Our Castle by the Sea

by Lucy Strange

  And then there was a noise from the cottage. A grating sound, like a bolt being drawn back.

  “He’s there!” Mags squeaked, pulling me down into a crouch beside her. “It’s Spooky Joe—he’s coming outside!”

  She was right. From between the gorse thorns, I could just make out the door of the cottage opening, and then a figure appeared. A squarish figure in a long, dark coat. The clifftop breeze whipped at his white hair, and he turned up his collar. I had seen this man before.

  “Do you remember, Mags? On the day the German bomber crashed? He was standing there on the ridge watching the whole thing? Staring at us?”

  “Yes,” Mags breathed. “Yes! That was him. That was Spooky Joe …”

  “He’s the old man who was so horrid to Mutti in the bakery. He called her Jerry.”

  My sister’s eyes narrowed. “What’s he doing?”

  Spooky Joe was doing something very peculiar. He edged his way around the side of the cottage nearest us and lowered himself down so that he was lying on his front in the grass. Then he wriggled inland and uphill. From the top of that rise, he could see all the way down to the Dover Road—the view was almost as good as from the lighthouse. He rolled onto his side and pulled some things out of his coat pocket. He put a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Then he appeared to write or draw something on a piece of paper.

  Mags looked at me triumphantly. “I knew it, Pet!” she whispered. “I knew he was the spy!”

  “But he’s facing inland,” I hissed. “What on earth could he be looking at?”

  “I don’t know. Stonegate church? I need to see what he’s writing down …”

  We kept watching. Spooky Joe squinted through the binoculars again and continued to scribble for a minute; then he crawled back down the hill, pushed himself up, and went back into the cottage, leaving the paper weighed down by the binoculars.

  “I’m going to go and have a look,” said Mags.

  “Are you mad?” I whispered. “He’s probably just gone in to get something. He’ll come back at any moment! Mags!”

  But she was already running across the grass.

  My eyes flicked back and forth between the door of the cottage and my insane sister. My heart was drumming quickly now and my breathing was changing. Oh God, not now … I could feel the dreaded pins-and-needles feeling starting in my fingertips.

  Mags was nearly at the top of the rise, trying to keep low but moving as quickly as possible. Just as she reached the piece of paper on the grass, there was a tapping noise behind her and she spun around. A loud grating sound followed, and a bang—a window being flung open—and then a voice: “HEY!”

  Mags had been seen. She stared for a second, then grabbed the piece of paper from the grass and started running back towards me at full pelt. But she didn’t reach the gorse bush. At the last moment she swerved and made for the cliff path instead. Perhaps she thought it would be quicker to sprint down to the village that way. But Spooky Joe wasn’t chasing her—he opened the door of the cottage and came outside, and then he stopped. There was a skidding sound just a few yards away from me—shoes on loose stone—and a scream. Mags!

  My limbs had gone all weak and watery and I was panting for breath—I couldn’t stand up properly. I managed to crawl a little to one side. Mags was just on the other side of our gorse bush, but she had run straight into a coil of barbed wire and was desperately trying to disentangle herself, looking around desperately and pulling at the barbs with bleeding fingers.

  Then there was a voice: “Well, fancy seeing you up here, Miss Smith. Bright and early, as usual.” It wasn’t an old man’s voice, it was boyish and cheerful—a voice full of ease and charm. Michael Baron.

  “Looks like you could do with a bit of help,” he said. He knelt down beside her and examined the tangle of wire and fabric. “Don’t,” he said, stopping her from grabbing at the wire. “Don’t, Magda—you’ll hurt yourself.” My sister twisted around again, still frightened of being pursued by Spooky Joe, but he had gone. The door of the cottage was shut.

  “It’s all right,” Michael said soothingly. “I’ve got just the thing.” And he reached into a pocket, pulling out some sort of tool or penknife. He clipped at the wires one by one, carefully disentangling them from Mags’s clothes.

  “Thank you, Michael,” she said, a little calmer now. I noticed that the piece of paper had gone from her hand—she must have put it in her pocket. She looked down at him.

