by Lucy Strange
“Can I read it?” I asked.
Pa took a breath and then nodded. “Of course, Pet—it’s to all of us.”
“I’ll read it out loud,” Mags said, snatching it from my hand. I hated it when she did her Big Sister act. On top of everything else that had happened recently, it made me feel like giving her an almighty shove, but Pa already looked upset enough, so I just shot her one of my foulest looks and went to sit at the other end of the table.
I tried to push all the terrible thoughts to one side and listened.
Dearest Fred, Mags, and Pet,
Mags read.
My darlings, I have been told that once a week I may write to you. I have been given this paper and told that I might write, but I am not allowed to write very much, so I shall (from now) try not to waste any words! I am well. It is quite comfortable here and clean enough, and the food is not too bad, but I am missing eating our homegrown vegetables. There are lots of people here who are kind, and someone even shared a piece of chocolate with me yesterday. I have met a lady who is from Munich, near where I grew up. It has been very pleasant to speak in German for the first time in so long.
There is a police inspector investigating the diagrams they showed me in court. He has been here to see me. He is a very nice man, and also clever. He may come to see you all at the Castle, so please do be helpful, but remember that I have told him everything he needs to know.
At this point, Mags’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”
She looked down again and read on.
Magda, don’t forget to return or renew your Motorboat Maintenance book at the library before the end of the month or you will get fined again. Pet, I borrowed an umbrella from Mrs. Rossi at the bakery when I got caught in that rainstorm. For me, please could you take it back to her? Please take good care of yourselves, girls, and be as sensible as you can. Remember, even though I am not there to tell you, that I love you both very much and I will always be proud of you. Make sure you are doing everything you can to help your father.
Fred, my darling, don’t work too hard. Give Barnaby a tickle from me and tell him to leave the baby rabbits alone.
I love and miss you all very much. All of you, Your Mutti xxxx PS Remember
Mags turned the page over, but there was nothing written on the other side. “Remember what?” she said.
Pa stared for a moment; his eyes were open very wide. “Perhaps she reached her limit of words,” he said. “Or it might have been censored by the guards at the camp. Her letters will be checked before they are sent. It might have said something they didn’t want her to say.”
“Like what?” I said, bewildered. “It just sounds like she’s going to remind us to keep our room tidy or feed the cat or something.”
“I don’t know, Petra,” Pa snapped, taking the letter back from Magda. Then, straightaway: “I’m sorry, girls. I don’t know.” He got up and put his jacket on. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the lighthouse.”
I took Mrs. Rossi’s umbrella back when I went down to Stonegate on Monday morning. There was no school now, as arrangements were being made to send all the children in our area to a safer part of the country. Except us. Pa had decided that Mags and I would stay at home with him after all.
No school! A few months ago, I would have skipped all the way down the cliff path to the village, but I wasn’t that girl anymore. I walked quickly and stiffly, my hand clamped around the handle of Mrs Rossi’s umbrella, and I recited Pa’s shopping list in my head. He had entrusted me with the ration book and had asked me to collect some fish, a newspaper, and a few other groceries. It was an overcast day and the air was very cool and damp. Rain started to fall—gently at first and then more steadily. I couldn’t decide whether or not it would be wrong to actually use Mrs. Rossi’s umbrella when I was in the process of returning it; handing it back to her all damp and dripping would be bad manners, wouldn’t it? But then, with a darkening of the sky above, the rain doubled into a downpour, and I concluded that Mrs. Rossi wouldn’t mind at all.
The sea looked vast that day, and flat and gray as wet slate. It was calm in the way it often is in that sort of rain—patted down by the raindrops, flattened by the weight of clouds above. I heard the sound of an engine droning high in the sky above. One of ours, I said to myself, though I couldn’t see the shape of the plane. It’s probably one of ours.
