The Apothecary Page 0,8

the table, please.”

“No,” he said. “I won’t.”

His eyes were serious and intent, and his hair didn’t flop limply over his eyes like so many of the boys’ hair did, but grew back from his forehead in sandy waves, leaving his face exposed and defiant. The knot of his tie was pushed off to the side, as if it got in his way.

“Do you want an engraved invitation?” the lunch lady asked, with her hands on her hips.

“It’s idiotic,” he said. “I won’t do it.”

“I’m sure you were wetting your nappies out in the country during the Blitz,” the woman said. “But some of us were in London, and a bomb drill is not a time to play at rebellion.”

The sandy-haired boy leaned towards her, across the lunch table. “I wasn’t in the country,” he said. “I was here. And we both know that these tables would have done nothing against those bombs—not the V-1, not the V-2, not even the smaller ones dropped by planes.”

The lunch lady frowned. “I’ll be forced to give you a demerit, Benjamin.”

“But this isn’t even a V-2 we’re talking about,” he said. “This is an atom bomb. When it comes, not even the basement shelters will save us. We’ll all be incinerated, the whole city. Our flesh will burn, then we’ll turn to ash.”

The woman had lost the colour in her face, but her voice still had its commanding ring. “Two demerits!”

But the boy, Benjamin Burrows, was making a speech now, for the benefit of the whole lunchroom. He had a thrilling, defiant voice to go with his thrilling, defiant face. “That is, of course,” he said, “assuming we’re lucky enough to be near the point of impact. For the children in the country, it will be slower. And much, much more painful.”

“Stop!” she said.

A short bell rang to signal the end of the drill, and people climbed out from under the tables, but I stayed where I was. I wanted to watch Benjamin Burrows a little longer without being seen. I was terrified by what he’d said, but moved by his defiance. I tried to sort out whether it was the terror or the excitement that was making my heart beat inside my rib cage at such an unexpected pace.

CHAPTER 4

Spies

I was supposed to take the Underground to Riverton Studios in Hammersmith after school, to see my parents at work. Robin Hood wasn’t on the air yet, but they had built a whole Sherwood Forest in a cavernous, warehouse-like soundstage, and they wanted me to see it. I was walking home to drop my books off, in an ambivalent drizzle, thinking about orange trees and avocados, when I passed the apothecary’s shop on Regent’s Park. Through the window, I saw a familiar sandy head of hair. I stopped to watch through the glare on the glass. Benjamin Burrows was shaking his head angrily and saying something to the kind apothecary.

I pushed the door open just enough to slip in, and stepped behind a row of shelves as if browsing for toothpaste. There was no bell on the door, and Benjamin and the apothecary were too occupied with their argument to notice me. Benjamin wore a leather satchel, like a messenger bag, slung on a long strap across his chest. He didn’t wear a wool cap like most of the other St Beden’s boys did.

“I don’t see why it matters,” he was saying. “Mrs Pratt’s just a nutter who likes being sick.”

“The delivery is still late,” the apothecary said.

“I had things to do.”

“You had things to do here.”

“Poxy things,” Benjamin muttered.

“We still have this shop,” the apothecary said, “through war and through difficult times, because we take care of our customers. Your great-grandfather did it, and your grandfather did it, and people trust us to do it now.”

“But you wanted to be an apothecary, like them,” Benjamin said. “I don’t want to!”

The apothecary paused. “When I was your age, I didn’t want to be one, either.”

“Well, you should’ve got out while you could!” Benjamin said. His anger, which had seemed so fitting against the lunch lady, seemed petulant against his father. If I’d had to guess, in the lunchroom, what Benjamin Burrows’s father might be like, I would never have picked the quiet, methodical apothecary. Benjamin snatched the paper bag off the counter and stormed out the door without seeing me.

I tried to slip out behind a row of shelves, too, without being noticed, but the apothecary said, “Good afternoon. It’s the girl with the