasn’t looking after Lucy, she hung around with Margery and some other prissy girls who had formed a society called the “Thumbs Up Club”.
    â€œDon’t you want to join us, Norah?” Dulcie asked. “It keeps our spirits up. Every time one of us feels homesick or scared she says ‘thumbs up!’ and we all do it together. It’s a great help.”
    â€œ I’m not homesick,” lied Norah, who lay beside Gavin every night trying to block out the images of home that flooded her mind. “I’m busy with much more important things, thank you.”
    She was watching for periscopes. Every day she leaned over the railing and gazed out to sea. Ahead of the SS Zandvoort steamed a whole convoy of ships, protecting them until they were far enough away from England to be safe. The escorts pretended to ignore the presence of the convoy, but Norah remembered Mrs. Baker’s comment. She knew they were in danger of being torpedoed. She watched the unbroken line of grey water on the horizon every day for an hour, until she got too chilled to stand still. The problem was, she didn’t know what a periscope or a U-boat looked like.
    Sometimes, if she let herself think too much about torpedoes, the suffocating fear would come again. Onceshe groped beside her in panic—where was her gas mask? Then she remembered. Instead of a gas mask, she now had a lifebelt she had to carry everywhere: scratchy orange canvas filled with cork. At least it made a good pillow.
    The ship was like a moving island and Norah explored every inch of it, happy to be able to go where she wanted after the regimented hostel. The Dutch crew indulged the children and let them help polish brass and coil ropes. Sometimes the captain would stop and speak to them in his halting English, or inspect their lifeboat drill. Wherever he went, he was followed by a gang of admiring small boys.
    The best part of the voyage was the unrationed food. Everyone gorged on unlimited supplies of sugar, butter, oranges and ice cream. Some of the meals had seven courses and there were five a day. Norah thought of the doctor who’d said she was scrawny, and ate as much as she could.
    The ten-day trip became a soothing, timeless space between the war behind and the unknown country ahead. Everything had happened so fast that Norah still couldn’t believe she was leaving home. Sometimes she tried to imagine “Canada”. She thought of ice and snow, red-coated Mounties and Anne of Green Gables . None of it fit together.
    Miss Montague-Scott recovered but, except for the daily lifeboat drills, she gave up trying to organize them. “They may as well run free while they can,” Norah heard her tell another escort. “The poor kiddies are going to have enough red tape when they arrive.”
    What was red tape? Norah wondered.
    She made friends with one of the boys from the Scottish group. His name was Jamie, and he had collected far more shrapnel than she had. He helped her watch for periscopes. “I do wish