When We Were Warriors

by Emma Carroll

  Mum tried to reassure him. ‘At least she’s somewhere she knows.’

  If Sukie was here we’d have been doing something, I couldn’t help thinking, not sitting around waiting for news from Plymouth. Mum seemed to guess what was on my mind. As we shuffled off to bed, she took me aside and told me, very firmly, not to do anything stupid.

  ‘Your sister has a habit of courting trouble,’ she said. ‘But I’m trusting you to be sensible. Chances are they’ll let them both go tomorrow. If we get involved, it could make matters worse.’

  ‘The Americans found a map!’ I reminded her. ‘They’re expecting more Nazis to come tonight. That already sounds pretty bad to me.’

  ‘All the more reason to keep out of things you don’t understand.’

  ‘And what about the wedding?’

  ‘It’ll have to wait,’ Mum replied. ‘I can’t help thinking Sukie’s rushed into it, rather.’

  ‘But Ephraim’s innocent! He hasn’t done anything wrong!’

  ‘Olive.’ Mum looked me square in the eye. ‘If they think Ephraim’s helped the enemy, things will get very serious for him. I mean prison, spying charges. They might even accuse him of treason.’

  I felt the blood drain from my face. ‘Treason? Isn’t that a hanging offence?’

  Mum didn’t answer. ‘I just don’t want you getting mixed up in it, that’s all.’

  *

  Esther had her own reasons for wanting to help Ephraim and, like me, didn’t want to wait things out.

  ‘What shall we do first?’ I whispered, as we lay in bed pretending to be asleep.

  ‘Check the German for papers,’ she replied.

  ‘But we already know what was in his pockets,’ I pointed out. ‘Everything had Ephraim’s name on it, and the colonel’s taken it all.’

  ‘Ah, but they didn’t take his bag. There might be hidden pockets in it.’

  ‘Like with Sukie and Mum’s coat,’ I said, catching on. My sister had once smuggled a coded note inside the lining of a coat, so it was certainly worth checking if this man had done something similar.

  ‘I want to show you another thing too. It’s pretty suspicious.’ Esther swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Coming?’

  Mum’s warning was still ringing in my ears as I pulled on my skirt and sweater and followed Esther down the steep attic stairs. It was no good waiting for the army to believe Ephraim. He wasn’t the enemy. And what if there was an invasion tonight? We had to prove the dead German had stolen our friend’s name, and we had until morning to do it.

  6

  The body lay exactly where the Americans had left him, in between Queenie’s runner beans and the rhubarb.

  ‘Look how dry the ground is here,’ Esther hissed, pointing near our feet. ‘It’s very suspicious.’

  Though with her torch already on the blink, it was hard to see what she was getting at.

  ‘They rolled the body over, didn’t they?’ She sounded almost excited. ‘If he’d drowned, his lungs would’ve been full of water. It would’ve leaked out as they moved him.’

  Esther’s dad was a doctor, so I supposed she was right.

  ‘If he didn’t drown, how did he die then?’ I asked.

  She glanced at the gate, on the other side of which Johnson the American was keeping guard. You could hear him out there, his leather boots creaking as he fidgeted into a more comfortable position.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Esther whispered. ‘But I’d guess he was dead before he even hit the water.’

  I wasn’t sure why she thought this so suspicious. Personally, I was more interested in the man’s bag, which we were going to check for secret pockets. It had been easier to search him on the beach when I couldn’t see his face. Now that he lay on his back, I glimpsed a snub nose, chapped lips, shaving stubble on a very square chin.

  Quickly I turned my attention to the bag, which was cloth, like a kitbag, and completely wet through, with buckles on the front that my fingers couldn’t get open at first. When it did open, a dead fish flopped out.

  ‘Ugh!’ I sprang back, stepping on Esther’s foot.

  She gasped out loud. ‘Y-ouch!’

  We both froze, terrified the guard had heard us. The gate stayed shut. Breathing again, I went back to my search. The bag appeared to be empty. When I felt the bottom part, though, there was a seam, and inside that seam a zip. It opened grittily, yank by yank. Inside was a leather wallet made stiff as a piece of slate by the sea. Stuffed in it were receipts, a train ticket, what could’ve been a shopping list. I sat back on my heels, stumped. It was all in German.

