Our Castle by the Sea

by Lucy Strange

  The smoke was dispersing already, but the firemen were still pumping water onto the walls of the village hall and the nearby wall of the church tower to prevent the fire from rekindling and spreading. On the opposite side of the road, all that remained of the Scout hut was a pile of charred metal struts and some blackened sheets of corrugated iron. It had been little more than a large shed, tucked between the schoolhouse and some old cottages, and now there was nothing left of it. Mags and I sidled around the crowd to get a better look. The stench of smoke was fierce here, and I knew Mutti would insist on washing our hair this evening whether we liked it or not.

  I looked at the two buildings—from one side of the street to the other. It didn’t make any sense: “How could the fire have spread?” Mags muttered. “The buildings aren’t even touching—they’re on opposite sides of the road.”

  I nodded.

  One of the firemen was rummaging around under the bushes beside the remains of the Scout hut, right next to where my sister and I were standing. He found something—a large tin, and he used a stick to pull it out of the nettles. He passed it to the senior fireman standing next to the engine. They spoke quietly, but we were just close enough to hear.

  “Paraffin?”

  He sniffed at the can. “Petrol, I think. Could make it easier to trace, seeing as it’s being rationed so strictly now.”

  The captain nodded in agreement. “It’s what we thought, then. And I’ve just been told it was being used as a base for the Local Defense Volunteers. We need to inform the police.”

  The Local Defense Volunteers? Pa had just signed up. There had been an announcement on the wireless—all able-bodied men age seventeen to sixty-five who were too young or old to fight, or were in the reserved professions, were asked to volunteer for the LDV to help defend the country in the event of an invasion. Just this week the village hall had been agreed upon as the base for meeting and training, and the Scout hut had been secured for storing equipment. And then, only a few days later, both buildings had been set on fire.

  Mags and I left the crowd at the village hall and walked towards the shops. Mutti had said she would meet us outside the butchers.

  After we had been walking quietly for a moment, Mags said, “So it was deliberate, then? Someone set the village hall and the Scout hut on fire deliberately? With petrol?”

  “It looks like that,” I said.

  “But why? And why target the LDV? Pa said they haven’t even got properly started yet. He was getting all cross about it—do you remember?”

  I did. Pa had been talking to Mutti last night. He had said the volunteers were so frustrated with the lack of proper equipment that a plan was being cooked up by the local farmers to arm the LDV with their own collection of rabbit rifles and shotguns. They were taking matters into their own hands.

  “Maybe it’s got nothing to do with the LDV or the war. Maybe it was a personal vendetta,” I said. “Or an act of passion.”

  Mags rolled her eyes at me. “An act of passion, Pet? In the Stonegate Scout hut? I very much doubt it.”

  Then we saw Mutti waiting there for us outside the butcher’s shop. She was looking at Magda with a peculiar, worried expression on her face. When we got closer, she shook the expression away and handed my sister the ration book.

  “See if you can get some bacon, please, Mags,” Mutti said with a quiet smile. “Pet, let’s go and see Mrs. Rossi at the bakery.”

  “Flames as high as the church tower,” one woman said. “We thought it was the end of days!” There was quite a queue at the bakery, and everyone was talking about the fire.

  “Was it children, do you think?” said another. “I heard some of the lads got their hands on a recipe for a sort of homemade bomb that you can make in lemonade bottles. If Jerry shows up, they’re planning on chucking them at him!”

  “If Jerry shows up,” someone else echoed, “I’ll be chucking more than flamin’ lemonade bottles—I’ll chuck the kitchen sink ’n’ all!”

  People laughed. But then there was another voice from the front of the queue—low and cold: “The thing is, ladies, Jerry’s already here, though—isn’t she?”

  It was an old man I didn’t recognize, and he had turned around to stare straight at my mother. There was a terrible silence. I looked at Mutti. What was she going to say?

