“Right, how do we go about this?” Idrys asked, perplexed by the triangular contraptions that Leighton was now trying to keep upright for me. I took them from him and stood them up either side of the chair, gripping the handles tightly.
“Just be ready to catch her if she falls on her bum,” Leighton explained. I gave him a wide eyed glare but I couldn’t hide my smile. His freckles were coming out in the spring sunshine and I thought the country air had done wonders for his growth. Mum was going to be impressed by both of us when she saw us next, that I’d make sure of.
With a massive heave I got from the chair onto my feet, wobbling for a few moments until I had the cushioned parts of the crutches under each arm to prop me up. I felt like a sagging scarecrow as I straightened up my frame, embarrassment forcing the red flush into my cheeks as I realised how silly I must have looked to my little audience. When I found Leighton’s face again he was smiling, but thankfully not laughing. He rolled eagerly on the balls of his feet, clapping his hands together silently.
“Go on then, take a step.” I could hear the anticipation hitching his breath.
Dragging the heavy crutches made my progress even slower than it had been when I used the wall of the bedroom to get about, but I walked seven snail-like paces to Idrys before I had to stop and heave out exhausted breaths. My arms were on fire and the jellyfish knees were back but Leigh and Idrys gave me a cheer all the same. The old farmer helped me back into my chair and said that we all deserved a drink and a biscuit, but as he wheeled me inside I waved a finger at him breathlessly.
“Only for half an hour,” I heaved, “Then you’ve got to take me back outside to try again.”
We went on like that for days, stepping in and out of the increasingly warm air as April turned to May. When Idrys was busy I managed to persuade Mam to tear herself away from her washing and cooking long enough to make sure I didn’t collapse on the grass and when Leighton got home from school he watched me practice inside. At first he stood by the door of the sitting room whilst I walked in case he needed to shout to Mam for help, but I couldn’t avoid feeling terribly pleased with myself when he finally plopped himself into a chair, deciding that I wasn’t going to fall.
Though I hadn’t quite gained independence with my steps, the rests I had to take in between practices were perfect opportunities to wheel off to my room and find Henri. We’d been exchanging stories every day of our progress and though he had trekked scores of miles over sheer hillsides and vast barren plains, my grand total of nineteen steps in a row was still the greatest achievement he had ever heard of. Every day he wanted to know the number of paces I could manage, so every day I pressed myself harder to take that one extra step so as not to disappoint him.
“This boy must be bloody good looking to get you working so hard,” Idrys remarked one morning when the step total had reached twenty three.
I was inclined to agree, though I hadn’t seen Henri’s face at all since the day he’d been beaten up by Kluger and his mob. I found my motivation in the warmth in his chest when I told him of my success and in the wide smile he cracked when he heard me say hello. I needed his praise and his belief in me the same way I needed the crutches: to hold me up, to help me take on the challenge. Without them I could so easily be that tear-soaked little girl again collapsing on the floor of Bickerstaff’s office and that was something I definitely never wanted to go back to.
***
The last day in May was a Friday which always signified Mam putting on a huge family dinner and inviting Bampi Idrys in for the evening. It also meant that Blod would be occupied with the dual tasks of helping Mam cook and supervising Ness whilst Leighton spent most the day at school. I disappeared under the pretence of practising a few careful steps alone in my room, but once I’d wheeled in there I took just four steps from my chair to the bed where I lay back and shut my eyes immediately.
I was surprised to find Henri indoors after so many visits to the beautiful mountainsides he had been traversing. He was in a little wooden room looking into a sink full of soapy water. He sloshed his hands into the sink and brought them up to his face with a tired sigh, obscuring my view as he washed his forehead before moving down to his cheeks. He looked up, but where I had been hoping for a mirror there was just a blank wooden wall that he stared at without focus. He slapped his wet face gently a few times then suddenly shook his whole head, droplets flying everywhere.
Henri you make me feel sick when you do that! I protested.
He jumped, then laughed in quick succession.
“Then you should tell me you’re here instead of spying on me,” he accused.
He had a point, actually, but I wouldn’t let him win. Oh yes, I replied, because feeling you wash your face is terribly exciting.
“What do you mean ‘feeling’?” Henri asked.
Um… In all our recent conversations I had managed not to let that slip yet, though I had often felt as though I ought to let Henri know I could feel everything that he felt. Well, I thought uncertainly, I can feel what you do with your body, almost like it’s my own body.
He pinched his arm hard.
Ow! I cried immediately. He hissed at the pain he’d caused himself. You didn’t have to test it!
“This isn’t good news Kit,” Henri mused sadly, “If you’re with me and I get hurt, you’ll feel it. I don’t want you to suffer for me.”
I wanted to gulp down my worries. Are you likely to get hurt? I asked.
Henri turned his back on the sink quietly as he reached for his shirt and swung it over his shoulders. For a brief moment he looked down to do up his buttons and I saw a flash of his bare chest, but he must have remembered quickly that I was behind his eyes because he looked up again at the wall while he finished getting dressed.
