The sky was yellow and grainy like old newsprint. Every few minutes, an airliner would traverse it, drawing an arc of noise and grime all the way from Torremolinos to Ringway. The whining would swell into fierce pressure that flattened the world and receded as slowly as the day’s heat. There was no room for simple heroism in these skies, no silk scarves and goggles, no delirious vapour trails as heroes in Spitfires and Hurricanes slashed across a blue and better sky to fend off the evil Nazis.

The blonde boy screamed a throaty, twelve-piston roar as the Spitfire in his hand swooped and rolled in pursuit of Matty Henderson’s Messerschmitt. Matty flung the yellow-nosed craft into an inverted loop but the pilot’s efforts were in vain when Matty’s toe hit a stone and he crashed to his knees. Matty rolled onto his backside, knees glistening with blood and ribbed with peeled skin, the 109 still held heroically aloft. The silence thickened and Matty’s eyes glistened as he considered whether or not to cry.

“Gerrup, you puff,” said the blonde boy. Matty nodded at him, sniffed and stood. Eight year olds don’t cry. “I’ll give you a head start.”

“Oi, Pyro, why am I being chased all the time?”

“’Cause you’re the Jerry. Good guys win. We won, stupid. Anyway, don’t call me that. ”

“Why not? That’s what my dad calls you. I’m not supposed to play with you ‘cause you’re a pyroniac and dangerous.”

“Why not? ‘Cause I’ll give you a dead-arm times ten, that’s why not.”

“Oh, ok. Anyway, why am I always the Jerry?”

“My aeroplanes. My rules. Look out, achtung, Spitfire out of the sun.” The blonde boy brought the plastic killing machine in a high arc down towards Matty’s head.

“Catch me first.” Matty ran, one leg stiff at the knee and smeared red. The blonde boy followed, machine-gun noises and flecks of spit flying from his mouth.

A Maxi was labouring and spluttering up the track towards them at crawling speed, windows open, radio belting out some nonsense about a brand new combine harvester. Tethered to the wing mirror an old greyhound lurched along, no more than bones and gristle knotted together by overstretched skin. The boys knew the old man at the wheel would have something to shout about because he always did. They could already see his lips working soundlessly beneath that famous nose, wide and blossoming red and purple.

Matty took a leap into the weeds, kicked another brick out of the farmer’s wall as he half jumped, half fell across it and set off through the nettles towards the field thick with yellow stubble and the barn beyond. The blonde boy followed, pausing when he was safely over the wall to flick the V’s at the old man. The dog yelped as the car’s brakes dug in and its lead was jerked to a stop. Whatever the old man shouted was lost as another airliner churned the air into noise and grime.

“My plane is faster in a straight line, you pyro divvy,” shouted Matty as he sprinted across the field, stubble crackling under his Dunlops, once white now grey like old chewing gum. The blonde boy pelted after him, knowing his gangly legs would close the distance quickly. The familiar throbbing in his temples had returned.

They both slid to a stop as they found the corrugated cement of the farmyard. The barn doors were open, a safe darkness lay within and it wasn’t overlooked. The air carried the sweetness of hay and the tang of dung, a distant rumble of generators, the slow lowing of cattle nearby.

“It says not to trespass over there,” whispered Matty, Battle of Britain forgotten.

“Been here lots of times. That barn’s haunted or something. No-one ever comes. You scared?” Matty shook off the question as though it were an inquisitive wasp.

“Right then.” The blonde boy sprinted towards the barn. “Last one in loses the dogfight.”

Shadow embraced them as they lurched inside, Matty trailing yards behind. This shadow should have felt cool but it nursed towers of baled hay, reeking of heat and cut grass. Stalks and cut twine were strewn on the floor and the corrugated roof and wooden beams ticked and groaned above them.

“You lost the dogfight.”

“Not fair. You didn’t say go.”

“Doesn’t matter. Shot you down in flames.”

Matty dangled the plane by its tail and let it pirouette to the floor with a rising howl followed by a phlegm-filled explosion. He laid it down gently without even bending a propeller blade. “Let’s go back, it’s nearly time for my tea.”

“Not yet. I shot you down in flames so that plane needs to burn.”

“It did. I made an explosion and everything.”

“No, I mean like really.”

“But you made this one.”

“I’m a bit sick of it. Anyway, I’m getting a Focke-Wulf at the weekend.” The blonde boy handed Matty his Spitfire and pulled a plastic lighter from his hip pocket.

“You are tapped. And a pyro or something.”

“What you afraid of? A few cows? Just watch this Nazi burn.” With a practised motion, he struck a flame and held it to the plane’s tail. Both boys watched goggle-eyed as the fuselage blackened then drooped and refused to catch light.

“Thought you knew all about fires then?”

“Not my fault. I thought all that glue would burn. Just give us a minute.” The blonde boy picked some long stalks from the floor and wrapped them around the plane with a length protruding from the tail. He flicked the lighter again and the length embraced the flame.

“Watch him go down in flames now then.” He tossed the plane earthwards, trailing orange flashes and pungent smoke. The moment it left his hand and moved beyond his reach, a new knowledge moiled in his guts. Even before it fell to earth, he saw in a flash of flame and destruction and heartache what he might have done, and knew he no longer wanted to share a body with the prattling fool who made him do these stupid things.

The plastic plane crashed and splintered onto the hard floor and slid into a bale, no longer aflame but blackened. Matty’s mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. For a second, the blonde boy breathed again. Then the parched straw found the heat and let out a grateful gasp of white smoke.

“What did you do that for? What do we do now?” Matty was shifting from one foot to another, still holding the precious Spitfire.

The blonde boy pinched his eyes hut and slapped himself once then twice. “Can’t have this again. Go get water.” Matty’s eyes were beading and his lower lip trembled. “Go on. Just get water.”

Matty ran, his Dunlops slapping the concrete hard. Matty stood and watched, willing the bale to stop. The sweet grassy air was turning into something hot and bitter, something that tickled the back of his throat and squeezed his eyes. He grabbed the smoking bale, tried to move it, felt it crackle and breathe heat at him, dropped it and stood back, trembling.

He shouted for Matty and the water and slapped himself again, harder. Minutes passed, or seconds, and Matty didn’t come. He couldn’t see the roof and the high beams were receding from view, shadows dissolving in gauzy heat. Smoke and flame were leaping from more bales as though they’d been waiting there all summer for this chance to escape. He plucked the lighter from his pocket, swore at it, dropped it and stamped it until it smashed.

Then he ran, the way Matty must have done. Lungs working like bellows, drawing the smuts and the smoke and the taste of his own wicked stupidity deep into his lungs, he reached the tree-line, hunkered down in the weeds and turned and watched. Help must come. Farmers had hoses and water. Only the old man had seen him near here. What would happen? Would his life end? Would he go to jail?

Tiny compared with the stocky farming lads he wanted to see, Matty staggered into view, lop-sided with an enormous grey bucket in one hand, and lumbered into the smoking maw of the barn. He didn’t come out until after the beams crashed in, after the farmer in his blue overalls had tried and failed to defy the flames, after the fire men had hosed it all down. Then the ambulance men turned up with a stretcher and a red blanket to bundle up something the size of Matty.