Pretending to throw hand-grenades and waiting for the explosion with their hands over their ears and eyes as wide as saucers. Falling dead with widely flung arms and excruciating screams, only to leap up again immediately to machine-gun somebody else.
Boys were stupid. Dunkirk wasn’t a game; Dunkirk was where your dad was.
But ever since this morning, the boys had given up playing ‘Dunkirk’. Instead, at every possible opportunity, they gathered in the corner of the yard and stared into the bike-shed.
For inside the bike-shed, when they arrived for school that morning, they had discovered a little tank. At least the boys said disparagingly, it wasn’t a real tank. It was called a Bren carrier and it had no turret, just a tarpaulin fastened securely over its open top. And it was no bigger than a car.
At first they just stood and stared; standing in a circle four boys deep, so no girl could get near, even if a girl wanted to. They admired its great muddy cogs, and the caterpillar tracks, and the strange painted symbols on its side, and argued about what they meant.
And then they began to wonder what lay inside, under the tightly-stretched tarpaulin. A Bren gun, or even dead soldiers …
Billie Cramer began to untie the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place, while the rest waited agog, their hearts thumping painfully in their heaving chests. Billie took a long time; he made the most of it, being a show-off. Saying he recognised the smell of a dead body.
But when he finally threw back one corner of the tarpaulin, with a fairground flourish, all there was was a half-eaten tin of bully-beef that ponged to high heaven, a pair of boots that ponged even worse, and a copy of an old French newspaper called Figaro that had been torn into quarters for use on the lav.
And then the Head had arrived like an avalanche, grabbed Billie painfully by the ear and hauled him into school for a caning. Since then, Old Brimbly the caretaker had stood on guard over it, grim as a policeman in his old brown overall. The boys dared do nothing, but they still stood staring at the huge muddy object, as if the solving of all Britain’s problems lay within.
And all day long through lessons, they had heard the Head screeching down the telephone in his study, for someone to take the hideous great thing away. But it seemed that no one would, for he was still yelling down the phone, his voice hoarse, when Maggie passed his door on the way out of school.
She didn’t linger. She had much worse things to worry about than hoarse headmasters or Bren gun carriers. Worse things even than Dad being still in Dunkirk.
She was terrified her mum was going mad.
Mum had been all right till two days ago. Tight-lipped, pale, worried to death like everyone else’s mum, but normal.
And then yesterday morning she’d come to Maggie’s room to wake her up and the pinched, worried look was gone. She looked ten years younger, rosy-faced like a young girl.
She had sat on the bed and said, “It’s all right, Maggie. Everything’s going to be all right after all.” And she had hugged Maggie so tight that Maggie had felt she was being squeezed to death.
And Mum had laughed strangely, deeply. And then Mum had wept a little, because Maggie could feel Mum’s tears sliding down to her scalp through her hair. Mum, laughing and crying at the same time …
“What’s all right, Mum?”
“Oh … everything,” said Mum, deliberately uncertain and vague. “Everything is going to be all right.”
“Is Daddy home?”
She felt her mother give a start, then she said, “Heavens, no. No sign of Daddy. I expect the Army still needs him and his lorry round Dunkirk. The men are still being brought home, you know. I expect Daddy’s making himself useful.”
How could everything be all right, when Daddy was over there, being shelled by the Germans? When he might be killed at any minute?
But before she could ask any more questions, Mum was heading for the door. Humming to herself, ’til she caught herself at it, and stopped.
And all through breakfast, Maggie kept catching Mum with that idiotic blissful look on her face …
But that night, when she got home from school, the silly-happy look was gone. Mum’s face was pale again, worse than before, and pinched up. And Mum started at the least sound, even at perfectly normal sounds like the gas stove clicking as it cooled down after cooking the supper; or the alarm clock going off by accident upstairs.
And when old Mrs Greenough had knocked on the front door, wanting to borrow half a cup of sugar, Mum had gone paralysed and just sat there, while knock after knock came on the front door, and finally Maggie had had to go to answer it.
“It’s only Mrs Greenough, Mum, wanting her usual …”
Mum just sat there, clutching her throat with one hand, and the area over her heart with the other.
Finally she swallowed three times and said in a low voice, “Give it … her.”
