by Dan Smith
We hacked our way through a thousand bullies, swirling and twirling as we sent ripped pieces of leaves flying into the air. We swiped and chopped so that our sticks dripped green, and we giggled to one another until Kim said she might even wet herself, which made us giggle even louder despite the fear that the soldiers might come.
By the time we came across the burn, we were high with excitement. Kim was lifted by news of her brother, the thrill of the bombing raid, and I was glad we were together again, but all the exhilaration fell away when we came to the place where Dad’s shed stood. Because there we saw a very different kind of destruction.
*
The pheasant runs were all smashed. There had been six of them, all in neat rows, and even though they were overgrown with weeds, the cages had been fine apart from the one we’d used. But now they were all broken. All Dad’s work smashed to pieces. Someone had pulled off the wire, throwing it into the banks of nettles, and the wooden frames had been snapped as if they’d been stamped on and then cracked against the trees. I’d felt rotten when I broke the one we used for Erik’s splint, but this was horrible. It was as if someone had come into my house and broken all my belongings.
‘What’s happened?’ Kim stood and stared.
It was bad enough that the runs had been destroyed, but the worst thing was what they had done to Dad’s shed. The door was open and the inside had been ransacked. There were tools all over the floor where someone had tipped the toolbox upside down, and there were some outside in the dirt. The paraffin heater was on its side, and the stool had been thrown into the nettles where the runs were. It looked almost as if a German bomb had landed on the area and blown Dad’s things all over the place. But there was no scorching here. There wasn’t the smell of explosives.
‘What happened?’ Kim said again.
‘Trevor Ridley,’ I said, feeling hot tears in my eyes. ‘I just know it.’ They’d been near here yesterday, and must have come inside for a closer look after I’d gone. I couldn’t think of anyone else who would do something like this. So he’d come back for his revenge, after all.
‘Fat lot of good it did hittin’ ’im,’ I said, fighting back the tears. I didn’t want Kim to see them. ‘Just got ’im more angry.’
But even though they had destroyed all those things that meant so much to me, that quickly went from my mind. The shed could be tidied, the runs could be rebuilt. Even the thought that they might have found the gun seemed unimportant, because what I was most worried about was Erik. Our friend Erik. He’d been here the whole time. First with this, then with the bombs falling.
I ran to the place behind the shed, dropping to the ground and crawling through the small gap in the undergrowth.
‘Erik?’
Erik was sitting with his back to the sycamore trunk, pressed to it as hard as he could, holding his arm straight out in front of him. And in his hand, he was holding a gun. The gun I had found at the plane crash.
I stopped suddenly and Kim bumped into me as she scurried into the den right behind me.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’
For a long moment, Erik stared at me, holding the gun straight out so the barrel was pointing directly at my face.
The gun was no longer dirty and clogged with mud. The barrel was dark and hollow and ready for a bullet to be fired along it. Somehow I just knew it would work. He must have found where I’d hidden it, and spent his time making it ready in case he needed it.
I looked up from the end of the barrel and saw Erik’s face. I saw the way he twitched because he was afraid, and I imagined how he must have felt, cowering in hiding, listening to the noise of the boys wrecking the pens. He would have pictured them as soldiers, just a few feet away, ready to kill him.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, moving further in, giving Kim room to come alongside me. ‘It’s all right.’
Erik swallowed hard and lowered the gun. He nodded and put it on the ground in front of him, placing it carefully. He held both hands out to show me he meant no harm.
‘It’s all right,’ I said again.
Erik said something in German and I was frustrated that I couldn’t understand what he was saying and that he couldn’t understand me. All we could do was look at each other and show that we meant no harm.
Erik’s breathing was heavy as he calmed down. He sucked great swooshes of air through his nose and blew them out in a rush, so we sat and waited for him to relax. And when his breathing was normal again, he put down the pistol and showed me the palms of his hands.
‘Erik,’ he said. ‘Peter. Kim. Friend.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Friends.’
