by Dan Smith
‘How come?’ I asked. ‘Where’ve you seen hundreds?’
‘Well, maybe not seen hundreds,’ she said. ‘But I’ve heard hundreds.’
I looked at her again, wondering why I’d never seen her before. She wasn’t dressed like most of the girls I knew. Most of them wore dresses or shirts and pinafores, but this girl was dressed more like I was. As if she were a boy. She was wearing a pair of shorts that came to her knees and a blue shirt, open at the neck. She had grey socks, one pulled up and the other ruffled close to her ankle. The only real difference between the way we were dressed was that I was wearing a pair of old wellies and she was wearing shoes. I had some shoes at home, but I wasn’t allowed to wear them. Mam was saving them for best, even though they had holes in them. She got them from Mrs Drake because her son, Matthew, was a few years older than me and had grown out of them. Mam swapped them for some old dress material, then she cut out some stiff card and pushed it into the bottom of the shoes to cover the holes. It wouldn’t keep the water out if it rained, she said, but they’d be good enough for best. In the meantime I could wear my wellies, and when they got holes in them, we’d mend them. I’d given my bike up for the collection, to be turned into bullets or guns or something, but we’d kept the inner tubes and they were perfect for repairing wellington boots.
Mind you, she might have been dressed like me, but she definitely didn’t sound like me. She didn’t have the same accent – the same one everyone I knew had. She sounded more like the voices I heard on the wireless, or maybe like Mr Bennett. She made the words seem bigger somehow. More important. The way she said them made her sound clever, and I liked that a lot. It made me think she was special.
‘I used to lie in bed and hear them go over,’ she said. ‘Last year, it was like they were coming every night. And then Big Bertha would start up. That’s the gun. At least, my mum and dad always call it Big Bertha.’
No one I knew said ‘mum’.
‘Isn’t your da’ fightin’ the war?’ I asked. ‘Mine is.’
‘My brother is – he’s in the RAF – but my dad’s a doctor at the hospital in Newcastle. He wasn’t allowed to go to war because he’s too important.’
‘Oh.’
‘And, of course, then I’d hear the bombs. After the planes, I mean. It’s much quieter here. This is the most excitement I’ve seen since I got here.’
I stared at her, the activity at the foot of the hill almost forgotten.
‘I’m from Newcastle,’ she said, ‘in case you hadn’t guessed.’
‘An evacuee?’
‘Kind of. I came here to stay with my aunt because Dad thought I’d be safer, but really I’m just bored. Nothing ever happens here at all, does it? Until now, anyway.’ She brushed a wisp of hair from her face and looked at me. ‘Well? Are you going to say something?’
‘Er. Aye. I’m Peter.’
‘I’m Kim.’ She put out her hand and I thought that was very strange. No girl had ever done that before. Even so, I put out my own and we shook. Her hand was very soft and warm and a little bit sweaty in the palm.
I watched her face, seeing the way her nose turned up slightly at the end. It made her look a bit like a drawing I’d seen in a book about Peter Pan.
She seemed to be studying me, too, then she raised her eyebrows and looked down at our hands joined together. It was as if something clicked into place, reminding us where we were, and I took my hand back, looking around to see if anyone was watching.
‘This is pretty exciting, don’t you think?’ Kim said.
‘Aye.’
‘I bet you don’t get many crashes here.’
‘No. Not many.’
‘So what’s the most exciting thing you’ve seen? Apart from this?’
I thought for a moment. ‘Prob’ly when the soldiers first came.’
‘Doesn’t sound very exciting.’
‘Well, it was. They took over Bennett Hall and put up these giant tents and an assault course. They built pillboxes out on the links, too. They’re like these little concrete houses with slits in ’em for machine guns and—’
‘I know what a pillbox is.’
‘Oh. Well. They put mines on the beach,’ I said. ‘And in the sea. There’s tank traps an’ these big poles stuck right into the sand to stop gliders from landing.’
Kim nodded her approval. ‘I’ve seen them.’
