Space Race Read online

  The first time she brought Thomas home from school and sat him down at the table in her own neat house to give him tea was something she would never forget. The little boy's chatter was so … imaginative! For a six-year-old, he possessed some very strange ideas. Mrs. Dalrymple put it down to things he must have seen on TV.

  “How do you like Belthorp now?” she said as they sat together at table.

  “It's different,” said Thomas. “Did you know I was a river? And there's another boy at school who's a river. His name's Mickey Trent. And we both join up into another river.”

  A quick thought process made sense of this. Derwent … Trent.

  “And you both flow into the Ouse!” said Mrs. Dalrymple, smiling.

  “Yes!” said Thomas, giving her a look of wonder. “How did you know that?”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Dalrymple, “there's lots of things I know! And I'm always ready to learn lots more.”

  Thomas liked that. He decided as he ate his homemade scones, which had cream and jam in them, that he very much liked Mrs. Dalrymple. He liked her house with its dark polished furniture and the plants on the windowsill. He liked the meal she had made for him at the table with its shining white cloth. He liked the log fire that crackled in the hearth. Above all, he liked the kindness he saw in Mrs. Dalrymple's eyes.

  “It's nice here,” he said. “I'm glad, I'm really, really glad, we came.”

  Mrs. Dalrymple was not an exceptionally nosy woman, rather the reverse; but by way of conversation she said, “And where did you live before?”

  “A long, long way from here,” said Thomas. “Coming here was very exciting, very, very exciting.”

  Mrs. Dalrymple laughed at the eagerness of his expression. “Sounds like a story,” she said.

  “It is! It is!” said Thomas. “It's a wonderful story, the best one I know. We came in a spaceship. But it was little, little, little …”

  Thomas cupped his hand as if it were holding a ball. His fingers were sticky with jam and there was a dot of cream on his chin. A small, slim six-year-old with a fine, sensitive face, he looked the picture of innocence. But he was about to tell his new friend what she could only regard as an enormous whopper. Or, being kind, a tale displaying a child's most glorious imagination.

  “And when we went in,” he said in a rush of words, “we got tiny and everything inside was tiny, but we didn't know that because we were tiny as well. And when we came out, we got big, big, big …”

  He stood up, spread his arms, and puffed out his chest to demonstrate.

  “And our cases got big, big, big and everything we had brought with us got big again. Then my father unpacked his wallet of money, and we left the spaceship in the soil because it was too heavy to move, and we went to a station and we got some tickets, and we got on two trains—not at the same time, one first, then another. And that's how we came here. My father said it was all as-a-range. Except the spaceship landed in the wrong place. And the marvelous bit was going round and round the moon twice, but that was a mistake as well.”

  Mrs. Dalrymple laughed again, affectionately. Her hazel eyes twinkled as she looked across the table at his solemn face. For that moment the child was so engrossed in the tale he was telling that it seemed as if he really believed it.

  “Does your father know this story?” she said gently.

  “Course he does,” said Thomas, looking puzzled. “He was there. And we looked in the shop windows we passed with mirrors and we saw what we looked like.”

  By now they had finished tea. Mrs. Dalrymple cleared the table and the two of them went into her little sitting room and settled down to watch some children's television. I'd better watch this, she thought. I obviously need to keep up to date!

  “Your son's a very bright little boy,” said Mrs. Dalrymple to Patrick when he came to collect him. Thomas was up in the bathroom washing his hands, so there was no danger of giving him too conceited a view of himself.

  “I think he is,” said Patrick, smiling, “but I could be prejudiced!”

  She then told him the spaceship story. “I've heard that one before,” said Patrick with a laugh. “I suppose it's more interesting than saying we came from Hemel Hempstead!”

  Five years on, the story remained unfinished, and Stella Dalrymple never found out anything about her neighbors' past. That didn't matter. After all, she never told them about some years of her own past, spent in a very different place. The sadness of losing her husband was not something she talked about. The present was enough, and the present was mainly joyful.

