by K. C. Finn
“Smashing,” Idrys said, “Then you’ve got what you need. Now go back to normal so you can save your strength for later.”
He was right of course, and when I got back into my own mind I could feel the toll the new type of journey had taken on my already weak frame. Now I really wished I had been able to sleep better in the daytime. I cradled my tired head and wiped my eyes as Idrys came back to sit beside me.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said quietly, “It might be a lot harder in the dark when the minds belong to strangers. And in Norway too, it’s a bit different to two rooms away, isn’t it?”
Idrys reached out and patted my shoulder with a smile.
“I don’t know a lot about this psychic lark,” he said gently, “but I do know a thing or two about life. And life is about belief. If you’ve got belief in yourself, you’ve got a chance of doing great things.”
I nodded, wanting desperately to believe him. But if life had taught me anything so far it was that my body had a habit of ruining all my chances at doing things, great or not. What was there to suggest that it wouldn’t let me down now too, when I needed it most? Idrys didn’t need psychic powers to sense my hesitance. He gave my shoulder another squeeze.
“This boy Henri, you care about him, don’t you?”
“Of course,” I said, a tiny smile creeping into my lips, “We’re friends. He said he really needs a friend.”
“Then you’ll do your best for him, won’t you?” Idrys pressed. I nodded fiercely. “Then I think you’ll do fine. Now sit back and relax and I’ll give you the rest of my advice.” He let go of my shoulder but I felt all the heavier, laden with the new responsibilities of my gift.
***
The clock on my bedside table was lit by moonlight as the rest of Ty Gwyn slept. When it was nearing the time that Henri had set, I got to work unstrapping myself from the night splints that Mam had returned to me earlier that night. Nothing would get in the way of this mission; no torturous device from some evil doctor’s mind would weaken me when I took my mind to Norway tonight. By the time I’d gotten the wicked things off I was ready to lie back and concentrate hard on finding Henri. I did my best to relax and be comfortable, freeing my body and mind from every distraction.
In moments I could see a damp grassy space in front of me in the dark. The wind howled as Henri shivered and there were many whispered voices around him talking in Norwegian. He was rubbing his hands together and taking furtive glances around at the murmuring group. They were all young men like him; some looked even younger than me, their faces contorted with worry in the dark.
Henri, it’s me.
I knew by the jolt of surprise in his heart that he had heard me, but otherwise he didn’t so much as flinch. I realised then that he wouldn’t be able to just talk to me in English with a dozen other boys around him.
Listen, I have some advice from an old solider. Can you hear me ok?
He nodded very slowly, so slowly that the other boys would probably have thought he was stretching his neck.
Right, I began, trying to remember exactly what Idrys had said, you should put your socks on outside your shoes so that you make less noise when you’re running.
I felt Henri break into a smile. He whispered in his own language to the other lads as he began to unlace his shoes. Everyone else quickly followed suit.
And rip anything off your clothes that’s dangling or loose so it doesn’t get caught on fences or wires, I continued.
Henri spoke again to his cohorts as they were taking their socks off. One of them gave him a huge smile and patted Henri on the shoulder. I felt that familiar swell of pride in Henri’s chest as he checked his clothes for loose bits.
And this was the most important one, I said, No lights, not even a cigarette, not even if you think there’s no Germans around. There could be sentries anywhere with guns, if they see a light where it ought not to be, they might just shoot for it.
Idrys had been very specific about that one; he had lost friends in the first war in that way. Henri gulped hard and did his slow nod again before addressing the boys one last time. When they had finished fumbling with their clothes, one of the elder boys took Henri off to the side, crouching with him in the wet grass. The older fellow spoke to him quickly and sharply, pointing with a flat hand off into the darkness. Then he gave him a hard clap on the shoulder and returned to the group, leaving Henri stooped alone in the black night.
What was that about? I pressed.
Henri gulped again. “They said I’m good with ideas, so they want me to distract the guards whilst they start the run.”
That didn’t sound good. My expert advice from Idrys had made Henri the least likely to get away safely now, but I wasn’t prepared to accept that.
You take me to the guards and I’ll do the rest, I promised.
There were four large German soldiers standing sentry at the border point the boys had chosen. Painted signs in both German and Norwegian glowed occasionally in the reflection of the soldiers’ flashlights as they ambled back and forth aimlessly. They were young men, not much older than the boys trying to escape the city, and they were clearly bored beyond belief of being on guard duty. Henri was laid flat on the wet grass about ten feet from the nearest soldier where the wire fence ended to leave a space for cars to pass through. The most thickset of the four guards was training his flashlight on that gap, staring intently into nothingness whilst the other three smoked and talked.
Choose your moment carefully, I told Henri, my own nerves raging as wildly as his thumping heart, That big silent guard is about to have a very funny turn.
“Good luck.” Henri mouthed it so quietly I couldn’t be sure he’d even said it.
Keep looking at the guard for me.
I focused hard on the quiet man, glancing from his meaty hands gripping the light to his small, piggy eyes cast into shadow. I tried to imagine the mind numbing boredom he was feeling, the sheer pointlessness of standing in the damp, dark night with three other blokes that he probably didn’t like very much, judging by the discontented curl on one side of his fat pink lip. I could feel his lip curling, and suddenly I felt terribly hungry. My vision was staring into the gap in the pass, following the beam of the flashlight. My flashlight. In my meaty hand.
