by Lydia Syson
It was quite silent now that he was looking. Just its warty old head was above water, staring right at him, you’d think, with those big eyes stuck on top. A real beauty. Big and fat and spotty and such a bright green. Ernest waited for a while to see if it would do that funny thing. If you were patient, they puffed out their cheeks like pale gray balloons, one on each side, qwarking away. Like a question. Or they’d burst out into loud laughter. Bre-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-keh. Gut Sewer was full of these new frogs.
They had escaped from Percy the Poet’s garden. That’s what his aunt had told him a few weeks previously, with a sharp sniff. Foreign frogs, she said, peering with great suspicion into a jar of spawn he’d just brought home. Those aren’t ours. She pursed her lips. Hungarian, if you please. At any rate that’s what she’d heard. Or was it Romanian? The point was that they were aliens. Invaders.
Peggy had come over to have a look, and she shook her head too.
“Can’t you see, Ernest? That’s not proper frogspawn. Just look at it.”
He’d wiped his glasses and looked more closely. And of course she was right. He’d wondered how he’d struck lucky so late in the year. There weren’t many eggs. And they were much lighter than usual, a sort of biscuity color, with far less of that jelly stuff all over them.
“It should never have been allowed,” Aunt Myra had said, with another sniff.
Ernest stood up and moved along the bank to the next cluster of willows, repeating the rules to himself. “THE ORDINARY MAN AND WOMAN MUST BE ON THE WATCH,” he said. Read these instructions carefully.
18
Peggy felt the heat of the sun on her hair, and a rivulet of sweat sliding down the skin of her back. She would take a different direction this time, she decided. You had to put people off the scent.
While she walked, Peggy worried. About the next meal. And the one after that. And of course the one after that too. She thought about the farmhouse larder. Its shelves usually began to fill this time of year. Aunt Myra had been pickling onions only last week. She’d amassed a small stockpile of sugar before it went on the ration, but she couldn’t go bottling fruit or making jam with her usual abandon. Nor could she stop complaining about the fact. June teased her about it, and got away with it. “Don’t you know there’s a war on, Mum?”
Across the fields Peggy noticed a heron poised over a dyke, still as a post. It watched the water below with a focus she envied. Fishing patiently. There was a thought. What about fish? That wasn’t rationed. Perhaps she could catch fish. But what would she find in these waters but eels, and how could she possibly cook fish, or stop it going smelly in this heat?
A splash of bright red moving beyond the willows interrupted the ebb and flow of her optimism.
“Ernest?” called Peggy. “Is that you down there?”
No answer.
“Ern?”
Her stomach cramped.
“Hello there. Just coming.” It was Ernest’s voice. The reeds parted and he came scrambling up the bank, reaching out a hand so she could haul him over the last bit.
“Thanks,” he said. And then he knelt down and started fiddling with his laces, although she could see they were perfectly tight already.
“Looking for frogs?” asked Peggy casually. She wanted very badly to talk about something normal and meaningless. “Did you find any? It’s getting a bit late, even for the new ones, isn’t it?”
“No, I was just getting stuff for Uncle Fred’s traps, actually.”
She watched as he began to polish his glasses furiously. So he was worrying about that again. She swallowed her impatience and made an effort to be constructive.
“Do you want me to ask if I can go instead of you? I honestly don’t mind.”
“Maybe. I don’t know …”
“Or is it the rabbiting you’re bothered about? Poor you. He does mean well. He doesn’t think you’re spoiled, or ‘over-sensitive.’ He thinks you’ve been deprived, you know, never having had a rook rifle of your own. Mum said he wanted to give you one when you turned eleven.”
“Really?” Ernest’s voice sounded dull.
