by Terry Deary
He rose slowly and walked to the door. He unlocked it, stepped through and locked it again from the outside. Brigit felt sick for a few minutes then decided that being sent back to Castle Bromwich would be a disaster. What had the letter said? The staff of her school will care for her.
Would it be the spiteful Miss Dennison, if she’d returned from Wales? Maybe she would have learned from Gladys Turnbull how that pepper got into her eyes. Or the vicious Mr Cutter? Either would be misery every bit as cruel as the Reverend Williams’ fires of Hell.
She sniffed and reached into the pocket of her dress for her handkerchief. She pulled out a piece of paper. It was the blank sheet that had been in the envelope Reverend Williams had opened at the breakfast table. There was an electric lamp on his desk and she turned it on. The bulb soon grew hot and she held the paper to it till writing appeared.
This time the letter from her mother was quite short.
Brigit. I will be passing through Aberpont at around noon on 28 May. I hope you can get out of school long enough to meet the bus, so we can say goodbye before I go to France. Love, Maman
Brigit nodded. That was always her escape plan but now she would be doing it while the police and the villagers of Aberpont were searching for a half-German girl who could be a traitor.
First, however, she had to get out of this locked room. She didn’t have Maman’s lock-picking and burglar skills. But maybe she didn’t need them. She stepped over to the window and looked around the heavy curtain. A sweating policeman was walking slowly along the road and turned in at the gateway.
The catch on the window was stiff but she turned it then stepped back into the shadow of the dusty curtain until the policeman had knocked on the door. As soon as the door was opened by Alice the cook and the policeman stepped inside, Brigit knew she had just a minute to make her escape.
The catch was open, but the old window frame was warped by years of Welsh rain. It wouldn’t move. Brigit looked around the room and saw a pair of candlesticks on the mantelpiece. She picked one up and used the heavy base to hammer at the handle to push it outwards without smashing the glass.
‘I locked her in here, Constable Evans,’ Reverend Williams was saying in the corridor outside.
‘Very good, sir,’ the policeman replied.
The girl gave one last desperate blow and the window creaked and swung open. She heard the key rattle in the lock. If she jumped out now they would see her run off and be able to follow. It was a small village with nowhere to hide.
The lock clicked open. ‘I’ll be glad to be rid of her.’ The Reverend sighed. ‘Cheeky, cunning brat.’
Brigit looked at his desk. Anyone sitting there sat between two stacks of drawers with the leather-covered desktop over them. Between the drawers there was a space where the knees went. Brigit dived for that and made herself as small as she could. It smelled of feet and the dust made her want to sneeze.
The Reverend stepped into the room and swore. ‘Hell’s teeth.’
‘I beg your pardon, your reverence,’ the shocked policeman rumbled.
‘Sorry, officer, but… the German traitor is gone. It’s enough to make a saint swear.’
‘Are you sure you locked the door, sir?’
‘Of course I locked the door. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the window is forced open. She isn’t in sight. She must have a five minutes’ start.’
‘Then we’ll begin a search of the village and the fields at once,’ the policeman promised. The voices of the two men faded as they hurried out.
Brigit breathed again. She was safe for now. There was a clock on the mantelpiece above the fire, so she would know when it was twelve o’clock. She could climb out from her hiding place and see down the main street of the village to the school, where the bus with her mother on board would stop.
She watched the policeman and the Reverend leave through the front gate and she heard them ordering villagers to start the search for a German spy. Alice followed them out, called from her kitchen to help.
It was over a hundred metres from her escape window to the bus stop beside the school gates. She would never make it without being seen and caught. But the plan she had dreamed up covered that. She would have to work a little faster than she planned, but the house was empty. She knew what she had to do.
Chapter Sixteen
‘I’ve got a blouse and shawl just like that’
Brigit looked quickly through the drawers of the desk and found a cash box full of coins and pound notes. ‘There must be a hundred pounds in there,’ the girl thought. She took five notes from the bottom of the box. No one would notice they’d gone unless they counted them carefully. By then she hoped she’d be far away. She put the cash box back and said, ‘Not only deadly sins but one of the Ten Commandments. The Devil must be really stoking up those fires for me… except I don’t believe in you, Mr Devil.’
