The Umbrella Mouse Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  FIRE

  In one furious snarl, Pip’s life as she knew it came to an end. The bomb struck Bloomsbury Street like lightning and belched its insides outwards in a hot, black cloud that swallowed the sun. At first, the street held its breath as the dust hung like fog in the air. Smouldering papers and photographs fell from the sky like autumn leaves tumbling in a breeze. Mr and Mrs Smith’s cherished wedding picture came to rest on the front step of where James Smith & Sons Umbrellas had once stood. Above it, there was no longer a door to welcome customers inside. The shop was lying as helpless as a house of cards, blown to pieces by a careless player.

  Deep beneath the mangled bricks and broken glass, little Pip Hanway opened her eyes in the dark.

  ‘Mama!’ she coughed. ‘Papa!’

  But only a dull roar bellowed in her ears. Searching the shadows in alarm, she realized she was alone in a small hollow in the rubble. There was no way in and no way out.

  ‘Mama! Papa!’ she cried again, but all she heard was ringing and the sound of her little heart clamouring inside her head.

  Pip trembled. She had never been completely alone before. Even when she secretly crept outside the umbrella and into the umbrella shop, Mama and Papa had always been sleeping nearby.

  ‘MAMA! PAP—’

  At that moment, the earth rumbled above her and dust poured into the hollow, rushing around her ankles to her knees. Pip threw her head from side to side, desperately trying to stop the dust creeping inside her mouth and nose. Suddenly the earth shook violently again. At once, the darkness overhead cracked into a jagged web of light. With a racing heart, Pip hurried through a tiny opening like thread passing through the eye of a needle and chased the slivers of daylight to the street above.

  But the world Pip laid eyes on was not the world she knew. Sirens wailed and men and women ran frantically past buildings that were stripped of their walls and windows. Once private places were now rooms on public display. She shuddered at a painting dangling lopsided in an upstairs bedroom, hanging perilously above a floor that had been blown away. The number eight bus to Bethnal Green that normally stopped in front of the umbrella shop was now standing crippled in the middle of the road with smoke billowing out of jagged, broken windows. It was then that a terrible shiver of panic threw Pip’s eyes wide open. Ahead of her, the half-closed Hanway umbrella lay beneath the bus’s front tyre, rippling with a smouldering, ebony glow.

  Pip’s legs trembled with terror. Clambering over shattered bricks and glass twenty times her size, she reached the road and sprinted for the umbrella, zigzagging through the enormous boots and high-heeled shoes that were chaotically crashing across her path. A few moments brought her to the bus, moaning as it buckled in the heat and spat flame and smoke that curled her whiskers as if she had crawled into an open fire.

  ‘Mama! Papa!’ she cried, reaching for the umbrella. She yelped in pain as her paws flinched and blistered on its tarpaulin. With beads of sweat racing down her brow, Pip desperately searched for a way inside to find Mama and Papa, but it was hopeless. The umbrella was heavier and hotter than anything she had ever known.

  ‘Looks like you’re in spot of bovver, aren’t ya, mate? These new doodlebugs don’t do things by ’alves.’

  Standing there in the smoke, with a long pink tongue lolling out of his mouth, was a small dog with a kind, sandy face, dark eyes and short, black fur like worn-out toothbrush bristles. Wrapped around his body was a grubby white coat with a thick red cross stitched on the side. Instantly Pip’s heart jumped with hope. He was one of the search and rescue dogs Mama and Papa had told her about. They followed their noses and found people buried under rubble after the bombs fell. She had seen one trot past the shop window once, walking with a man dressed in dark blue overalls and a white tin hat.

  ‘Help!’ Pip cried. ‘Please help! My Mama and Papa are inside!’

  The dog snapped the umbrella in his mouth, but it burned his lips and he spat it out with a growl. Panting in the heat, he carefully scampered around the umbrella. Jabbing it quickly and lightly with his coal black nose, he found its silver tip. Pinching it with his teeth, the terrier shuffled backwards and dragged it away from the bus into a nearby puddle next to a fire engine. It hit the water with a hiss.

  ‘Careful, mate!’ the dog said, watching stunned as Pip swiftly paddled across the water.

  ‘Mama!’ she cried breathlessly, dragging her sopping wet body out of the puddle. ‘Papa!’