‘He must’ve been terrified,’ Kim said. ‘He must’ve heard them out there and wondered what was going on.’
‘Trevor Ridley,’ I said. ‘I’ll kill ’im.’
Erik took out a piece of scrap paper and the pencil. We waited while he drew a picture of a plane. His hands were still trembling and it wasn’t a very good picture; he wasn’t much of an artist and the lines were shaky. Then he drew some box-like houses underneath and made lines come down from the aeroplane. He drew an explosion of grey lines over one of the houses and put a question mark beside it.
‘He wants to know if anything got blown up,’ Kim said.
We both shook our heads and Erik sighed deeply, closing his eyes. Then he nodded and put up his thumb. ‘Gut.’
‘I got you some clothes,’ I said, opening my satchel. It was bulging and I’d had to fasten the strap on the very last hole. ‘There’s a bit of chicken, too. From last night’s tea.’
‘You had chicken?’ Kim asked.
‘Mr Bennett brought it.’
‘Lucky you. Make sure you invite me next time.’
I passed everything to Erik.
‘We’ll have to take off the splint if he’s going to get changed,’ Kim said.
It would have been easier to cut the binding, but we didn’t want to waste good rope so we picked at the tight knots until we could slip them loose. The pieces of wood fell and Erik waggled his ankle.
‘Looks like it’s just about better,’ Kim said. ‘Come on; let’s leave him to get dressed.’
*
We went outside, walking into the woods in different directions, but there was no sign of anyone, so we encouraged Erik to come out of the den. He was still having a bit of trouble walking, but he was much better. He could walk quite well without holding on to anything. Kim had done a good job.
I thought I might feel bad seeing him in Dad’s clothes but, really, it was just strange. They were a bit big on him, but they made him look completely different. He wasn’t a Nazi airman any more.
‘He just looks normal now,’ I said.
‘Well, of course he does,’ Kim replied.
‘No, I mean—’
‘I know exactly what you mean. He looks like everybody else.’
‘Aye.’
Kim and I collected together all the broken wood and piled it close to the shed. I had already decided I was going to fix everything, make it just like it was before, so we divided it into two piles – broken beyond repair, and reusable – and I saw that when we were finished I’d need to find a lot more to rebuild the runs.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get what we need,’ Kim said. ‘We’ll make it as good as new, I promise.’
And while we collected the wood, Erik went into the shed and gathered the tools from the floor, laying them out on the bench. One or two were lost in the nettles, but Kim and I found most of the ones that had been thrown out.
‘I was thinking,’ I said. ‘He can’t stay here for ever. Mam said the war’s going to last much longer and Erik can’t live in the woods all that time.’
‘Why not? Maybe that’s exactly what he’ll have to do.’
‘But he can’t. It’s too dangerous. Think what would’ve happened if Ridley had found him.’
‘He has a gun; maybe he’d kill them.’
I looked across at Erik sitti
ng in the shed, laying out tools. ‘He wouldn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know.’
Kim sighed. ‘You’re probably right. We’ll have to think of something.’
‘Like what, though?’
‘I don’t know, Peter.’
And right then, in that moment, I had the awful feeling that while we had meant the best, we had actually done the wrong thing for Erik; that we had taken this all too far and that it was going to end badly for all of us.
I looked from Kim to Erik and back again, scared for my two friends, then I shook the dark thought from my mind, and carried on with the clear-up.
*
When we’d collected and sorted the wood, we set up a production line in the shed. Erik removed any dirt from the tools and passed them to me one at a time, I oiled and rubbed them, Kim put them away in the toolbox.
‘There. That didn’t take too long, did it?’ Kim said when the final tool was in its box and the shed was tidy again.
‘Not too long,’ I agreed. ‘Thank you.’
Erik put out his hand like Mr Bennett had done last night. ‘Friend,’ he said.