“Well, we’ve arrived at the place where the boats will come for us,” he explained, “This is a small base made up by the Resistance.”
When will your boat come? I pressed. He had ignored my last question, but I was too interested in how soon he could get across the sea to pursue it.
“When the water’s right,” he said, drawing in a sharp breath, “We just have to be ready to leave as soon as they tell us. It could be any night from now on.”
That’s brilliant, I exclaimed. He smiled a very small smile.
“Listen to me Kit,” he said, his deep voice turning serious, “I don’t want you to be there when I cross the water.” I made to protest but he carried on talking. “It’s going to be cold and dangerous and all kinds of hell to endure. I don’t want to be the reason that you feel all that.”
But it won’t hurt me really, I argued, I’ll just-
“No,” Henri cut me off, shaking his head, “If you come to my mind and you find me on that boat, you leave again right away. And you keep leaving until I am back on land somewhere. If you don’t, I won’t forgive you.”
I hadn’t heard him speak this harshly since the night he cursed the Germans when his employer was taken away, and most of that had been in Norwegian. This was his warning to me and he meant it.
“If you care for me at all then you must do what I say,” he urged.
He knew more than I did about the dangers on the water, someone had clearly warned him how bad it was going to be. I wanted to tell him to turn back, to not risk it, but now that he had vanished from a city riddled with German soldiers there was little choice left for him but to endure whatever the journey threw at him.
Of course I care for you, I said softly, I promise I’ll stay away until you’re safely on this island.
“Good,” he answered quietly. I felt the heavy burden in his chest start to relax. “Well, do we still have time together now, or will you have to go soon?”
I smiled. I think I’m all right for a while. Everyone’s busy here today.
Henri left the little wooden washroom and made his way down a pitch black corridor, turning instinctively to another tiny, dark room. Once inside he fumbled with a lantern until it came t
o life, illuminating a little bedroll on the floor. He lay down on it quietly and I felt the hardness of the floor behind his back. It was horribly uncomfortable, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
“I’ve been wondering about your family in London,” he said quietly, “Tell me, what does your mother do?”
Mum works in a factory that makes parts for bicycles, I admitted. I felt Henri smiling quietly to himself. It used to be a tiny little job, but she started working millions of hours there once Dad went away, and now she says the factory’s started making parts for aircraft instead. I felt a sad sort of longing creeping into the back of my head. That’s why she can’t get away long enough to come and see us up here, she’s working very long hours for the war effort.
“I think it’s good that everyone does their part,” Henri mused, “I want to do my part too when I come over.”
He meant becoming a soldier, I was sure of it. The thought of Henri going to battle was both awfully brave and utterly terrifying to me.
They won’t let you enlist until you’re eighteen though, I answered, bringing myself some comfort.
“I know, but my birthday’s in August, it’s not that far away.” He shuffled on the hard floor, resting his head on a rolled up jacket. “So your father is away at the war?”
Um... no. Not exactly.
“What do you mean?” Henri asked.
I hesitated, for a moment before I gave in and told him. Dad went away about a year before the war started. Mum always says he’s working, but we haven’t heard a word from him in all this time.
“I had a friend like that once,” Henri began, “His mother told him the same thing.”
And where was his dad really? I asked nervously.
Henri bit his lip. “I’m not sure I should say.”
Go on, I pressed, it can’t be any worse than what I’m thinking.
“In prison,” Henri answered, “What were you thinking?”
Dead.
I could feel the shock in Henri’s broad chest. “You don’t really think your father’s dead, do you?”
Sometimes, I said sadly, then sometimes not. It’s all so strange. We woke up one morning and he’d just vanished, he never even came to say goodbye to us. Mum just said he had to go, and that was that.
“I think prison’s more likely by the sound of that,” Henri said. I felt his own grief matching mine as he gripped the pockets of his trousers tightly, his arms turning stiff. “I would have preferred to hope that my parents were still alive, if I could have.”
I didn’t want to press him to talk about them and he didn’t volunteer any more information, so I tried to ignore the sadness rising within him.
If we were in the same place together, I said gently, this would be a good moment to give you a hug.
He broke into a grin as his gaze fixed on the black ceiling. “I have saved up a few hugs for you already,” he revealed, “On the condition that you can walk up to me to get them.”
A fluttery, wonderful feeling gripped my chest so strongly that I didn’t know if it was me or Henri that was feeling it.
I did twenty seven steps last count, I replied, wondering if my voice would quiver in his head.
“Then I’m going to stand thirty paces away and hold my arms out like this,” he laughed, pushing his long, strong arms up in front of him in a wide, welcoming gesture, “And you’ll have to get to me.”
Yours arms will be aching by the time I do, I giggled in reply, I walk like a snail. A slow snail. A really elderly, slow snail.
He fell about laughing with such abandon that all thoughts of the war vanished from our heads, so it wasn’t until I returned to Ty Gwyn later that I thought again about the boat and the dangers ahead.