  But Mutti didn’t say anything at all. She looked at me, and then looked down so no one could see the tears that had already started in her eyes. Someone giggled. Someone else shuffled her feet, and then whispered in her friend’s ear. My face was burning. Perhaps I should say something—Don’t talk about my mother like that, you nasty old man!

  But then Mrs. Rossi said very briskly, “Thank you, sir. Who’s next please, ladies?” and the dreadful silence eased.

  When we got to the front of the queue, Mrs. Rossi leaned across the counter to Mutti and whispered, “Don’t pay any attention to him, my dear.”

  Mutti nodded. Her eyes were very sad. “He lost his brother in the Great War, I believe.”

  She knew this horrible man? But I had never seen him before in my life.

  “Ah.” Mrs. Rossi seemed to understand. “He finds it hard to be kind, then, I think,” Mrs. Rossi said. “Hard to forgive.”

  “Yes. It is very difficult for him.”

  “Difficult for you too,” Mrs. Rossi said, her chocolate-brown eyes looking at Mutti with sympathy. She and her husband were from Italy—she knew what it was to feel an outsider in a village like ours. I saw her slip an extra bun into our paper bag. “Difficult for all of us, my dear.”

  The fire wasn’t the only act of sabotage. Just a few days later, three telephone lines in the village were cut, including the line to the police station. At first it was blamed on high winds, but when the man came to repair them, he said it was obvious the lines had been severed deliberately. It was starting to become clear that there was someone in the village who was not on the same side as everyone else. People looked at one another differently when they passed in the street, searching each familiar face for a trace of something sinister. Is it you? they seemed to say as their eyes narrowed with suspicion; they hugged their shopping bags tightly, as if someone were about to make a grab for them. And all the time that fishing net full of Smith family secrets kept squirming heavily in my mind, and the unspoken mistrust among us grew deeper and more dangerous.

  Sometimes, I felt like I barely knew my sister anymore. Despite food rationing, she was shooting up and suddenly seemed about a foot taller than me. She had started to pin her hair up on her head, using the curls to conceal her sticking-out ears. Then, one day, she announced that she was dropping out of school.

  “It just feels ridiculous,” she said to Pa, “copying out of dusty old history books when history is happening all around me right now and I could be doing something practical to help.”

  “You’re still too young for the Wrens, Magda,” Pa replied.

  “But I could volunteer. I could volunteer on the lifeboat until I’m old enough for the navy.”

  Mutti looked at Pa as if she was trying to tell him something with her eyes. Her expression was grim, but she didn’t say anything.

  Pa sighed. “I’ll talk to the boys at the lifeboat station tomorrow.”

  Mags looked delighted. “We’ll go together?”

  “We’ll go together.”

  I remember that next day very well. Mags was up earlier than usual, and washed and dressed before me or Mutti. By eight o’clock she was waiting for Pa in the kitchen.

  And at nine o’clock she was still waiting.

  At half past nine she gave up. “Where is he?” she said to no one in particular.

  “I don’t know, darling.” Mutti tried to soothe her. “He went out for a walk early this morning—perhaps he got held up somewhere, or stopped off at the farm or the village—”

  “Or perhaps he just forgot,” Mags interrupted. And she went straight to our bedroom and slammed the door.

  At almost exactly
the same moment, the kitchen door flew open and Pa appeared, holding what looked like a box of goodies from the grocers.

  “Who wants a breakfast picnic?” he said, a broad smile plastered across his face.

  He might as well have said we were off to have tea with a mermaid. “A breakfast picnic? There’s no such thing, is there?”

  “There is now.” Pa smiled. “We’ve got fresh bread and butter, Scotch eggs, sausage rolls straight from the oven, oranges, and I’m going to make us a big flask of hot cocoa too.”

  I gasped. Pa must have decimated the ration book.

  “My darling, what’s the special occasion?” Mutti asked, standing up and giving him a big kiss on the cheek.

  “Do we need a special occasion?”

  Mutti smiled and kissed him again. It was like the sun coming out after weeks of rain—I had forgotten what their faces looked like when they were lit up like that. For months now they had both been so pale and pinched with worry.

