That Burning Summer

by Lydia Syson

  “Does she really have no idea?” Victor said incredulously.

  “No, I don’t, because whatever you think, you’re wrong.” Peggy wanted to shake him. “You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, drop it,” said Victor unhurriedly. “Keep your breath to talk your way out of the hole you’ll be in when we call the Constable.”

  He turned and started striding along the lane towards the Looker’s Hut, jerking his head at Ernest to follow. The sight revolted Peggy: Ernest trotting after Victor Velvick, so eager, so conspiratorial, as if all the years she’d speny protecting him had never happened. She shook her head and set off after them. For ten long minutes the three walked without a word, Victor leading the way. From time to time he whistled, but made little effort to hurry. Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run … Drawing out the agony was clearly part of Peggy’s punishment.

  Peggy considered jumping onto Victor’s back, wrestling him to the ground, fighting with him as she’d often wanted to fight with Ernest when they were younger, when he was driving her to distraction. She eyed Ernest’s shotgun, wondering, her mind racing over every possibility, and getting nowhere. Victor was right. The game was up. Not just for Henryk, but for her too.

  She wished she could know what that actually meant. She still had no real idea even of the nature of her crime. Words like “treachery” and “treason” and “execution” rang through her head like axe blows. Harboring a deserter. That would be the charge. But what would be the punishment?

  “Get a move on!” Victor threw the words over his shoulder, and Ernest didn’t even look round. Peggy glared at their backs, and returned to the dark gyre of her thoughts.

  She reckoned she could bear anything if they didn’t hurt Henryk.

  They had reached the hut. Victor was as casual as anything now, now that he had everything under control. He released the latch, opened the door with a single kick and then stood aside to usher them in, waving a lordly hand. Peggy ducked into the shadows, and looked around.

  “See. I was right all along. Henryk is a spy,” said Ernest, aiming a feeble kick at the leather suitcase on the floor. Its lid immediately fell shut, but not before Peggy had glimpsed the equipment inside. She dropped to her knees, and opened the case again. Dials. Switches. A headset. Everything inside her began to race again: her pulse, her heart, her thoughts. The blood seemed to drain from her head and rush straight back again. For a moment she could hardly see.

  “No.”

  She looked up at Ernest. Small as he was, just now he seemed to loom over her. Standing over the open suitcase, shotgun raised vertically above his head, he gripped the barrel with both hands and then smashed the heavy butt down onto the wireless equipment with all his force. There was a splintering sound as the dial cracked. One black knob hung at an angle, but he made little impression on the metal. He raised the gun again, glasses askew, face twisted into a snarl.

  “Yes. He’s an enemy agent. Just like I always thought. He really is.”

  Peggy covered her face with her hands and tried to think.

  He couldn’t have made everything up. He couldn’t have. The Black Sea, and Constantinople, and Beirut and the boats. Flying over the refugees in France. His three sisters. Little Anna with her braids and colored ribbons and her grazed knees. The dancing. Was all that really a cover? The dancing.

  And what about his fear? Nobody could act fear like that. She thought of the hours he had spent alone in the church. Could he really have been sneaking out to radio messages to Germany the moment her back was turned? It was impossible. Surely impossible. She remembered the warmth of his arms around her, and the disturbance of his breath in her hair, and the darkness under the pulpit they had shared.

  And the looker … At that moment there was a loud slam as the door was pulled shut from the outside. The strangled cry that followed—it must have come from Victor—was quickly stifled. Peggy staggered to her feet, and grabbed Ernest, who was poised to smash the rifle butt down once more.

  “Stop,” she whispered. “Shhh! Stay here. Whatever you do, don’t come out. He might not have seen you.”

  Ernest looked as terror-stricken as she felt. Pushing him gently away, a finger on her lips, Peggy forced herself to take the few steps towards the door, where she stood and listened. There was the sound of struggle—grunts and blows—and then a dragging noise, and from further away, the crash of a gate slamming against a gatepost.

  Cautiously, Peggy scraped back the door, just a few inches. Keeping her body hidden, she looked out.

