That Burning Summer

by Lydia Syson

  Or could it actually be a parachute?

  He scrambled back the way he’d come, and stood panting and sweaty on the track, looking about him anxiously. Nothing had changed. The Marsh was still and calm. No paratroopers were descending from the heavens. No church bells ringing that he could hear. There was not the least hint of an invasion. But he couldn’t take any chances. He’d seen something suspicious, and now he had to go at once and report it to the nearest military officer. The Appledore road. That would be quickest. He’d go and find Fred and tell him right away, and then it would be out of his hands, and he’d have done his duty.

  What about June, or Peggy? No, not a word to them. No rushing about. No rumors. Straight to the point. He’d sneak in, get his bike, and sneak off again before they could ask where he was going.

  At the roadblock, Uncle Fred was nowhere to be seen. There was a proper army man there, in a car, who would surely count as “the nearest military officer,” but he was shouting so furiously at Mr. Gosbee, the LDV guard, that Ernest didn’t dare interrupt.

  “What the bloody hell do you mean?” The officer’s red-veined face emerged from the front window of a shiny black Wolseley. “I don’t have to show you anything! Let us through immediately!”

  “I’m afraid you do, sir,” said Mr. Gosbee firmly. “You both do.” He tipped his cap at the ATS driver, who was pretty and blonde, and then tried to turn the movement into a salute. “Everybody has to show their papers. Sir.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, man—don’t you know who I am?”

  “Yes, sir, Colonel, sir, I do, sir. Of course I do.” Mr. Gosbee shuffled his feet, glanced at his LDV armband as if it had let him down, and then looked for reassurance at his gangly companion, Gordon Ramsgate. “But you see, sir, I have my orders, sir, and … no, no, Gordon, I don’t think that will be necessary, Gordon, put it down … I’m sorry, sir, but really would you mind …”

  To Ernest’s relief, Gordon lowered his ancient gun. Why did it have to be him there, the oldest of the Ramsgate boys? He was the last person Ernest wanted to have to tell about the parachute. Gordon was barely older than Peggy! Meanwhile, the Colonel’s driver whispered something to her agitated passenger. Still huffing and puffing, he finally reached inside his jacket.

  “Do you realize this is the fourth time we’ve been through this charade in the past hour?” said the Colonel, passing across the necessary documents.

  The vehicle was waved on at last, and Ernest stepped forward, hoping his voice wouldn’t let him down.

  “Looking for Section Commander Nokes, are you?” asked Gordon, with a grin.

  Ernest’s confidence in his mission was faltering fast, but he nodded.

  “I’m afraid you’ve just missed him,” said Mr. Gosbee, more kindly.

  “Oh dear. Where is he? Will he be long?”

  Gordon placed a meaningful finger against his nose, and looked down at Ernest.

  “Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

  “He was only asking, Gordon,” said Mr. Gosbee. “The Section Commander is on a special operation, just now, son, but we can’t tell you where.”

  They don’t know themselves, thought Ernest.

  “Can we help?” added Gordon.

  Ernest supposed they could, in theory. They were now the nearest military officers, weren’t they? Right. He was ready for this. Quick, calm, and exact, he had to be.

  “I’ve got something to report. I think I’ve found a parachute.”

  “Very funny. And I’ve got Adolf Hitler living in my bathroom.”

  There was a roar of laughter, and the men looked at each other.

  “Suppose you found it hanging on the washing line, did you?” said the older man, beginning to hum.

  “Quick, look over there!” shouted Gordon, putting up his gun again, and Ernest’s head obediently whipped round. “Oh, sorry, it’s just a crow. I thought I saw a nun.”

  Ernest’s neck began to burn. There was no point in staying.

  24

  When the pills had worn off completely, Henryk’s hunger returned with a vengeance. His jitters were getting worse too, and he felt almost as guilty about losing the plane as he did about losing his nerve. There could be no hope of repair—it must be category 3—nothing worth recovering. Just another mess to track down in a field or a wood and pick over for souvenirs.