  It was my favorite sort of weather—breezy and cool but gloriously bright. We made for the sunny, seaward side of the lighthouse, and Mutti spread blankets out on the rabbit-nibbled grass. Mags followed a few minutes later. I had managed to entice her from the bedroom by reciting a list of all the wonderful food we were about to devour without her, so she had tagged along, but I could tell that she was still upset with Pa.

  We tucked into the sausage rolls and hot cocoa straightaway. It didn’t take too long for Mags to defrost—after all those mornings of margarine scraped over a thin slice of wheatmeal toast, who could have resisted a breakfast banquet like this?

  “I haven’t forgotten about the lifeboat station, Mags,” Pa said to her quietly when he didn’t think anyone was listening. “We’ll go tomorrow. All right?”

  “All right,” Mags said after a moment, giving Pa one of her sideways smiles. Then she shoved an entire Scotch egg into her mouth, and I thought I was going to die laughing.

  I will always remember that morning. I couldn’t have known it at the time, but it would become the last truly happy memory I have of all four of us together. It was as if all the tensions and distrust of the past few months had been washed away, and we were as we’d been before the war began. How I wish someone had taken a photograph of us—Pa with his arm around Mutti’s shoulders, Mags spraying crumbs everywhere as she laughed—the Daughters of Stone standing like sentinels around our little family and, above us all, the enormous spring sky, as blue as a balloon and bursting with promises for the summer ahead.

  But then again, I don’t really need a photograph, do I? I can see it all perfectly whenever I want. I just have to close my eyes.

  “Tell us the story, Frederick,” Mutti said.

  “The story of the Wyrm and the Stones?”

  “Yes.”

  So he did. We gathered close, and Pa told us all about the fog, the fishermen aboard the Aurora and their four daughters who sang to the sea, promising the greatest of sacrifices if it would only send their fathers safely home. When he got to the bit about the Wyrm spitting out the boat and devouring the souls of the daughters instead, I couldn’t help shuddering—just as I had when I was four years old.

  My eyes were drawn towards the sea. There was no sign of a German U-boat—in fact there had been no more sightings since the day of the crabbing competition—but the Wyrm was there, as it always was. Its long, serpentine shape quivered hungrily beneath the waves. The Daughters seemed to be looking at the water with me, staring down at their cruel enemy, never letting the Wyrm out of their sight. The stones versus the sand serpent. The Wyrm may have petrified the Daughters for thousands of years, but in that moment I had an oddly certain feeling that the battle between them was not yet over.

  When we returned to the cottage, the grocery box was empty and our tummies were full. Mags led the way, carrying the blankets, then Pa and Mutti with the empty box and bags. I brought up the rear (determined to get the last few drops out of the cocoa flask).

  “Really, Frederick,” Mutti said, “that was so lovely, but for the rest of the week, we will be living off vegetable soup!”

  “I know,” he replied, with a strange little laugh. “But it was such a beautiful morning …”

  “It’s the war,” she said, and they both stopped walking. “So much darkness. It makes you want to hold every bright moment.”

  “Yes.” He pulled her close to him and kissed her on the forehead, closing his eyes very tightly. “It’s the war, my darling.”

  Then Mags called back over her shoulder, “Tomorrow, Pa. You promise?”

  Pa held Mutti close for a moment longer; then he moved his face away and quickly wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. He took a quick breath.

  “Yes. Tomorrow, Mags. I promise.”

  But the next day brought something else entirely.

  The sound of the antiaircraft guns ripped through my dreams, splitting the silence of the dawn—an impossibly loud CRACK CRACK CRACK.

  I heard Mags fling herself out of bed and run straight to the window.

  I stayed exactly where I was. I clamped the pillow tightly around my head and lay perfectly still under the blankets, curled up like a hedgehog, my breathing quick and shallow.