I looked down at it and then at his face. I put my hand in his and we shook. ‘Friends,’ I agreed. Then he and Kim did the same.
We risked going to the burn, where Erik put his foot in the cold water.
‘They’re not really any different from us, are they?’ I said, watching Erik lean back and look up at the sky. ‘Germans.’
Kim turned to look at Erik. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re just the same.’
‘I wish it was all over, don’t you? That we could all go back to normal.’
‘Mostly,’ she said. ‘But then I’d have to go back to Newcastle.’
‘Don’t you want to? Don’t you miss your mam and da’?’
‘Of course I miss them, but then I’d miss you, wouldn’t I?’
‘Would you?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t miss your silly remarks, but yes . . . I’d miss you. Wouldn’t you miss me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I would.’
Just then there was a sudden loud boom from somewhere in the distance. Erik stiffened and jerked his head round. The birds stopped singing. The sound echoed, faded and was gone.
‘What was that?’ I whispered.
‘Sounded like a bomb,’ Kim said. ‘In the village.’
‘We should go and see.’
Kim nodded and turned to Erik, who was watching us. She held up her hands, palms out. ‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘Don’t move.’
THE PHANTOM AIRMAN
We saw that a lot had happened while we’d been in the woods that morning. Just as Kim had said, the whole village had been evacuated, and when we crested the hill, we could see that the crowd standing on this side of the road had grown. They were a long way off, two fields from where we were, and they all had their backs to us. All eyes were turned to the coast.
No one had thought to come this far away, but from where we were, we had a clear view all the way to the Black Bull, and it was a bright day so we could see the soldiers busying around. One side of the pub was in pieces, the wall completely blown away, and a steady burn of black smoke rose to the sky, much like it had done the day Erik’s plane crashed.
‘Wonder what happened,’ I said. ‘Looks like they blew up the pub.’
‘Let’s go and find out.’
So we crossed the fields and came to where the whole village had gathered. The men had congregated in one place, where they smoked cigarettes and pipes, nodding and rubbing their chins. The women were shaking their heads and standing with their hands on their hips, wanting to get back to whatever they’d been doing. The children just wanted to find out what was going on.
We melted into the crowd, sticking together, listening to what people were saying.
‘Is it the invasion? Are they coming?’
‘It’s just a bomb from last night. Had to do something with it.’
‘They blew it up?’
‘Mr Charlton was trying to get them to move it, the daft old so-and-so.’
‘You’d think he’d know better, bein’ the warden and everythin’.’
‘No, it’s the German. The one that escaped.’
I felt a hand grab my shirt and I turned to see Mam standing behind me. I must have pushed past without realising it was her.
‘I might’ve known you’d be right in the thick of it.’
‘Hello, Mrs Dixon,’ Kim said.
‘Hello,’ she smiled. ‘So where do you two think you’re goin’, eh?’
‘We want to see what happened,’ Kim said.
‘Plannin’ on sneakin’ through, eh? I don’t think so. Come on back home, I think we’ve seen enough.’
‘But Mam, I . . .’
Mam shook her head at me and held out a finger. I knew what it meant. It meant ‘do as you’re told’, so I dropped my shoulders and looked at the floor.
‘See you later,’ I said to Kim.
‘Don’t you want to come too, pet?’ Mam said, bending down to speak quietly. ‘I’ve made some delicious biscuits, but there’s far too many of them. We might need some help.’
‘Biscuits?’ Kim pretended to be unimpressed. ‘Oh well, then, I suppose I could help.’
We left the rest of the village to stand outside wondering what was going on, and made our way back to Hawthorn Lodge. ‘D’you know what happened?’ I asked as we walked.
Mam pursed her lips as if in serious thought. ‘Well, people are talking, but they all say different things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, now, let’s see. Mrs Dudley thinks the Germans are invadin’. She thought she saw a ship out at sea and now there’s a whole fleet of German ships comin’ to blow us up.’
‘That can’t be right,’ Kim said.