Mission accomplished, but the real work was next. My distraction of choice was a tried and tested method; I had done it to Leighton plenty of times when I first got the hang of my gift, back before I realised how cruel it was to frighten my little brother like that. But my childish prank had not been in vain, for now it would give Henri the chance to escape.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I buzzed like a bee, hard and loud and right into the centre of the guard’s mind. He jumped immediately as I’d hoped he would, dropping the flashlight. It rolled away leaving the gap in total darkness. The guard fell about wildly grabbing at his ears, batting them with his huge hands as he tried desperately to flush the imaginary creature from his eardrum.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I let my inner child take over, the buzzing grew wilder and louder still. The guard threw his gun off his shoulder and cried out which attracted the attention of the other three men. I grew dizzy as the meaty guard ran around in circles with his hands over his ears, staring at the dark ground. He ran up away from the pass in the opposite direction to Henri, along the fence a little until he turned, crying to his fellow soldiers to help him as he sank to the ground.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
He looked up then, jumping up again frantically, and I saw all three of the others racing towards him. The sternest looking of them was shouting at the top of his voice. The other two were in fits of laughter; one of them had even retrieved a camera, but was laughing so much he couldn’t focus it. Not one of them still had hold of a flashlight as they crowded around the now-cowering guard I was occupying. My view of the pass was completely obscured, but that meant theirs was too.
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Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I let the imaginary bee loose one last time in the meaty guard’s mind; he was screaming so loudly that a hundred boys could have run through the pass unnoticed. The stern soldier leant over to grab the distressed guard by the shoulders. He shook us violently, making me feel sick as he dug his hands sharply into the guard’s biceps, shouting over the screams to make his orders heard.
I stopped buzzing. The guard took a deep breath, his eyes clouded with water. He was shaking and breathing out ragged sobs. The laughing pair had finally gotten their act together to take an embarrassing photograph of him; the stern one shouted at them both when he saw the flashbulb go off behind his head. I receded gently back from the congealed humiliation building in the guard’s stomach, thinking instead of Henri and hoping that he’d taken the right moment to dash by.
When I found him he was streaking across the pitch black fields, glancing behind him to the patrol and the soldiers. Another flash of the camera told me he was already a considerable distance away from them; the bulb was little more than a firefly sized burst. His feet fell heavily into the grass but the socks over his shoes dulled each leap into a tiny thud. I could feel every muscle in his strong body raging as he pressed on in the darkness and slowly I saw the shadowed forms of the rest of the boys running in a pack just ahead of him.
Well? I asked loudly over the sound of Henri’s thudding heart. Did I do all right?
“You. Were. Amazing,” he panted, half laughing and half gasping for air.
The cold shiver I knew only too well began to creep up the back of my spine and though I wanted desperately to stay with Henri until he reached the other lads, I knew my energy was spent.
I have to go, I said sadly, but I’ll come back as soon as I can.
“Tomorrow,” Henri gasped, “Promise me, tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, I replied as the feel of his charging heart faded away.
Every time I visited Henri in the next few days he made me promise that I would come back tomorrow, which was actually not an easy promise to keep in a house full of unpredictable Welsh women. When Idrys was visiting he helped me to make excuses to get peace and quiet, but when he wasn’t there I often had to retire to bed early to be undisturbed, pretending that I was tired or had a headache. Mam was starting to think that I was ill, which could only mean that a visit to beastly Bickerstaff was looming on the horizon and he was the last person I wanted to see. After about a week of visiting Henri for only five or ten minutes at a time I decided enough was enough. There was only one way to get peace from Ty Gwyn, and that was to get out of Ty Gwyn.
I needed to walk. I needed to get as far as the bank of the stream or to one of the trees where I could sit undisturbed and pretend to be taking in the fresh air. I told Henri of the plan early one night when I had feigned tired eyes and escaped to my room.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” he murmured, “Didn’t you say the strain makes you ill for days?”
He was standing on the side of a large hill looking out at a stunning pink sunset. The lads were making camp every night in some secluded part of the mountains as they moved nearer to their target, but Ol, their self-appointed leader, had told Henri it would be almost the end of May before they could get where they were going. Every time I went to him I saw a new, stunning view from the higher altitudes of Norway and it often made me wonder how much he would miss that kind of beauty when he eventually made it to the rain-drenched shores of Northern Scotland.
We don’t know that for sure, I argued, Bickerstaff pushed me too hard. If I do it at my own pace I might be fine.
“Or you might not,” he added. It was hard to tell what was actual worry and what was just shivering in his chest from the cold evening air.
Have a little faith in me, I said sadly.
Henri put his hands up to his chapped lips and rubbed them gently.
“Since this war began, you are the only thing I’ve had faith in. Sometimes I still wake up afraid that you’re not real.”
Perhaps when you make it to Britain I can prove to you that I’m real.
It was a thought I’d been harbouring ever since Henri had told me his plan to get to Scotland. When I wasn’t with Henri I often let doubts creep in, like doubts about whether he would ever want to meet me if he did make it across the sea. But, here with him, when he said such meaningful things, it didn’t seem quite so impossible to believe that he would.
I felt him smiling even though it cracked his sore lip. “How far will it be from Scotland to North Wales?” he asked. There was no hiding the elation in my voice when I replied.
***
The huge wooden crutches that Bickerstaff had tried me on had been sitting in the corner of my bedroom ever since the fever. It was a bright warm Sunday after chapel when Idrys wheeled me outside whilst Leighton struggled along with the crutches, dragging their pointed ends across the cobbles of the farmyard. We found a soft patch of grass at the edge of one of the fields; it was a space I knew from my psychic travels, the place where the teenage farm boys threw their love notes up at Blod’s window. When I glanced up at the window I saw Ness’s little face peeping out at us with interest, thankfully Blod wasn’t there to witness my struggling.
“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.
&n
bsp; “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.