  ‘I can read German,’ Esther said, and took over.

  She tipped the wallet upside down. In amongst the receipts was a black and white photograph, showing a boy about our age, standing in a garden. With his white-blond cropped hair and great square jaw, there was no question this was our dead man in his younger days. He was wearing what looked like a Scout uniform and smiling at the camera.

  Esther shuddered, tapping the picture with her finger. ‘That’s the Hitler Youth uniform. Looks like he’s been a Nazi for years.’

  The wallet and photograph turned this dead body into a person who most definitely wasn’t Ephraim Pengilly. There were receipts to say he’d bought things – bratwurst, which Esther told me was a type of German sausage, and cups of black coffee – all in Hamburg, Germany. It made the man seem more real than ever. We couldn’t shrug it off as a mix-up. This man was someone. He even had a name, and that was our biggest problem.

  Wearily, I rubbed my eyes. It was getting more complicated, not less.

  ‘Won’t our Ephraim have documents of his own?’ I said. ‘If we could find those—’

  The back door opened. I froze, terrified it was Mum. But whoever it was slipped silently outside. I caught a flash of striped pyjamas darting between Queenie’s gooseberry bushes.

  ‘Cliff!’ I whispered as loud as I dared.

  He stopped, looking round for me.

  ‘Over here!’ I waved. ‘Where are you going?’

  But I’d already guessed: he was heading to the lighthouse. Every night he slept with Pixie at the foot of his bed, so no wonder he couldn’t sleep without her. Esther and I got to our feet, brushing soil from our knees. I stuffed the German’s wallet and receipts in my skirt pockets.

  ‘We’re coming with you,’ I said. Though we’d have to tiptoe past the American first. I prayed Johnson had fallen asleep. The signs were encouraging because he’d gone awfully quiet. Yet when I eased open the gate, he stumbled inside like he’d been leaning up against it.

  ‘Hell fire!’ he cried, when he realised we weren’t Nazis risen from the dead. ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

  We all spoke at once:

  ‘Sleepwalking.’

  ‘Getting some fresh air.’

  ‘Sorting the dog out.’

  One of these excuses was vaguely true, but we sounded so totally suspicious it was no surprise that the soldier wouldn’t let us pass.

  ‘I’ve orders not to let anyone out or in,’ he said, not unfairly. ‘How about you go back to bed like good kids and we say no more about it, huh?’

  None of us moved.

  ‘So.’ He sighed. ‘We have a problem.’ He pushed his army cap to the back of his head. I had a better glimpse of his face, then. He was dark-skinned, which, I’d imagine, got him a few looks from the locals. You didn’t see many black people in Devon, not like London, where the mix made life that bit more interesting.

  ‘Please, mister,’ Cliff spoke first. ‘There really is a dog. She belongs to the lighthouse keeper, and she’s called Pixie. She’s a fox terrier and honestly, she’s the best dog in the—’

  ‘Oh, spare us the details,’ Esther groaned.

  ‘Ephraim Pengilly is our friend,’ I tried to explain. ‘He’s a kind man who wouldn’t even swat a fly.’ And because the soldier seemed a reasonable type, I half-wondered if I should come clean and explain that what we really wanted was Ephraim’
s birth certificate, a ration book, letters – anything to prove he was the real Mr Pengilly. Cliff could see to Pixie while we were there, a fact he was keen to remind us of.

  ‘Mister, please,’ Cliff kept on. ‘It’s not fair on Pixie, being shut in by herself. She’ll be needing a wee by now.’

  Esther groaned again.

  Yet of all the things we’d said, Cliff’s plea seemed to be working.

  ‘A little terrier, you say, huh?’ The young man’s face softened. ‘We had a dog like that back home in Boston. Called him Scout. Best ratter I ever saw, though he cried like a baby if he couldn’t sleep in with me at night.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Cliff jumped at this – we all did. ‘Pixie’s just the same.’

  ‘Jeez, I shouldn’t let you go. I’m in the colonel’s bad books already.’ The soldier rubbed his jaw, weakening by the second.