  The whole of Belthorp was in a basin surrounded by hill farms. From the windows of Belthorp Primary School the children could see sheep grazing in a not totally unspoiled countryside. To the east, at the foot of Shotten Hill, was a grim-looking modern factory. To the northwest, the pit heap of an abandoned colliery was slowly being reclaimed. Most of the classrooms were on the north side of the school. The south side looked out onto the playground and the village street.

  It was the day after the fight.

  Mickey Trent's “flu” had cleared enough for him to return to school. He and Thomas were leaning against the railings beside the school gate. Mickey was overweight but not a soft, fat boy. His big bones supported the extra weight comfortably and he was not at all flabby. The makings of a good fighter, not a bad mate to have by your side, though such a thought never occurred to Thomas Derwent. He never knew how many times Mickey's strength had saved him from the usual bullying such a slight, clever boy might expect to suffer.

  Mickey had been by Thomas's side from the first day they met. Six-year-old Thomas was the newcomer. Mickey had been at the school for over a year. It was Miss Crosbie, the class teacher at the time, who set them up as allies. She it was who called them “the two rivers.” The Derwent and the Trent, you know, are tributaries of the River Ouse. It was as good as being blood brothers! And what a nice way to make a new boy feel at home! Thomas soon proved to be much cleverer than his friend, but that was no disadvantage. They worked quite happily as a team. Besides, Thomas was only clever at sums and spelling and things like that. It didn't stop him being very gullible, and Mickey could usually put him straight.

  “Did Donnie really set fire to Jackson's barn?” Thomas asked his friend as they stood waiting for the bell to ring. “My father read about the fire in the paper.”

  “Don't you go saying that,” said Mickey, horrified. “Of course he didn't! It was just Phil's idea of a joke. You know what those two are like! Donnie Justice would no more think of setting fire to a barn than of flying to the moon!”

  “Remember, I've been there,” said Thomas quite seriously. “Like I told you, we flew round it twice on our way to Earth. I still remember how crummy it looked, nowhere near as good as this place. I don't know why anybody would want to go to it.”

  Mickey laughed. Thomas told some fantastic stories, always had. They made you think of doing things! Like flying … Both boys then sprouted wings that were really arms and flew round and round the yard, dipping and diving, till the bell went and spoiled their game.

  Miss Kershaw had a headache. It made her cross and irritable. The children streaming into the room were as noisy as children always are, scraping chairs, bumping about with school bags and settling down a bit like an orchestra tuning up before the concert.

  “Please be quiet,” said Miss Kershaw. She felt like asking for mercy but eleven-year-olds are not famed for being merciful. It helped that she was young and pretty, but it is a rare child who can really see a teacher as a vulnerable human being!

  “Sit down,” she said firmly, “all of you, and stop that chatter. Today is going to be a very, very quiet day.”

  At that moment an airplane swooped low over the school on its way to the RAF training base and drowned out her voice. At the back of the classroom, Donald Justice and Philip Swanson stamped their feet briefly and giggled.

  Miss Kershaw smiled wanly.

  “It will be as quiet a day as we can make i
t,” she said. “There is enough noise on this planet without our adding to it.”

  Thomas always liked it when Miss Kershaw said “this planet.” To him it seemed like some sort of recognition. Miss Kershaw was a friend of the Earth. Though at that moment she did not feel particularly friendly toward anything or anybody.

  “Now then,” she said, holding up the sheaf of cards she had in her hand, “I have prepared a task card for each of you. You will carry out your own special task in silence. If you have any questions, come quietly and ask me.”

  “Can we do them in any order, Miss Kershaw?” said Rosie Bigwood, seeing even at the age of eleven that the system was ripe for chaos. It could end up with lots of people trying to grab the same card! That might be fun.

  “No,” said Miss Kershaw sharply, knowing exactly what Rosie had in mind. “You must do them in the order given and return each card to the table before you start on the next task. And do it quietly.”

