That Burning Summer

by Lydia Syson

  “You mean they didn’t speak Polish? And you didn’t speak French?”

  “No. No. It was not the language. Many of us speak French. It was … everything else … the way they thought, the way they acted. They were not like us. I cannot speak of it. And when the Germans came, well, it was as we feared.”

  “What happened?” What had it been like, over there? What would it be like, over here?

  His chest filled. She edged a little closer.

  “You … you don’t have to say,” Peggy quickly told him. Part of her didn’t want to know. There was a long silence, and the heaviness of defeat settled around them.

  “To give up like that,” he murmured. “Just give up. So easily. To burn your own aircraft. We could not give up like that. We knew we had to come to Britain.”

  There. They had reached the question Peggy couldn’t bring herself to ask, the subject they had skirted all this time. It was like being drawn to the very edge of a cliff: you feel compelled to look down but it’s making you dizzy, and you’re terrified of falling. After all that, what had made Henryk give up now?

  He closed his eyes. Woken by the light, a fly began to buzz at the window, banging and bouncing against the glass. Then Peggy noticed that the inner door was moving, swinging towards them with a mild groan. The long barrel of a gun pointed towards them.

  35

  Crouched between the two doors of the church, Ernest fought the urge to flee. The voices stopped almost right away, though not before the man’s accent had given the game away. Ernest forced himself upright, rifle at his shoulder, and his binoculars immediately swung forward and back again, crashing into a gut already taut with fear. A little oof came out before he could stop it, and he realized with horror that his rifle was already poking out past the edge of the door.

  “Handy Hock!” he shouted, moving forward, wishing he had a choice.

  Ernest closed one eye and then the other. The church bounced and jerked back and forth, back and forth; he saw moving hands and faces, and his finger trembled on the metal trigger, but Ernest couldn’t remember the next bit. Then it came to him. Almost. “Oom kay … oom kay … oom kay something march something.” He waved the gun in little circles.

  The stranger must be so strong, to have dragged Peggy all this way. And cunning—waiting for days, hiding in the outbuildings and watching the house all through the late evening air raids. And then finally, he must have gone creeping up the stairs, the bannisters’ shadowy cage spilling out across the staircase wall as he passed with his torch. Breathing in a harsh German way over Ernest’s own bed perhaps, checking him out before rejecting him, then gagging Peggy’s cry with a tight, efficient cravat. Silk, of course. Always silk.

  “Ernest, stop!” ordered Peggy. “Put it down!”

  From the tone of her voice, he could have been one of the dogs, worrying a shoe.

  “Now, I tell you.”

  Ernest lowered the rifle. The wrought-iron chandelier, the lectern and the altar all stopped moving. The man stood still too, silently watching him. Peggy moved a little in front of the man, one hand out and slightly behind her, as if she were guarding him, instead of the other way round.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  She was speaking to the stranger. Then Ernest noticed his clothes. He stared at the clay-encrusted jumper and the corduroy trousers. Their ridges were worn smooth at the knees and there was a rip beginning at one pocket, just as he remembered.

  “Who are you?” he shouted, panic flooding through him. “What have you done with Dad?”

  The two of them just looked at each other. He shouted again, louder this time.

  “What the hell have you done with Dad? Where is he?”

  Ernest rarely rises to the occasion, his school report once said. And now here he was again. Stupidly, so stupidly, he began to cry, noisily and messily. He couldn’t see anything. He was useless. Keep your head, he told himself, keep your head. IF YOU KEEP YOUR HEADS, YOU CAN TELL WHETHER A MILITARY OFFICER IS REALLY BRITISH OR ONLY PRETENDING TO BE SO. He had a vague and alarming sense that the man was getting something out of his pocket, and walking towards him. Ernest backed into the font. He wasn’t keeping his head. The held-out handkerchief dissolved and reformed before his teary eyes. He took it, wiped his nose, and smelled his father in the cotton. Ernest glared at the man, who finally spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Ernest. I don’t know your father, and I don’t know where he is.”

