by Lydia Syson
Peggy wondered how long she could wait before twisting around. To bring them face to face again, mouth to mouth. Melting wax again. That was exactly how it felt. Right through her body, right down her legs even. Minute and unfamiliar sensations.
His breathing became louder, and his arms held her more firmly. In the near silence, she caught the low futter of a distant plane, and tensed. These arms. Could they really be giving-up kind of arms?
She remembered the lifeboat leaving Dungeness for Dunkirk. The talk there had been. White faces everywhere. The shock of it all, and the time it took for the truth to dawn. There was giving up and giving up.
Without her own to contain them, Henryk’s hands began to shake again. He steadied them against her thighs, and she felt their heat through the cloth of her overalls. And then she did turn round, quite suddenly, before she could scare herself with the idea of it, and she kissed him with a frightening urgency.
57
Aunt Myra was wheezing, a painful labor, repeated in cycles, over and over. Ernest would have been alarmed at the noise when he came into the hall had he not immediately heard the wireless crackle. Of course. It was Thursday. ITMA. More laughter spilled out of the front parlor, overlaid with Mum’s, and even June’s, which was more metallic, stretched, and thin. It’s being so cheerful as keeps ’em going, thought Ernest, in the charlady’s graveyard voice. Well, they’d be even more cheerful soon. When they saw what he was really made of. When they knew how he’d saved them.
No Mrs. Mopp just now. Funf the spy tonight, with a song about counter agents and a spypaper joke. A gigantic roll of yellow sticky paper unfurled in Ernest’s mind’s eye, dotted with tiny struggling figures in different uniforms. Then a horrible notion froze him in his tracks. How did counteragency work? Maybe that was why the wireless transmitter was labeled in English. It was quite possible to pretend to be a German spy and an English one at exactly the same time. Or perhaps he was getting confused between counter agents and double agents. There should have been a leaflet about that.
Spies are everywhere. It’s that man again.
Another yellow envelope had arrived. He kicked it under the doormat. Welcome.
He wouldn’t look. He wouldn’t think about that. He just had to act now.
Then he retrieved it and read it. The writing was just the same.
PACIFISTS SHOULD KILL THEMSELVES, AND BE DONE WITH IT. THEY’VE NO RIGHT TO LIVE ON FOOD OTHER MEN HAVE SACRIFICED THEIR LIVES TO BRING HOME.
He hid the note, climbed on the hall chair and stared at the two guns. Reaching for his own, Ernest wondered if the day would ever come when it didn’t feel awkward. Uncle Fred’s shotgun was like part of his own body. He handled it with ease and grace and it nestled against his shoulder as comfortably as Claudette asleep on June. Ernest shook his head, and replaced the air rifle that had never felt any part of him. With a choking, dry-throated swallow, he took down his uncle’s shotgun. That was more like it.
The gun was heavy. With just one hand free, he couldn’t lift the chair, so it scraped against the floor as he put it back in its place. The noise coincided with a pause in the program. A pause for comic effect, demanding laughter.
Ernest waited for it. Then he eased open the drawer and quickly grabbed a couple of cartridges.
“Ernest?” His mother’s voice had an uncertain ring. “Is that you out there? Do come and join us. There’s still another twenty minutes to go, and the program’s ever so good tonight. And get Peggy out of her room too, why don’t you? Can’t think why she hasn’t come down yet. She seems to have been up there for hours.”
Ernest licked his lips again. Too loudly. He waited.
His aunt gave a kind of grunt.
“Oh,” said Mum. “I was sure I’d heard Ernest. I simply don’t know where he’s got to tonight. I can’t keep saying it over and over, and I don’t want to frighten him, but I do wish he’d stay close by … Don’t you think I should go and look for him?”
“Shhh,” hissed Aunt Myra. “I can’t hear the program.”
Ernest set the gun on his shoulder. Be like Dad, the posters said. But he would be better than his dad. He caught sight of himself in the hall mirror, gave himself a brisk salute, and crept back out through the kitchen door.