  Michael grinned up at her. “A Boy Scout is always prepared, Miss Smith,” he said with a wink. “Not that I’m a Boy Scout anymore …”

  Mags laughed. I’d never heard her laugh like that before.

  He stood up then. “Hang on,” he said, his voice a bit softer. “What’s this?” He reached towards her face and gently untangled a bit of dead gorse from a strand of hair that had escaped from beneath her hat.

  Mags’s eyes were locked on his, and her face flushed pink. “Thank you, Michael.”

  “My pleasure, Miss Smith. Anything to help a damson in distress.”

  “A damsel,” she corrected.

  “No. More like a damson,” he said, and touched her blushing cheek. I watched my sister’s face turn an even darker shade of pink.

  “I’m just up here for a walk with my sister …”

  “Oh yes?” He looked around. It must have been a bit odd that he couldn’t see me. I stood up on trembling legs and waved at him from behind my gorse bush. He waved back at me, looking only slightly puzzled. “Are you going down to work on your boat this morning?” he asked my sister.

  She hesitated, tucking her ears firmly beneath her woolly hat. Then she smiled and said, “Yes. You can come too if you like, Michael.”

  So they set off together and I tagged along behind, glancing back over my shoulder every now and then to make sure Spooky Joe wasn’t following us. What had he been up to? It had certainly looked like spying of some sort, but what could he have been looking at? And what was written on the piece of paper Mags had taken? I wanted Michael Baron to go away so that we could discuss it properly, but as I watched them walking along together, side by side, it became clear that any conversation with my sister was going to have to wait until later.

  We’ll take the tunnel,” Mags announced, and my heart sank. She knew how much I hated the shortcut down to the beach. Was she trying to shake me off—hoping I’d leave her alone with handsome Michael Baron?

  Something flared up inside me. I wasn’t going to be shoved aside. Besides, if I’d turned around to go back home via the cliff path, I would have to have gone past Spooky Joe’s cottage, alone …

  “Are you coming, Pet?”

  I smiled as innocently as a younger sister can at moments like this. “Of course,” I said.

  The entrance to the tunnel was concealed by the ruins of an old lookout tower and the roots of a gnarled, wind-bent tree that grew from between the tower’s fallen stones. Most of the children in the village knew about the tunnel. It was a secret passed between siblings and school friends, though our Pa had been the one to show it to me and Mags. It was a long, steep, enclosed passageway carved through earth and chalk and tree roots—an old smuggler’s route that took you from the south cliff all the way down to the beach at Dragon Bay.

  We used Pa’s torch, its feeble beam illuminating the chalky burrow just a few yards ahead. Michael went first, then Mags, then me. Here at the very top, the tunnel was the entrance hall to an enormous rabbit warren, and as we dropped down onto all fours, we had to watch where we put our hands, as there were little piles of droppings here and there. Something blinked in the gloom and scurried away down a narrow hole with a flash of feet and a blaze of tail.

  I hated this first bit. Tree roots cobwebbed the walls of the tunnel and dangled down into our path. Sometimes they were sturdy enough to be helpful, you could grip them and lower yourself around the steep, twisting corners; sometimes the thicker roots blocked the way, hanging there like pale stalactites, and you had to hold you
r breath as you squeezed between them. They were rough and scaly, and caught on my woolly hat and hair. It was such a low passage that, in places, we had to wriggle on our backs or bellies. My left foot caught in a root, and, for a second, I couldn’t budge. As Michael and Mags got farther ahead, the light of the torch died out completely, plunging me into darkness. “Mags!” I called. “I’m stuck.”

  “Just wriggle your way through, Pet—pretend you’re a mole or something.”

  I forced my foot back, hearing the root tear behind me. Some loose soil pattered down from the ceiling of the tunnel. I forced in a deep breath of the damp, earthy air and struggled on, following my sister’s squirming feet. I felt myself getting angry with her, exactly as I had done in the rowing boat on the day of the crabbing competition. Why did I let her get me into scrapes like this?