  Or at least that is what she probably said. Her final words were lost as another plane passed noisily overhead.

  “Funny how there's always two of them,” said Philip in a voice that was louder than he intended. He had thought the plane's noise would drown out his words, but the plane had gone before he got them out. Miss Kershaw glared at him.

  “Our spaceship was much quieter than that,” said Thomas in a whisper to his friend. “It could travel faster than sound without even making a bang.”

  “Give over,” said Mickey, nudging his elbow. “We'll play it outside later. Miss Kershaw's getting vexed. She looks to me as if she's got a bad head.”

  After that, the class settled down to a hum of quiet work. Each child was working seriously within his or her own scope. It would have needed deliberate malice to spoil the lesson and the children of Belthorp Primary were not deliberately malicious, whatever else they might be.

  Thomas was on to his fourth task—drawing and labeling figures with three, four, five, six, and seven sides—when his mind strayed into thoughts of what his father had hinted at the night before. Yet it was not so much what he'd said as how he'd said it and how he'd looked. Thomas shivered as the thought came to him that perhaps this life of theirs was ending. He stopped work and his dark eyes brimmed with tears.

  Miss Kershaw noticed. Her head was clearing. The lesson was going well, and she had time to notice Thomas Derwent faltering and fighting tears.

  “What's wrong, Thomas?” she said quietly, coming close to him.

  “I don't know,” said Thomas in a very low voice. “What does dying feel like? I don't ever want to die.”

  Miss Kershaw bent over him as if inspecting his work. At these last words she held back a smile.

  “You really needn't worry about that just yet,” she said solemnly. “Finish your work. You're doing very well. At this rate, you'll win three merit marks!”

  Thomas looked up at her.

  “I want to stay here,” he said. “I don't want to go away.”

  Miss Kershaw remembered that Thomas and his father were newcomers to the village—or had been five years ago, and that was pretty much the same.

  “Is your father being transferred elsewhere?” she said. Mr. Derwent, they all understood, worked for a multinational chemical company, commuting each day the forty miles to town. And multinationals, so she assumed, can move their people around.

  “I don't know,” said Thomas bleakly. “He hasn't said.”

  The school day ended well. A fully recovered Miss Kershaw gave out the parts for the Christmas play. Emma was Mary, Donnie was Joseph, and the rest of the cast included Mickey Trent as the angel Gabriel and Thomas Derwent in the role of the youngest shepherd.

  When Thomas came home from school looking thoroughly miserable, Stella felt real concern. She settled him down to his tea and sat beside him at the table. It was a while before she came to the point. She knew not to rush him. Thomas sat silently eating his food, as if to do so were a great effort.

  “Is something wrong, Thomas?” she said as she poured herself a second cup of tea. “Has something happened at school?”

  Thomas took a big bite out of his sandwich and tried hard not to cry. Tears gathered rebelliously on his dark lashes.

  “What is the matter?” said Stella, immediately aware of the body's distress. “You can tell me. I'll see to it, whatever it is. Troubles are best shared.”

  Thomas put down the remains of the sandwich and looked across at her wretchedly.

  “Has my father said anything to you about us going away?” he said.

  “No,” said Stella. “Not a word. And if you were going, he'd be sure to say. He's much too nice and too polite to leave without giving me notice.”

  “And you would tell me?” said Thomas.

  “Of course I would,” she said, then leaned over and gripped his arm. “But Thomas, Thomas, please listen to me. If you were leaving Belthorp, your father would tell you properly himself. He would never, ever upset you like this. What put the idea into your head?”

  “Something,” said Thomas awkwardly. “Nothing. Just a feeling. And I don't want to go. I like it here. This is my home.”

  “Well, you ask him about it,” said Stella. “Wait till you are alone and tell him exactly what's worrying you and why. Bringing things out into the open is good for children and for grown-ups too. Hidden worries hurt more.”