  He sat on the floor of the pew and sighed. There were never enough planes.

  They thought they’d soon be in the air again all those months ago. But despite what they’d been told, there were no aircraft at all waiting for the Polish Air Force in Romania. A kind of welcome, perhaps, not always kind, and sympathetic looks from villagers. And then internment.

  At least in the camp, the guards were happy enough to look the other way, for very little reward. Quite a few of the other cadets had been sneaking out each evening ever since they arrived, and they weren’t looking for empty beds to spend the night in either. It didn’t seem much harder for a courier to sneak into the camp.

  Henryk and Kazimierz sat hunched on wooden pallets in the barn that was their barracks. Aching from another day working in the fields, they rolled cigarettes that got thinner each time. Though he liked to have something to do with his hands, Henryk had never cared much for smoking, so he handed his tobacco ration over to Kazik, who’d given up on his prayers after the fall of Warsaw. Now he just ranted.

  “What are they going to do with us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can’t just stay here.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to go on. We’ve got to keep going.”

  “I know.”

  “We can’t just stay here.”

  “I know.”

  “But what are they going to do with us?”

  “Shut up and listen, Kazik.”

  They both cocked their ears. Henryk was right. The knocking came again. One two, one two. A stick beating on the rough wooden wall, hard enough to flutter the candle flame with each blow. And a voice, in Polish at last. Through a knothole, they received their orders. Learned where they’d find a change of clothes. Who to meet. When they might see their officers again.

  Henryk barely remembered now quite how they got from there to Bucharest. Rivers. Forests. Generosity from peasants with bare feet, he remembered. Incomprehensible Romanian army officers with white silk gloves who searched the pilots or let them pass at whim. A lot of walking. A few days into their journey, they joined up with a man from another squadron called Piotr, which meant they could walk together, three abreast, taking the middle spot in turn so one of them could always sleep on the move.

  How the policemen in Romania loved to wield their silver sabers. Any opportunity, they’d take. Slash, flash, and a slice of flesh gone. It was mostly show though. Usually you could get away with it … it was just a case of handing over enough lei or a half-decent pair of boots and suggesting a drink to the health of King Carol. The next thing you knew, you were sitting down to supper with the policeman’s grandmother. But not always.

  Stick with the women on the trains, that was the trick. The courier had tipped them off to it. They’d hop on at a bend or crossing and scatter themselves through the carriages, each pilot looking for a single lady traveling on her own. The patrols didn’t seem to question lovers.

  Bucharest was altogether more frightening. The Gestapo officers were very much in evidence, patrolling the streets, making everyone scuffle, and the courier had warned that they couldn’t be bribed. Evacuation was being managed from a small but grand apartment in the old part of the city. Henryk’s name was ticked off a list extracted from one of the huge piles of paper covering the lid of a grand piano. Other files were spread across the dining-table and a double bed. Papers, more cash, and more instructions.

  Kazik, some way ahead of Henryk in the queue, was sent to Constanza. Henryk had to make his way to Balchik, another Black Sea port. The idea was to get to France. The Polish government had re-f
ormed in Paris, they were told. If they were lucky, they might meet again in France. Before they said goodbye, they crouched over a gutter running through a darkened alley and dropped their silver eagles through the grating. All that was left of their uniforms, but the pilots couldn’t be caught with their Air Force badges now. Listening to the feeble tinkle as the metal bounced against the side of the drainpipe, to be swallowed up by the muck and sewage of Bucharest, Henryk felt he’d lost part of himself.

  25

  In the end Peggy managed to slip away again after supper, muttering something about a walk. By that time Fred was hard at work again, trap-making, with Ernest strangely gray and silent by his side. Aunt Myra had made a trap of her own for June, who sat on a stool at her mother’s feet, hands held stiffly up in front of her face, a foot or so apart, wound about with gray wool. It kinked away from a sleeveless pullover her mother was unravelling to make up into socks for the forces. Peggy’s mum was already knitting, lips tight.