  ‘We’ll be super quick,’ Esther promised. ‘And we’ll bring Pixie back with us so you can meet her.’

  Tapping his wristwatch, the soldier tried to look stern. ‘No more than twenty minutes, got it? Or I’ll come after you myself.’

  ‘Yes, mister!’ we all said at once.

  ‘Kids, please,’ he winced. ‘My name’s Eddie.’

  He was, without doubt, the nicest American I’d ever spoken to. Actually, he was the only one, but still.

  7

  We ran down the main street to the harbour. By now the wind had dropped, so the night felt mild and calm. The sea was quiet, whispering and sighing over the shingle. Though we were more than used to climbing the lighthouse ladder these days, I still preferred to do it when the weather was gentle like this. I was nervous for other reasons tonight.

  Just inside the front door Pixie was waiting, spinning around in circles.

  ‘I’ll take her down again,’ Cliff said, hoisting her on to his shoulders like Ephraim had taught him to.

  ‘Go straight back to Eddie,’ I told him. ‘Keep him entertained while we try and find Ephraim’s papers.’

  ‘Where first?’ asked Esther, once Cliff and Pixie had gone.

  ‘The top and work our way down?’ I suggested.

  Arming ourselves with a couple of the spare torches Ephraim left hanging by the front door, we climbed to the control room at the top of the lighthouse. It was a part of the building we normally kept away from, but I knew there was a desk up there, shelves, drawers, letters, maps, paperwork. It was a serious, grown-up sort of a room. If Ephraim had a passport, a birth certificate, documents from his parents perhaps, there was a good chance we’d find them up there.

  Esther took the right-hand side of the room, I went left. I opened drawers, shook out folders, looked under books. I couldn’t find anything that looked personal. On her side of the room, Esther also drew a blank.

  ‘Nothing here,’ she remarked. ‘Perhaps he keeps private things separate? Like in his bedroom?’

  ‘Good point,’ I replied, thinking of how I’d once tried to hide things in my sock drawer. So had Sukie: fat lot of good it had done either of us. We’d both been rumbled.

  I was also very aware of the minutes ticking away. Pixie might buy us a little extra time, but we couldn’t count on it lasting.

  Bypassing the living room and mine and Cliff’s bedroom, we went straight back to where Ephraim slept. His was the floor just up from the lighthouse entrance. There was only one bed in it, a chest for clothes and piles upon piles of books, all stacked against the walls. Though the staircase took us through the room every time we came in and went out, I’d never paid much attention to it. Being here now felt like I was prying. Ephraim was such a private person – and why was that, the doubt-voice asked.

  The sock drawer was, unsurprisingly, full of woolly socks. There was nothing under the bed, not even much in the way of dust. I was beginning to think we’d run out of places to look when I saw, in the far corner, a little cubbyhole in the wall. Had it been in the kitchen, I’d have thought it was a bread oven. There was an iron door on the front of it, stamped with BP, the lighthouse’s initials.

  ‘What d’you think it is?’ I asked Esther as we crouched in front of it.

  ‘Open it and find out,’ she replied, practical as ever.

  The door was unbelievably heavy, its hinges grinding like they’d not moved in years. Inside was a tin box with a little handle on the top of it. My first thought was money: this was where Ephraim kept his earnings. It was red, battered round the edges, the sort of box that might’ve seen a thing or two in its time.

  I took out the tin box and opened it; there was no lock on it, no key. There was nothing inside, either. And by now I reckoned our twenty minutes of searching time must be well and truly up. Esther, though, had noticed something at the bottom of the box. She shone her torch right on to what looked like a small brass tack.

  ‘Press it down,’ she said.

  As I did so something clicked and the base pinged upwards. Suddenly we were looking at an entirely different box, one that had a bundle of envelopes in it, and a card wallet with a name written across the front in fancy curled writing.

  ‘Wow! A secret compartment!’ I cried, then glanced at Esther. ‘How did you know to press that button?’

  ‘My nana had a box that was similar to this. She kept love letters in it from the man her parents didn’t want her to marry.’

  ‘I don’t think these are love letters,’ I said. Without picking them up I could see they were mostly documents.