  As we got deeper inside the cliff, the tunnel became steeper. The walls were chalky—pale and smooth as old bones. There were parts that were almost high enough to stand up in, with steps carved into the chalk, and lower stretches where we had to tuck down on our haunches and skid and slither our way down into the darkness. I felt my boot scrape against something sharp and the same thing tore at my coat. I thought about how angry Mutti would be when we got home and she saw the state of my clothes—and then I remembered that Mutti wasn’t at home anymore. I had to bite my lip to distract myself from the tears that immediately started burning in my eyes. Then dim morning light illuminated the tunnel ahead, and the passageway twisted around a tight corner, suddenly opening up into a much larger space.

  Here, halfway down the cliff face, was a round cavern with two window-like openings that looked out over the sea. This was Dragon Bay Cave. It must have been a perfect lookout spot for the smugglers who had first used the tunnel all those years ago, as they could have watched the boats making their way around the dangerous coastline, flashing signals to them with lanterns held up at the round, chalky windows.

  Michael stood at one of the windows now. “Such a fantastic view,” he was saying. Then, more quietly: “I love being here with you, Magda.”

  I was confused. Had they been here before, then?

  Mags’s face was shining, but I felt as I always felt when I stood here in the cave. I felt eerie. The two windows at the front made me feel as if I were inside a giant skull, peering out through the hollow eye sockets.

  “Just look at the Wyrm,” I muttered, staring out through the other eyehole. I looked down, and swallowed.

  The tide was coming in, the sands were shifting, and the yellow-gray Wyrm was twisting about hungrily beneath the shallow waves.

  “It must be tricky, that sandbank,” Michael said. “If you’re maneuvering a big ship, or a submarine or something like that.”

  “It’s fine if you know what you’re doing,” Mags said with confidence. This was her favorite subject. “And the lighthouse gives you the perfect bearing to steer safely around it into Dragon Bay or Stonegate harbor.” She looked at Michael. “I can show you if you like.”

  He nodded, keen as mustard. “That would be wonderful.”

  Down at Dragon Bay, Mags led us straight to the line of upturned rowing boats that were pulled up high onto the dry sand, out of the reach of the tide.

  “Aren’t we going to take the motorboat?” I asked. Pa had salvaged the rusty old wreck from the scrapyard as a project for Mags. When we first got it, it just about managed to stay afloat, but the engine had needed rebuilding. Mags had christened her Faith, and she was moored in the harbor.

  “No, I haven’t quite got the engine running yet,” Mags replied.

  “But you’ve been working on her for months, haven’t you?”

  I might have been mistaken, but I thought Mags flashed a look at Michael then.

  “Of course I have. But there’s so much that needs doing before she’s safe and seaworthy. Come on—we’ll take Edward.”

  Edward, or rather, King Edward, was the family rowing boat we had used for the crabbing competition—a lovely old thing, painted red, blue, and white. I used to think it was odd that we had a boat named after a potato, but it had been Pa’s since he was a little boy (when King Edward VII was on the throne). Pa had passed it on to Mags, who had always tended it lovingly. If Mags went missing on a summer’s day, she could usually be found down here on the beach, sanding, repairing, and repainting the King Edward, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, flecks of paint in her messy hair. My sister had always smelled of yacht varnish and the sea.

  Michael and I helped turn the rowing boat over, and then we dragged it down towards the water. There were long lines of barbed wire all along the beach, scoring the sand like razor-hooked fishing lines, but someone from the village had flattened sections of it, and cut other parts back so that children could still take their little boats out or swim in the bay. It was probably against the law, but no one seemed to mind much and the coastguard had turned a blind eye.

  When we got to the water, Mags turned back to me and said, “Why don’t you wait here for us, Pet? The boat isn’t really big enough for three. You could do some drawing or something.”

  I stared at her, and she stared steadily back. Her clear, dark eyes said, You’re not welcome.

  There were lots of things I could have said to my sister at that moment, but the one that came out of my mouth was, “I haven’t got my sketchbook.”