“Dad didn’t like the idea at all. You can imagine.” She hadn’t really meant to mention their father. Ernest didn’t look at her though. You’d think he hadn’t heard a word she’d said, in fact.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea for you,” Peggy went on. “Say you’ll go shooting with him, and go along with it all, but then just keep talking all the time you’re out. Really keep at it, you know. Don’t stop, ever.” Looking at her brother, she saw what a tall order this would be for him, if not for her. “Just be as loud as you possibly can, and stomp around, you know, like this, as you walk … then all the rabbits will run away and with a bit of luck you won’t be able to get anything, and neither will Fred.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Or … I suppose … I suppose I could volunteer for that too, couldn’t I?” Why didn’t she learn to shoot rabbits with Uncle Fred instead of her brother? That would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. “If you do my washing-up for me, that is. Fair’s fair.”
What was he looking at? Peggy suddenly became aware of the empty string bag hanging in her hand. She should have hidden it in her knickers, or something. She began to scrunch it up, trying to get it out of sight in the palm of her hand before he noticed.
“What is it, Ernest? What’s the matter?”
It wasn’t the bag. Something in his head. A few moments later he broke the stillness.
“It’s LMF,” he said.
“What? Ellameff?” It sounded like a foreign word. A place, perhaps?
“L.M.F.,” he repeated quietly, each letter distinct this time.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Peggy was beginning to get exasperated. It generally took less time than she hoped.
“Lack of Moral Fiber. That’s what they call it in the RAF now. Victor Velvick told me. He knows about these things. His brother must have told him.”
“What?” Peggy said again.
“When you’re in a funk. You know.” He kicked at the ground. “Too scared to fly. They don’t want waverers. Dangerous. It’s infectious, you see. It can turn a whole crew bad, Victor says.”
“But nobody’s asking you to fly,” said Peggy uncertainly.
There was another long silence, and then Ernest spoke. He was almost inaudible.
“But it’s just the same, isn’t it? I haven’t got the moral fiber to go trapping with Uncle Fred. Or rabbit-hunting. I’m too scared. I’m no good at that kind of thing. A coward. They used to shoot cowards, you know.”
She looked at him sharply.
“In the Great War,” he added.
“Yes, but not now,” she said. “Traitors maybe … Deserters even. But not cowards.”
She found it hard to think that word in her head, let alone say it out loud. Deserter. Deserter. Deserter. There was something so harsh about it. It seemed to have so little to do with Henryk. It conjured up an image of a man running and running, across miles of empty sand, guns firing at his back. Until he fell.
Ernest and Peggy stared each other out for a few moments, daring the other to push the subject further. Then she shook her head. What could he possibly know? She had taken such care. Unless he had heard something about Dad …
“So where are your sticks?” she asked. “You know. For the traps. I’ll help you carry them home, if you like.”
He looked around, genuinely baffled to find his hands empty.
“Oh, bother. I must have put them somewhere.”
He turned to lower himself back down the bank.
19
Peggy was still talking nineteen-to-the-dozen, as Aunt Myra would say, when they burst into the kitchen just after one. The table was laid, but nobody was there. A man’s voice was booming out from the parlor, steadily rising in excitement. It sounded like a racing commentary, and near the end of the race, too.
All three frowning, fingers on lips, Aunt Myra
and June and their mum turned from the wireless in unison as they came in. Then Ernest realized his mistake. The announcer wasn’t getting excited about horses.
“There’s one coming down in flames—there. Somebody’s hit a German … and he’s coming down—there’s a long streak—he’s coming down completely out of control—a long streak of smoke—ah, the man’s baled out by parachute—the pilot’s baled out by parachute—he’s a Junkers 87 and he’s going slap into the sea and there he goes—sma-a-ash …”
“Dover,” whispered Mum. “Attacking a convoy. It happened yesterday evening.”
You could hear bursts of shooting somewhere in the background, not far off—the ack-ack guns on the coast, Ernest supposed—and further away, the occasional explosion of a bomb. As last night’s battle progressed, the five of them bunched closer and closer to the wireless.
“The sky is absolutely patterned now with bursts of anti-aircraft fire and the sea is covered with smoke where the bombs have hit … Ooh boy, I’ve never seen anything so good as this—the RAF fighters have really got these boys taped.”
Aunt Myra thumped her fist in her hand with relish.
“Give it to ’em, boys! That’s the way! Oh yes, we’ll show ’em.”