  ‘No,’ Esther agreed. ‘But they’re something Ephraim wants to keep secret.’

  ‘Like the pocket in the dead man’s bag,’ I muttered. It wasn’t a comparison I wanted to make, but it was hard not to, suddenly. I was nervous that these papers might not prove Ephraim’s innocence at all, but instead tell me something I really didn’t want to read.

  *

  The first in the pile was a marriage certificate. On it were two names that I guessed were Ephraim’s parents: his father’s profession was ‘lighthouse keeper’, and his mother’s ‘schoolteacher’.

  ‘Explains why he likes books so much,’ I commented. ‘And lighthouses.’

  Esther pointed to another column, where the parents’ names were. ‘His father’s surname was Prinz. That’s a Jewish surname – a German one, I think.’

  In with the marriage document was a boat ticket for a Josiah Prinz, and a stamp showing he’d arrived in Southampton from Hamburg in September 1920. It was a shock to discover Ephraim had German connections. I’d assumed Budmouth Point was in his bones, that his family had always lived here. Yet just a generation back and his father had left Germany as a young Jewish man.

  I supposed Ephraim’s dad had changed his name to an English one to fit in, just like Esther was given the surname Jenkins when she first arrived from Austria. No wonder, more than twenty years later, his son wanted to help refugees fleeing Hitler – I guessed that was in Ephraim’s bones too.

  ‘Does this make Ephraim Jewish?’ I asked.

  Esther shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. It’s passed on through the females in the family, but Ephraim’s dad married someone non-Jewish, it looks like.’

  Deeper in the pile was a birth certificate for Ephraim Josiah Pengilly. Born 24 April 1922 in this very lighthouse! Tucked in with it was something altogether sadder – a death notice for Mrs Roberta Katherine Pengilly, who, it seemed, died a day later.

  ‘That’s so tragic,’ Esther said. ‘To think he never knew his own mother.’

  I nodded, blinking back tears, and stood up. Papers still in hand, I did a quick scan of the room. ‘Is there anything else we might need from here?’

  Out of the shore-side window, a light was flashing. It was coming from the beach. I was pretty certain it was Cliff, trying to warn us that Eddie the soldier was on his way. Why he hadn’t gone straight to him like I’d told him to I didn’t know.

  ‘Come on, we’d better get going,’ I said.

  Esther scrambled to her feet. She stuck her hand out for Ephraim’s papers. ‘Sha
ll I take those?’

  I gave them to her, since my pockets were full with the dead German’s wallet and receipts, and we couldn’t afford to leave anything behind, or worse, drop something vital. Without the evidence it’d sound like a pack of lies.

  We rushed down the final stairs to the front door. On opening it, I froze, my foot in mid-air. Down on the beach were three torches, not just one. It meant Cliff had company.

  8

  The moment I stepped on to the beach, a hand grabbed the scruff of my neck. I couldn’t see who it was – everything was either torch-beam bright or very black – but they pulled so sharply backwards I almost lost my balance.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelped. ‘No need to be so rough!’

  ‘Don’t hurt her,’ Cliff pleaded.

  Another person grabbed Esther. From the crunching of the shingle under her feet, I knew she was putting up a fight. We were frogmarched off the beach with such force I could actually hear my sweater ripping. I’d guessed by now Eddie was one of our captors, but I’d no idea who was holding me, and it was very unnerving.

  Finally, up on the main street, the hand on my neck let go.

  ‘Don’t you ever go to bed?’ said a voice I knew all too well.

  In the dark, in front of me, stood Sukie.

  ‘They let you go!’ I gasped, though I didn’t dare hug her. The anger was coming off her like steam.

  ‘I didn’t even get as far as Plymouth,’ she replied. ‘They asked me some questions, then gave up and brought me back.’

  I couldn’t understand: it was good news, wasn’t it? The police must’ve believed her and Ephraim enough to let them come home. We wouldn’t need these birth certificates and death notices to prove our point after all.

  But Ephraim, I saw now, wasn’t with her.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘In custody, of course! Where d’you think he is?’ she snapped. ‘They’d no intention of giving up on him.’

  ‘But you’re here,’ I insisted. ‘That’s a start, isn’t it?’