I had become so used to the sounds of aircraft roaring back and forth above the Castle that it was difficult to remember a time when the cliffs were truly peaceful. I tried to keep the old cliffs in my heart, and I had Mutti’s drawings and paintings to remind me of what it all used to look like before the bunkers and barbed wire. But that peaceful, safe, serene feeling was really hard to summon up now that the war was everywhere. Everything was different.
Have you ever been really freezing cold—so cold your whole body is shivering and your teeth are chattering? When you’re that cold, it is hard to imagine ever being too warm, isn’t it? Or perhaps you’ve been so achingly hungry that you can’t remember what it feels like to eat too much—such a sensation is impossible, surely? Well, that’s what war does—it makes everything so different, so extreme, that you forget what life was like before. That first pang of hunger—the first hammering of the guns—comes as a shock. But then it all becomes normal.
It felt as if everything was against me—even the weather. As I made my way down to Stonegate, the cold rain ran down my legs and soaked through my socks and shoes. I hadn’t stopped thinking about my mother’s letter. In the light of my new suspicions about Mags, Mutti’s words about loving us and asking us to be sensible felt strangely weighted. Did she believe that Mags was up to something? Could my sister really be the spy? Was that why Mags had been so keen to shift attention onto Spooky Joe? The disloyal thoughts hit me swiftly, one after another, like punches in the stomach. I had never felt so adrift, so alone. And the only person I wanted to talk to about all of this was the only person I couldn’t talk to.
When you share a room with a sibling, storms in teacups are never just storms—they are tempests. Every little quarrel is more cruel and more intense than it would be otherwise, and this was something much more serious than a quarrel. When I thought about going to bed that night, I was filled with dread—I could already feel that cold, electric tension, crackling in the silence between our two beds.
Thunder. I turned my head sharply towards the sea as a booming noise quivered over the gray water. It boomed again—a terrible blast of sound. Sometimes thunder sounds just like a sort of explosion in the sky, I thought, but that was usually when a storm was right overhead, and there hadn’t been any lightning yet. I walked more quickly, scampering down the path. If there was going to be lightning, I didn’t want to be the idiot standing out on the clifftop holding a big umbrella.
The main street was deserted. Everyone else was being sensible—sheltering from the storm inside their nice, cozy houses. I’ll just get to the bakery, I thought, and perhaps Mrs. Rossi will be kind enough to offer me a cup of tea and a biscuit or two while we wait for the rain to stop.
But I didn’t get that far.
As I was going past Mrs. Baron’s house, the glossy black door opened and a man came out. It must have startled me, I think, because I instinctively stopped and shrank back against the wall. Water from the gutter above splashed down onto my umbrella. I moved more closely against the wall and watched as the door closed behind the man, and he opened a black umbrella of his own. Then he clanked through the gate and set off down the main street towards the harbor. It was Pinstripe, the police detective. Visiting Mrs. Baron, I thought, to discuss the spying investigation. They must have been discussing my Mutti.
I followed him. I didn’t know if I had the courage to speak to him, or what on earth I would say if I did, but I had to find out what he knew.
I followed him all the way down to the harbor. The rain was drumming down on my umbrella; I wove around puddles and dodged wobbly cobblestones. Even
tually, Pinstripe came to a halt at the harbor wall, and I stopped too—a safe distance away, lurking behind a postbox while I thought about the best way of phrasing what I wanted to say. The sky over the Channel thundered again.
“It’s a terrible sound, isn’t it?”
Was he talking to me? I waited behind the postbox, not sure what to do. He can’t see me, can he? I crouched a little.
“I can see your umbrella, Petra.” He laughed. “It looks as if the postbox is wearing a rain hat.”
Oh, Pet, you really are a first class idiot … I blushed as red as the treacherous postbox itself and stepped out.
“Sorry, sir,” I said. “I wasn’t spying on you or anything …” I faltered at my poor choice of words.
He smiled and was about to speak again when the sky boomed once more.
We both looked up at the heavy gray clouds. “But there’s no lightning,” I said.