  “There’s paper and a pencil in my bag.” She laughed, tossing me the canvas backpack. Then she took off her coat, rolled it up, and threw it at me too.

  I watched as my sister climbed into the rowing boat. Michael pushed the boat out until it was floating freely; then he climbed in too, and Mags started pulling at the oars. As the boat grew smaller and smaller, I became aware of my boots sinking more deeply into the sludgy sand, and the deeper they sank, the angrier I felt.

  Mags and I had always squabbled, but usually Mutti forced us to make up quickly. “Be the bigger person, Petra,” she’d whisper. It was always me that had to be the bigger person (even though I was considerably smaller). It was always me that had to apologize, to swallow my pride and say sorry. But then it wasn’t possible for my sister to swallow her pride, was it? She had so much of it she’d probably choke …

  I felt the wet sand closing over the toes of my boots. I turned my back on the sea, pulled my feet up with a revolting sucking sound, and returned to the higher, drier part of the bay.

  I had been waiting for at least half an hour, watching the quiet traffic of fishing boats on the glassy sea, before I realized that there was something very important that I could have been doing with my time. I could have kicked myself for forgetting about it.

  I rummaged in the pockets of my sister’s coat and found what I was looking for straightaway. It was the piece of paper that Mags had taken from Spooky Joe.

  I unfolded it, my heart pattering with excitement. This could be the key to proving that Mutti is innocent. I was expecting to find some sort of diagram like the ones mentioned in the magistrate’s court, but instead I found an incomprehensible list of numbers. This is what Joe had written:

  MB—TB

  0617 040540

  0638 110540

  0557 180540

  0625 250540

  Was it a code of some kind? It was so unlike the documents at the tribunal … Perhaps Spooky Joe wasn’t the spy after all. As much as I wanted this easy answer, it just didn’t fit. If Joe was on the side of the Nazis, why had he made that comment about “Jerry” in the bakery? No—Spooky Joe was a patriot. Perhaps he was keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior, just like the government’s posters told us to. Perhaps this note was the clue to who the real spy was … I couldn’t make head nor tail of the numbers, but the letters at the top must mean something … What could MB stand for? The first thing I thought of was the initials of the person who was currently swanning about in the King Edward with my stupid sister—Michael Baron—but I knew that was nonsense. It’s just your anger talking, Pet, I said to myself firmly. Anyway
—you’re not really angry with him, you’re angry with Magda. And then I stopped and looked at the letters again. MB. Magda’s middle name was Bernadette. Could Spooky Joe have been making notes about my sister?

  I sat quite still for a moment. The salt-heavy breeze tugged at the paper between my fingers, and a series of waves rose up and rolled in, one after another onto the beach. My mind churned like mud in the shallows. What if it was Mags? What if Mags had been up to something these last few months? I thought about her odd moods and behavior, her early morning disappearances, the fact that she had obviously not been working on the motorboat as she had claimed. She had been lying to us. And then I thought about that anonymous figure in the mist—could that have been my sister? Perhaps Mutti had thought Mags was up to something too. That was why she followed her that morning. That was why she was so desperate for us both to be evacuated …

  I stood up, stuffing the piece of paper hurriedly into my own coat pocket as I realized that the boat sliding up onto the beach was the King Edward.

  They were back.

  On the way home, Mags turned out her coat pockets looking for Spooky Joe’s note. “It must be here somewhere,” she muttered.

  “Perhaps it fell out,” I said, aware that my voice sounded cold as stone, and I didn’t know if it was because I was so angry with her, or if it was because I was lying. “It probably fell out as we were going down the tunnel.” And you didn’t notice, I wanted to add, because you were so bewitched by Michael bloody Baron. My hand closed guiltily around the paper in my pocket, crushing it into a ball.

  It was a strange, silent walk back up to the Castle. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to Mags at all, and for the rest of the day, I could barely even look her in the face. Anger, doubt, and suspicion were billowing in my mind like storm clouds.

  When I came down to breakfast the next morning, there was a letter from Mutti waiting on the kitchen table. Pa must have just opened it, and was staring at it as if it had bitten him.