‘There’s mines on the links, too,’ I went on. ‘We used to play down there all the time, but we’re not allowed any more, in case we get blown up.’ Then I remembered about Mr Bennett’s young collie that went missing. Everyone said she’d gone onto the links and tripped a mine. Blown into a cloud of blood and meat, was what the boys said at school.
‘A dog got through the fence on the beach an’ exploded,’ I said.
‘Wow. You saw that? What did it look like?’ She turned so she was facing me. All her attention was on me.
I shook my head. ‘I didn’t actually see it, but—’
‘Doesn’t count, then.’
‘Well, there was the time a mine came ashore. One of them big ’uns with the spikes sticking out all over the place. They had to evacuate half the village.’
‘Did it explode?’ Her eyes sparkled and her face lit up. She was more alive than anything I’d ever seen, and I thought I could look at her at all day.
‘No.’ I wanted to make her happy, she seemed so keen for it to have blown up, but I was a terrible liar and was sure that if I tried to make up a story, she’d know it.
‘Oh well.’ She shrugged.
‘What about you, like? What’s the most excitin’ thing you ever saw?’
She puffed out her cheeks and looked up at the sky, as if there were just too many exciting moments to choose from. ‘I saw a barrage balloon get loose once. It floated all over the place causing all sorts of trouble.’ She lifted her hand and pretended it was a loose balloon. ‘And there was the time I saw a parachute caught up on the tail of a plane.’
‘Was there a man on it?’
Her face took on a grim expression and she nodded. ‘One of ours.’
‘Oh.’
‘Another time a bomb landed just down the street. We were in the shelter when it happened but it felt like the whole world was coming down around us, and when the raid was over we went out to see half the street gone. Some of the houses were nothing but dust and bricks.’
‘That must have been terrifyin’.’
‘I suppose so. Anyway, we went out to see who could collect the best souvenirs. I found a piece of the bomb.’
‘How do you know?’
‘That it’s a piece of bomb?’ She shrugged. ‘You can just tell. I’ll show it to you sometime.’
‘Maybe I can get a souvenir from this,’ I said, liking the idea of having a memento of the occasion. Then something occurred to me. ‘Was anyone in them houses that got bombed?’
‘I think so.’
And for a second we looked at each other, half understanding what she had just said. There was a touch of embarrassment and we looked back down the hill. We were young enough for the war to bring excitement, but we were also just old enough to feel there was something deeper. Something darker. Lives were being lost.
But the thought was snatched away when someone spoke behind me.
‘Hey, did you scrape your knee, puny lad? Did you have to get your mammy to kiss it better?’
Trevor Ridley was fifteen and big for his age. His hands were thick and grubby, his dark hair cut close to his scalp, his face twisted in a permanent scowl. His dad was a farmer and wasn’t allowed to fight because his job was too important, but that made Trevor feel left out. While his friends talked about their brave dads, he could only stay quiet. He didn’t see it as good luck that his family was unbroken, while other people’s had been split. He only saw that he couldn’t boast about his soldiering dad, and that made him ashamed.
My dad, on the other hand, had gone away with a uniform and a rifle to battle the Germans,
and somehow that didn’t seem fair. While my dad was fighting for his life, Trevor Ridley’s was tending his animals and growing vegetables which were taken away to be split into rations. And while I desperately wanted my dad to come home, Trevor Ridley wished his would go away. To me, just twelve years old, it seemed as if the whole world had been turned on its head and I couldn’t wait for the war to be over so that everything would be back to normal.
I didn’t know how long Trevor and his two friends had been standing there, I hadn’t noticed them earlier, but he must have been behind some of the others. Either way, it didn’t really make any difference – he was here, which meant I was going to have to leave. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay and talk to Kim; to watch the way her upturned nose wrinkled; to see her chewing at the inside of her cheek. I wanted to see the way the low evening sun turned her hair blue. But, instead, I stood up and turned around, seeing that all the other boys and girls were looking at me, waiting for my reaction.