  “I’ll keep the scraps for your squares!” promised June, as Peggy exited, calling out thanks. She flicked her cardigan from a peg in the hall and pulled it on.

  “Is she moping over someone?” Myra asked, loud enough for Peggy to hear from the back doorstep.

  “Oh, you know our Peggy,” said June. “She’s like her dad, isn’t she? Can’t get enough of sunsets.”

  Our Peggy, she absorbed gratefully. She shut the door firmly before she could hear the response, and ran.

  “Hand of God,” her father always used to say whenever he saw a sky like this, and he was only half-joking: from a mass of dark swollen cloud, outlined in gold, radiant beams reached down to earth to touch the distant trees. Like a revelation. But glorious as this evening’s sunset was, Peggy felt too poisoned by the note she’d found to be uplifted.

  Rape. She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. Something worse than nasty, that was certain. And part and parcel of invasion, to judge by the dark comments she’d heard from time to time these past few months. It seemed to be reserved for women, though she wasn’t quite sure of that. And girls perhaps?

  When grown-ups used the word “rape,” they mouthed it, or lowered their voices at least, and quickly looked at her to see if she had noticed. Peggy had got quite good now at pretending not to listen, she thought. That pleased her. It was the only way to find anything out. That was how she had learned of the suicides in Hastings. An old couple who’d lost three sons in the Great War. They took poison, Myra had whispered, disapprovingly, while Peggy pretended she couldn’t hear over the clatter of pans in the sink.

  Sometimes you had to give up on rules. Like telling the truth and shaming the devil. Not reading other people’s letters. Believing grown-ups.

  She should have kept that yellow paper. Evidence. There might have been some sort of clue she’d missed, a hint at its author. But all Peggy had wanted to do was get rid of it, as quickly as possible, and make sure there was no danger at all of her mother seeing it, ever.

  The “hand of God” dissolved and the sun began to sink. Lucky it had been so dry for so long. Not just for the harvest, of course. All through winter, and most of spring too, you could only reach the church by the highway. And before that, people used to go by boat, Uncle Fred said. There hadn’t been a service there for nearly a year. Peggy decided that if anyone ever saw her going, she’d say she was praying. For the war to end. Or for God to strike down Hitler. Nobody could argue with that.

  Anticipation fluttered high in her chest. The thought of seeing Henryk again made her feel nervous, but there was a kind of pleasure in her fear. She mustn’t talk too fast, this time. She must give him a chance. They had to decide the next step together. Peggy wanted to call out as she approached the porch, to make sure she wouldn’t catch him unaware. Actually, she realized, she just wanted to say his name out loud, to hear how it sounded in her voice, and to know she could trust that voice not to squeak or crack.

  The key was in the door, on the outside.

  The church was empty.

  Peggy stood in the aisle and looked around carefully. She peered into the white-painted pews, one after another, slowly and quietly at first and then much faster. She reached the last pew.

  Nothing.

  He had covered his tracks well. A disturbance of dust was the only sign anyone had been here for weeks. A few fingermarks on the lid of the harmonium. She traced these with her own finger. Some mud was smeared on the bricks near the font, and a little more in the lettering of the single memorial stone in the middle of the floor, caught in the curving J of John Beale of this Parish. A sense of air that had been stirred and settled.

  Nothing you’d really notice if you didn’t already know.

  So that was that.

  Bother, she thought bitterly, and looked at the bag of vegetables she’d carefully gathered, twisting and untwisting at her wrist. She’d swiped a jar of plum jam too, for pudding, and a little more bread, and filled a lemonade bottle with fresh water too. She’d even found clean socks. So much for that. Bother. Then she said it out loud, again, and just for good measure, and because there was nobody to hear, she shouted, loud as could be:

  “BUGGER. BUGGER. BUGGER.”

  She’d never dared say that in front of anyone other than Ernest. Once.

