When We Were Warriors

by Emma Carroll

  There was no sign of her in the water any more.

  ‘June!’ Stan yelled, spinning around, looking everywhere. ‘June!’

  He felt sick that they were too late, that she’d already gone under. Scrambling down the bank, he stood shin deep in the water, gasping at the coldness of it.

  ‘No, buddy.’ Eddie dropped down beside him. ‘I need you to wait on the bank.’

  About sixty feet out on the lake, the water stirred. June bobbed to the surface, spluttering, coughing, doing a very weak doggy paddle.

  ‘June!’ Stan yelled in relief. ‘It’s going to be all right! I’m coming to get you!’

  ‘Give me that.’ Eddie gestured to the rope slung over his shoulder.

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ Stan asked.

  ‘What you’re going to do is tie it round one of those trees, and when I say so, pull like I’m a big old fish on a line.’

  ‘But she’s my sister!’ Stan argued. ‘And I’m a really good swimmer!’

  Eddie held out his hand for the rope. There wasn’t time to discuss it. Being a soldier, Eddie would have training in survival stuff and know what he was doing. And there was the simple fact that he was far bigger and stronger than Stan.

  ‘Hurry up, then,’ Stan muttered, giving him the rope.

  Eddie surged away into the deeper water. ‘Miss?’ he called, hands cupped to his mouth. ‘I’m coming to get you, okay?’

  Climbing back up on to the bank, his feet squelching in his shoes, Stan found the nearest tree and wrapped his end of the rope around it. That done, all he could do now was wait for the signal to pull.

  It was scarier, somehow, watching from the bank. Though Eddie powered through the water with a strong front crawl, June kept sinking beneath the surface. It was like she was drunk with cold. Gritting his teeth, Stan willed Eddie on. Inch by very slow inch, as he got closer to June, the rope that connected them unravelled at Stan’s feet.

  ‘Hold on, June!’ he yelled encouragingly. ‘Eddie’ll get you out, don’t worry!’

  He kept shouting, repeating it like a stuck record. And it did the trick because June was now getting cross.

  ‘Shut up! Stop fussing!’ she cried as her head bobbed above the water.

  Once Eddie reached her, he tied the rope around her chest, his cold fingers fumbling at the knot.

  ‘I’m going to pull,’ he told June. ‘And Stan’s going to pull too, got it?’

  Stan nodded. Grabbing the rope, he wound it round his hands, gripping as tight as he could.

  Out in the water, though, June started struggling. She was trying to undo Eddie’s knot and pushing him away.

  ‘No!’ she shouted, and something else that sounded like, ‘Not me!’

  Each time she tried to speak her mouth filled with water. She was weakening too, sinking, then floating. Stan was pretty sure this wasn’t meant to happen, and it scared him. Eddie, who was trying to calm her down, finally lost his patience.

  ‘Cut it out, miss, I want to help!’ he cried.

  ‘Don’t save me!’ June shouted.

  But Eddie waved to Stan to start pulling. He dug his heels into the ground, heaving so hard he was practically on his back. A whoosh in the water. Eddie, dragging June, was coming in fast to the bank.

  When they were in water shallow enough to stand, June slumped against Eddie. Her legs were too weak to hold her, so he carried her the rest of the way, before putting her down on the bank. Stan, weak himself from pulling so hard, let go of the rope and rushed over. He took off his sweater and put it round June’s shoulders. She was shivering violently.

  Eddie made her get to her feet. ‘You need to warm up, miss. Keep moving. Get the blood flowing.’

  ‘Thaaa …’ June tried to protest but her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn’t get her words out. She still couldn’t stand, either.

  ‘Shouldn’t we get help?’ Stan asked worriedly. ‘Or take her back to the house?’

  Eddie, shaking the water off himself, nodded towards the path. ‘Looks like the house is coming to us.’

  Sure enough, a crowd of people were hurrying towards them along the path: the other GIs, Miss Potter, Miss Barrington, Gladys the horse, Mr Potter, and with him, hanging on to his arm, Tilly. Even the sausage dogs, little Lobelia included, were bounding over the grass.