When Mrs Greenough had departed with many fervent thanks, Maggie had gone back to find Mum collapsed on the settee, near-fainting. She had had to run and fetch Mum’s smelling-salts and mix her a dose of sal hepetica, which was always an ominous sign.
“Whatever’s the matter, Mum?”
“Oh, it’s my nerves. What with your Daddy and the Germans …”
But Daddy and the Germans had been bad for weeks …
Maggie put her key into the lock with a sinking heart. Mum had said she mightn’t go into work at the shop today, if she didn’t feel any better.
Maggie called out down the hall. There was no answer.
She called louder. Still no answer.
And then she noticed Mum’s coat and hat were gone from the hall-stand. So she had gone to work after all. She must be feeling better …
But hat and coat were no proof that Mum had gone to work really. She might be wandering round the town, still going mad …
Uneasily, Maggie sought the refuge of her bedroom. There were potatoes to peel, but they could wait. Mum might return too insane to cook them …
Maggie flung herself on to her bed and stared around her room, seeking comfort from old friends. The three teddies sat on their shelf as usual, leaning safely together; she never played with them now. Just put them under the bed for safety when the air-raid siren went.
There was her Dutch doll, fat and rosy-cheeked. Really, apart from the blackout curtain and the tape across the windows in big stars, her room looked no different from in peacetime, when Daddy had come home at five o’clock every night, and Mum had been always happy and singing.
How could some things change so, and yet other things stay the same?
Above her, the ceiling creaked. Her heart gave a terrified leap. And then she relaxed. She hadn’t been frightened of the creaking ceiling for years, not since she was little and Daddy had explained it creaked because the sun made it hot and the beams expanded. Then night made it cool and the beams grew shorter again. And in growing longer or shorter, they made a creak.
She was getting as bad as Mum. She laughed, to try to make herself feel better.
Then the ceiling creaked again. And again. And a fourth time. It never did that. Not four times in a row, straight off. It was almost as if something heavy was moving about up there … some heavy creature …
And the next time it creaked, she swore she saw the ceiling move. And a little tiny speck of whitewash broke loose and twinkled down. Slowly. Like a tiny parachute …
And that set her thinking about the German parachutists, descending in their hundreds over the skies of Holland and Belgium, so the sky was black with them, in the cinema newsreels.
And they said they did not come as soldiers, but as spies, saboteurs. Disguised as nuns and clergymen, they had blown up bridges and ammunition dumps.
Billie Cramer said they were landing in England after dark already. Disguised as bus conductors and Salvation Army.
She lay frozen with fear, listening.
A sound came down through the ceiling. It sounded very like a groan … a soft groan.
She leapt off the bed, trembling from head to foot. There was somebody up there, in the loft. Was that why Mum was so terrified? But why had Mum run off and left her? Alone with it?
Oh, she told herself, this is silly. This is England! This is our house, 17 Bretton Gardens.
It was a charm she had often used; but this time it didn’t work.
And then came a sound that brought just a tiny bit of comfort.
A snore? Was it a snore? She had to be sure.
Silently, gingerly, she put her bedside chair on to her chest of drawers and climbed up and listened, the slightly-damp pungent smell of the ceiling plaster and whitewash filling her nostrils.
She put her ear right against the plaster, and then she knew it was snoring.
A sleeping spy? Was it safe to run for a policeman? But first. …
But first she must be sure who he was. Just raise the trapdoor and peep, while he was asleep … Even if he wakened (and he sounded very deeply asleep) she could jump down and pull away the ladder, and run like mad and be out of the house long before he could catch her.
But first she went and opened the front door wide, so she could run straight out into the sunshine. And the next-door neighbour, old Mr Finnis, was busy mowing his lawn, and looked up to give her his usual smile.
It gave her the courage to go back to the ladder, the trapdoor, the loft.
She stood at the top of the ladder and pushed gently upwards on the trapdoor. It opened silently, giving out the usual smell of dust and mouse-droppings, soot and damp paper.
As usual, it seemed pitch-dark at first. Then the dim grey patch that was the skylight at the far end swam up into view, outlining the stacks of Daddy’s old magazines, the push-chair she had had when she was a baby, the old cabin-trunk and suitcases. All as usual.
But what was not usual was a pile of what seemed to be old coats and rugs. She was sure they hadn’t been there before.