  “There’s a plane!” Mags shouted. “A German plane! It’s—”

  And then came the explosion. It was much more than just a sudden, deafening boom—it was a sensation too. It was as if the explosion happened inside my chest, inside my head. Everything buzzed with the force of the blast. Everything was shaken to its core. There was a high-pitched ringing in my ears now, and Mutti was shouting: “GIRLS! HERE! GAS MASKS!”

  But there was no need for the gas masks as it turned out—there was no gas, and there had been no bomb.

  “It’s CRASHED!” Mags bellowed. “The plane just crashed down into Mr. White’s cabbage field! Our guns must have hit it!”

  It wasn’t long before a crowd from the village came up the cliff path to have a good look at the German aircraft that now lay crumpled and smoldering amongst the cabbages. Mags and I went too, pulling on rain boots and coats over our pajamas. Pa was already there, helping Mr. White the farmer and a few others to cordon off the wreckage to discourage children from looking for “souvenirs.”

  “As if we’d be that silly,” I said.

  Then I saw Michael Baron pick up a fragment of metal half-buried in the ground beside his boot. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and stashed it in his pocket.

  Kipper Briggs and his father were there too. Kipper and Michael eyed each other from a distance like tomcats. Kipper said something to his father, and Mr. Briggs’s response was to cuff his son casually around the head. Kipper slinked away, but Mr. Briggs stood there in the mud for a minute or two longer, staring at the huge, blackened skeleton of the plane. He shook his head, looking even angrier than usual.

  Mrs. Baron was wearing her spotless ARP warden’s uniform.

  “She got that on pretty quickly,” Mags hissed irreverently. “Perhaps she wears it to bed, just in case.”

  I snorted and gave my sister an appreciative shove. For a moment, she was the old Mags again.

  “Clear the area, please!” Mrs. Baron was shouting, using what I recognized instantly as her Headmistress Voice. A few people shuffled about between the cabbages, in order to look as if they were being cooperative.

  “Well done, gentlemen,” she said to Pa and Mr. White, gesturing towards the posts they had just hammered into the earth. She smiled at them, and Mr. White nodded and touched his cap. Then she lowered her voice—“I take it there were no … survivors?”

  Mr. White shook his head gravely. “Not a chance, ma’am,” he said. Then he picked up his tools and set off towards the farmhouse while Mrs. Baron attempted to shepherd the crowd.

  Mags and I managed to duck behind her so she didn’t see us inching towards the cordon. The plane lay facedown in a mess of chalky soil, dark shards of metal, and blackened cabbages. Flames still played about the charred fuselage an
d dark specters of smoke rose into the air. The smell of burning was acrid, brutal.

  How many men were inside? I wondered. How many lives plummeting towards the ground, knowing that these were their final seconds?

  “I need everyone to leave the area,” Mrs. Baron shouted. “Clear the area, please! It is not safe!”

  As we followed Pa back towards the lighthouse, I felt a flush of pride that it was my Pa who had got there first and had known what to do. He wasn’t just one of the gawping crowd; he had done something useful. In that moment, I felt very important and very special.

  Mutti had not wanted to come and see the crashed plane. She stood at the gate, her arms wrapped around her middle, waiting for us to come home.

  I waved at her, then looked up at the sky and took a long lungful of the morning. It had rained heavily overnight, and the air was filled with the scent of fresh rain, damp earth, and the churning sea. The blustery wind was already carrying away the bitter smell of the smoke and the burnt cabbages, and the sun was trying to break through the clouds. Two or three narrow shafts of sunlight streamed down, spotlighting patches of the swollen ocean and our Castle—a brave silhouette against the silvery sky …

  Then Mags interrupted my thoughts. “Who’s that?” she asked. She was looking beyond the lighthouse, towards the south cliff. A man was standing on the ridge, staring down at us. The wind was whipping my hair around, so I held it out of my eyes, squinting up at the figure. I couldn’t make out his face, only the squarish set of his shoulders and some rather wild white hair.

  “I can’t see his face properly, but it might be that man who was so rude to Mutti in the bakery. Could he be one of the fishermen?”

  Mags shrugged, frowning. “I’ve never seen him before,” she said.