  On reaching them, everyone crowded round. June was wrapped in blankets and given brandy from Miss Potter’s flask. The relief that his sister was safe made Stan’s limbs turn to jelly. He was exhausted. But as Mr Potter and Eddie tried to get her up on to Gladys to take her back to the house, she struggled to speak again, her voice thick and slurred with cold.

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘It’s not just me! Please! You have to listen!’

  Stan was bewildered. ‘What’s she trying to tell us? What’s happened?’

  It was Tilly who finally understood, the colour draining from her face. ‘Oh heck, someone’s still in the water.’

  There couldn’t be; the surface of the lake was empty. Unless the person was under the water …

  Stan’s first thought was Clive. He’d said he was coming here, hadn’t he? He must’ve got to the lake first, and been already swimming when June arrived.

  So why then was Clive on the bank with the others, looking shaken up but completely dry and warm?

  Stan’s heart stopped.

  The one person he couldn’t see was Maggie.

  *

  Blocking out shouts of ‘Stay back!’, ‘Don’t be stupid!’, ‘Someone stop him!’, he half crawled, half scrambled into the lake. Behind him, Stan was aware of other people throwing themselves into the water. He was fastest, though. The cold made him catch his breath, but he kept kicking until he was at least as far out as June had been.

  Beneath him the water was black. He couldn’t see anything down there: it was like staring into a witch’s cauldron. He was aware of the cold seeping through his shirt. His knees in their short trousers had already gone numb. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Eddie inching towards him, demanding he go back to the bank and leave it to the adults.

  Stan didn’t listen. Pinching his nose, he took a few short, sharp breaths. Kicking up with his feet, he dived under with his eyes wide open, going down and down into darkness. It wasn’t pitch-black, but a swirling, soupy brown that smelled of mud and was so cold it felt like someone was squeezing his brain in a vice. He despaired at finding Maggie in this.

  Instinct took over. He swam in gentle strokes that didn’t use too much energy. As the seconds ticked by, his lungs began to fold up. He imagined them like those funny paper shapes June made to tell her friends who they were going to marry. That was how his brain was working: it was slowing down, relaxing.

  He grew calmer with it. And instead of seeing nothing but darkness, the water grew lighter, so light, in fact, it was almost like gloomy daylight, and queer as anything.

  Queerest of all was seeing Maggie coming towards him.

  She couldn’t swim – none of them had taught her yet. Yet here she was, gliding through the water like a fish, even though she still wore her school pinafore and black lace-up shoes.

  Stan didn’t know what to do. What it meant.

  Had he got to her in time? Were they both dead? In Tilly’s story Kit Barrington’s ghost saved her life; was Maggie about to save his?

  Well, he didn’t want that to be their story. There were enough ghosts here at Frost Hollow Hall, and he didn’t want to join them.

  Grabbing Maggie’s hand, he started paddling upwards. She tried to let go. Shaking her head and clawing at his arm, she was pointing back down to the lake bed, where he could see a blade, an ice skate – the right-footed one, it must be – glinting in the mud. He kept swimming. She was fighting, trying to drag him back to the skate. Oh, how he wished he’d left that wretched thing in the cupboard.

  Above them, the water churned with people reaching down to grab them. Someone seized Stan’s shirt and pulled. They both shot up, Maggie and him, ou
t of the water, into the daylight. On the bank, Stan lay back, exhausted. All he could think was how warm the grass felt beneath him.

  Maggie, though, was sick all over Mr Potter’s shoes.

  11

  It took days to warm up again, longer still to get the smell of lake out of their hair and the mud from under their fingernails. As Tilly’s cottage was cosier, she offered to look after Stan and his sisters until they’d recovered. All three siblings shared a small back bedroom, which was exactly how Stan had wanted things from the start. It meant squeezing into one bed, but listening to Maggie’s snoring, or waking up with June’s feet in his face, was a small price to pay.

  On that very first night, when they were still shivery and weak and tucked up in bed, he and June finally cleared the air.

  ‘You shouldn’t have let Maggot come with you. You knew she couldn’t swim,’ Stan said. He didn’t want to make June feel guilty, but he was trying to be more direct because that was how she often spoke to him.