“No,” he said. “That’s because it isn’t thunder.”
I looked at him. Not thunder?
“It’s guns.”
Guns.
“The German artillery.” He beckoned to me, and I went to stand next to him at the harbor wall. He gestured towards the sea, towards France.
“Just over there,” he said, “about twenty miles away, there is a little seaside town just like this one, with a beach and cafés and shops and things. And right now it is being bombed to bits by Hitler’s guns.” His voice became quieter, and the creases on his forehead grew deeper. “It’s remarkable how close they are now. One is so much more aware of it down here.”
I stared out over the water, and swallowed. A little seaside town just like this one …
“Twenty miles isn’t very far at all, is it?” I said, remembering some of the blisteringly long hikes Pa had taken us on over the years. “For an army I mean.”
Pinstripe shook his head. “I came down from London on the train this morning, and that was about eighty miles,” he said. “So, no. Twenty miles is not very far at all.”
We both looked out over the gray water.
“I need to tell you something, sir.”
He raised his eyebrows: “Mm?”
“Mutti is innocent. My mother, I mean. It wasn’t her who did those diagrams and things. It couldn’t have been.”
He nodded, but his craggy brow was all bunched up. “And how do you know that, Petra?”
My brain froze. If you mention Spooky Joe’s coded note, you could end up incriminating Mags instead of Mutti.
Flustered, I said, “She’s just not like that. She might be German, but that doesn’t mean she supports Hitler and all the terrible things he’s doing. And she has nothing to do with any of the information that passes through the lighthouse about shipping or anything. If she were to look in Pa’s logbook, I honestly don’t think she would know what any of his notes or records meant.”
A little voice hissed in my head, But Mags would—wouldn’t she? I swallowed hard, as if I could somehow get rid of the thought that way.
Pinstripe nodded. “I see,” he said. He cleared his throat—that dry fox cough. “Well thank you for that information.”
“Aren’t you going to write it down? Doesn’t it count as evidence—a character reference or something?”
Obligingly, he took a notebook out of a pocket and scribbled something down.
“She hasn’t done anything wrong,” I said, determined to make him listen. “And it’s not fair that she should be locked up just because of the country she was born in.”
He didn’t say anything.
I pressed on. “She’s a good person.” I was starting to get angry. The detective didn’t seem to be listening to me at all; he was gazing out to sea again.
The rain became quieter, hardly falling now—just a damp thickness in the air. Pinstripe took down his umbrella, shook it, and rolled it up. Then he looked at me. “I’m sorry to say this, Petra, but sometimes good people do bad things.”
I felt a little stabbing pain in my chest. Is he saying Mutti is guilty? That she is a traitor?
“Why?” I said, fighting back the tears that burned in my eyes. “Why would a good person do bad things?”
He shrugged. “The world is a very complicated place, and war is a terrible thing. Sometimes a good person has a logical reason for doing something that is morally wrong; sometimes they feel they have no choice.” He took a clean white handkerchief from his pin-striped pocket and offered it to me to wipe the tears away. “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid this is something you are going to need to come to terms with, Petra. Very soon.”
He knew something. He knew something that must prove Mutti’s guilt, and he wasn’t telling me.
All I wanted to do then—the only thing I wanted to do—was to run straight home into the arms of my Mutti.
But she wasn’t there.
I shook my head at the handkerchief, tightening my face and forcing a sob back into my throat. “But you gave the drawings back.” I remembered how kind he had seemed in the lantern room—as if he were on my side. He hadn’t let the police sergeant take Mutti’s sketches.
“I didn’t need them,” he said simply. “I didn’t need to take anything else.” Then again: “I’m so sorry.”
He gave me a sad smile, turned away, and walked back up the main street, through the dark, rushing streams of rainwater.
When I eventually got to the bakery, I was in a very bad state indeed. Mrs. Rossi wasn’t there, so I returned the umbrella to the shopgirl, Edie, apologizing for its sogginess.