  Frantically racing inside the hot umbrella, she hurried to their nest at the highest point of the canopy. The place where they had spent their days curled up together, hiding from the outside world. But the nest was gone. Only a few stray pieces of fluff and old newspaper remained.

  She called again, coughing in the stifling heat as she scrambled around the umbrella, searching every pleat, pocket and furrow inside the canopy. ‘Where are you?’

  A sick feeling of fear crept over her. Still she looked and her nose twitched with hope as she lifted each ripple of tarpaulin in her paws, desperately wanting to find them tucked inside a fold. But each one felt emptier than the last and soon a horrible screech of panic rang inside her ears.

  Mama and Papa were not inside the umbrella.

  ‘Where’s yer mum? Where’s yer dad?’ the dog yapped, poking his nose into the end of the umbrella and sniffing vigorously. ‘This ain’t a place for little ’uns!’

  But Pip didn’t know where they were. Closing her eyes, she wrapped herself up in the dark creases of the umbrella and pressed her nose against the canopy, searching for Mama and Papa’s fading smell.

  In her heart she knew she had lost them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SEARCH AND RESCUE

  ‘Now, none of that, love. I can’t bear to see a nipper cry,’ the terrier said, lying on his stomach with his legs splayed out behind him and his chin resting sympathetically just inside the umbrella canopy.

  Pip crawled into a little ball and wept, longing for Mama and Papa to come back. Human screaming and yelling echoed all around and she clasped her paws over her ears, trying to think of a way to escape the nightmare unfolding outside.

  ‘You count your blessings on a day like today,’ the dog said. ‘This bleedin’ war ain’t been as kind to many – some of us don’t even have a roof over our heads these days.’

  A crash sounded nearby and the dog whipped his head out of the umbrella with his ears pricked high on his head. A moment later, Pip gasped, feeling him drag the umbrella across the ground with his teeth.

  ‘Dickin!’ a man cried, following it with a long whistle that went up a note at the end. ‘Dickin! Come here, boy!’

  ‘You stay put, love,’ the terrier said, giving the umbrella one last push with his nose, hiding it in a gap under a splintered bedroom door lying against the rubble. ‘It ain’t safe for ya out here and I’ve got a job to do. Don’t worry, I won’t forget about you. If I find yer mum and dad, I promise I’ll bring them straight here.’

  A prickly feeling of isolation crept over Pip as the sound of Dickin’s claws scratching against the pavement disappeared. Taking her paws away from her ears and lifting her head, the bombsite sounded less frightening, like it was in a next-door room. But she couldn’t stay here. She had to find Mama and Papa and get herself and the umbrella away from this place.

  Uncurling herself from her ball, she crept out of the canopy. She ran her paws across the carvings scored into the length of the umbrella handle and wrapped her arms around its hook. She tugged with all her might, but it remained rooted to the ground. With tears filling her eyes, Pip knew moving the umbrella on her own was impossible. A terrible choice tied a knot inside her stomach as she slowly edged away, risking losing it forever to search for Mama and Papa.

  The fallen door created a shadowy opening, framing the early-evening horror on Bloomsbury Street as though she viewed it through a secret window. Scanning the ground for Mama and Papa, she was mesmerized, watching firemen wrestle
with a hose and soak the smouldering bus with a jet of white water. To their left, men and women rushed about the debris, wearing navy-blue overalls and dark metal hats with bright ‘W’s printed on the front. Some carried sobbing children in their arms while others helped stunned people coated in dust to clamber over the rubble. Behind them, Pip spied Dickin scampering over slabs of stone and planks of wood, following his nose and wagging his tail.

  Suddenly the terrier yapped and began frantically digging. A tall, dark-haired man wearing black-rimmed spectacles and a white metal hat raced to his side, beckoning other air-raid wardens to join him. As a group, the men and women rolled away heavy blocks of bricks still cemented together and, reaching into the hole, they pulled out a young boy, unmoving as if he was asleep. A moment later, a nurse in a tin hat with a cream apron tied around her pale-blue dress rushed to meet them, leading an ambulance man and woman carrying a stretcher. Gently placing the boy upon it, they hurried away.

