That Burning Summer

by Lydia Syson

  Except he didn’t, and she didn’t, and instead they both just sat there, feeling the space between them.

  “Your English …” Peggy stopped. She didn’t want to sound rude.

  “It is very bad?”

  “No, no … I meant the opposite. The first time … the night you came … I thought perhaps you couldn’t, I mean, you didn’t know … well, I just thought … and now I can see. It’s really very good.”

  Bother. She hadn’t wanted to remind him of that night. Terror must surely have driven everything away.

  But Henryk swallowed and then said, “In the RAF they didn’t like it. When we talked in Polish.” He smiled at her consternation. “When we were flying, you know. It is difficult to remember. And sometimes … well, it is easy to get …”

  He waved his arms and looked from side to side, acting out alarm.

  “Excitable, that’s what they said we were. So we had to learn quickly. Mistakes are dangerous.”

  She nibbled at her beans, to make them go more slowly, so there would be more for Henryk. He thought hard, and then seemed to be quoting something he had learned by heart:

  “‘Reporting of enemy. DON’T get excited, and DON’T shout. Speak slowly and into the microphone.’”

  He swallowed again, though she knew he had finished his mouthful. He was remembering things he didn’t want to remember. When you watched the dogfights up above, the machines themselves seemed to be the living things. It was so hard to think there could be actual people alive inside them, shouting and maybe screaming too, their screams drowned out by the sound of their engines. Cursing each other perhaps. How did you remember to speak slowly into a microphone with an ME 109 on your tail, coming out of nowhere? Or a whole formation bearing down on the country, and only you to stop it?

  Peggy passed Henryk a carrot, hoping to distract him. His teeth took the top off with a resounding crunch.

  “Too loud, for church,” said Henryk, with his mouth full, and raised an apologetic hand to cover it. She let herself smile then, and looked at him directly, happy to change the subject.

  “There aren’t many things you’re meant to eat in church, are there, really?”

  Henryk mimed taking the sacrament, and looked at her with questioning eyebrows.

  “Oh, well, yes, I suppose there is that. I was thinking of proper food. There are scones, sometimes, I suppose, when there’s a fundraising tea. Or rock cakes. They always go down well. And even I can make rock cakes.” She was beginning to gabble again, she knew. “Everything’s for fundraising now. Lydd was trying to buy a Spitfire when we left, but there was a long way to go. They cost so much.”

  She regretted letting that out immediately. She’d have done anything to stop that twisted look returning to his face.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … Was yours a Spitfire, then?”

  He shook his head.

  “No. A Hurricane. Beautiful.”

  “Oh, but it wasn’t your fault, I’m sure. I mean, it can’t have been, can it? You must have done everything you could, surely.”

  “But I lost it. And they will find it. They will look for me.”

  “I don’t think they will find it,” said Peggy quietly. “It’s gone now.”

  “Gone?”

  “My brother saw where it fell. It must have been your plane. It went right into the Marsh. Buried itself. They’ll never get it out. And nobody saw you bail out. You’re safe. Really you are.”

  26

  As soon as she’d gone, Henryk felt Peggy’s absence. They had begun to speak of his journey from Poland: his answers to her questions seemed to transfix her. It surprised Henryk how easy it suddenly became to talk about those buried months.

  Arriving at last in Balchik, the pilots found themselves in a steep place with an end-of-season feel. Pale stone houses curving round the shore and sprawling on rocky slopes rising behind. The music of gypsy violins seeped out of courtyards and snaked from pavement cafés. It made Henryk melancholy as he waited for news and watched the ships pass.

  He eked out his day’s allowance, tried to resist the sting of alcohol on an empty stomach, and wondered if he should let himself be tempted by the Bulgarian girls who crowded round the pilots’ endless games of bridge. Finally the call came. Down to the dockside, where a Greek-flagged merchant ship with a huge and shallow hold was waiting for them.

  Leaving land felt significant, and hopeful, until Henryk clambered down into the ship’s hold and breathed in the stink of it. He was too much of a city boy to know if the last occupants had been sheep or goats, but the smell sent him reeling.