  Then she sat down on a bench, with her back to the pulpit, and hugged her knees. She tested her teeth on her salt-tasting knees and screwed up her eyes and tried to persuade herself how much better it was that Henryk had gone. She hoped he’d had the sense to turn himself in.

  It must have been hard. (“Accept the inevitable,” her mother had said. “I won’t,” her father replied. “I can’t. I don’t believe it is inevitable. It shouldn’t be. It’s not right. Don’t you see why?” “No. I don’t.”) Couldn’t he have waited, though? Couldn’t he have said thank you, and goodbye … at the very least …? She would have written it in dust, she decided, as she stood up to inspect the black-painted edging.

  But there was no sign. Waterlogged with regret, she sat down again in the pew they had shared just that morning, and blinked hard. She examined a woodlouse, desiccated and dangling in a corner cobweb. She counted the pegs in the rafters. She read the oval painted signs on the pale gray beams ahead that she’d never taken much notice of before, and found herself more mystified than enlightened.

  Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God … She looked at her own feet. One sandshoe was beginning to come apart at the edge where the rubber met canvas. Keep thy foot? How could you not keep your foot? … and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools. That was more like it. Not that she had sacrificed much yet—though she had certainly been prepared to—but she was definitely a fool.

  Barely had she made herself ready to hear than a scrabbling noise started up. It came from almost directly beneath her. She jumped to her feet, scattering a few runner beans, and quickly leapt up onto the bench, cowering in the corner just under the lectern. The scratchy rustling sounded like claws and came from the base of the triple-decker pulpit that rose in steps from the box pew behind her. Henryk’s head emerged first, twisting round to glance at her. Then he thrust his arms out, leaning on his elbows, and dragged himself forward, turning halfway through so he was on his back.

  “I see you from the window. You come. I hide myself.” His face, more shadowed still with beard-growth, was serious and steady.

  “You …” Peggy felt an idiot standing up there. “Why? Why hide yourself from me? Don’t you trust me?”

  “I am wanting to know if I can disappear.”

  Peggy didn’t answer right away. Holding her dress against her thighs, she carefully lowered herself down to sitting, knees primly together, and refused to look at him.

  “In case it is necessary,” he added.

  Henryk pulled himself up and sat beside her, the food between them.

  “You mean if it isn’t me, next time? If someone else comes?”

  “Tak. Yes.”

  “But n
obody ever comes here. That’s why I brought you.”

  “I hope not. But maybe it is changing …” He frowned as he searched for the phrase. “‘Better safe than sorry.’ Yes?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Better safe than sorry.”

  She picked up a runner bean, checked it for dust, and snapped it in two. She offered one half to Henryk, and crunched the other herself, too loudly.

  “Thank you,” he said. They chewed in unison. Uncooked, the beans tasted sweeter and sourer than usual, both at once. Different. Just as everything felt a bit different when she was near him. As though his very presence awarded her senses an extra power. On the skin of her arms, she could feel the heat his body exuded. She seemed to hear and smell in a new dimension too. Sensations she’d never even noticed before became all-absorbing.

  Peggy wasn’t hungry, but there was something awkward in watching another person eat alone, and she had brought a huge pile of beans.

  She looked sideways at Henryk, and wondered. She decided to be patient. He was planning to stay. Clearly. So there was some time, after all.

  “That house. Over there …”

  “It’s empty. Don’t worry. Mrs. Frampton used to live there, but she’s a widow and she went to live with her sister in Dorset. Didn’t like the guns. You’re safe.”

  He nodded.

  “You really are.”

  “Thank you. Thank you again.” He half-bowed, and made as if to move towards her. Like a puppet whose master has tweaked the right string, Peggy almost put out her hand. The invisible pull was so strong. Her skin tingled where his hair might brush it if he bent his head to kiss it. First her fingers, and then the back of her hand. She could almost feel his touch now, slowly, softly sliding off, while she watched.