“Oh, I’m sure she won’t mind, Petra,” Edie said nicely. “It’s what they’re for after all, ain’t it? A dry umbrella’s a wasted one, eh?”
Edie talks too much and she’s not exactly the brightest of sparks, but she’s a very kind soul. She used to be good friends with Mags when they were at school together. Edie tucked a strawberry-blond curl behind her ear, leaned down, and looked at me closely. “You feeling all right, Petra?”
I must have wobbled a bit, as she got me a chair then and made me sit down.
“You look like death warmed up,” she said. “Here …” She took an iced biscuit from the tray of baked goods under the counter. “Don’t tell anyone! You look like you haven’t eaten all day. Honestly, this rationing’ll be the end of all of us!”
I could hardly tell her what was really wrong, could I?—that I was reeling from that terrible conversation—the booming of the German artillery, Pinstripe’s words of doom …
“Yes, I’m probably just hungry.” I took the biscuit and nibbled at it. I inhaled the sweet, warm air. “Thanks,” I said. “I won’t clutter up the shop for long, Edie. Pa’s given me a shopping list, and I’d better get to the fishmonger’s before Arthur Briggs closes for lunch.”
“Well—I’m afraid you won’t have any luck there,” Edie said.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Fishmonger’s been closed all day,” Edie said. “Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Arthur Briggs was arrested last night.”
“Arrested? What on earth did he do?” My head was full of spying and treachery …
Edie’s curls bounced excitedly. “Racketeering,” she said. “Making a profit out of the war. He’d got his hands on a stash of forged ration coupons and was selling them off to his customers, apparently.”
“Good grief. Really?”
“Looks like he’ll be in prison for a bit,” Edie said. “Like your poor mum.”
I stared at her and swallowed a dry ball of half-chewed biscuit. “My mum’s not in prison, Edie,” I said.
“Oh.” She reddened slightly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean …”
“She’s in an internment camp.”
“Oh. Right,” Edie said again. Then, after a pause: “What’s the difference?”
I thought for a second.
“Most of the people in internment camps are there because of who they are or what they believe, not for anything they’ve done,�
�� I said. “People go to prison for committing crimes.”
“Right,” she said again. “I see. So your mum hasn’t done anything?”
“No,” I said, “other than be born in Germany.” Perhaps if I said it out loud it would help it to be true. I was ignoring the voice of Pinstripe in my head: Sometimes, good people do bad things …
“Well, that’s a relief, then,” Edie said with a big smile. “So she’ll be coming home soon?”
I nodded, but when I tried to say yes, my mouth wouldn’t open.
There was a jingle and slam from the fishmonger’s shop next door, and a second later, we saw Kipper Briggs skulk past the bakery window. He wore his black fisherman’s hat pulled low over his brow, and the collar of his waterproof coat was turned up. His chin was tucked in against his chest, and his eyes were focused on the wet pavement beneath his feet. He looked smaller than he usually did—as if he had shrunk somehow.
“Kipper’s very upset of course,” Edie said.
“I’m sure he is,” I said, and was surprised at the pang of genuine sympathy I felt for him. I knew how terrible it was to see someone you loved being taken away from you. That tearing feeling in your chest. And the shame too—the police car, the gossiping crowds.
“He’ll be taking on the family business now, I suppose. Reckon it’ll be the making of him—a bit of responsibility, and that bullying dad of his out of the way. Under all that nonsense and bluster, Kipper’s a good lad really.”
I thought about Kipper and wondered what sort of boy he would have been if he’d been lucky enough to have had a Pa like mine. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him.
“Thank you so much, Edie,” I said, standing up at last. “I feel better because of that biscuit, but I’d better get on with the shopping. Pa will be wondering where his paper has got to.”
“Oh,” she said, “I can save you the penny for the paper at least. Take this one, Pet, love—I’ve had a look already this morning and there’s nothing in it to speak of.”