  “Psia ko,” he swore, pitching into a stocky fellow coming down the steps behind him.

  “Dog’s bone?” the other laughed, pushing him upright again. “Pig’s shit, more like.”

  Henryk quickly got to know Mirek better. They could hardly help it. By this time eight hundred airmen were squeezed into the St. Nicolas, the last hundred or more soaking wet after having had to swim to the boat. A night passed, and a day, and another night fell. When they felt there was no air left to breathe down below, Henryk and Mirek pushed their way onto deck and leaned over the railings.

  “Why are we slowing down?” asked Mirek.

  The sailors were signalling and shouting. There was land on each side now, narrowing all the time. Mountains with stringed clusters of lights that glimmered again in the water. Henryk had always loved maps. He worked out where they must be.

  “We’re going through the Straits of Bosphorus. No clashing rocks for us, at least,” he laughed, light-headed.

  Mirek stared at him blankly.

  “Jason and the Argonauts, you know? Oh, never mind. They were going the other way, anyway.” Henryk turned away, and the brief surge of excitement he’d felt was crushed. If everything had been different, how glorious, how romantic this moment would be. Sailing towards Constantinople. He’d always wanted to see the world. Learning to fly was part of that urge.

  Henryk had turned eight just a few weeks after Orliński flew back in triumph from Tokyo, the hero of all Poland. He’d begged his mother to take him to the local aeroklub for his birthday. And after that, he was hooked.

  “So what country’s that?” Mirek persisted, waving to the right.

  “That must be Turkey. We’re at the crossroads of the world. Europe that way, Asia over there. Pretty impressive, huh?”

  Mirek rolled his eyes. “There’s only one thing that can impress me now. Getting into the cockpit of a plane and fighting back for Poland.”

  They’d all thought that, then. Never imagined for a second there would come a time when the opposite might happen. Never dreamed of that moment when, in the middle of combat, you find yourself alone, isolated. Hidden in a cloud perhaps. Lower, higher, less visible than the rest. The brief possibility of escape held in front of you, just a temporary exit, a chance to get away from the fray. Stuck on that boat, desperate to be in the air again, neither Mirek nor Henryk could know what determination you would need to return to a scrap when, like a gift from heaven, you have unexpectedly been offered a way out, with nobody there to see you take it.

  RULE FOUR: DO NOT GIVE ANY GERMAN ANYTHING. DO NOT TELL HIM ANYTHING. HIDE YOUR FOOD AND YOUR BICYCLES. HIDE YOUR MAPS.

  27

  The next day was Ernest’s birthday. He’d been a two-o’clock-in-the-morning baby. That meant most years he just woke up, and it had happened: he was a year older. This time they were all awake and together at twenty-five to two, down in the cellar with eiderdowns and torches. And an enamel jug of tea, as if they were haymaking. A pack of cards sat untouched.

  “Hitler must have known it was your special day, eh, Ernest?” joked Uncle Fred, with serious eyes. “He wanted to make us light the candles on time, for once. Not so long now.”

  Perhaps he could get Uncle Fred on his own tomorrow, and explain quietly. They could go together, and he’d show him, and maybe it would turn out not to have been a parachute at all. Maybe there’d
be some other explanation, quite obvious to everyone else, that Ernest just hadn’t managed to think of.

  “The last thing we need down here is candles, Fred.”

  Aunt Myra sniffed at the smells in the cellar and fretted. Paraffin, and cardboard, and last year’s potatoes. They heard flight after flight of enemy bombers coming over the farm. Whump, whump, whump, whump, they went, hour after hour, relentless and threatening and unmistakable, but you didn’t exactly want the noise to stop. You wanted it to keep going, so you knew the planes had got past you.

  Ernest buried his face in his pillow and wondered if anybody would notice the farm in darkness, from above. What might show from up there? Could a wisp of rising smoke give them away? The gleam of iron on the pigsty roof? And what if the planes themselves were flying on and away, but silently dropping parachutists as they passed? Arms up, he’d heard they landed, a grenade in each hand. Even when they were dressed as nuns? You kept hearing about nuns. Hairy arms. Hairy hands. That’s what you had to look out for. Nuns with hairy hands and Fifth Columnists. Who would surely know better than to hide a parachute in the side of a dyke.

