Fireweed by Jill Paton Walsh Page A

bath in five minutes, dearie!’
    A bath! The very thought of it! We waited. She went off down the road, and knocked on doors there. Soon more people were waiting, and women came up with buckets, and were given hot water from a tap. When the cubicles were ready they gave us towels and soap, and we had showers to bathe under. It felt marvellous to be clean again. I put on my last clean shirt, but it was horrible putting back the other clothes, all gritty with dirt. Julie emerged with her hair damp and sleek, hanging down like rats’ tails round her shoulders. And somehow the night had washed away. We felt ourselves again, and we went back to the North Bank, looking for Marco’s, though by now it would be lunch rather than breakfast, and we went by Westminster Bridge.
    Marco’s face lit up when he saw us. ‘Amici!’ he said. ‘Marco worries for you. You no come, I think you go caput! You hungry, no? I get you good food, good coffee …’ on he went, babbling away as usual. Julie afforded him a smile.
    Sitting opposite her, at one of Marco’s little tables, I saw a bruise on her lip.
    â€˜I hurt you last night,’ I said.
    â€˜But I can still hear you say so,’ she said, smiling. ‘Does it look awful?’
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘Not too bad. Take more than that to make you look awful.’
    â€˜Thanks!’ she said, laughing.
    â€˜Julie, would you mind very much if we went back home, when we’ve eaten?’ I asked.
    â€˜Back to your aunt’s house? No, I don’t mind. Do you want to see what’s happened there?’
    â€˜No!’ I said sharply. ‘No, not exactly. I just want to see somewhere that I know. I think I’d feel better for it, somehow.’
    â€˜Oh, I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘All right, let’s.’
    I still felt a bit guilty about it, as though I was putting something off that would sooner or later have to be tackled.
    â€˜Cheer up, Bill,’ she said. ‘We’ll buy you a new shirt if it would cheer you up.’
    I pushed the guilty mood away.
    But of course, my aunt’s house wasn’t there any more. They had cleaned up some of the mess, so that the street was in use again, but where our houses had been there was nothing but a hole in the ground. And even worse, somehow, all the houses around were smashed; the views out of all the windows of our house had been swept away. It made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach.
    â€˜Bill,’ said Julie, tugging me by the hand, ‘don’t keep looking at it. Don’t keep looking like that!’ I still just stood and looked.
    â€˜Come on, Bill, there must be something round here you know, something still here. Come on.’
    â€˜There’s a park I used to go to,’ I said at last.
    We wandered away down the street, towards the park. When I was much younger my father used to take me there, to get me out from under my aunt’s feet, as he put it. I used to ride on the swings, and he used to smoke his pipe. The swings were still there, everything was the same there, even the familiar mist of an autumn afternoon, with the paint on the roundabout glowing against the whitened air.
    Inside the palings we put down the rucksack, and then she sat on the roundabout, and I pushed it faster and faster, and then jumped on. There weren’t any other kids there, but then it was so cold that wasn’t surprising, and I suppose a lot of them had gone, now that so many houses were wrecked.
    On the roundabout we laughed again, both of us.
    â€˜Make it go faster, Bill!’ she cried to me. Jumping off I put my shoulders to it, leaning hard, and spun it faster and faster. Then I jumped on again for my own ride. The world whirled past so fast that it was just a blur; green and blue, smeared out of the sky and the grass, and men red and black, made of houses and fence. I looked round dizzily at Julie; since she was moving