Ernest glanced at Peggy, who was leaning against an armchair, looking pale and dazed. Their mother switched off the wireless set, and the glowing dial darkened abruptly. For a second afterwards she rested her hand on its polished wooden top, as if feeling it for warmth and life. Aunt Myra was still talking enthusiastically about the battle report, and saying they mustn’t miss the evening news on any account.
“Every night I pray to God to strike Hitler down,” she said, with satisfaction, looking around as if anyone who didn’t do the same was letting the side down.
Ernest thought about the possibility of a well-aimed thunderbolt, and shook his head.
“I think He’d have done it by now if that was His plan.”
“That’s quite enough of your clever remarks.” Aunt Myra swept from the room, the others following in a cowed line. As they passed the baby carriage in the hallway, June quickly bent and snatched up Claudette, even though she was fast asleep. The baby began to whimper.
In the kitchen, Mum was all bustle again.
“Peggy, slice us a few tomatoes, would you, dear? Not too thick, mind. In that bowl, on the draining board.”
“Yes, Mum.”
“By the way, Myra, did you hear about Mrs. Velvick? She was nearly done by one of Cooper’s Snoopers last week.”
“No?!” said Aunt Myra, delighted. “What happened?”
Mrs. Teacup-Whisperer. Ernest wondered if his mother was trying to get on the right side of her sister-in-law. Buttering her up with a tidbit of gossip. Where was Uncle Fred? He’d put a stop to this. Muck-spreading, he called it.
“He sent his daughter in to do the dirty work, it seems.”
“Like a decoy? Well, I never.”
Miss Leaky-Mouth.
“I suppose so, yes. Begging for some extra sugar for her mother-in-law’s birthday cake apparently. Awfully convincing, I heard she was too.”
“And?’”
Their aunt plonked the bread-board down on the table, where it set up a slow circular rattle, like a drum roll. The rattle of doom, thought Ernest.
“Oh, not a hope. Mrs. Velvick wasn’t having any of it.”
“Really?”
“Not even when the girl offered her fourpence a pound. Well, you know how it is these days … she’d have been up before the magistrates like a shot if she’d let her have the sugar.”
“An example to us all!” Aunt Myra glowed with self-righteousness.
“Oh yes.”
“And quite right too. I heard what happened to Mr. Morris in Winchelsea. No more than he deserved. But I can’t see Mrs. Velvick doing anyone a favour, least of all a stranger.”
Strangers, thought Ernest. That’s what the posters meant. It was strangers you had to be careful of.
“Well, she’s had a hard life, specially this year. To lose a son like that …”
“We all have our crosses to bear. How did she know the girl was from the Ministry, anyway?”
“Food Control Office. Apparently there was a man in a mac waiting outside. She recognized him. Nearly fell off her perch. But this isn’t from the horse’s mouth, you know.” Mum hung up her apron. “It’s just what Mrs. Ashbee told me. Hurry up, Peggy.”
Ernest sat down at the table, and remembered not to tip his chair. June had taken no part in this conversation and was gazing out of the window across the farmyard, as though she’d just noticed something frightfully interesting. But when Ernest stood up to look too, there was nothing to see at all. June was thinking about the wireless broadcast, he guessed, and other ships being bombed somewhere else. Troop ships. She was holding Claudette so fiercely against her that the baby began to struggle and moan.
“If the Nazis come here, I’ll kill her myself before I let them take Claudie away from me,” June said, and sat down, very suddenly. “I’d kill myself, too, if I had to.”
Suppose they didn’t hear the church bells? thought Ernest. Suppose there was no time for anything like that? Suppose they killed you first, before anybody could even get to the felty ropes to pull out a warning? Suppose they were already hiding in the church tower itself, ready to strangle you with those very ropes?
“Oh bother,” muttered Peggy into the shocked room. Unable to get a purchase, the knife kept slipping right off the smooth, hard skin of these freshly picked tomatoes. Now it had slipped through her own skin. She sucked her finger, wincing.
“Slice, don’t chop, dear,” Mum reminded her.
