by Lydia Syson
Why had nobody told him before? They called him a pansy at school because he wouldn’t fight back. Dad always said he didn’t have to. Nobody had to fight. Dad said it didn’t matter. But of course it mattered. Dad was just as bad as him. They were two of a kind, both useless.
The grass under his legs was spiky and sharp. Funny how thinking about the big things made you notice the little things more. Like the sensation of burning in his throat as Ernest drew breath. Or the mosquito which had just landed on his arm. Its long proboscis was already drilling into his skin, just beside a freckle. Head down, utterly focused, with antennae waving, it swayed gently on legs beautifully banded, dark and light. Too absorbed to slap it away, Ernest watched its body fill, swelling with his blood, and he felt completely and utterly detached. Its head moved gently up and down as it fed, like a lamb sucking at the teat, dropping lower and lower as its capillary sank in further.
When at last he brushed it off, a bright splash of red appeared on his arm. Ernest wasn’t certain if it had spurted from him or from the dead mosquito’s body, which now sprawled, stuck to his skin, its legs feebly trying and failing to rise.
What did it matter? thought Ernest. Gradually his breathing slowed and his body uncurled. What difference did anything really make? The Nazis wouldn’t come any faster or any slower just because of his dad. And why shouldn’t making pots be war work? Why couldn’t people choose?
There were a few swallows diving low over the dyke, following the clouds of insects gathered above the water surface. He watched the birds return again and again, swooping low but never colliding. Beaks open, gaping, scooping, the swallows continued to weave and wheel, mesmerizing in their flight.
Ernest thought about all the letters he had written to his father and given to his mum. So many questions. He’d asked about the food, and the guns, and the training, and the other soldiers. He’d told Dad about his birthday, and the film, and the frogs, and the rabbits. But what had Mum done with the letters? Probably never sent them. Surely he would have replied. Maybe prisoners weren’t allowed to write letters. He had no idea what you did all day in prison. Ernest could only think of prisoners in Robin Hood, sitting in dungeons with rats and stale bread, and if you were lucky, a minstrel playing a song you knew outside your window, sending you a secret message that would help you escape.
He rolled onto his back. Something was going on, very high up, way away in the direction of Dover. There was always something over there. According to June, they called it Hellfire Corner. “We should count ourselves lucky,” she’d told him with one of her slow winks. “There’s always some poor bugger worse off than yourself.” And then she’d looked over her shoulder, to make sure they hadn’t been overheard, and said with a giggle, just like Uncle Fred: “Pardon my French.” That was before the telegram, of course.
Even with the wind dying down you couldn’t hear that much from here.
The tiny whirling forms overhead were only swifts, riding the thermals high above him. They’d be the first to leave next month. Actually—Ernest sat up hurriedly, and squinted at the sky, one hand shading his eyes—it wasn’t just swifts up there. That was a hobby too, scanning the Marsh. Male or female? Not sure, without his binoculars. But it had set its sights on something. One particular swift. With height on its side, down it plunged. The swift spun out of the way, faster than you would have thought possible. But the hobby had power too, and determination. Up it soared again, turning, gliding, and then positioning itself for the kill, more deadly than ever. It happened so fast Ernest blinked. One moment they were apart. Then they were together, the swift struggling in the hobby’s talons. Feathers drifting down, too small to see.
Ernest stood up, and shook his head, trying to empty it again. He would go to the Looker’s Hut. Work things out there in peace and quiet. It was bound to be empty now.
54
Peggy kept her eyes tight shut, while the salty dampness spread stickily between their skins. There was no hiding the gulps that kept erupting from her chest. They were like waves slapping against a breakwater, refusing all her efforts to force them back.
She had never rated herself as a dancer. Two left feet, and all that. But Henryk made it easy. She didn’t even have to think. Which was just as well, as she didn’t want to think. The waltz he was humming seemed to sound right inside her, bypassing her ears and vibrating in her head and in her chest, until her sobs subsided and she found herself joining in. One-two-three, one-two-three. Her fingers, at first tightly locked behind his neck, began to relax. Her body swayed and turned.