Henri and I had a few more precious days where we could chat and laugh together, but the night finally came where I closed my eyes and found him at sea. The thrash of icy waves shocked me so severely that I fell right out of his head and back into my own bed, but the few seconds I’d been with him were enough to tell me that every muscle in his body was straining against the North Sea. I wrestled with myself about going back to him, just to check that he was all right, but I had made a promise to him and it wouldn’t be right not to keep it.
I told Idrys about the boat when we were practising my steps outside and he promised me that a good strong boy could make it across the water. Henri was a good strong boy if ever I’d seen one, but I took little comfort in the old Welshman’s words. I didn’t even need to step into his head; there was something behind his thoughtful eyes that told me he was worried for Henri too. I threw all my efforts into reaching thirty paces, which was about the distance from the edge of the field to the nearest tree, but I got stuck at twenty nine, my energy sapping away until I actually did collapse on the grass.
It had been three days since Henri went to sea when my aching body dropped into the long warm grass, spent from my futile efforts. Twenty nine steps weren’t enough to reach him. Nothing was enough to reach him until the beastly sea let him go. Idrys rushed over to me and made to help me up, but I waved him off, looking up at the tree I had almost reached as my eyes began to water. He looked down on me, his bushy brow furrowed in concern.
“Just leave me,” I sobbed, “I’m tired of this.”
“Don’t be daft,” he said, crouching down to scoop me up in his hefty arms, “You’re doing great, you are. Don’t be giving up now eh? Not when you’re so close.”
I lay limp and upset in his grip as he took me slowly back to my chair, shaking my head.
“Everything’ll come right soon,” he promised, and I knew he didn’t just mean for me.
That night I went to bed feeling sure that Henri’s crossing would be over, readying myself to congratulate him on a mission well completed. He’d told me it would take about three days if conditions were good. I suspected that they weren’t good from the brief glimpses of the crashing waves and hellish winds I had witnessed when I checked on him, but I was still hopeful that the boat might have kept to its timescale. I settled in my cosy bed trying to ignore the anxious pounding in my chest, focusing on Henri as hard as I could.
Everything was black, like it sometimes was if I had caught him sleeping.
Henri? Henri wake up, it’s me.
Nothing happened. The world stayed black. I could feel someone breathing, but I couldn’t tell if it was him or me. There was no movement of body, no light, no noise.
Henri, I pressed, pushing harder and louder into his head. Henri please wake up. Please!
I tried time and again but there was no reply. I came back to my own head to check nothing was wrong with me then tried Henri again, but found myself in the same blackness as before. I panicked then, sitting up in bed and throwing all my splints off with a mighty crash. He was hurt; I just knew it, knocked out or something. I swung myself to the edge of the bed, tears flowing down my face. Or worse still, he was gone. He had warned me about the dangers he would have to face; perhaps this was what he really meant when he said he didn’t want me to suffer.
He didn’t want me there in case I felt him die.
In spite of any weakness I leapt to my feet, racing on wild limbs to the nearby wash basin to throw up. I hadn’t even realised that I had made the walk without aids until after I had spewed my guts out, crying and heaving into the bowl. The door burst open and a second later I felt Mam’s warm hands on my shoulders as she guided me to sit and wiped my face. I could hardly communicate with her I was crying so much, which didn’t really matter because I couldn’t have possibly explained what had made me so upset. When my chest finally finished heaving I began to hear her soothing words.
“There, there, love,” Mam said in her sing-song lilt, “Bad dream was it?”
I just nodded, feeling hollow. I grimaced at the horrid taste in my mouth and Mam fetched me some water. When I tried to sip it my hands shook out of all control.
“Oh dear,” Mam said quietly, “I hope you’re not getting sick, not with your b
irthday the day after tomorrow.”
I didn’t care about my birthday any more, not if I couldn’t hear Henri wish me many happy returns.
***
My sixteenth birthday began with the news that conflict had broken out in North Africa. The wicked war that had engulfed the whole of Europe was expanding to other continents now; I had a horrid feeling that no place on Earth would be left untouched before it was through. It had already gotten to me, that was for sure. I tried in vain the whole morning of the day before to reach Henri again, but every time I sank into the horrific blackness where his mind used to be it only cut away another part of my heart, so that in the end I became terrified to try again, since every visit only cemented my grief at losing him.
Mam still thought I was sick so she was being very tolerant about me crying all the time, tactfully ignoring it in that special way of hers. Idrys tried to take me out to practice my walking but I refused to go, even after he tried to persuade me that Henri was probably just unconscious. He didn’t know that for sure, he couldn’t possibly know that; I thought it was cruel to give me that kind of hope. In the end he gave up trying and just held my hand quietly for a while as Mam started to prattle on about the arrangements for my celebration.
“Now we’ll set up the big tables in the field between yur and the barn, you’ll do that Da,” she said to Idrys, who just nodded, “And Blod can lay the table up for nine of us.”
“Nine?” I said in a broken voice. If I was going to be made to suffer through a birthday garden party, I at least wanted to know the guest list.
“You, me, Bampi, Leighton, Blod, Ness, the two farm boys,” Mam began, hesitating a moment, “and Doctor Bickerstaff.”
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