by S Block
‘So, she has never actually told you what you’ve just told me? It’s just supposition on your part?’
‘Informed supposition.’
‘I see,’ said Teresa as flatly as she could manage.
‘I suspect that’s why I’ve always thought of her more in terms of being a pal than anything else. We got on famously from the off, but not in a boy–girl way.’
‘No?’
‘I’ve never had that feeling with Annie, ever. If you add it all up it makes sense.’
Teresa nodded sagely, trying to look as if she were weighing Nick’s words carefully. Inside, a worry had started to nag at her.
If Nick can spot Annie, how long will it be before he’ll spot me? No, stop. Think. He’s spent far more time with me than with her. If I was giving him anything to notice he would have noticed by now. Calm down. Don’t panic. Unless . . . he thinks he’s noticed something but isn’t certain.
Teresa struggled to stop her imagination from running away with itself.
It may be easier to detect in the mess. Boys and girls together. Heightened emotions. Everyone copping off with one another in the heat of the moment. Why wouldn’t I be good at pretending to be a normal wife? At a certain level, teaching a class full of children is a performance of sorts. You have to stand in front of a room full of children every day and persuade them your word is law, regardless of how you might be feeling.
Teresa gathered herself together, at least long enough to see Nick off. He needed to return to Tabley Wood for a briefing about the ongoing search for the missing German pilot. The local forces were coming under pressure from London to find the aviator dead or alive, and bring the matter to a close. The longer something like this went on, the more it chopped away at the population’s faith in authority, which was bad for morale.
Disturbed from her own slumber, Teresa rubbed her eyes and turned to look at Annie. The sight of the young pilot covered in plaster and bandages raised a lump in her throat. Every other time she had seen Annie she had seemed invulnerable. The sight of her now, her life brought to the precipice, reversed that. In a single moment of miscalculation Annie had become the most vulnerable person Teresa had ever known.
She could yet die. The doctors may have missed something. Or made a mistake.
Teresa reached out, gently took Annie’s warm hand in hers and held it tightly, hoping to communicate some sense of solidarity, companionship, support through her touch. Teresa looked closely at Annie’s swollen, bandaged face to see if she was conscious, but there was no sign. Just a great deal of swelling and bruising.
Teresa looked round the rest of the ward. Mostly men. All asleep. She looked back at Annie and shuffled her chair closer.
‘You need to be careful. Nick knows about you,’ she said softly. ‘Or thinks he does. But then, short of telling people, you’ve never really hidden it, have you? Not like me. It’s what I admired about you from the moment I first saw you. Unashamed. You have to pull through, Annie. You simply must.’
Even now, smashed and discoloured as she was, Annie’s refinement somehow managed to shine through. Teresa suddenly felt compelled to kiss the unconscious young woman. She looked round the ward, and then towards the door. No one was looking.
What if someone sees?
Teresa sighed and sat back in the chair. Annie’s fingers started to tighten around her own. Teresa looked down at her hand and then at Annie’s face. Her eyes were closed. She looked round the ward a second time, then leaned forward, closed her eyes and pressed her lips against Annie’s, feeling their warmth and softness. As she lifted her face to take a breath Teresa was shocked to see that Annie’s eyes were open, looking at her.
‘Well done,’ Annie mumbled. ‘Don’t stop . . .’
Chapter 62
Steph Farrow was in the farmhouse preparing supper for herself, Little Stan and Isobel. Bryn always gave her a little ‘extra’ meat on top of her ration in exchange for a few extra eggs every week, and she was cutting it into strips for a stew. It was usually while preparing supper that Steph felt closest to her husband, Stan. She wondered where his regiment was, and what plans were being made for him by High Command. She wondered how he was faring with the physical side of being back in the army. Stan was extremely strong, but his muscles had been developed and fine-tuned for farm work, not for racing across open land, or crawling through ditches, avoiding shells and bullets. He was thickset and brawny.
An easy target.
She knew Stan would be taking the younger men – especially the conscripts – under his wing, building their confidence, allaying their fears. He had told her once that most soldiers lost their nerve before going into action, and the younger ones saw it as a cause of shame. He told them it was proof they’d put themselves on the line. When Little Stan was a boy and afraid to jump into the dark waters of Deer Park Mere, Stan told him, ‘Bravery isn’t having no fear. It’s overcoming it’. It worked, and Little Stan learned to swim that day.
So proud of him, we were. Stan carried him all the way home on his shoulders.
Steph looked out of the kitchen window and could just about make out the figure of her son in Bottom Field. Farmers had been advised not to work alone while the German pilot was at large, but the authorities had checked all the buildings of Farrow farm, with no sign of disturbance or anything out of place.
Most of the farmers round here think he’s long gone.
Though Steph had double-checked the henhouse before sending Isobel in to collect any eggs the chickens had laid during the day.
Little Stan was repairing the wall in Bottom Field, following the dry-stone method his father had taught him, filling any holes carefully, judging how to knit small stones with large to make a structure strong enough to withstand any weather, or livestock trying to rub away an itch. The light was beginning to wane and he reckoned on remaining out for no longer than five or ten more minutes. The ground was soft and wet underfoot. The previous day’s deluge had left the ground sodden, before being blown east.
Little Stan looked forward to supper and then an evening stretched out in front of the parlour fire. His mind drifted to his father’s whereabouts. He revisited images of military campaigns from newsreels he’d watched in the village hall, implanting his father into various acts of derring-do. He longed to join up himself, but Steph had forbidden it.
‘I’m not planning on losing one man from this family,’ she’d told him, ‘let alone two.’