58
Peggy pulled herself away. “Oh God, what time is it?” Her eyes were bright, almost feverish. Henryk stared into them, imprinting her in his mind. “I could stay forever, Henryk,” she said. “Why don’t I just stay forever?”
Stay, thought Henryk, imagining a night with her. He picked a wisp of hay from her hair. She still smelled of hay.
“You will come back soon,” he said. She didn’t smile. Just nodded, no longer flushed, but pale and worried now.
“I wish it could be the present, all the time,” Peggy said quietly, unfastening his hands. Like a window held together by masking tape, waiting for the explosion, the world they had built between them seemed ready to fracture.
His head tilted in a question.
“Oh, that sounds so silly. I know it does. Of course it’s always the present. It’s now, and then now, and then now, always and forever.”
“So …?”
“If you could just keep each now separate and untainted, free of all the other nows that have been before and that will come after it. So that when we are together we’re just together, pure and simple. And there isn’t a then, in the past, to intrude on now, and there won’t be another one, in the future, that we have to worry about.”
“That would be time standing still. You can do nothing if time stands still. We would be statues.”
“I know. I’m not explaining it at all well. That’s not what I mean. That’s not what I want.”
He stroked her hair and loved her with his eyes. She pushed against his hand with her head, like a cat.
“I wonder how late it is.”
“Will they miss you?” Henryk wasn’t sure if this was quite the right word.
“Soon.”
He would miss her more. Every slow inch she moved away, he felt inside as a dull ache, more painful each time. In France a mechanic had taught him the word for magnets. Amants. It meant lovers too, he’d said with a wink. Now Henryk understood why. Now that he had felt that pull himself.
At the threshold, he tugged Peggy back one last time, and held her again.
“It’s not dark yet.”
“It stays light forever now. Double summer time they call it. The government changed the clocks—to save fuel or something. Or make us work harder. There’s no clock here, is there?”
“No. In Poland, our churches have clocks, on the tower.”
“Yes, here in England too, often. Haven’t you seen?”
“I like there is no clock here. I can think always that you are about to come. That we are out of time. Like you say. Like you want to be.”
“That’s right. That’s what I mean. Instead of running out of time, which is how it always feels. Oh, Henryk, do you think we really are?”
“Running out of time?”
RULE SEVEN: THINK BEFORE YOU ACT. BUT ALWAYS THINK OF YOUR COUNTRY BEFORE YOU THINK OF YOURSELF.
59
Ernest imagined himself anywhere but here. Doing anything but what he was about to do. August should be a month of untroubled days, solitary evening ambles and freedom, not this grim and purposeful march. If he could only get past the barbed wire to the shore again, what would he see? There’d be newcomers by now. Godwit. Whimbrel. Turnstone. Sanderling—wood and green. Oystercatchers, of course, always. And curlew. The other migrators. Sandpipers. Spotted redshank.
He went through the list in his head again. The names calmed him.
Godwit. Whimbrel. Turnstone. Sanderling. Sanderling. Sanderling. Wood and green.
He thought he heard the squeak of a bicycle pedal.
60
Despite the promise she had made to herself, Peggy turned at the end of the causeway. His face was a white blur at the window, unreadable.
Her hand went up, very briefly—a quick, jerky wave. Too dangerous. If she went on taking stupid risks like this, there was no hope for them. Though when she saw a movement in return, she couldn’t regret looking back.
There was still something he wasn’t telling her, she felt. Peggy almost had the feeling she didn’t want to know. He was protecting her, wasn’t he? Just as she and Mum had thought they could protect Ernest. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Except that wasn’t quite true.
These long, light days were so deceptive. It was later than she’d thought. She’d have missed ITMA, which meant they’d have missed her. She began to hurry, turning this time into the little path with the overhanging trees, where she could walk unseen, yet keep the church just within sight through the branches. If she could see it, she knew Henryk was safe. The path was dead straight, but not empty. A figure was moving at the far end, coming towards her.