Brigit took two sheets of writing paper from the desk and scribbled a note on one. She climbed the stairs, hurried past the bedroom she shared with Jean, and climbed more stairs to the small attic room where Alice slept. The room was dark and cold and lit by an oil lamp that the girl turned up to wrap the room in a warm amber glow.
There was a narrow bed, a chest of drawers and a washstand with a jug of cold water. There was no heating in the room. Brigit opened the drawers one at a time till she found a faded black skirt, a blue blouse and a green shawl. When they were laid on the bed she placed the note on the washstand with the pound notes. It read, ‘Sorry I had to take your clothes. Please buy some new ones with this money.’
Another lie.
‘Sorry, Alice,’ she muttered, and she put the old woman’s clothes on over her school uniform. Alice was a small, frail woman and the clothes were a good fit on the girl. Once she was dressed she hurried down the stairs and back to the Reverend’s study. The fire wasn’t lit because the weather was warm. There were paper and sticks in the hearth ready to light it.
Brigit pushed these to one side and scooped some ashes and soot on to a sheet of the Reverend’s writing paper before carrying it carefully back up the stairs to the bathroom.
First, she took the pale wood-ash in the palm of her hand and dabbed it on her face till her skin turned a sickly grey. Then she took a matchstick, dipped it in the soot and drew thin lines that followed the creases on her face to make them look like deep wrinkles. Anyone who looked closely would see the bright young eyes burning in an ashy face. But if she pulled the shawl over her hair and kept her head down she might just get away with it.
Back in the Reverend’s study she watched the villagers, led by the constable, searching every house on the main street. Some of the house-owners came out to join the search. Many of them carried walking sticks and pokers, wood axes and kitchen knives. ‘They must think I’m a wild animal,’ Brigit said with a shake of her head. ‘Maybe I am. Nothing’s going to stop me from meeting Maman.’
And so she waited. The searchers spread across the fields and found themselves in an argument with a farmer. He seemed to be telling them they were trampling his spring wheat. He carried a shotgun and looked as fierce as the scarecrow that flapped in the centre of the field. Even the constable looked afraid of the gun and backed away with his hands raised to show they meant no harm.
The villagers walked around the outsides of the fields as the angry farmer watched them. Brigit took some biscuits from the pantry and drank water from the kitchen tap. She emptied her suitcase and packed what she needed in a brown-paper carrier bag.
The clock seemed to be creeping round and she began to worry that the Reverend would give up the search and return.
At eleven o’clock the constable called the searchers together and arranged them in a line with about an arm’s length between them. The line headed towards the twenty-acre wood with the villagers beating aside the ferns and brambles before they vanished for a long while.
‘Just as well I didn’t hide there,’ Brigit decided.
By h
alf past eleven the search party were back on the main street. One or two brought along dogs to sniff out the fugitive German spy. This time they headed towards the river.
The clock hands came together like praying hands. Twelve. The children were set free from their lessons and Brigit heard their distant screams as they exploded with happiness into the schoolyard. And exactly on time the bus appeared over the top of the valley road and began a smoky, engine-popping roll down towards the village.
Brigit wrapped the shawl over her head, threw her gas mask over her shoulder, picked up her carrier bag and left the Reverend’s house behind. ‘Poor Jean,’ she sighed as she closed the front door for the final time.
She put on her best slow hobble – not too slow or she’d miss the bus – and walked towards the bus stop by the school. There were a few villagers left and they looked at her curiously. Everyone knew everyone who lived here but they’d never seen this strange old woman before. With that carrier bag she must be from a farm in the county, come to Aberpont to shop.