By the time Little Stan started to pack away his tools he was standing in the penumbral gloom between the still-light field and the darkness of the wood. He had picked up the tool bag and turned for home when he heard a small click behind him. If it had been the low snap of a twig under the foot of a fox or badger Little Stan would barely have registered the noise. But this was more subtle, mechanical, like a lever of some sort being carefully moved into position. He had started to turn back towards the wood when he heard two words in a foreign language.
‘Hände hoch.’
The voice was low and firm and German.
Little Stan recognised the instruction from comics he’d read, and films he’d seen about the first war.
Hands up.
A tingle went from the very top of his head to the soles of his feet, as his body suddenly flushed with adrenaline.
‘Hände hoch,’ came the command a second time. ‘Jetzt.’
Little Stan dropped the tool bag, slowly raised his arms and turned to find himself facing a young German man, no more than a year or two older than himself, pointing a pistol at him. He was about the same height as Little Stan, with similar sandy-coloured hair. The German’s hands were filthy, and the hand pointing the gun trembled with cold. A field dressing was wound around his head to staunch the flow of blood from an injury he’d suffered on landing.
‘Lebensmittel,’ the pilot said exhaustedly.
Little Stan frowned with incomprehension and the German repeated the word with added force, ‘Lebensmittel!’’
He followed this up with a brief mime of eating.
‘Hungrig.’
The pilot gestured with his gun that Little Stan should start walking towards the farmhouse.
‘Bleib ruhig. Ich werde dich nicht verletzen.’
Little Stan’s attempt to fathom what the German was saying to him suddenly gave way to the primal impulse to save himself by whatever means necessary. He gave out a loud yell to distract the pilot, and broke into a sprint across the field towards the farmhouse three hundred yards away. He could hear the German screaming incomprehensibly behind him. Little Stan looked desperately over his shoulder and saw the German gaining on him, holding his gun out in front of him. Little Stan was gripped by a mortal terror and began to scream for his mother as he ran.
‘Ma!’ he cried out at the very top of his lungs. ‘Ma! The Nazi! He’s here! Help me! Ma!’
For every syllable yelled by Little Stan for his mother to come and save him the German shouted four more to entreat him to shut his mouth.
But nothing and no one could have stopped Little Stan running for his life in that moment. The sight of the pilot over his shoulder, still gaining on him, condensed his screamed words into an incoherent shriek of desperation.
When he was within reach, the German pilot launched himself at Little Stan, bringing him crashing to the ground, covering them both in wet grass and mud. Little Stan was convinced he was about to be shot, and flailed his arms around to try to wrestle free of the pilot’s tight grip. The two young men tumbled across the pasture, each trying to gain supremacy over the other, each screaming words in a language the other didn’t understand. One moment, the pilot was on top of Little Stan, pinning him to the ground. The next, Little Stan threw him off and scrambled to his feet, only for the German to grab him by his legs, and pull him back down to the ground. Suddenly, the pilot was on top of Little Stan once more, pressing one hand over the Englishman’s mouth to prevent him from shouting out and giving away his location, and pointing his service revolver at his face with the other, all the while hissing at him in German to stop screaming.
The next moment brought a deafening gunshot.
With the report still ringing in her ears, Steph watched the pilot slump forward on top of her son. Almost immediately, her hands began to tremble, but she was unable to lower the shotgun. The muscles holding it had completely locked up. Momentarily shocked by the noise, Little Stan slowly turned his head and saw his mother standing ten feet from him, still aiming the shotgun at the motionless pilot.
‘St-St-Stanley?’ she said, unable to stop her teeth chattering from the adrenaline racing around her body.
‘Ma?’ he replied, sounding five years old again.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I . . . don’t think so.’
‘Come away, then.’
Little Stan took a deep breath, pushed the German off and ran to his mother. He looked at her, still holding the shotgun aloft, as if ready to shoot someone else.
‘He’s dead, Ma. Put the gun down. You killed him.’
‘Killed . . . ?’
Steph stayed in position for a few moments longer, then slowly forced her arms to lower the shotgun.
I killed him . . .
Mother and son stood and looked down at the dead German, now lying on his back, staring up at the first stars of the night. The pilot didn’t look dead at all, but relaxed. His arms were outstretched and his legs splayed. Unseen, underneath, his blood silently drained out of his body, and soaked into the soft English earth.
Little Stan stared at the pilot with awe.
‘Bloody Hell, Ma . . .’ he whispered, as if speaking louder might reawaken his assailant. ‘You’ve only gone and killed the bugger!’
Steph hadn’t moved from the spot since pulling the trigger. Her only thought had been ‘save Stanley’.
I have. Stanley’s alive, thank God.
Isobel had left the henhouse in response to the shotgun blast, and started calling for Steph from the farmyard. Little Stan turned towards her.
‘She’s killed him, Isobel!’ he shouted. ‘Ma killed the Kraut pilot! One bloody shot! Straight through his back! He was going to kill me, but Ma killed him first!’
He turned back to his mother, who was still staring at the pilot, and gazed at her with admiration.
‘Bloody hell.’
What have I done? Go back! Go back! Please, let me just go back sixty seconds!
But there was no going back.
The trigger had been pulled.
The blast had resounded across the field into the village, where some had mistaken the sound for something far more benign.
Steph had killed a human being, and everything had changed.
Go back!
As intensely as she wished it were possible, there was no way back from this moment. Only forward, into an increasingly uncertain future of truths and consequences.
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First published as an ebook in Great Britain in 2017 by Zaffre Publishing
80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE
www.zaffrebooks.co.uk
Copyright © Simon Block, 2017
Home Fires (television programme) © ITV Studios Limited 2015, 2016
Cover design by Alexandra Allden
All other photographs © Shutterstock.com
The moral right of Simon Block to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-49986-164-8
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