  * * *

  By the time Patrick came home, something had happened to distract Thomas's attention from those hidden cares. It was snowing. Heavy flakes were falling and rapidly covering the ground.

  “We'll still go for our walk tomorrow,” said Thomas eagerly. “To see Jackson's barn. You said we could. And I'd love to go walking in the snow, finding parts that nobody's been to.”

  “I don't see why not,” said his father. “Explorers have to start somewhere!”

  “Vandals,” said Patrick sadly.

  Thomas looked at him uncertainly. They were standing on the edge of Jackson's field. Father and son were both clad for the weather—anoraks, scarves, gloves, and Wellington boots. All around was snow, covering the fields, lying heavy on the hedges, glistening in a weak winter sun that somehow gave everything shadows that were yellowy brown.

  The only sharp color in the whole landscape was the blackened skeleton of Jackson's barn. The roof appeared to be still intact, but nothing else remained except four charred uprights whose branched tops held the roof in place.

  Patrick saw his son's puzzled look and added, “No, son, it was no one from your school. These would be real vandals, older and stupider. Remember why Donnie was ready to fight his friend, even for joking about it? He had nothing to do with this. I doubt if anyone swill ever know who did. It's hard to imagine who would want to destroy something so sturdy and so old. It's a bit of history.”

  “The roof's not gone,” said Thomas hopefully.

  “Yes,” said Patrick. “And they'll probably save it. But that's no thanks to the idiots who started the fire.”

  “Will the owls come back?” said Thomas.

  “I would think so,” said his father. “All creatures tend to return to their own base. As we shall to ours.”

  “And our base is Belthorp,” said Thomas firmly. “Let's go home now. Stella will have our dinner ready.”

  He looked anxiously at his father, willing him not to contradict his words. I am Thomas Derwent, and Belthorp is my home. He shivered and turned to face downhill toward the village in the valley.

  Patrick felt guilty for keeping so much to himself. He made up his mind to broach the subject of their departure. He had to begin somewhere and time was running out.

  “We don't really belong here,” he said, one hand resting on his son's shoulder. “You must never forget that. We are here with a job to do. When the job is finished, we will be going home to Ormingat.”

  Thomas said nothing. Instead he scrunched his boots into the snow and kept his head down. He clung to the possibility that their leaving was not imminent, that perh
aps it could be delayed, delayed indefinitely. He rooted round in his brain for arguments to persuade his father to stay put.

  “Stella couldn't come to Ormingat,” he said. “Stella has never heard of Ormingat.”

  “I should hope not,” said Patrick. “You know the rules. You must never, except in the direst of circumstances, tell anyone your real name or your real place of origin. Those words are keys and someday you might need them.”

  Thomas did not understand, but neither did he feel the urge to question. He did not want to know anything about “the direst of circumstances.” The whole idea was too hard for Mickey Trent's best friend, even if he was always top for sums and reading. If he had known how to put it into words, he might have said, Look here, I'm Thomas Derwent. I go to Belthorp Primary and Miss Kershaw's just given me a part in the end-of-term play. That's important. I don't want to know about anything else.

  Yet that was not quite accurate. There was one thing he wanted to know here and now. There was one thing he was conscious of waiting to be told. He looked at his father expectantly.

  Patrick hesitated but said nothing.

  They walked on in silence. Darkness fell and, one by one, stars brightened in the blackness of the sky.

  They passed the first street of houses in the village. The streetlamps were giving their own special light to the snow. In the distance, children on the village green, just beyond Merrivale, were shouting faintly and throwing snowballs.

  It was Thomas who decided to break the deadlock. He had to ask the question, even though he was deeply afraid of what the answer might be.

  He stood still and turned to face his father. He had only the faintest idea of how orders might come and from whom.

  “When have we got to go back?” he said. “Have you had word somehow? It's not fair to hint and hint and not tell me what's really going to happen.”