When we first get to cities my brother and I go to the bathroom a lot, and drop things in as well, such as pieces of macaroni, to see them disappear. There are air-raid sirens, and then we pull the curtains and turn off the lights, though our mother says the war will never come here. The war filters in over the radio, remote and crackly, the voices from London fading through the static. Our parents are dubious as they listen, their mouths tighten: it could be that we are losing.

My brother does not think so. He thinks our side is the good side, and therefore it will win. He collects cigarette cards with pictures of airplanes on them, and knows the names of all the planes. My brother has a hammer and some wood, and his own jackknife. He whittles and hammers: he’s making a gun. He nails two pieces of wood at right angles, with another nail for the trigger. He has several of these wooden guns, and daggers and swords also, with blood coloured onto the blades with red pencils. Some of the blood is orange, from when he ran out of red. He sings: Coming in on a wing and a prayer,

Coming in on a wing and a prayer,

Though there’s one motor gone

We will still carry on,

Coming in on a wing and a prayer.

He sings this cheerfully, but I think it’s a sad song, because although I’ve seen the pictures of the airplanes on the cigarette cards I don’t know how they fly. I think it’s like birds, and a bird with one wing can’t fly. This is what my father says in the winters, before dinner, lifting his glass when there are other men there at the table: “You can’t fly on one wing.” So in fact the prayer in the song is useless. Stephen gives me a gun and a knife and we play war. This is his favorite game. While our parents are putting up the tent or making the fire or cooking, we sneak around behind the trees and bushes, aiming through the leaves. I am the infantry, which means I have to do what he says. He waves me forward, motions me back, tells me to keep my head down so the enemy won’t blow it off.