  After giving Dickin quick congratulatory pats on his head, the air-raid wardens scattered, resuming their search for those in need. The terrier’s pink tongue lolled out of his mouth in a smile before he leaped back across the collapsed buildings, sniffing the debris with his black, shiny nose.

  Pip’s heart was in her mouth as she watched the dog’s sharp sense of smell lead him and the air-raid wardens to three more people and two cats trapped under the rubble. Each time he yapped, she willed him to uncover Mama and Papa, but each time he saved somebody else, and the flutter of hope inside her grew faint. She had to do something to help.

  ‘Mama!’ she cried, stepping out from under the fallen door into the open air with her paws cupped around her mouth. ‘Papa!’

  ‘No!’ Dickin barked, snapping his head in the direction of her voice. His ears flattened against his head with worry, seeing her wander into the road. ‘Get back under the door!’

  Pip continued, tears swimming in her eyes. Over her shoulder, ambulance doors slammed shut one after another as two medics rushed into the front seats of the vehicle. A moment later, it roared into life with a rev of its engine, screeching straight towards her.

  ‘Look out!’ Dickin yapped, now bounding across the rubble.

  The terrier sprang across the street. Rocketing into Pip, they somersaulted between the ambulance wheels. The vehicle hurtled over them as it rushed along the road. Tumbling together, Pip and Dickin landed heavily against the fallen door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Pip scowled, struggling to stand. ‘I have to find my parents.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Dickin growled. ‘You’re lucky you’re not stuck to them tyres like glue. I told you to stay put!’

  ‘I can’t sit here doing nothing.’

  ‘I think it’s high time you told me yer name and I took yer somewhere safe.’

  ‘I-I’m Pip,’ she stammered. She’d never been introduced to any dog before, let alone an important one, like he was. ‘Pip Hanway.’

  ‘Pleased to meet ya, Pip. My name’s Dickin, as you’ve probably heard these folks shouting. I’m a search and rescue dog and I’m here to help. It’s not safe for you here right now.’

  ‘But I can’t leave,’ she said, desperation thumping in her chest. ‘What if Mama and Papa come back?’

  ‘I ain’t got a whiff of yer mum and dad yet. I’ll do my best to find ’em, but ya got to promise me that you’ll stay under this door.’

  ‘But what if—’

  ‘No what ifs, mate. You’ve got to trust me and that’s that.’

  Pip stared into his scruffy black face. He must be a good sort if he was a real search and recuse dog and he had already done a lot to help her, and everybody else trapped under the rubble too.

  ‘All right.’ She nodded reluctantly. ‘But I’m keeping a lookout for Mama and Papa while you’re gone.’

  ‘Deal. Now you get back under that door,’ he said, wagging his tail and nudging her with his cold, wet nose. ‘I’ll see ya as soon as I finish my shift.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DICKIN

  The sun had already risen in a pink mackerel sky when the terrier returned, caked in grey dust from the tips of his whiskers to the end of his tail. Flopping on his side by Pip, who was still peering out from the opening under the fallen door, he rested his head by her paws and panted with his tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth. All night, Pip hadn’t taken her eyes off him as he tirelessly searched through the ruins of Bloomsbury Street. The din of panic had subsided now and the road was quiet as if it was resting from the trauma of the hours before. Dotted around the rubble, the air-raid wardens talked quietly among themselves, sipping tea from white mugs between bites of fresh sandwiches cut into triangles. The tall man wearing black-rimmed spectacles stood by a camouflage-green van with ‘WVS’ printed on its bonnet, which was parked at the side of the road. A woman leaned out a through a large hatch cut into the van’s side. Taking a handful of bread from her, the tall man turned away and approached Dickin in broad strides.

  ‘There you go, boy. You deserve this,’ he said, placing the food by the terrier’s head and affectionately rubbing between his ears. Pip darted back under the door and hid in the shadows of the umbrella. Giving the bread a sniff, Dickin turned flat on his stomach and wolfed it down where he lay. ‘Stay here and rest,’ the man said, walking to the other air-raid men and women once more. ‘That was quite a shift for the both of us.’

  ‘Help yourself, love.’ The terrier said, nudging the last mouthful of food under the fallen door with a wag of his tail. ‘You must be hungry if you ain’t slept all night.’

  ‘Where are my mama and papa?’ Pip said, not giving the bread a glance.