  Nobody wanted to turn the torch off, though they knew they were wasting batteries. It sat in the middle of their circle, like a feeble campfire, yellow beams lighting the underside of the hall floorboards, catching the cobwebs. Nobody even pretended to sleep, except for Claudette, who lay so still and calm that Ernest wondered if she was actually breathing. Just as his anxiety built up enough to make him want to poke her into life, her eyelashes briefly flickered, and he breathed again himself. Every ten minutes or so, Ernest crept his hand into his mother’s, and pulled her arm towards him so that he could squint at her wristwatch. Sometimes she stroked his hair.

  Impossible to settle when you’re waiting for something.

  A few minutes before two, Peggy began to shiver and look clammy. Ernest was surprised. He’d never seen her scared like that before. Real terror. He wasn’t sure what to do about it. Then a peculiar noise erupted from the depths of her throat, as if a crow were stuck in there. Half-rising, Peggy threw up through her fingers. Ernest sat up, transfixed, immobilized. But Mum was quick enough. The cellar had plenty of old pans and buckets stacked in one corner, waiting for the next tinkers’ visit. She grabbed a huge saucepan and shoved it under Peggy’s overflowing hands, and held her while she heaved and swayed.

  June looked away, one hand over her own mouth.

  Peggy stared wildly for a moment, dewdrops of sweat suddenly scattering her forehead, and then she rushed up the cellar steps and disappeared.

  “Oh, where on earth has she gone?” Mum grabbed the sick-filled pan and ran after her. Ernest accidentally caught a whiff as it passed and worried how white Peggy’s nightgown was under the path of those planes. They’d be able to see it, ever so clearly, as she crossed the yard to the lav. Wouldn’t they? From up there?

  The others huddled and listened, except Aunt Myra, who had insisted on putting a preserving pan over her head.

  “It just feels safer like this,” she said, with a spectral rattle. “Have you all got your gas masks?”

  Eventually they came back down, Mum supporting Peggy, whose legs weren’t doing a very good job on their own.

  “What did you see?” Ernest asked, wondering if he didn’t need the lavatory himself.

  Peggy shook her head, and gulped.

  “Runny tummy,” Mum explained. “Seems she ate some raw beans while she was doing the weeding.”

  “Not feeding her enough, Myra?” Fred nudged his wife, and his shoulders shook a little.

  “Well, I’m sure she won’t be tempted again,” said June.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know better.” The words echoed inside the preserving pan, surprising nobody. The voice of doom, thought Ernest. “Good as poison, raw runner beans.”

  Peggy’s eyes went round and starey and she seemed about to rush straight back up the steps, but another wave of planes could be heard, and everybody froze again.

  “I expect you’ll feel yourself again soon,” he said kindly, when the bombers had gone. She had sat down, but was holding herself all tight and stiff, as if she might break. Or make another dash for it, at any moment. He hoped her illness wasn’t going to wreck his birthday. It would be so unfair. He had high hopes for the day ahead. Mum must have heard his thoughts, because she gave him a huge, tired smile and said:

  “Goodness, look at the time! You’re twelve already. We almost missed it. Happy birthday, love!”

  Their ragged chorus filled the cellar and Ernest basked briefly. He felt silent questions passing above him, and hoped a little bit more, and harder. Then Mum nodded, and stood up again, as much as you could down there.

  “May as well. I’ll get them, Fred.”

  “You know where …”

  “Yes, yes …”

  “Be quick.”

  “Of course I will. Won’t take a moment.”

  Mum hovered at the top of the steps, the door open just a crack. Yet again, they all listened. Ernest was torn between guilt at putting her in danger and wanting to find out if he’d guessed right.

  June was doing quite a good show of looking excited on his behalf, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it. Her eyes were all smoky round the edges. Ernest hadn’t realized before that she slept with her curlers in. Above them, they heard Mum’s feet coming along the hall, not exactly running, but almost, and Claudette began to stir. The door opened and shut. Peggy opened her eyes and reached for the sick-pan, and Ernest tried to block his ears.