Dancing was different when it wasn’t with your brother or Jeannie. All at once Peggy understood why June’s eyes went dreamy when certain tunes came on the wireless, and what she was thinking as her hips began to sway. It was a oneness like nothing else, perfection, legs working together, just gliding in and out, hipbone to hipbone, nothing between you.
Extraordinary, really, when you thought about it. That people did this in public and it was allowed. How on earth could it be possible to feel like this, like candlewax melting, this heat, this throbbing, with people watching and drinking and smoking and clapping and even brushing against you as you danced? Glorious.
She’d have to keep her eyes shut and pretend it was a dream. It didn’t feel far off. Her head was airy and light, and strange images kept flashing by, one after another. Intense, random thoughts that fed each other and disconnected her from the earth. Perhaps flying was like this.
Their movements slowed and their humming ceased. The wind had quietened and the church was completely still. Peggy felt the prickle of bristle against her cheek. Henryk’s breath filled his lungs. Then came the touch of his lips on hers. Warm and moist against the salt-tracks along her nose and chin, tasting her. She couldn’t open her eyes. If she opened her eyes the spell would be broken. It was like a wild animal, she thought. The moment it sees you looking, it’s gone. She couldn’t look at herself. But she let her lips loosen, and open.
He picked her up like a child and took her to the bench by the altar and there she sat—half-lying, really—across his lap. And his head was bent over hers and as he kissed her, she felt his tears on her eyelids and then he said her name. In the way people do when they want to check you are there. When they have just begun to worry.
“Yes. Henryk.”
“I want … I want you to know …”
Peggy felt she ought to be able to help him somehow, supply him with the words he couldn’t reach. She nodded.
“Yes?”
He started again.
“I want you to know you are a bang-on job.”
She laughed out loud. Henryk never looked prouder than when he’d managed to remember one of these funny RAF words. He produced them so carefully. She put her arms round him again and gave him a tight hug, and maddeningly, a few more tears leaked out, but they were the happy kind this time.
“I think you’re wizard too.”
For a while, they just looked at each other. Peggy found herself drinking him in, every inch. She had given up all hope, and now everything had changed, and if he could still like her after what he had heard and seen today, well, that was better than anything. He had seen her at her absolute worst. Fighting on the floor like a brat. Sullen. Dishonest, even. Crying. He knew she’d broken a promise she’d never wanted to make, let down her mother, upset her brother. She could hardly pretend to be a nice girl any more.
He obviously didn’t care that she didn’t have stockings and couldn’t lay her hand on lipstick or that her legs were always scratched from walking through the fields to see him. Just as it didn’t bother her that he trembled from time to time, and constantly looked behind, and around, and ceaselessly quartered the sky for danger.
He kissed her again, a strong simple kiss that pressed her lips against her teeth and broke the stillness. They looked at each other like conspirators, and then at the altar and up at the crucifix pattern worked into the lead of the window immediately above, and shr
ugged. It didn’t feel wicked. It had happened now, and that meant it could happen again.
55
There was wool caught on the fence posts outside, on the splinters of the small pens where sheep used to mill. Droppings everywhere. Soon these fields would be plowed too, grass turned to corn. But just at this moment, it was peaceful, and nobody could bother Ernest. Glancing at the sky, listening for planes, seeing a fading tangle of trails, his gloom lifted a little. Peggy should have thought of hiding Henryk here, instead of the church. It was a good place to escape—further away, but much safer, surely.
Ernest’s thumb pushed down the iron latch. When it stuck, he nearly turned away. Still panting from his run, he leaned against the peeling wooden door instead. It shifted slightly with his weight, so he tried the latch again. With just a little more pressure, it gave, pinching the tender crescent of skin between his thumb and forefinger. A few particles of dust floated away from the groove worn down in the brickwork by the metal bar.