The greengrocer’s shop was open and as she passed it, Brigit heard a voice that she knew. ‘Well I never. I’ve got a blouse and shawl just like that.’ Alice the cook came to the door of the shop for a closer look. Brigit hobbled faster and reached the bus stop at the same time as the bus. Alice hadn’t tried to stop her. No one had stepped in front of her and pulled back the shawl.
But as she began to climb the step into the bus she looked back. Jean Mason was at the railings of the schoolyard. Their eyes met and Jean’s mouth fell open. ‘Brigit?’ she gasped.
Chapter Seventeen
‘What are we going to do with you now?’
‘Someone said the police were taking you away,’ Jean said.
Brigit raised a finger to her lips. ‘Shhhh. I have to escape.’
‘On a bus?’
‘Yes. On a bus. This isn’t the movies where the cowboy rides out of town on the fastest pony he can find. Now go away before anyone sees you talking to me.’
‘But I’ll miss you,’ Jean sniffed.
‘And I’ll miss you too, but if I don’t leave now they’ll take me away from here anyway. Go.’
Jean nodded and wandered sadly back into the schoolyard where Miss South was organising a game of rounders. Brigit boarded the bus.
‘Brigit?’ came a voice that startled her.
‘Maman!’ she cried and saw her mother’s baffled face as she walked down the bus to meet her.
‘Why are you dressed like that? Is it a school play?’
‘I’ll explain. Just tell the driver to go.’
Aimee Furst shook her head. ‘I only called to see you and say goodbye. You know you can’t come with me.’
‘I have to,’ Brigit groaned as she saw the Reverend Williams walking down the high street towards them and Alice shuffling the other way to meet him. The cook’s watery eyes were fixed on Brigit’s clothes.
Aimee looked and quickly understood her daughter’s problem. ‘Drive on,’ she told the man at the wheel.
‘Another passenger? To Pembrokeshire? That’ll be two shillings for an old-aged pensioner.’ The driver fussed with his ticket machine.
Reverend Williams was a few strides from the bus and calling, ‘Driver… we need your help…’ while Alice was croaking, ‘Stop, thief.’
‘Three shillings if you set off right now.’
The driver gave a grin and a wink. He crunched the old bus into gear and put his foot on the accelerator. The racing engine gave out clouds of oily smoke that smothered the Reverend Williams. The bus jumped forward like a pouncing cat and Alice had to jump out of the way. She waved a fist as the Reverend broke into a shambling run behind. The constable didn’t quite know what was happening but he stepped in front of the bus to find out. The driver blasted his horn and slowed. ‘Four shillings,’ Aimee promised, and he gathered speed again as the policeman put his whistle to his lips. The constable took a deep breath of black engine fumes and coughed till his face turned tomato-red.
‘I enjoyed that,’ the driver said. ‘I suppose there’ll be trouble for me at the other end.’
‘There won’t,’ Aimee said. She waved a hand at the dozen people on the bus. ‘These people are very special. Mr Churchill himself watches over their work. Trust me, no one will dare to ask questions about why we drove out of Aberpont like that.’
The driver nodded, satisfied. ‘And what about the old lady that just got on? Is she Churchill’s mother?’
Brigit used the shawl to wipe most of the ash and soot off her face. ‘It’s a young lady… and she’s the newest member of Mr Churchill’s secret group,’ she said.
‘Of course you are,’ the man said and swung the bus around the rolling, twisting roads of the Cambrian Mountains towards the west. ‘We’ll be there in four hours. Just in time for tea,’ he said.
Aimee sat Brigit down next to her on the bus. ‘You can meet all these brave people later. First, I have to know what happened back there in Aberpont. We’re a very important group of people and we can’t risk our secret getting out.’
‘You’re not important. You’re my maman,’ Brigit said with a cheeky grin that made Aimee want to hug her.
‘I agree. But it did mean I could get reports from the head of the evacuee department about where you were staying. However, the training I’ve been doing has been top secret, and who I am isn’t widely known. Unfortunately, some unwitting clerk in an office sent out that letter about you to the Reverend Williams before we could stop it. Was that him chasing the bus?’