  He spoke in a funny, deep voice. It sounded sincere, but he would have been trained to sound as if he was telling the truth. The man came a step closer. Ernest had nowhere left to back away.

  “Stop. Just stay there,” he said. This had gone all wrong. He hadn’t rescued Peggy at all. He could have run for help, as soon as he’d noticed the church’s open door. He should have told the authorities, like the leaflet said, just as he should have reported the parachute, but here they were instead: both trapped.

  “Please don’t come any closer,” ordered Ernest shakily.

  He wondered miserably when they would be tied up.

  The spy wasn’t what he had expected. That raggedy beard made him look older, his height adding to the impression, but when you looked closer it was clear he was no bruiser. His youth and slight lankiness must be part of the great deception. What did they call men like this? Intelligence. That was it. Which meant he was clever and tricky and he knew how to put you off your guard and on the wrong foot or the back foot or something.

  “This is Henryk, Ernest.”

  A huge hand was coming towards him with long fingers and flat, broken nails. He was bowing too, in fact, actually bowing, and doing a funny kind of salute, all straight and jerky, while he snapped his heels together like a tin soldier. His heels, in Dad’s workboots.

  Ernest wanted to spit on the floor of the church.

  “Pleased to meet you, old chap,” said Henryk.

  He wouldn’t answer, decided Ernest. He didn’t have to. Do not tell him anything. He kept his eyes low and surreptitiously measured the distance to the door. He’d have to choose his moment. He could only run if he wasn’t being watched.

  “Listen, Ernest. I gave him Dad’s clothes,” Peggy said, moving between him and the door. Ernest’s thoughts crashed around his head. She’s going to make a run for it too. We can escape together. I must keep hold of the gun. Maybe I can hit him over the head with it. He tried to give her a sign. A jerk of the head. She just stared at him. She must understand. She must.

  She didn’t. He mouthed the words:

  “On the count of three.”

  She shook her head.

  “We’re not running away from here,” she said. Out loud, for Pete’s sake. Just like that. Ruining everything. Then it dawned on Ernest that Peggy had moved deliberately, to block his exit. It seemed incomprehensible.

  “Why did you give those clothes to him? They’re Dad’s. He’ll need them when he gets back. We’ve got to look after them for him.”

  “He needed something to wear. He had lost his boots.”

  Ernest looked from the boots to Henryk’s face. He gave an apologetic shrug.

  “Did he make you give them to him?”

  “No, he didn’t, actually,” Peggy said. This time she didn’t look at Henryk for confirmation, so Ernest was even less sure what to believe. “I offered. It was my idea.”

  “You’re a collaborator!” That was the word.

  “Peggy. Stop,” said Henryk. “I will explain.”

  He sat heavily on the harmonium stool without looking at either of them and stretched both hands across the keys, knuckles spreading, as if preparing to play a crashing chord. Then he thought better of it, and curled and uncurled his fingers, several times. Stranglers’ hands, Ernest thought again. The hands of doom. Except they were shaking. All three of them could see quite clearly how much Henryk’s hands were shaking.

  36

  Peggy watched Henryk’s spine collapse and his should
ers cave in: a broken man with broken English. She could feel his shame.

  “No, no, there isn’t time,” she said quickly, determined to protect him from Ernest’s questions. “It’s getting late—look! We have to get back to the farm before Marge starts making a racket. But Ernest, you’re not to say a word about Henryk. We’re not leaving here until you swear.”

  She could hear her bossy big sister voice, rising, commanding. It was so tempting to play the games that worked. She could grab Ernest by the wrist, force him into submission by twisting his arm and a hissing a threat of worse consequences. A few years ago, she would have done it without a second thought.

  Henryk stood up, slowly, like a creaking old man.

  “But I think it is too late. I cannot stay longer.”

  “No!” Peggy cried out. “You mustn’t go just because of Ernest. You mustn’t worry about him.”

