Traynor, looking at him, saw his forehead beaded with sweat. ‘It’s hot in here,’ he said quietly. ‘Turn off the gas.’ He stood up. ‘I must go and get settled in,’ he said and turned to the door.
A boy and girl were looking in, smiling. ‘Daddy,’ said the girl. ‘Simon and I are going for a walk.’
Skinner smiled back at them. ‘Don’t be late back. Supper’s at seven. Before you rush off I’d like you to meet Mr Traynor who’s just arrived. My daughter Liz, and Simon Randall, Mr Traynor.’
‘Hello.’ They smiled and nodded at one another. Then they were gone in a rush through the drive-in.
* * *
Traynor was surprised when he reached the Naval Station. He had been sure it was farther away than a three-minute drive. He swung his car into the gateway and parked. No guard detail to open the gate for him now. He climbed it and set off towards the sheds. A shambles. Wind bent the saplings that had grown among the buildings and fluttered the few rags of loose insulation that remained. Metal sheets scraped delicately together. In his memory he saw it once again as it had been in 1940, new, clean and camouflaged by a team of Naval specialists in a style which had turned it into the most prominent feature in the landscape. He grinned.
His eye was caught by a patch of trodden grass and among it a spot of colour. A paperback edition of George Borrow’s Lavengro. ‘Caravan reading matter,’ he muttered as he read on the fly leaf: ‘Simon Randall 1970 from Frank, Jean and Liz.’ The book went into his pocket and he strolled on towards the wreck of the Station. The buildings, when he found himself among them, were less decrepit than they looked. Those in the centre of the small complex had been protected by the sheds on the perimeter. He went through a Nissen hut, once the Orderly room, empty now save for an irritable owl preparing for its night hunt. He icked down the door at the end near the Operations room and stood among saplings in a hot, windless enclosure. The owl flew noisily out over his head into the darkening evening.
He ducked. ‘I wish to God they’d send some hero to do these jobs. Bloody owls terrify me.’ A bank of solid boarding sealed the main door of the Operations block but a window had been knocked out of the research lab. He climbed through, stepping carefully over rotten floorboards and tangles of wire. Lizards fled as he crossed the room. A chart board still hung on the wall. Across it a yellow aerosol had sprayed ‘city for the cup’. ‘Last year’s visitors,’ thought Traynor, ‘and none since by the look of the place.’
The remaining rooms were depressingly derelict. His own old office at the end contained a broken chair. He lifted up some loose floorboards. Below was a rough surface of tar and gravel.
‘Useless,’ he muttered and moved on. In half an hour he had searched the Station’s ruins with the meticulous care of a scientist. His last visit had been a long time ago. He had been here in 1947 to seek an answer to a vital question. But it left the question unanswered. He withdrew to higher ground for a check of the area and then plodded off up the hill to find his car.
He patted the book in his pocket. ‘Mustn’t forget to give this to young Randall,’ he thought to himself.
3
Simon and Liz stumbled in the dark towards an isolated hut. A sharp challenge came from a pile of sandbags.
‘Halt, who goes there?’
The sailor behind them growled amiably.
‘It’s only me, Phippsy, with a couple more Nazi generals.’
The guard waved them on towards a blacked-out door and turned away.
Inside the guardroom a Petty Officer sat behind a desk. He listened in silence to the sailor’s account of his capture of the two children, and then dismissed him. Liz and Simon watched apprehensively as he went, then turned towards the Petty Officer who examined them, still in silence, until Liz felt so stupid she wanted to cry and Simon began to look about for a quick escape route. The Petty Officer reached for a few sheets of paper and picked up a pencil. Questions began. Names, addresses, schools, parents, what they were doing in St Oswald, what time they got into the Station, where the wire-cutters were. The Germans.
Total confusion made them all talk at once until the Petty Officer ripped up the three sheets of paper he had covered so far.
‘We’ll start again,’ he said. ‘Right. You first,’ he jabbed the pencil at Simon.