‘It was.’
‘Didn’t look like a very pleasant person.’
‘He’s not… I’m going to burn in the fires of Hell several times, he says. But that can’t be any worse than what Miss Dennison used to do to us in Castle Bromwich School.’
‘I guessed that’s why you switched groups and ended up in Aberpont with Hodgehill School. Then I saw you’d been adopted by a priest and thought you’d be safe and happy there.’
Brigit shrugged. ‘I was safe but hungry. I think he took us in because it gave him extra ration coupons for more food, and he could eat our share.’
The girl went on to tell her mother the adventures of the morning. ‘I told myself I’d make it to the bus… and I did.’
Aimee sighed. ‘Yes, but what are we going to do with you now? There’s no one to look after you back in Castle Bromwich. Your father will be released next week to work as a doctor in the Spitfire factory, but he’ll have to return to the internment camp every evening after work. You can’t live with him there.’
‘There is someone who will look after me and care for me nearly as well as you would,’ Brigit said.
Her mother frowned. ‘We have no relations in this country.’
‘I didn’t say the person was in this country,’ the girl replied.
‘Then who? Don’t tease, Brigit.’
‘My grand-maman… your mother.’
Aimee shook her head. ‘But… but she’s in France. The Germans are about to march in and take over.’
‘Yes, I know, but you told me that in the last war your mother’s farm was spared because both sides needed the food she produced. I speak perfect French. Grand-maman Colette would love to look after me. And remember what you said in your secret invisible letter?’
Aimee’s eyes flew wide with fear. ‘Don’t let anyone know about that letter. Mr Churchill will shoot me himself if he finds out I told you about our work.’
‘Of course I won’t tell anyone. But as I do know about the letter, I know you’ll be working near Bray. If I stay with Grand-maman you may even get to see us from time to time when you’re not blowing Germans to the moon.’
The afternoon sun was sinking and shone golden on the Irish Sea as the bus crossed the last range of mountains and began to run down the west coast of Wales. Aimee thought for a long time before she finally said, ‘I will talk to Major Ellis when we get to the training camp. Though he won’t agree.’
‘Do
n’t give in, Maman. Never, never, never give in.’
Her mother smiled. ‘You’re just like Mr Churchill.’
‘Just not so fat and bald,’ Brigit said.
Chapter Eighteen
‘I could sleep on a rock in the river’
The training camp had been set up quickly. It was simply a square made up of a dozen wooden sheds, nestled in a hidden valley that ran down to the sea. The setting sun shone golden on the water, birds sang in the trees and war seemed impossible in such a peaceful world. It was sheltered by woods and surrounded by a high fence topped with barbed wire. Half a dozen soldiers were on patrol or in lookout towers.
‘Is this an SOE camp or a prison?’ Brigit asked her mother.
‘The fence and the guards are to keep strangers out, not to keep us in,’ Aimee said as they stepped down from the bus. The rest of the group followed, a handful of chattering men and women, smiling warmly at Brigit.
‘They’re all speaking French,’ Brigit said.
‘Of course,’ said Aimee. ‘Most of the team are French. We’ll be back in France very soon, so we need to get used to the language again… not just speaking French but thinking and dreaming in it. Some of us have been away for a long time.’
The team of saboteurs carried kitbags and were met by an army sergeant and by Major Ellis who said, ‘Sergeant Evans here will show you to your huts and tell you the rules – though after training all these months I guess you can quickly settle in anywhere.’
‘We’ve slept in forests and fields, on beaches and mountains. I could sleep on a rock in the river if I had to,’ one of the men said.
‘We may let you try that, Raoul,’ Major Ellis said, and the others laughed. They all seemed relaxed and closer than friends. More like a family. ‘I find it hard enough having cold showers,’ the major was saying. Everyone shivered at the thought.
Sergeant Evans looked at the major as if he was swallowing vinegar. ‘This is a training camp, not a holiday camp… sir.’