  “Where?” said Ernest. “Where is he going? Back to Germany?”

  “No, you idiot. Henryk’s not a German – do you think I’d be here if he was? He’s Polish. He’s in the RAF. But he’s a deserter.”

  There. She had said it.

  She felt Henryk flinch, and glanced at Ernest. He really did look like an idiot now, with his mouth open wide and his forehead all crumpled, understanding dawning fraction by fraction. Then he said those letters again. He knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “Oh. LMF. That’s what you mean.”

  She nodded. Couldn’t go further than that. It felt so cruel in front of Henryk. Then Ernest made things even worse.

  “But I thought … I thought Poles were fearless.”

  The church was silent with the nothingness that follows an accident, or resounds after a ball has crashed through glass, after a metal pan has smashed against a stone floor, after a gun has fired.

  “Not all Poles,” said Henryk quietly. “Not this one. Not any more.”

  Ernest’s expression changed.

  “Come on,” said Peggy quickly. “Let’s go. We’ll leave Henryk to have his breakfast in peace.” Ernest hadn’t spotted the cake yet. “And look … I almost forgot … I brought you some cigarettes.” One had broken in her pocket, she discovered, and was spilling tobacco from its split paper. She blushed as she held them out. Ernest would know she’d stolen them from June.

  “Thank you.” Henryk smiled. “But there is no need. I do not smoke.”

  “But I thought … Oh, well in that case, I’ll put them back … I’ll see you later. Don’t worry. And you mustn’t think for a minute you have to go now, just because of Ernest. You’re not ready to leave. I really don’t think you’re ready.”

  She wasn’t ready.

  37

  Peggy was too furious with Ernest to wait for him, and he had to keep breaking into a run to keep up. His questions never stopped, and she simply didn’t know all the answers.

  “But you don’t speak Polish. Or German. How do you know he’s not just pretending?”

  “It’s on his uniform. His R—A—F uniform,” she spelled out sarcastically. “You can see for yourself if you insist.”

  “What if he’s stolen it?” Ernest asked.

  “I don’t think that’s very likely.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  He didn’t reply—just puffed along behind her for so long that Peggy began to get nervous. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t worried about the same thing herself, at their first encounter.

  “I don’t know that it is,” panted Ernest, catching up with her again. “The leaflet said you can tell if an officer is really British or not. If you use your common sense, and keep your head, that is. It didn’t say anything about Polish officers. Why didn’t it say anything about them?”

  “Because …” Why was it? They hadn’t thought of it? “Maybe there weren’t any here when they wrote it. I don’t know. It would have been useful if it had. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  Peggy lengthened her stride and Ernest fell behind again. She should have been more careful. Now how would she keep him quiet?

  “Wait, Peggy, please!” he called out. Then, “I wonder if there are any Polish words in the Pears’ Cyclopaedia. Then we can test him. Then we’d know.”

  “Shh … don’t shout!”

  “Then slow down, so I don’t have to.”

  She stopped but didn’t turn round. Shhhh. Shhhh. The wheat, riper and drier, made a different sound now. Its gentle rustling had become harsher. It rattled when you ran your hand across it. Why should you never tell secrets in a cornfield? Too many ears about.

  “Anyway, there aren’t,” she told him.

  “What?”

  “Polish words in Pears’. I looked. I found where he’s from though. Cracow.” That wasn’t how Henryk had pronounced it, but she thought it must be the place he’d said. “I found it in the Gazetteer’s of Poland,” she remembered. City, that must mean. Strong fortress, university, impt. manuf.; p. 176,463. At least that was the population in 1929 or so. She had no idea what “impt” was but she’d looked at the maps and seen how close the city was to Prussia’s spreading pink.

  “But how do you know he’s really from there?” asked Ernest yet again. It wasn’t an accusation, but Peggy felt accused. The truth was she didn’t know. She simply believed Henryk. From the time she had first returned to the church, doubt hadn’t re-entered her mind.