The window was small, so he left the door ajar to let in more light. Ernest looked around. A wooden table, carved with dates and initials, and a drawer at one end of it. A single chair. A fireplace, with a pot-hook and a pan like a witch’s cauldron in the corner. And yes, there was even a bed, with a lumpy ticking mattress, a bit damp-looking, and a couple of blankets with frayed stitching, folded neatly at the end. All you needed for a night of watching, and lambing, and warming milk, and waiting. Or just thinking, on your own. Ernest was tempted to settle down, to stay for the night, and if it made them fret, well, let them. It was all they deserved.
Should he look for a candle for later? No. His eyes would get used to the dimness. And there wasn’t so much as a curtain at the window, let alone blackout.
Ernest inspected the stains on the bed and then sat down heavily, about to swing his legs up. The mattress sank and groaned. But it didn’t go down like a hammock all the way, as he’d expected. There was something hard, just underneath the surface, tipping Ernest slightly to one side. You’d never notice unless you actually lay on the bed.
He knelt on the floor to inspect. Grit digging into his bare knees, he reached blindly into the darkness beneath, head turned as he thrust his arm out. It was odd. There was nothing there at all. Not so much as a mousetrap. Ernest returned his attention to the mattress, patting and pressing until he realized that the hard thing was right inside. When he pulled the bed away from the wall—revealing a scattering of mousedroppings—Ernest began to understand. The mattress had been hollowed out, very carefully, springs and flocking neatly removed to make space to slide in a small suitcase. Ernest dragged it out, then heaved it on top of the bed, which did indeed now sink, just as surprised as he was by the weight and solidity of the brown leather case. It was scratched and battered at the corners, but far from old. Perhaps it was full of tobacco, or maybe brandy, or whisky, he thought with a sudden thrill. Close-packed, with straw or something, so you wouldn’t notice the sloshing. Contraband. Like the film.
Everyone knew there were smugglers on the Marsh, didn’t they? There was that poem Dad used to chant years ago, like a lullaby, when Peggy couldn’t get to sleep. Though as soon as Ernest heard Dad’s voice, low, as he bent over the other bed, he’d find himself wider awake than ever, staring at the wallpaper so hard he thought he could see the shadows in the poem. Four-and-twenty ponies, trotting through the dark.
“‘Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by,’” Ernest muttered as he tried the sliding locks, one on each side of the leather handle. If it was brandy, he’d drink it, he decided, there and then. That would cheer him up, wouldn’t it? You always saw men laughing outside pubs. There was something scary about the way they laughed, but maybe that was the point. They didn’t care. And Ernest didn’t care now.
Annoyingly, the locks wouldn’t budge. Ernest growled at them.
He’d knock the spirits straight back—never mind a glass—and when the bottle was empty he’d throw it against the wall and let it smash, and then he’d light up a cigar (if there was one, and if he could find some matches) and smoke till dawn. If Victor could smoke, so could he.
You had to push the clasps back at exactly the same time. That was the trick. Ernest heard a click, and eased the lid up.
No brandy. No tobacco.
What was it exactly?
Gray metal. Two solid boxes, one square, one rectangular, nestling in compartments lined with maroon felt. Black knobs. White dials. The larger box had a grid of little holes, and a circular window with a needle. A row of small red sockets. Writing: Off. On. Key. P.A. Tun. Whatever that meant. Volume. Phones. He looked at the mess of black wires and plugs in the long, thin compartment above the machines. Yes, there were headphones too. The whole thing was half the size of the wireless at the farmhouse. Ernest hadn’t known it was possible to make one as small as this.
His scalp tightened. He took off his glasses and began to clean them on the corner of his shirt. He was breathing too hard and he needed to slow down. Then he put his glasses back on and picked up the headphones. Easing them onto his head, he adjusted the bar on top to make them fit, and the arms of his glasses dug into his skull. The earpieces were big and black and hard, and he had to hold them on with one hand.
He licked his dry lips, and put the plug at the end of the lead into the socket marked “phones.” Nothing. Just a beating sound inside his head. Nothing else at all. Of course there was nothing. How could there be, idiot? Ernest’s finger and thumb lingered over the power switch. The white triangle on the black ridged knob was firmly pointing to the word “Off.”