“That needs sharpening,” said her aunt, whisking the knife from her hand with a flash of silver. “Used to go through flesh like butter, it did. Pass me the stone.”
A mean, low rectangle of margarine glistened in the dish. Ernest stared at it while he listened to the blade scraping across the whetstone, a rhythmic broken sawing sound that went on and on and on.
RULE THREE: KEEP WATCH. IF YOU SEE ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS, NOTE IT CAREFULLY AND GO AT ONCE TO THE NEAREST POLICE OFFICER OR STATION, OR TO THE NEAREST MILITARY OFFICER. DO NOT RUSH ABOUT SPREADING VAGUE RUMORS. GO QUICKLY TO THE NEAREST AUTHORITY AND GIVE HIM THE FACTS.
20
June looked up from the mangle with a disbelieving smile.
“You’d rather grub around in the earth than do the laundry?”
More than anything, June hated weeding. It was the effect on her nails that she minded most. She inspected them now with a grimace.
“Oh, any day!” said Peggy. “I HATE ironing. I loathe folding clothes. And I’m always pinching my fingers in that horrible thing … I’ll love you forever if you’ll swap.”
“And you won’t change your mind the minute I’ve finished with this lot?”
“Of course not. That would be rotten. I want a permanent swap.”
“Go on then. You’re welcome to it. But take this with you for the potatoes while you’re going.” She swapped the full bucket of soapy gray water for an empty one. Its handle clanged mournfully. The pitch of the dripping became higher and more insistent: a half-wrung out pillowcase was still caught in the rollers. “And wait till the sun’s lower before you do any watering, won’t you?”
“I know, I know.” Everyone thought she and Ernest knew nothing about anything. Anything useful, anyway. Coddled. That was what Aunt Myra always said to Fred as soon as Mum was out of earshot. Time they grew up. Their father thinks … When I was that girl’s age … Or worse, when June was that girl’s age, she’d been earning a living … etc … etc … As for traveling all that way to the Grammar, what on earth was the point of that when she could be paying her way like everyone else?
Well, moving here had put a stop to school pretty quickly. They all knew they had to earn their keep on the farm.
“And do wear gloves. Specially with that cut of yours.”
“I will,” Peg
gy called back, knowing she wouldn’t, that it was already too late. The mangle’s squeak faded.
She’d worked it out during dinner. If she took over the vegetable plot, it would become a hundred times easier to “lift” the odd thing here and there for Henryk. Nobody had time to count carrots. They’d never notice if a few went missing. Or more than a few. Besides, it was perfectly true. She’d far rather be out here on her own where she could keep an eye on things, than messing up the washing or breaking crockery under Aunt Myra’s gaze.
At the gate, Peggy hesitated. There was a figure behind the beanpoles, already at work, digging. Not easy with the ground so dry. Little gasps of effort were escaping with every blow.
“Mum?” Peggy called, shading her eyes to be sure. “Mum! What are you doing? I’m in charge of the veg now. You’ve got enough to do already.”
Her mother twisted, one foot raised on her spade. She didn’t answer immediately. Panting slightly, she waited for Peggy to reach her, and then looked around before she spoke.
“I’m hiding this. I don’t think we’ve got long now.”
There was no need to ask what she meant by that. As if in confirmation, a faint burst of anti-aircraft fire sounded from the direction of the ranges on Denge Marsh. Peggy frowned. An old wooden crate gaped, ready to receive its treasure. Her mother had already wrapped it up, swathing it carefully in a couple of pillowcases, soft and worn, but Peggy had a good idea what it was.
The first pot Dad had ever given her. His wooing pot, he always called it, and for years the way he said that was guaranteed to make Mum blush and giggle, and the children wish they weren’t there. More recently though, she kept silent when he referred to those days, and looked at the floor as if it had all been a mistake.
An old story, often told when Peggy was younger. He had stopped at a café in Rye, at the end of a weekend of walking and sketching on the High Weald with a trio of Art School friends. The pub hadn’t opened yet, so they were making do with tea. As soon as Mum appeared to take their order, he was smitten.