‘You goin’ to run away to Mammy?’ said Trevor.
‘She won’t be interested,’ Bob Cummings said with a laugh. ‘I saw her goin’ home with her fancy man, Mr Bennett.’
I hated it when people said things like that. It made my blood boil.
‘Me da’ reckons your mam gets whatever she wants from his lordship since your da’s not around,’ said Trevor. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if you end up livin’ with him.’
Adam Thornhill sniggered like an animal, raising his upper lip to show oversized teeth that made me think of horses. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Mr Bennett gives your mam what-ever-she-needs.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say. All those other people watching me like that as Trevor Ridley and his two friends stood there like thugs, the three of them in a line, looking down at me.
The others laughed nervously and I stared at the three boys, feeling my anger rising. Anger mixed with fear, that is. Trevor was bigger than me, older than me and stronger than me. There wasn’t much I could do.
‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?’ a voice said, taking me by surprise. In fact, it took everyone by surprise, because no one ever faced up to Ridley and his gang.
Kim stood up beside me, close enough for our shoulders to be touching.
Ridley looked taken aback. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Just leave him alone,’ Kim said.
‘You s’posed to be a lad or a lass?’ Ridley asked.
‘A girl, of course. Which are you supposed to be?’
Ridley opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of anything clever to say, so he closed it again.
‘Or maybe you’re supposed to be a fish,’ Kim said, opening and closing her own mouth a few times. The insult was followed by a wave of silence. There was the gentle sigh of the evening breeze and the sound of the soldiers working on the wreck, but that was all. The others who were sitting on the crest of the hill had all focused their attention on Kim.
And then the first of them laughed. A girl, no older than seven or eight.
‘Shut your gob,’ Ridley spat, pointing a finger.
The little girl stopped, but Kim carried on taunting him.
‘Or maybe you’re just a chicken,’ she said. ‘Picking on people smaller than you.’
And then another child sniggered, followed by another, until almost all of them were looking up at Ridley, taking his power away from him.
‘Stop it,’ he said, turning about, glaring at each of them. ‘Stop it or I’ll—’
‘Or you’ll what?’ Kim asked. ‘Bully them in front of all these grown-ups and soldiers?’
Now Trevor looked over at the adults grouped not far away, the sergeant close by, and the soldiers at the foot of the hill, then he turned back to Kim, red-faced and fuming. He looked as if he was about to say something, but he didn’t get the chance, because just then there was a loud crack, a sharp gunshot, and everything erupted into chaos.
‘Incoming!’ one of the soldiers yelled at his comrades, and they all dived to the ground. ‘Get down!’ he shouted up at the rest of us, waving his arms. ‘Get down!’
There was a moment of confusion, none of us quite sure what was happening as the adults began screaming and waving at us as they dropped to the grass. It was as if we were frozen to the spot by the sudden madness. Sergeant Wilkes yelled, his face contorting as he hurried over and pulled the first of us to the ground. He threw Tom Chambers down, grabbing other girls and boys, toppling them like trees and shouting like a lunatic before we all began to take cover. More loud cracks split the evening as the machine-gun ammunition, heated by the fire inside the plane, began to go off. The air was filled with the crackle of gunfire. Bullets were whizzing into the sky, zipping overhead, battering the inside of the plane and smacking into the soil around the base of the hill.
One of the soldiers screamed out in pain and doubled up, clutching his thigh.
‘He’s hit!’ another shouted, and began crawling towards the wounded man as blood blossomed on the leg of his uniform trousers, spreading out until they were dark red.
All around, bullets hammered into the field, sending up spurts of loose soil as the soldiers dragged their comrade away. They pulled him backwards up the hill until they were at the top, close to us and away from the centre of the confusion.
Doctor Jacobs was already waiting for him, down on his knees. He didn’t seem to care about the bullets as he went to the wounded man, using blunt-ended scissors to slit open the trouser leg.