  “Anyway, if he’s really Polish, why do you need to hide him?” he asked next.

  Peggy started walking again, more slowly. She didn’t want to have to face him as she answered. It was a simple question. She ought to know how to reply. But there were lots of different reasons, and some of these might take them in directions she didn’t want to go.

  “Because he can’t fight any more, because … Oh, it’s so hard to explain. He needs … he’s worn out, you see. He’s been fighting for so long. He needs some time … someone to look after him.” Her voice was wavering more than she wanted it to. “He needs me.”

  “Is he hurt?” tried Ernest. “I didn’t see. Why doesn’t he go to hospital?”

  “He twisted his ankle. But that’s better now really. He’s hurt in another way though. Not the kind of hurt they can do anything about in hospital, I don’t think. It means he can’t fly. And if he’d gone back when he first bailed out, they would have made him fly.” Peggy found it hard to say the next thing she had to tell Ernest. “The trouble is that if they find him now, I don’t know what will happen.”

  “I see,” said Ernest and looked at her in some wonder. He was used to her know-it-all certainties, she supposed. That was her job: to be right at all times and do things properly. They all knew that. Ernest rarely seemed to resent it, and she didn’t usually admit to fallibility.

  He nodded gravely.

  AWOL. Deserter. Lack of Moral Fiber, she could see him thinking.

  “So do you believe me now?”

  “I think so.”

  They had reached the lane.

  “And you won’t say anything?”

  “No, I won’t say anything.”

  Peggy glared at him, to make sure he meant it.

  “You have to promise,” she said fiercely.

  “OK, OK … I do promise.”

  She almost wanted to demand physical proof, to seal it in blood, but they were both too old for that.

  “I’m sorry we frightened you,” she said instead.

  Any other boy would have denied it. That didn’t even occur to Ernest.

  “I’m not so frightened now. And you didn’t mean to. But I wish you’d told me.”

  They were approaching the gate where they could take a short cut across the pasture and round to the back of the farmyard. The fields were alive with rabbits. Ernest’s hand tightened on his gun, and he glanced at her, and began to shake his head.

  She held her hand out for the rifle, eyebrows poised commandingly. Ernest looked from her to the rabbits, and back again, an
d handed it over with a sigh. The butt was warm from his hands.

  “If we come back with a rabbit, there’ll be no questions asked,” she said firmly. “And we’ll have meat for tea.” And if I can bring in food, I can take food, she added silently. “Loaded?”

  Ernest nodded, and closed his mouth. She looked at the gun with more respect, and swung it away from them both.

  “Stay here. Don’t move.”

  RULE FIVE: BE READY TO HELP THE MILITARY IN ANY WAY.

  38

  For a good week Ernest did keep quiet. He covered for Peggy when she slid away, and even took the blame when Myra noticed food disappearing. Half a loaf of bread took some explaining.

  “You can’t expect a decent pile of sandwiches if I’ve nothing to make them with,” she said as they stood at the edge of the field, weedhooks in hand. “I’m not a magician. Actions have consequences, you know.”

  “He’s a growing lad.” June pulled on her gloves. “And he’ll be hungrier still before this day’s out.”

  Peggy said nothing, while Fred sighed and said it was time to get on with it. The longer you left it, the harder it would be. Anyway, they’d have the War Ag on their backs if they didn’t watch out, for the thistles were coming through the earth with more strength than the barley.

  The newly plowed field could not forget what it had been, thought Ernest. Just as in other years, in a certain light, in a certain season, with the wind streaming across it, meadowgrass seemed to transform itself back into the sea from which it had been claimed.

  “Is it true that they’ll flood the Marsh when the Nazis come?” he asked. It wouldn’t be difficult.

  “If,” said Fred, with a tight smile. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”

  There had been talk of setting fire to the sea too. Ernest didn’t think he’d get a straight answer about that either, so he didn’t bother to ask.