Sisterland by Linda Newbery

Author:Linda Newbery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307433770
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Snakes and Ladders

Letter from Eric Thornton to his parents

Uncle Donald did firewatching at night, so he kept odd hours, going to bed at dawn and getting up in the afternoon. His meal times were upside-down and back to front, he said. When Sarah got home from school he would be reading the paper, his shirtsleeves rolled up. After tea, the two of them sometimes played board games together, Ludo or Snakes and Ladders. Occasionally Auntie Enid played too, more often just Uncle Donald and Sarah. All the games were kept in a cardboard box whose lid was battered from use, with split corners. It was called a Compendium of Games. Sarah was fascinated by the Snakes and Ladders board – the ladders that could carry you on a swift short-cut through eight or even ten rows, and the brightly coloured snakes, zigzag patterned, with grinning mouths and forked tongues, that waited to slither you down. There was one particularly vicious snake, thick and fat as if gorged on countless victims, that twined its way from nearly the top of the board to the very bottom row, back to the start.

Sarah liked looking at the board more than she liked playing. Playing made her feel anxious. It was too dangerous. No matter how diligently she worked her way up the numbered squares, moving her counter (always the red one) towards the winning corner, the next throw of the die could send her into the jaws of a lurking snake, and the dizziness of the slide right down to the bottom.

Die, dice. Auntie Enid called it a dice, but Uncle Donald said that was wrong, because dice meant two of them. If there was only one, it was called a die. The English language didn’t seem to follow sensible rules, like German. If it was die, dice, why not one pie , two pice or one lie, two lice? That would make sense. But she always remembered die. Throw it and die. Throw the wrong number and the snake would swallow you.

The war was like Snakes and Ladders. Listening to the news she heard good news followed by bad: the aircraft factories were turning out more and more Spitfires, but the Germans had reached Paris. The local paper showed Northampton army boys posing in uniform, ready to go and fight Jerry, but in France people were leaving their homes, carrying their belongings in wheelbarrows and handcarts. There were more snakes than ladders, Sarah thought.

‘German Measle,’ some of the children called her at school, the bullying boys. ‘Slimy German Measle. Go back where you belong! We don’t want you here.’

But I don’t belong anywhere, Sarah thought, not now. Not in Germany, not in England. Only at Shoe Lane, where they never call me German or Measle, where I’m just Sarah or Lovey.

And now Dunkirk. The advancing German army was the hugest snake of all, obscenely fat. It had gulped and swallowed great bites of the British army, and sent the rest slithering and sliding all the way back to England.

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