  ‘I know.’ June hung her head. ‘It was stupid of me. All I was thinking about was finding that bloomin’ ice skate.’

  ‘The game was a crummy idea anyway,’ Stan said. ‘It was just an excuse for Clive Spencer to show off.’

  ‘It was my idea too,’ June pointed out.

  ‘And I won the first dare,’ Maggie added sleepily.

  June sighed. She smoothed out the bedclothes in a way that meant she had something important to say. ‘You know who the winner was in the end, though, don’t you?’

  Stan didn’t.

  ‘You.’ She sounded almost sheepish. ‘You did the most daring thing out of all of us – and for the best reasons too.’

  ‘But I didn’t think, either,’ he insisted, feeling himself go red. ‘I just wanted Maggot to be safe and you to stop being angry.’

  June went quiet. Between them, Maggie started to snore.

  ‘It’s better to be careful than be stupid,’ June said quietly. ‘You were right to worry about Mum that night, when she couldn’t stop coughing. You didn’t know a bomb was going to drop on us – you were just caring for Mum, that was all. You’re a very decent brother – the best, in fact. I’m sorry I’ve been such a cow.’

  Stan blinked. His sister had never apologised for anything. Though she didn’t mention their brother Donnie by name, he knew what she was trying to say.

  He couldn’t remember hearing her talk in such a thoughtful way. He liked it – just as much, if not more than the bold brave June who didn’t back down from anything.

  He felt the need to explain himself too. ‘I know I get scared and I’m not tough like you, but after today, well, maybe scared people can be brave sometimes, if they have to be, I mean.’

  ‘Too right they can,’ June agreed.

  *

  The next day Eddie came to say goodbye. Now the truck had been fixed, the Americans were on their way to the south coast, though no one was supposed to know that. Waving away Tilly’s offer of tea and a currant bun, Eddie said he’d just wanted to check the children were recovering. It was true – but only partly. And Tilly sensed it.

  ‘I’d like a word with you myself,’ she said, and made him take a seat by the fire.

  Poor Eddie couldn’t keep still. It was bizarre to see the same soldier who’d dived into a lake and rescued his sister, now struggling to be brave. Stan and his sisters crammed themselves into the nearest armchair, desperate to hear what this was all about.

  ‘So, young man, what I want to know is how your grandmother knew about Kit Barrington,’ Tilly said.

  Eddie held up his hands. ‘You got me, ma’am. I’d better start from the beginning. It wasn’t an accident, I’m afraid I deliberately crashed the truck outside Frost Hollow Hall.’

  ‘Wowsers!’ Stan whistled. So Lalit was right, after all – he couldn’t wait to tell him.

  Tilly glared at Eddie. ‘Why the heck would anyone drive a truck into a ditch on purpose? Are you sure you’re right in the head, young man?’

  She didn’t mince her words, and Stan almost laughed. But he saw the beads of sweat on Eddie’s brow. The poor chap really was nervous.

  ‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone,’ he pleaded.

  They all nodded.

  ‘Scout’s honour,’ Stan added, saluting.

  ‘I had to come here, to see you, Tilly. But they wouldn’t have allowed it if I’d asked,’ Eddie explained. ‘As we were heading south on an exercise, and I knew this place wasn’t far away, well, I said I’d do the driving and—’

  Eddie stopped to reach down into his kitbag. He pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper, then took a very deep breath. ‘This is why I came to Frost Hollow Hall.’

  What he gave Tilly looked the size and shape of a pot of jam. It was kind of him, Stan supposed. Yet he couldn’t see why Eddie would fake an accident just to bring jam when Tilly probably had loads of it in her larder already.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tilly, who seemed to be thinking the same. ‘Ta very much.’

  As she started to unwrap it, Eddie grew jumpier than ever. It was making Stan feel edgy now too.

  ‘I’d better explain,’ Eddie blurted out. ‘My name is Edward Johnson. My grandmother, on my mother’s side, is called Eliza.’

  Tilly’s hands went still.

  ‘Who’s Eliza?’ June hissed in Stan’s ear, but he didn’t know, either.