  64

  Henryk began to pack. It went against every instinct in his body. There wasn’t a great deal to take but the important thing was to remove every last bit of evidence from the church. Nobody must ever know he had been there. He crawled under the bench to retrieve his flying suit, which whispered as he pulled it from its hiding place.

  He looked down at his borrowed clothes, still spattered with clay. He would have to keep the boots. He’d get nowhere without the boots. As for the trousers, the shirt … he’d dump them. And do a better job than he’d managed with the parachute and vest.

  Now that he’d finally made his decision, Henryk wanted to hurry, to get on his way, and be done with it. If he kept walking all night, away from the sea, eventually he’d run into a checkpoint, an official of some kind. Then he would hand himself in, and avoid dragging Peggy down with him. He wouldn’t breathe a word about Peggy.

  It felt strange to be putting his uniform back on, all crumpled and smelling of damp stone and dust. He settled the revolver into the inside pocket, and remembered the feel of its barrel in his mouth. If he’d had the courage to see that through, he wouldn’t have had Peggy. And without Peggy, he couldn’t have begun to live.

  She’d be back at the farmhouse soon, and getting ready for bed before long. The haymaking had worn her out, he could tell. And before she washed, she’d be slipping off her overalls. Bending. Stretching. Yawning. That lovely mouth.

  And then he checked himself. You’re making it more difficult for yourself, he told himself. Stop. You’ll regret it. Too much time. That was the trouble. He’d got used to having too much time to think, and to imagine, and to yearn for her.

  The church was growing gradually darker. If only he could blow the dust around again and cover up his traces. It would soon settle back though. In a few weeks’ time, his presence would be effaced. Just as the grass must be beginning to grow already over his lost Hurricane. He’d better open the door, let in the last of the light, and then he’d be able to see if there was anything he’d forgotten.

  The door wouldn’t move.

  He rattled the handle, unable to believe it. But the key had clearly been turned. Should he check the windows? No point. It would be easy enough for his captor to keep out of sight. And it would hardly be a moment before Henryk found out if they were out there waiting for him or not. All he had on his side was speed.

  Abandoning his bundle of clothes, his goggles and helmet, Henryk looked around for something strong and heavy. Hassocks. Books. A candlestick? Useless. He grabbed hold of the harmonium stool and threw it with all his strength at the nearest window. In an icy fountain of noise, twenty tiny panes of glass shattered at once. The lead between them buckled but did not break, and the stool crashed back to the ground. Again Henryk picked it up, and this time he didn’t let go, but beat it repeatedly, over and over again. He heard himself roaring and grunting as he worked, while his boots crunched the shards of glass to powder on the hard floor. Once the metal had snapped, it became easier. He grabbed the altar cloth, sweeping a crucifix to the floor in his haste, and wrapped the white linen round his fist. Well, there’d be no hiding this mess, would there? But he wished he hadn’t lost his gauntlets when he bailed out.

  Pulling at the twisted leads, now oddly pliable, he bent back a space in the window, and as soon as it was large enough, he forced his way through it, ripping the back of his flying suit as he tumbled out onto the grass outside. He hardly n
oticed the blood seeping from his cut hand, coloring the cloth. Henryk staggered to his feet.

  65

  Ernest pushed Peggy out of the way, forcing them both out of the brick hut, and immediately fired. The shot went into the air. The recoil threw him back against the wall, against his sister.

  “It’s not Henryk,” she cried. “I knew it couldn’t be.”

  Head dazed and ringing, he saw at once that she was right. Ernest had never seen this man before, this hollow-cheeked stranger in a fisherman’s cap who was holding Victor like a shield in front of him as he backed away. He scuttled sideways towards the water’s edge like a giant crab, moving faster than Ernest could believe possible. They were twenty or thirty feet away already, nearly at the sewer’s bank.

  Should he fire again? Ernest had just one cartridge left and then he’d have to reload. No spares. A sudden attack can be resisted. A sudden attack can be resisted. The words were jumbling in his head. Remember. These instructions must be obeyed at once. What instructions? He had no instructions for this.