She squinted and realized it was only Ernest. She’d almost forgotten their fight. Now she waved, and smiled, and broke into a run. He’d forgiven her, then. He understood. Maybe he’d even managed to get hold of more food for Henryk—an extra loaf of bread, perhaps, or a hunk of cheese. Aunt Myra had been generous with the haymakers. The last few days had seen more opportunities than usual to squirrel away food, if not to take it to the church. It wasn’t such a bad thing that Ernest had found out. It was good to have someone to share the worry with.
“Ernest?”
As she got closer, she could make out the fury on his face.
“Ernest?” she called again. “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. I meant it.”
Ernest was hurrying too. His lolloping walk turned into a run, and now she saw that he wasn’t carrying food on his back, but a gun. When he reached her he didn’t stop but brushed roughly past her, without a word.
“Hey! You nearly knocked me over! And where do you think you’re going with Uncle Fred’s gun?”
“Something I’ve got to do,” he muttered, not changing his pace.
“What?” said Peggy breathlessly, as she caught up with him. “Tell me. Where are you going?”
“Why should I? You never tell me anything.”
“I – I – Well, I have now. I couldn’t before.”
“And I can’t now.”
He kept his eyes on the ground as he walked, just glancing up from time to time to look across towards the church.
“It’s something to do with Henryk. Tell me,” she repeated. “What’s happened? Has someone found out? Why have you taken Uncle Fred’s gun? Talk to me, Ernest. Just stop and talk to me.”
Peggy pulled at his shoulder, and he swung round. The gun knocked her chin, and she staggered a little.
“Go home, Peggy,” said Ernest savagely. “You’re not going to like this.”
She had never seen him look so grim before.
“I don’t like it now. Stop messing around, Ernest.”
“I’m not messing around, I tell you. Just go home now. And forget about Henryk.”
61
He hadn’t bargained on Peggy getting in the way like this. Why hadn’t he thought of this? The awful look on her face made Ernest hesitate for a moment. Her eyes were so very bright and staring. Peggy loved Henryk. He hadn’t known before. Ernest turned away from her. She was putting him off. He had a plan, you see. He had to stick to his plan.
“Look, he’s not who you think he is.”
Insultingly, Peggy laughed out loud.
“Oh, Ernest, please stop! We’ve been through all this before.”
“I’ll prove it to you.”
“Go on then.” She stopped and stood with arms folded across her chest, so of course he had to stop too. She was flushed, and trembling a little, but her look was still more mocking than fearful, which made Ernest angry again. “I’m waiting.”
“Not here. You’ll have to come with me.”
Ernest started walking again. He tried not to let his uncertainty show, but he realized he actually didn’t want her to go at all. He needed to convince her, to confront her with the truth, so there could be no more betrayals. And he might need back up. There was every chance things could turn nasty.
“Where? Back to the church? I’ve only just left it.”
“And Henryk is still there?”
“Of course he is.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, of course I am. Where else would he be?”
62
Henryk paced the aisle of the church, feeling more caged than ever. Perhaps because he also felt more alive. Anyone would think he’d just gulped down a whole handful of go-pills. Except this brightness, this energy, this weightlessness was something quite different. It made him want to soar again, to rise above the world and the mess it had made of itself. Dashing and brave and foolhardy in a way he hadn’t felt for months, he longed to loop the loop once more, with Peggy by his side. To fly under a bridge or swerve out of a spin just for the joy of it, with nobody watching and nobody to watch out for.
But it was no good. They were both trapped, with the skies overhead busier by the day. Henryk sat down at the harmonium with a sigh and eased out a chord. He thought about Peggy and Ernest’s father, and their mother’s shame. He thought about his own.
What would happen if he turned up at the aerodrome tomorrow? It was surely far too late to pass himself off as lost, or confused, or forgetful. He was beyond AWOL. There would be a hearing of some kind. He would have to offer something like an explanation. There would be punishment. But the punishment would only get worse the longer he left it. He couldn’t put it off forever.