  Dickin’s tail fell limp. Her brow, furrowed with hope, was a look he saw every time the bombs fell. Those lost, longing faces broke his heart.

  ‘I hate to be the one to tell ya this,’ he said, gently shaking his head. ‘But if we could have, we would have found them by now. It’s time I took ya somewhere where you’ll be well looked after now.’

  ‘I can’t leave. Mama and Papa always come back, I have to wait for them. They would never leave me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love, but don’t you reckon they’d have found ya by now? We ain’t moved all night. And look around ya . . .’ Pip’s eyes followed his, sombrely falling on newly organized piles of rubble and skeletons of buildings pummelled into unnatural, jagged shapes by the bomb blast. ‘Most of this site’s been cleared. If they were trapped under what little there is left of this place, they would’ve climbed out and found ya.’

  ‘But they have to find me,’ Pip whimpered.

  ‘They’re in a place they can’t come back from.’ Dickin paused and his gruff voice cracked with sadness, his scruffy head between his paws. ‘They’re dead.’

  Pip suddenly felt so unsteady on her legs that a soft breeze could have carried her far away. How could they be dead when she had just been curled up beside them in their nest, resting her ears on Mama’s chest, listening to her heartbeat? It was impossible to think she would never see them again.

  ‘No,’ Pip said, standing tall and defiant on her hind paws. ‘I don’t believe you. If you’re not going to find them, then I will!’

  She dashed from under the fallen door to the solitary front step where James Smith & Sons Umbrellas had stood, too devastated to care about being seen by the humans standing on the other side of the street.

  ‘Now, Pip,’ Dickin said urgently, leaping up to follow her. ‘There ain’t any need to look over there.’

  Pip quickened her pace, determined to search under every crushed brick and splintered piece of wood whether the dog liked it or not. But as she neared the step, her throat tightened with sorrow. A sheer drop lay before her and she looked down into the deep, dark, jagged mouth of a crater which had replaced the welcoming shop floor where she had last seen Mama and Papa sleeping inside their umbrella.

  ‘It was a direct hit, love.’ Dickin said softly, peering into the ruins beside her. ‘It’
s a miracle you made it out alive.’

  Pip couldn’t speak. Mama and Papa moved fast and could squeeze through the tiniest of spaces. She’d never seen anything they couldn’t hop and climb over. She looked at the remains of the umbrella shop and a sick feeling of despair choked her breath. Crawling out of the mangled bricks, wood and glass wouldn’t have posed a problem for them.

  Turning away, her eyes rested on a pool of dried blood on the pavement, still outlining the shape of where a human body had lain. Mr and Mrs Smith must be dead too, and poor Peter fighting the war in France would have no idea. It was then that a tremor of regret shook her chest. Before they had gone to bed inside their nest, she had been so mean to Papa. She would do anything to go back and say she was sorry, tell him she loved him, listen to his history stories and rest her head on Mama’s shoulder one last time. Drawing a long shuddering breath, a terrible, painful loneliness she had never felt before gripped her heart.

  ‘I know it’s hard, love,’ Dickin said with a kind nudge of his scruffy head. ‘Come on, let’s get ya back to yer umbrella where it’s safe. They may be dopey with no sleep but we can’t risk them humans catchin’ sight of ya. They’re a jumpy bunch when they see little ’uns like you. Loony behaviour if ya ask me. Here,’ he said, throwing her up on to his snout with his cold, wet nose. She flopped on it, feeling paralysed by grief. ‘You must be as tired as a bee after everythin’ you’ve been through.’

  Reaching the umbrella, he shuffled his head under the fallen door with his tail in the air. Sliding from his nose, Pip crawled into a little ball beside it with tears soaking her furry cheeks.

  ‘This bleedin’ war took my family from me too,’ the dog continued softly, lying on his stomach and resting his head next to her with a whimper of sympathy. Pip quietly listened, feeling comforted by his deep, gruff voice. ‘It weren’t a big one – just my Jack and his mum since his pa went off to war – but I’d have done anythin’ for them. We were so happy until we found out Jack had to move to the countryside where kids would be safer. The East End of London was in a bit o’ strife, you see. Even with blackouts every night, Hitler’s bombers found us cos of the Thames shinin’ in the moonlight, and there ain’t no point bombin’ a field of potatoes, now is there?