Kissed a Sad Goodbye

to bribe the grocer for a few sultanas. If word got out, we’d have half the village here begging for a taste.”
    Fruit of any kind — fresh, dried, or candied—had become extremely rare, but Cook had a few jars of last Christmas’s mince tucked away in the pantry and meant to make the most of it. Lewis suspected that in spite of her admonition, she’d already dropped a careful hint or two in the village, and was very much looking forward to being besieged with requests. And if he suspected as well that Cook had a soft spot for him, he had no qualms about taking advantage. “That’s because your pies are the best,” he said, looking up from his paper.
    “You’re a flatterer, Lewis Finch; you mind yourself,” said Cook, fanning herself, but her face turned just a shade ruddier and Lewis knew she was pleased. “Now what about them onions for your mum? Shall we pack them up nice with some of my marrow and ginger jam?”
    “Yes, please. And some of the greengages?” Lewis gave her his best smile.
    There had been no question of Lewis’s going home for Christmas this year. Although the attack on Coventry on the 14th of November had marked the beginning of a decrease in raids on London, the bombs were still falling. And even had it been safe, there was not really anyplace for him to go. The damage to the Stebondale Street house had been irreparable; his parents had been finally resettled in a tiny, one-room flat in Millwall, a few blocks from the Mudchute.
    The food shortages were even more evident in London than in the country, and he and Cook had conspired to send a few much-prized things, including onions from the Hall’s kitchen garden. His mum had written that she’d seen a lone onion on a cushion in a greengrocer’s window, priced at 6d, and that the sight of it had made her weep with longing.
    His mother wrote often, full of news of fires tamed and rescues carried out in the course of her new duties as a volunteer ARP warden. After the chaos of the first few nights of bombing, she’d been determined to make herself useful and had gone about it with her usual practicality. And besides, she’d confessed to Lewis in a letter written on a late night watch, it helped take her mind off worrying about his brothers, who had been posted together to a cruiser in the North Atlantic—and about Cath, who had taken to going to the cinema and staying the night in a public shelter if the warning sounded while she was out.
    “Greengages it is,” Cook agreed, twinkling. “Your mum and dad will think Father Christmas came in the post.”
    John came in then, his arms full of faggots for the stove, and as he and Cook talked about the business of the day, Lewis went back to his essay. In the past year he had discovered, to his surprise, that he rather liked schoolwork. Mr. Cuddy even made history interesting, and he had determined that the children should understand the war in what he called an “historical context.” They had put an enormous map up on the wall in the schoolroom, and kept track of the campaigns in Europe and the Mediterranean ivith pushpins and colored pencils. This made the names of places mean something to Lewis, but every once in a while a glance would remind him how close their little part of England was to Occupied France, and he would shiver. He tried not to think about what would happen if Hitler decided to send his armies across the Channel. At least for now he seemed to be busy elsewhere, though in a dream Lewis had seen Hitler’s mind as a great red eye, turning this way and that, and the image had haunted him ever since.
    William banged through the door from the corridor, brmging Lewis back to his unfinished essay with a start. “I've finished mine,” William taunted him with a grin.
    Race you to the shops. Edwina wants a newspaper before they close, and she said I could get some glue for my model.”
    “Right," said Lewis, letting his chewed pencil bounce onto his paper, and they jostled one another out the door and into the courtyard.
    A sun the color of blood was setting against a trans- | lucent sky etched by the black skeletal silhouettes of trees, | the air smelled of frost and wood smoke, and the last of the leaves swirled suddenly on the courtyard cobbles as if stirred by an invisible hand. Lewis stopped, seized by a sensation he couldn’t quite put a name to, but it reminded him of the way he’d felt when he’d watched one of the great ships steam into the docks at