  He straightened his glasses and put up the gun again, trying to focus on the unfamiliar sights, to work out where he might dare aim. He only knew about rabbits, and what Uncle Fred had said about killing them—go for the sweet spot, between eye and ear. It’s got to be clean. His mind flashed back to the doe he had watched Peggy kill, remembering how the body had flown up in the air, like a toy thrown by a peevish child. Twisting, it landed, back legs thrashing. Kick, kick, kick. Head pulled in, rotating on the axis of its shoulders, in a deserted field. Kick, kick, kick. Until it lay still.

  Victor was barely conscious. Fear made him flop like a scarecrow, arms and legs and head uselessly dangling. Peggy backed herself up against the wall by the door, breathing heavily, and her gaze moved jerkily from Victor to Ernest’s gun barrel to the stranger and back again.

  The intruder looked nothing like a spy, of course, or at least nothing like the Nazi officer Ernest had seen in the poster, sliced vertically in half to reveal both disguise and reality. He was bony. Bearded. More like a fisherman really, any old fisherman, with his long waders, and oilskins up to his chest. That was how he had made it this far. Dark water rhythmically slopping against rubber up to his thighs, moving by night, hiding in reeds and under bridges, resting the case on his head to keep it dry as he crept inland. All the way from the shore he’d come, where the real fishermen still cast their nets among the mines, harvesting the odd shoal of dead and blasted fish, all along the waterways, sluice by sluice, until he found this hut. Had he known exactly where he was going? Was it chance or a map? And how had Henryk guided him here?

  “Halt!” shouted Ernest. His voice sounded thin and pathetic in all this space, so he slung the gun on his back so he could cup his mouth with both hands and shout again: “Handy Hock!”

  The stranger only threw an incomprehensible curse at him, spitting it out with a jerk of his head that brought Victor back to life with a start. To Ernest’s horror, the boy began to struggle and scream. His voice, high-pitched with terror, was soon stifled to a choking cough as the man’s hand came over his mouth to force it shut.

  “Peggy!” Ernest said, looking behind him. She was gone. Where? Where had she gone? “Peggy!” She reappeared from the hut, the case in her hand.

  “We’ve got to get rid of this properly.”

  She began to march towards the dyke. Towards the man.

  Ernest licked his teeth, urgently, as if his tongue might find a solution, hidden somewhere around his gums, in the space between his teeth right at the back. She must have a plan. She had that look about her. Peggy always had a plan.

  “You go, Ernest! Just run! Get away! Get help!”

  He was so used to obeying her orders that, like a waiting batsman, he was already on his toes. He almost sped off. But he couldn’t.

  “No. I can’t,” he said. “I won’t leave you.”

  A rustling slither, a loud splash, and then a cry. The stranger and the boy—one almost as tall as the other—were suddenly chest-deep in sludgy water. Victor could shout out loud at last because the man needed both hands to force him down. He pushed on his broad shoulders with all his strength. Victor’s voice cracked between registers as he cried for help. Through the broken screen of reeds, Ernest watched them flail and flounder in mud and sediment and churned-up water, and a tiny part of him thought, This is how it feels, Victor Velvick. Like this.

  “Then we’re three against one,” called Peggy, staggering, off-balanced by the heavy case, blocking his view of Victor. “Come on.”

  That sounded good, but did not make it obvious how the advantage of numbers would help. Ernest looked at the gun in his hands. If he used it now, he risked hurting his sister as well as Victor.

  “Get out of the way, Peggy!” he called.

  She wasn’t listening.

  “Help! You …” Victor was silenced as his head went underwater. But then he came up again, spluttering and choking and fighting for air.

  At that moment Ernest realized a new sound was building all around them, the low ominous throbbing he always dreaded, dipping and rising and getting louder every moment: “We’re coming, we’re coming, we’re coming.”

  66

  You could feel it in your bones, even before your ears had worked out what the sound was. A slight vibration, building to a rhythmic moaning hum, and before long a vast wave of bombers was blackening the sky. Without looking, Henryk knew they were enemy aircraft.

  But on their way home, or heading inland? He couldn’t tell.

  It was the first time he’d been completely out in the open for weeks, and he’d never felt more vulnerable, or disoriented, unsure of the direction of their flight and his own. He just knew they were getting closer all the time. How much worse to be below than above, he thought, surprising himself. From above at least you had a chance. You could emerge from the clouds without warning, dive down without a qualm.