But ten minutes later they were all shouting at one another.
They started a third time.
‘Do you always have your summer holidays in May?’ asked the Petty Officer.
‘No, in August,’ said Liz.
‘But this is May.’
‘If it was May we’d still be at school in London.’
‘The London schools are closed.’
'Of course they’re closed. It’s summer holidays, isn’t it?’
The Petty Officer was running his hands madly through his hair.
‘When,’ he asked, 'did you leave St Oswald?’
‘About half past six,’ answered Liz. 'And we’d like to go back soon please because supper’s at seven and I said we wouldn’t be late.’
The Petty Officer looked at his watch. ‘I make it eleven twenty-five.’
Silence fell in the little room. Simon exchanged a forlorn look with Liz. The Petty Officer shuffled his papers and began to write again. About twenty minutes later their sailor came in with three enamel mugs.
‘Brought you some char, chief,’ he said, ‘and some for the kids.’
‘Thanks. We need it.’ The Petty Officer looked defeated, Simon had withdrawn into himself utterly and Liz was near to tears. 'Take this report over to the CO. I’ll hang on to these kids in case he wants to see them.’
The sailor was back in ten minutes. ‘Wants to see them now.’
'All yours,’ said the Petty Officer with relief as Liz and Simon followed their escort.
They passed through a group of sheds. Even in the dark Simon could see that this was very like the Naval Station he had looked down at in the afternoon. The path took them down past four concrete blocks supporting a trellis of tapering steelwork crowned by what might have been a radar scanner. Against the sombre sky the soft outline was dim but both place and equipment seemed oddly out of date. A guard let them through a roughly-textured blackout curtain into the main block. A dim passageway ran the length of the building.
‘Wait here.’ The sailor knocked on a door and then entered.
‘Simon, where are we?’
‘Dunno.’ Simon was edging towards a half-open door through which light flooded. She tiptoed after him. Three technicians were working at the end of a large room.
Nearer, an older man in a white coat crouched over boxes and controls on the front of a green metal box.
‘Yes, yes. That’s more like it, Alice,’ said the man. ‘Now increase range. More and a little more. What is it now?’ ‘Twenty miles,’ said the woman.
‘Then we ought to be getting a better response than this, blast it.’
He leant sideways to adjust a control and disclosed a small, dark glass screen. A line of flickering light appeared on it with a tall peak at one end.
‘Radar,’ murmured Simon.
‘What?’
Simon turned and whispered. ‘It’s radar they’re working on.’
A door opened and the sailor reappeared.
‘Come on, you two,’ he said. ‘The Commander will see you now.’
* * *
Able Seaman Phipps leant across the bank of sandbags that screened the guardroom door. His rifle lay below his folded arms.
‘Bloody kids,’ he muttered. ‘Running a ruddy nursery here.’
He yawned, looked at his watch and put out his hand to pick up his rifle. They never made contact. Phippsy collapsed gently to the ground. Two German raiders picked him up and carried him towards a dark shed on the edge of the Station.
* * *
The Commander’s office was a working room: charts and graphs pinned to the walls; sheets of duplicated orders and schedules accumulating in a thick mass o
n a green pin board; electronic equipment on a couple of trestle tables. The Commander was crouched over his desk reading the Petty Officer’s report.
He sat up abruptly and looked at the children.
‘Mr Traynor,’ squeaked Liz.
Younger, more hair, less lined but certainly the man they had seen that evening in the caravan.
‘What did you say?’ The man was angrily surprised.
‘You’re Mr Traynor,’ stammered Simon. ‘We’ve just been introduced at The Bull.’
For a few seconds they exchanged a long, blank stare.
‘I have never set eyes on either of you. How do you know my name. Who are you?’
‘We’ve just left you with Liz’s father, Mr Traynor,’ Simon protested, frightened by this angry man.
‘What the devil are you talking about, boy? I know nothing about either of you. And you cut that hole in the wire — you and this girl.’