The echo of his next chord drowned out the sound of the outer door, as it opened and shut. Henryk did not hear the key turning in the lock, nor the muffled chink as it was removed.
63
Peggy saw him first, and nudged Ernest. “Look,” she whispered. Victor Velvick was waiting in the shadow of the trees by the lane. He wasn’t blocking their path exactly. But it was quite clear that he had no intention of letting them pass.
Peggy sensed Ernest shrinking beside her, so she took his elbow in her arm, and gave it a firm squeeze. Her brother straightened his back, and gripped the shotgun more tightly.
“It’s all up now,” said Victor, looking them up and down as if he’d like to squash them under his foot. The gun seemed to amuse rather than alarm him. “All over. I know what you’ve been up to. You and your Nazi-chum family. You’re as bad as each other really, aren’t you?”
The yellow notes. Peggy and Ernest looked at each other sideways. It was perfectly obvious really. Who was in a better position to know their family secrets than the postmistress? And who better to deliver them than the telegram boy?
“Aren’t you?” Victor’s voice was soft and controlled. He was rocking back and forth, from toe to heel, slowly and deliberately. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, and Peggy couldn’t help wondering why. He raised his eyebrows. Peggy registered the fact that his jaw had become much stronger in the last few months, his chest much broader. His feet were huge. Even his voice sounded different. He was no longer a little boy Peggy could crush with a clever riposte. Victor Velvick was growing up fast.
Rigid and silent, Peggy tightened her hold on Ernest and willed him not to do anything stupid. Then Victor stopped rocking. Perfectly unhurried, he held out one pointing hand. The great iron key from the church swung tauntingly from his accusing finger.
Peggy didn’t gasp, but her quick inhalation betrayed her. She knew this from the flicker in Victor’s eyes, the brief flare of his nostrils. But if she was quick enough, Ernest could cover her, and perhaps—with a shotgun aimed at his head—might Victor leave them alone …? She darted forward and tried to grab the key, but Victor—always a tall boy, but taller than ever this summer—simply whisked it out of her reach. Shaking with rage, she retreated and turned in appeal to Ernest.
His face was white and tight and completely unforgiving. Ernest shook his head and began to edge away from her. He w
as lining up with Victor.
“Ernest. You’ve got to …” Her voice trailed away.
“No, Peggy. He’s right.” Ernest’s voice sounded clipped and strange. He wouldn’t quite look at her. “Now you need to see for yourself. I said I’d show you the proof. Otherwise you’ll never believe it. Let’s go.” He turned to Victor. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You followed me to the Looker’s Hut.”
“I know everything,” said Victor.
“Good. So we’ve just got to prove it to Peggy and then we’ll get the Special Constable. Mr. Carpenter will know what to do next. At least we can leave Henryk safely locked up.” Even Victor looked taken aback when Ernest continued: “Well done. I hadn’t thought of that. I was planning to try to bring him in myself, but it’s much better like this. Yes, so much better.”
Peggy felt dizzy and cold.
“What are you talking about? What’s wrong with you?” she said.
Ernest glanced in the direction of the church and back at Victor, who took over.
“He’s lying to you, you little fool. No, I don’t mean Ernest. That Hun in the church you can’t leave alone. Oh, there’s no need to look like that. I’ve seen you. I’ve watched your comings and goings. They ought to shave your head.”
Now she was burning all over, and sure it showed. She couldn’t speak. She could barely stand. Victor looked her up and down disgustedly.
“He’s properly pulled the wool over your eyes, you little …” He glanced at Ernest, and coughed theatrically. “Right. Let’s go to the Looker’s Hut. But you really should have put the case away when you found it, Ernest. You’ll get yourself in trouble like that.”
Ernest blushed, and nodded.
“Sorry. I—I didn’t think.”
“For God’s sake,” Peggy burst out. “Just tell me what you’re talking about.”