‘Mrs Howard, on the other hand, thinks it’s the Phantom Airman. She says he’s sabotaged the village pub.’
‘Phantom airman?’ I asked.
‘That parachutist. They’ve been searchin’ all over but there’s no sign of ’im. No one ever found ’im, did they?’ She looked at me. ‘So that’s what they’re callin’ ’im in the village.’
‘The Phantom Airman.’ I looked at Kim. ‘I like that.’
‘And then Mr Shaw said there was an unexploded bomb from last night and the soldiers evacuated the village and blew up the bomb to keep everyone safe. Now which one of those do you think is true?’ Mam asked.
‘Erm . . .’ I pretended to think about it.
‘I like the one about the phantom airman,’ Kim said, glancing at me. ‘I like that one a lot.’
*
Mam was right about the biscuits, they were delicious. We sat at the table, with a plate because Mam wouldn’t allow crumbs, and we had two biscuits each. Mam had a cup of tea, while Kim and I had a glass of milk.
‘I wish my aunt made biscuits like these,’ Kim said. ‘Actually, I wish she made any kind of biscuits.’
Mam laughed and told Kim she could come to our house and eat biscuits any time she wanted.
And when there was a knock at the door, Mam hardly even flinched. She took a sip of her tea and she went to the door and pulled it open.
There was a boy standing on the step. He was dressed in navy blue and his bike was leaning on the fence. I knew who he was. He was the telegram boy.
He couldn’t look Mam in the eye as he held out the telegram.
Mam took a step back and shook her head. ‘No.’ She retreated a few paces into the kitchen and put her hand out to steady herself on the table. She wobbled a little, and sat down in her chair, staring ahead.
The boy waited on the step. He looked at me and Kim sitting at the table, then he bent down and put the telegram on the mat.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ Then he turned, climbed on to his bike, and rode away.
THE TELEGRAM
Mam stared at nothing. It was as if she had turned to stone. She sat for
a very long time, facing the window. I stared at the telegram that lay on the mat. Beside me, Kim put her hand on mine.
Outside, the birds continued to sing. The sun continued to shine. The telegram boy made his way to his next delivery. The villagers waited to be allowed back to their homes. But in our kitchen, no one moved. No one spoke.
And after many minutes, Mam took a deep breath and pushed herself from her chair. She moved as if her legs had no strength, then she forced herself to stand straight, gathering her thoughts, composing herself. And when she was ready, she took two firm steps over to the mat and bent down to pick up the telegram.
When she straightened up, she held the telegram out but didn’t look at it. She turned to me and forced a smile and said, ‘Will you excuse me a moment?’, then she went to sit on the settee opposite the sideboard.
I didn’t turn round to look at her, I was almost too afraid, but I heard her tear open the telegram.
Kim and I sat at the table with our half-eaten biscuits, and we listened to Mam sobbing.
Kim kept her hand on mine, and when she spoke, she said, ‘You should go and see your mam.’
*
Mam was sitting on the settee, looking up at the place where the wireless was on the sideboard. Dad’s letters leant against it, all tied up with twine. Above them, his shotgun on the rack, as if he was going to walk in right now to get it. He would come into the kitchen, wearing his boots, and Mam would tell him off for bringing in the dirt. She’d tell him he was getting mud on her nice clean floor and he would smile at me and wink, coming in anyway and reaching up for his gun.
‘You comin’?’ he would say.
But he wouldn’t say that any more. He wouldn’t come into this room ever again and he wouldn’t ever reach up for that gun again.
The telegram was lying on the settee, so I sat down next to Mam and picked it up. A piece of clean white paper with the Post Office heading at the top. Strips of slightly different coloured paper had been stuck to it, and on those strips were the words we had feared so much.
‘Deeply regret to report the death of your husband D. Dixon on war service. Letter follows.’
Dad’s number was on there, too, as if to confirm they had the right D. Dixon.