It was impossible to see where the bullet had gone in, because it was bleeding so much. I’d never seen anything like it – the most blood I’d ever seen in one go was the time one of the younger boys fell off the wall at school and split his head open. This was much worse, though. The blood was thick and red and kept on flowing, draining out of him and onto the grass. Doctor Jacobs pulled bandages and pads and swabs from his bag and began wiping it away so he could get to the wound. I could hardly take my eyes off it.
When the gunfire settled down, the lieutenant crawled up the hill to the rest of us. ‘We need to clear this whole area,’ he said to the sergeant. ‘Get everybody to move back. Everyone away. No one’s to come round here.’
For a moment, no one moved. At the bottom of the hill, the plane was becoming quiet. The crackle and spit of the bullets had almost stopped. We tore our eyes from the wounded man and looked at the man in charge.
‘Well, go on then,’ the sergeant said. ‘You heard the lieutenant. Clear off. All of you.’
Still we watched him.
‘Go! Get out of here!’
Now people began to get to their knees and crawl back, moving beyond the top of the hill, where they stood and milled around for a while before the sergeant shooed us away for good.
‘And there’s a curfew tonight,’ the lieutenant told us as we left. ‘No one out after dark. There might be a German on the loose. Keep your eyes peeled.’
*
I was still shaking when Kim and I crossed the field on the other side of the hill and headed towards my house. So much had happened. Seeing the plane crash had been incredible, all the fire and bullets and blood, but it wasn’t the best thing that had happened to me that day. Meeting Kim was far more important, and I knew something special had happened. So when we reached the other end of the field and it was time for me to turn home, I wished I had further to go; that I could walk with her for the rest of the evening.
‘Do you really think there’s a German on the loose?’ I said.
‘You saw the parachute, didn’t you?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, then. What do you think?’
‘Don’t know.’ I thought about the posters of Germans they put up on the village noticeboard. They always looked so dangerous. ‘You think we’re safe? I mean, if there really is a German wandering about, what d’you think he’d do? You think he’d look for people to kill, or . . .’ I shrugged.
‘One German?’ Kim said. ‘I don’t think th
ere’s much he could do. There’s soldiers everywhere. Anyway, they’ve probably found him already.’
‘Aye.’ I nodded. ‘Hey, d’you want to come to mine, like?’ I asked when we reached the track. ‘You could have tea. Mam wouldn’t mind.’
‘Can’t,’ she said. ‘I’d better go back, otherwise . . . well, my aunt doesn’t like it when I’m not there on time. I’m already late as it is and she’ll be batty with worry, probably. I’m surprised she hasn’t come after me.’
‘Oh. All right.’ I kicked at a loose stone.
‘Can you get out tonight, though?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Can you get out? Sneak out, I mean.’
‘Why?’
‘Meet me on the top of the hill at ten o’clock.’
‘What for?’
‘We’re going souvenir hunting.’
‘With that German out there? And the soldier said there’s a curfew.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Kim said. ‘You scared?’
‘Course not.’
‘Well, then,’ she said starting to run. ‘I’ll see you later.’
LETTERS
Mam was standing at the kitchen window, staring out as if she’d been watching for me.
Mr Bennett was there, too, right beside her, so close they were almost touching.
‘Did we miss anything exciting?’ he asked, when I came in.
I shrugged.
‘Don’t keep us in suspense.’ He moved away from Mam and went to the strong wooden table that was right in the middle of the kitchen. It had been there as long as I could remember. And when Mr Bennett sat down, I thought about how Dad would sit there to clean his shotgun, and Mam would get mad with him for making a mess. Dad would tell her not to get so het up and he’d look across at me and wink as if we were sharing a joke.
There wasn’t a gun there now, though. Instead, there were two cups, side by side.
‘Well, I don’t think much of it at all,’ said Mam. ‘It might be excitin’ for you young’uns, but all that racket nearly frightened the life out of me. And then all that smoke coming this way, ruinin’ my washing? Now everythin’ smells and we’re on the last of the soap powder and—’