‘No we didn’t.’
‘Guard?’ The Commander turned to the escort.
‘They were right beside it, sir,’ he replied, looking unhappily at Liz who had burst into tears.
‘We couldn’t help it, sir,’ Simon said. ‘We fell through the first time. You see, sir ... it was light one minute and dark the next…
‘Sonny, I’m the one who’s in the dark,’ the Commander growled at him.
‘It must have been the other people that cut the wire, sir.’
‘What other people?’
‘The ones who speak German.’
‘German?’ The Commander gazed in amazement at Simon and then burst out laughing.
‘What a turn you two are. We’re in the middle of a full-scale war at a secret establishment, we have coastal defences from north to south and you tell me there are people here speaking German. What do you do for an encore?’
Simon looked miserably at Liz. The Commander stood up.
‘We’ll have to keep you under guard until we can hand you over to the police and inform your parents.’ He turned to the sailor. ‘Get them some cocoa and a sandwich. I’ll be in the Operations room.’
Liz felt the sailor take her arm and guide her to a chair.
‘There,’ he said quietly as she sat down. ‘No need to take on so. You’ll be taken home as soon as we can find your parents.’
‘But,’ Liz asked, ‘this Commander — why doesn’t he know he’s Mr Traynor from the inn?’
‘He’s Mr Traynor all right — Commander Traynor to you — and he goes to The Bull all right. Was down there for lunch today.’
‘Well, then, why doesn’t he know us?’
‘He’s not the only one,’ the sailor answered. ‘We’ve been on the blower to the landlord and he doesn’t know anything about you either.’
‘Old Bradley?’
‘That’s him. Where are you really from, kids?’ the sailor asked as if it were somehow a secret that could be shared between able seamen and children but not between officers and children. Liz looked at him with big eyes. Simon tried to explain.
‘We’re from London and we really are staying at The Bull.’ He was so emphatic about it that the sailor shrugged and turned towards Liz again.
‘What’s your name, anyway?’ he asked.
‘Liz,’ she said. ‘Liz Skinner.’
‘You don’t say.’ He grinned. ‘My name’s Skinner too. Frank Skinner.’
‘Frank! ’ Liz said, her eyes even bigger.
‘That’s right. We’ll have to stick together, us Skinners will. You and I. Look, I’ll go and fix you some cocoa and a cheese roll.’
‘But — but—’ Liz stammered as he moved towards the door. ‘Wait a minute...’
‘Don’t take on so, Liz,’ said the sailor. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy with supper. You’ll be all right here.’
The door closed behind him and Liz turned to Simon who was frowning at her.
‘Simon! Simon, he said his name is Frank Skinner. You heard! That’s Daddy’s name.’
4
‘Simon,’ Liz said. ‘Is it really eleven twenty-five?’
‘If it is, they’ll be looking for us everywhere,’ Simon answered. ‘Probably started a search.’
‘Well, why haven’t they found us? It’s nearly midnight and...’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Maybe time is different once you get through that hole in the wall.’
‘It can’t be different,’ Liz protested.
‘I don’t see why not,’ Simon answered. ‘Like a clock that goes slower than another. Or faster...’ He sat looking worriedly at the papers pinned above the Commander’s desk.
‘Well, I wish they’d come and get us,’ Liz grumbled. ‘I’m starving and I bet Mum is going up the wall.’
‘You can be Mum.’ It was their sailor backing into the room with a tray in his hands. Jug of cocoa, mugs, cheese rolls, pickles.
‘Come on, you kids. Grub’s up.’ He put it on the Commander’s desk and waved to Liz.
‘Go on, Liz, do your stuff.’ He grinned at her.
Liz poured out the cocoa and handed round the food. ‘Your name,’ she said. ‘Is it really Frank Skinner?’
‘Right.’
‘I don’t believe it. It can’t be.’
‘What’s this about, girl? What me to phone me mum?’