  While the cleaning up was going on, Ernest turned his back on the parcels and inspected the floor of the cellar. He found a detached pan handle and started to scratch away with it quietly, a new possibility constructing itself in his mind. What if they had to hide there when the invasion started? Supposing they were stuck for weeks on end? If there was a gas attack, say, or if the bombing got so bad they couldn’t leave the farm at all. They could eat the potatoes, raw, he supposed, if raw potatoes didn’t make you sick too. Or they could dig their way out, but it would take forever.

  “Happy birthday again, love! This is from me.” Mum held out her present.

  “And Dad?”

  Peggy looked away, and Mum seemed to hesitate. Uncle Fred started coughing.

  “Yes, yes, of course, and Dad …”

  It was probably a book—too heavy and square to be a game or a model kit, and it was solid, not a box, and made no noise. She had wrapped it in an old Beano. He held it closer to the torch. Jimmy and his Magic Patch were flying through some mountains on the front, red bottom in the air.

  “Thanks, Mum. Can I open it now?”

  “Course you can. Didn’t brave the bombs for you just to look at it, did I?”

  Ernest began to unpick the first strip of tape. Nobody spoke. He made a pact with himself. If he could get every scrap off without tearing a single bit of paper, Dad would come before his birthday was over. You just had to be very patient, very gentle. It was perfectly possible. A bit more difficult with so little light down here, and it would be good if his nails were less bitten. Strang the Terrible came away intact, and then Big Eggo, in a splash of yellow. Mum had chosen all his favorites. He turned the parcel over and started to tackle the other side. He realized he was breathing rather loudly, and then that everyone else was too. All watching him.

  “Oh give it here, Ernest. I’ll help.” June had lost her patience. She half-snatched it from him, and he held on. The sound of ripping paper silenced everyone.

  28

  He really minded. June didn’t notice, but Peggy did, and so did Mum, who gasped, and touched Ernest’s arm, because she’d seen the glint of a tear too.

  But Ernest just shook them all off. He tore at the rest of the paper with careless speed. Then he ripped it up, deliberately, crumpling each piece and dropping it.

  “Arthur Mee’s Blackout Book,” he read out loud, opening it close by the torch, with Peggy reading over his shoulder. Mum
had remembered to put Dad’s name, but it was quite obviously her writing. Anyway, Dad had never given a book in his life without putting a little picture by his name. They all knew that.

  “That looks super, doesn’t it? We’ll have lots of fun with that, won’t we?”

  Everyone had become so good at pretending. Peggy forced brightness into her own voice and thought about Henryk, all alone in the middle of the Marsh, retching and retching and worse too, if she was anything to go by, cowering in a dyke, perhaps—he could hardly stay in the church—his stomach cramping uncontrollably, just like hers was now. Wretched, and far too visible.

  Ernest had found a page of jokes. That’s the spirit.

  “What is the difference between a glutton and a hungry man?” He tilted the book to the light to read out the answer. “One eats too long, the other longs to eat.”

  Laughter.

  Ernest looked up, pleased, and ran his finger under the next one.

  “Which travels faster, heat or cold?”

  “Oh, I think I know this one,” said Mum. “Is it heat, because you can ‘catch’ cold?”

  “That’s right. How did you know?”

  The grown-ups looked at each other.

  “Here’s another good one. What is longer when it is cut?”

  He gave them half a minute.

  “A ditch.”

  A cold and hungry man in a ditch.

  Fred rapped on the preserving pan.

  “Come on, Myra. It’s our turn. Just come out for a moment, won’t you? Ernest’s big day, remember?”

  She grumbled of course, and blinked at the light, then played her part.

  “Yes, and we’re going to make a man of you now that you’re twelve, aren’t we, Fred? Where is it then, Lizzie? We haven’t got all day.”

  “Right here.”

  Mum had brought down a bundle of towels, in case Peggy was sick again, she’d supposed. In fact, they’d been hiding Fred and Myra’s present. Without them, its shape was a dead giveaway, even in its brown paper wrapping. Peggy watched recognition form on Ernest’s face and willed him to pretend some more. It worked.