His eyes fell on the open door. It hadn’t moved. He would have noticed. But he threw off the headphones anyway, and slammed the door shut. No, oh no, that was a mistake. Now he had only the window left from which to check. Nobody coming? Nobody watching? He could wedge something into the latch, jam in a stick to keep it locked. If he had a stick. But if somebody was out there already, if somebody knew he was there …
Ernest stood balanced between bed and door—no distance at all—weight on his back foot, like someone hesitating in boggy ground. You look for somewhere firm, a spot within jumping distance. And you feel yourself sinking as you steel yourself to leap. But you know that as you make that jump, you’ll force your back leg in further.
He chose the door. He opened it again as slowly and quietly as he possibly could.
He was terrified that he’d suddenly see Henryk standing behind it, ready to clobber him. Revealing his true colors at last, just a fraction of a second before everything went dark. Then he would drag Ernest’s limp body out of the way. Dump him somewhere, and get straight back to his real work. Tapping secrets to Germany with this transmitter. In code, of course.
He had made such a convincing coward. It was a brilliant disguise. Thanks to Ernest and Peggy, Henryk had stayed safely hidden, fed and warm all this time, and meanwhile he’d been sending back all the information his bosses could possibly need. Tap, tap, tap. Preparing the way. So when the Germans finally did arrive—all he had to do was hold on; no wonder he was in no hurry to go anywhere—why, he’d be laughing. And Ernest and Peggy would be collaborators.
Ernest emerged as quietly as he possibly could. But there was nobody outside. Just rabbits. More rabbits. Loping with an indecent lack of haste into the bottom of the hedge when they caught wind of him. Good. Ernest was used to watching. He could even be methodical, when he put his mind to it. He’d keep his head this time, and work out exactly what he should report to the authorities. He moved slowly round the outside of the hut, ducking through a few fences where he needed to, bending his body but not dropping his head. There wasn’t a human being in sight.
If Henryk could hide a transmitter and a receiver so easily, never mind his true identity, he could surely hide a powerful pair of binoculars too. Not to mention a great many other things. Even now, further away than Ernest could possibly see, or worse, cunningly concealed somewhere closer, as only a successful spy kne
w how, Henryk could be watching him. Something else occurred to Ernest then. If Henryk was sneaking around out here, he could just as easily have gone to the farm too. It must have been Henryk who took Ernest’s missing binoculars, and he was probably using them right now.
Was this how the birds felt, Ernest wondered, when he was watching them? Did their skin prickle under their feathers and warn them when to fly? Ernest knew all about telepathy. ESP, they called it sometimes. That stood for Extra-Sensory Perception. They should have practiced before, really. If he sent his thoughts across to Peggy, if he really, really concentrated, perhaps he could make her understand what awful danger she was in.
He wished he’d hidden the case inside the mattress again. When Henryk opened the door, he’d discover straight away that things had been tampered with.
To think he’d felt sorry for the man. He’d actually liked him. And Ernest thought Henryk had liked him too. He remembered the way Henryk had looked at him. His sympathy. That strange little speech he’d made about courage. But he knew it was all a lie. All the time he knew. Now that Ernest knew too, his anger swelled and burned inside him. He’d make him sorry.
56
Peggy kept her eyes on the hands in her lap, interlocked with her own, gripping them more tightly with every word. She pushed back his sleeve, half-circling his forearm with finger and thumb. She wondered at the strength you must need to maneuver a Hurricane. These arms still had strength, despite everything. Her hand moved further up his arm, testing the muscles, marveling at the subtle changes in texture in his skin, the smoothness of its underside.
Henryk said something, and Peggy realized she had missed his words completely. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate. Her arms were crossed awkwardly, high on her chest, so she wasn’t sure if she was holding him, or he her. She was enveloped, giddy almost, and yet strangely in control. She could feel his breath on the parting of her hair. In and out. In and out. Cell-tickling and bewitching.