‘It’s so weird. I mean, if you’re really Frank Skinner and this is the old Naval Station.’
‘Old? Why old? The paint’s still fresh on it.’
Simon swallowed the last of a cheese roll and leant forward.
‘But it is the Naval Station. The one on the hill outside St Oswald?’
‘You know too much, my boy. But you could be right. What I’d like to know is where you both belong. Why don’t you tell the truth? We won’t do you any harm.’
Liz and Simon stared at him silently, trying to find words that would explain their predicament.
‘Come on,’ Frank turned from them sharply. ‘I’ll show you the Recreation room.’
‘Wait a minute,’ begged Liz, ‘just a minute and I’ll try to explain! We’ve come from...’
‘Look,’ said the sailor patiently. ‘You barge into a classified establishment and tell us a tale about a crowd of helpful Germans who cut the wire for you. It’s not reasonable, is it? Come on, kids, I’m to put you in the Recreation room until the top brass has found your mums and dads.’
‘You won’t find our parents,’ said Simon harshly.
‘You’re not like that other kid in there, are you?’ The sailor was losing patience. ‘The one who came in this afternoon?’
‘What other kid?’ Liz demanded.
‘You’ll soon see. You know it isn’t surprising that the Commander does his nut. You village children have no sense. There’s a war on, you know.’ He nodded towards the door and Simon went into the corridor. Liz followed but as she passed the sailor she stopped close in front of him and smiled.
‘Where were you born?’ she asked.
‘Rugby,’ he answered. ‘Want to see my pay book?’
‘No. I just wondered. Was it about 1924?’
‘Not bad. 1923.’
She looked searchingly at him until he began to frown. Her own expression was one of desperate consternation.
‘Yes,’ she said as she moved out to join Simon. ‘Yes. That’s right.’
Recreation rooms are all alike. Scruffy, battered and full of chalk dust. The dartboard covers bore the scores of the previous night’s games. There were posters pinned up and Pages torn from picture papers. A small billiard table stood at one end under a cover, next to it cues and a scoring board. Behind the rickety card tables and chairs was an old sofa. A young, moon-faced girl sat staring sadly at them. Her hands were clasped in her lap and from time to time she sniffed and gave a tiny sob.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Liz, and went towards her.
‘What’s the matter?’ she went on, reaching out a hand. ‘Are you? ...’
The girl edged away. Simon had come up behind Liz.
; ‘It’s Sarah. The girl from the village who disappeared.’
‘What’s she doing here?’
‘What are we doing here?’
They looked at one another uncertainly, then Liz glanced back at Sarah. Her helplessness infuriated her.
‘Why,’ she burst out, ‘are you keeping this girl a prisoner? She’s done nothing wrong. She ought to be at home with her mother. She’s upset and scared. It’s not like you.’ She turned furiously on Frank. The sailor’s eyes popped.
‘Not like me?’ His voice had gone up an octave. ‘Look, I joined the Navy to see the world, not to run a kindergarten. This is the other kid we found. I told you about her. I suppose she fell into the Station too.’ He paused for breath. ‘She won’t tell us a thing about herself. Not even lies.’
‘Well, stupid, she can’t, can she?’ Liz was indignant, both for Sarah’s sake and their own.
‘Why not?’
‘She’s not — well, she’s not like us.’
‘You mean you know her?’
‘Sort of,’ said Liz. ‘Anyway, we know about her.’
The sailor heaved a sigh. ‘Thank the Lord for that piece of good news. I’ll tell the Petty Officer we’ve had a signal from the mainland and can get all boarders ashore.’
He moved towards the door.
‘Mr Skinner,’ Liz said.
‘Call me Frank.’
‘Frank?’
‘It’s my name. Maybe you don’t believe me.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Liz. ‘I believe you, Frank,’ and she felt her throat tighten and tears sting her eyes. He came back to her.
‘Don’t you start crying too, Liz. I can’t bear weeping females.’ He reached out and patted her jaw. She smiled back at him.
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