  He kept to the lane, wishing it wasn’t so much higher than the land around. But he was ready to take to a ditch if he had to, and he didn’t stop running.

  Then he heard a new sound, much closer than the bombers: a confusion of voices that made him flinch. He had to stay away. He couldn’t let himself be discovered yet, not here, not this close. Henryk ran beside the hedge to the nearest gateway and stopped, eyes narrowing as he tried to make out where the shouting was coming from. A little way away he saw a small, low building, brick, fenced off—a pumphouse, perhaps? No. Too far from the water running behind it, one of the larger channels that intersected the Marsh.

  Height always helped. He would have to take one risk to avoid another. Henryk climbed onto the gate, and looked, and listened. The shot he heard was like a starting pistol. Henryk was over the gate in an instant, vaulting the next a few moments later. From the jumbled shouts that reached him, a few words detached themselves and rose above the rest. Peggy’s voice.

  “Let him go!”

  No hiding now.

  67

  Peggy’s yell caught the stranger’s attention at last. He seemed to be looking straight at her, his face illuminated by the last splashes of light reflecting off the water. You’d never know he was German. You couldn’t know anything at all, not when his eyes were shaded by the peak of his cap, his mouth concealed by that thick beard.

  “Let him go! You’re finished without this!” she yelled, swinging her arm out over the dyke. At the far point of its arc, the momentum of the heavy case almost pulled her into the water. But she didn’t release her grip, and just about managed to keep her footing on the bank as the damaged transmitter swung back to safety, this time dragging Peggy backwards with its force. “Give yourself up!” she insisted, vaguely aware of the distant sirens, the roar of bombers in the air above. “You may as well give up. You’re finished whatever happens.”

  He clearly didn’t agree—or perhaps did not understand. Or maybe he had a better idea than Peggy what lay ahead if he surrendered himself. He had already kille
d once. He hesitated, for just long enough to allow Victor to twist himself away. But that triumph was temporary. The stranger shouted something—who knew what? —and briefly forced Victor’s head back underwater. Peggy stood panting and uncertain. What kind of bargaining chip was a smashed-up transmitter? She would have to go into the water and tackle the man herself. If she could distract him into releasing Victor, then he could help too.

  The bombers were almost overhead. From just a few fields away came the scream of falling incendiaries, and immediately afterwards, from just behind her, an urgent, familiar voice.

  “Peggy!”

  At the sound of her name, Peggy turned, full of sudden elation. The case in her hand swung out once more.

  “Henryk!” she cried.

  Unstoppable, the transmitter continued its trajectory across the water and slipped from her grasp. Quite out of control, it sailed towards the struggling pair, and hit Victor squarely in the chest. All the breath knocked out of him, Victor crumpled and slid out of sight. Peggy was horrified. Now she really had blood on her hands. Then Peggy saw Ernest. He had clambered down into the dyke too, and stood uncertainly among the reeds at its edge, shotgun held high. Didn’t he realize how deep the water became just a few steps beyond? He would never be able to fire from there—it would be up to his neck.

  The stranger turned towards her brother.

  “Henryk!” shouted Peggy. “That’s the murderer. He’s a spy. We’ve got to stop him!”

  Two more great splashes. Peggy and Henryk entered the water almost at once, perhaps seven or eight feet apart along the bank. The cold knocked the breath out of her, and the mud felt like a living thing, sucking at her ankles, dragging on her clothes, swirling and clouding the water so Peggy couldn’t see a thing below the surface.

  “No!” she yelled, and took a step forward but immediately stumbled. She had no hope of rescuing Victor. There was nothing firm around her. She was sinking. It felt hopeless. Yet Peggy refused to give up. Mrs. Velvick could not lose another son. She lurched forward again, groping in the dark turmoil in front of her, dragging one foot after the other, spitting out weed. At last she half-fell against something firm. A log? No, a body. Now she really had no choice. Peggy took a deep breath, clamped shut her mouth and squeezed tight her eyes, and then plunged both arms downwards towards Victor.