  Eddie hurried on. ‘My grandmother came to America in the spring of 1881, so she tells me. She arrived in New York with her father – he was your father too, wasn’t he, Tilly?’

  Stan’s mouth fell open. Crikey, Eliza must be the sister Tilly hadn’t spoken to in over sixty years. Even for him, it was a shock.

  ‘My mother gave me Kit Barrington’s middle name – Edward.’ Eddie kept talking, getting into his stride. ‘She never forgot what my grandmother told her about him rescuing you from the lake. I grew up hearing that story, time and time again. And so you see, Tilly, you’re my family too – my great-aunt – and I sure as heck wanted to meet you.’

  As Eddie told her this, Tilly’s face was like a hillside on a sunny day when clouds are racing overhead: the colour of it, the mood, kept changing. Stan found it rather hard to watch.

  ‘My sister – your grandmother,’ Tilly said shakily, ‘left our village all those years ago without a thought for anyone but herself. She lured my father away from me, don’t you see? In bettering her own life, she broke my mother’s heart into little pieces, and trampled all over mine.’

  There wasn’t much anyone could say to that, though June tried. ‘Being cross with someone doesn’t feel very nice, not forever.’

  But Stan could see it from Tilly’s side too. Sixty years was a very long time not to speak to someone. She probably wouldn’t even recognise Eliza any more, let alone know what to say to her.

  In her lap still was the jar-shaped gift, which she half-heartedly began picking at again.

  ‘Eliza wanted it to come back to you, where it belonged,’ Eddie said rather cryptically.

  With the wrappings finally off, Tilly held up a brass pot with an inscription on the side. It wasn’t like any jar of jam Stan had ever seen.

  ‘What is it, Tilly?’ Maggie asked, eyes like saucers. ‘Is it treasure?’

  As she turned the pot over in her hands, there was a moment – a lighting up – when Tilly seemed to realise what it was.

  ‘No, lovey,’ she replied, in a voice that shook. ‘It’s worth more to me than treasure.’

  Very slowly, very carefully, she placed it between them on the table. The pot was small, plain, with a screw-on lid. Stan had once seen something similar when his gran died. Mum kept it under her bed – had kept it under the bed. He recognised it as a pot that contained a dead person’s ashes.

  ‘Will!’ Tilly was now on her feet, wiping her hands in her skirt and calling to Mr Potter in the kitchen. ‘Get in here, can you?’

  He appeared in the doorway. ‘What’s the matter, dear?’

  Tilly pointed to
the jar. ‘My sister sent him back to me, Will. All these years Eliza had Pa all to herself. Now, at last, she’s sent him home again.’

  There were lots of tears – happy ones, mostly. When Eddie left, he scribbled down Eliza’s address and gave it to Tilly.

  ‘I’m glad to have met my English family, ma’am,’ he said, touching his cap. ‘Your sister’s a strong woman.’

  Tilly laughed. ‘Yes, she is that.’ Then she took Eddie’s hand. ‘And you, my great-nephew, are a credit to Kit’s name.’

  Afterwards, when Mr Potter mentioned he had a writing pad upstairs and did she want it, Tilly said she’d think about it, which after sixty years of silence was probably a start.

  *

  A week or so later, Stan, June and Maggie were considered well enough to rejoin the others at the hall. Before they left, Tilly took Stan to one side.

  ‘You didn’t see anyone under the water that day, did you?’ she asked, searching his face. ‘A boy, I mean, in a white shirt?’

  Understanding what she was getting at, Stan shook his head. ‘There weren’t any ghosts down there, I promise.’

  ‘Thank goodness.’ Tilly relaxed a little.

  ‘I saw the ice skate, though. Right down at the bottom it was, sunk into the mud.’

  ‘You didn’t touch it, did you?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘No, I left it where it was.’

  Tilly sighed. Patted his arm. ‘You’re a good lad, Stan. I just want Kit Barrington to rest in peace, that’s all.’

  ‘Something odd did happen, mind you,’ Stan admitted. ‘It was almost light down there, far more than you’d expect water at that depth to be. And Maggie was swimming, even though she doesn’t know how to, and I felt really calm. I can’t describe it, but it was pretty strange.’