And then the tangled pile of coats moved, and a foot pushed out of the bottom. A very large foot with a grey sock on it, and a big hole in the end of the sock and a big toe sticking out of it.
For a long time, holding her breath ’til it hurt, she studied the toe.
A man’s toe, a big man’s toe, a sleeping man’s toe.
But otherwise it told her nothing new. And she felt reluctant to report to her future policeman that she had only seen a toe. She felt her policeman would not be convinced by just a toe. She must know a little more. A German uniform, a nun’s habit, or at least a face.
And the sight of the sock with the hole in it had made her a little bolder. It had made its owner seem a lot less frightening. Not a very good spy. Perhaps, even … a harmless old tramp. What a fool she would seem reporting a spy, if it was just a tramp!
If she came two more steps up the ladder she could slide her body along the floor from the trap-door, peer round the piles of Daddy’s magazines and see the man’s face.
One step up, two. Raise the trapdoor higher.
Silently, begin to slide her chest across the floorboards, through the dust that made her want to sneeze …
The huge hand descended on the collar of her school coat without warning; dragged her in, the whole length of her, like she was a mewling puppy. Behind her, she heard the trap-door bang shut.
The rancid smell of a filthy male animal filled her nostrils. A great filthy face loomed up at her through the darkness …
“Maggie!” said a voice.
And she was in Daddy’s arms.
“We didn’t want you to know,” he said wretchedly, when the cuddling had finally stopped. “It was just to be a secret between Mummy and me.”
“But why. You’re safe! Is Martha all right?”
“Poor Martha went for a burton outside Amiens. She was caught in a mass of refugees. They blocked the road so we couldn’t get through. Then a Stuka put a bomb into her. She burnt for hours. I kept looking back and seeing smoke.”
She felt Daddy shudder and knew there was more he was not telling her.
“How did you escape?”
“Hiding in ditches. Four days, hiding in ditches.”
“But you don’t need to hide now!”
He said, in a low voice, “They left us, Maggie. The officers left us and ran away. In a staff car. They left us to get killed. They didn’t care – only about saving their own skins. And we got bombed and machine-gunned.”
“I’m not going back to that. The army’s finished. We had to leave all our tanks and guns and lorries over there, for the Jerries to get. We’ve got nothing left to fight with.”
“You’re not …”
“Yes I am. I’m a deserter. I’ve run away too.”
It was beyond belief. Bad beyond belief. Her daddy. A deserter.
She closed her eyes. What would the kids at school say, when they knew?
What would Billie Cramer say? What would the headmaster say?
Life would be an endless misery … she shrank away from him.
“I’ll go away,” he said, humbly. “I’ll go away and never bother you and Mum again.”
Oh, she had loved him so much and now she hated him so much. She turned to him and said, “Who’s going to look after England? Who’s going to look after us?”
“Would you rather have me dead?”
His dirty face appealed to her; there was sweat on his brow in the grey light of the skylight.
She got up stiffly and dusted her skirt.
“Yes,” she said with hate, and turned and walked to the trap-door, opened it, let herself down on to the ladder and out of the house.
The police picked her up at near midnight, walking, still walking on the promenade. When they took her home, her mum was frantic. Asked her where she’d been, what she’d been doing?
But somehow she knew it was all pretend. Mum knew very well what she’d been doing, because Dad must have told her.
Before he went.
Back to the Army.
Never to have to fight again. Never to have to leave England, through all the long years of war. Which he spent at an ordnance depot in the north of Scotland, running lorry-loads of spares to ack-ack gun sites that never fired in anger.
And, after the war, that evening after school was never mentioned.
She almost came to believe it might have been a dream.
OPERATION CROMWELL
The summer of 1940 was a bad time for us. My father was a dairy farmer. Before the war he was also a butter-factor.
He bought butter off the other farmers, and blended nineteen different sorts together to make the perfect butter that graced the tables of the grand hotels on the sea front at Bournemouth and Eastbourne. It took days, and knowledge; he was a real craftsman.
But when the war came the government stopped all that. We had to sell all our butter to them, so they could cut it up in tiny portions to sell on the rations.
All the profit would’ve been gone; my father always got an extra twopence a pound for his special butter. And those hotels were fuller than ever, with all sorts of high-ranking officers dining out their own wives, or others.
Where would the running of the war have been if those high-ranking officers didn’t have their proper food?
So we only sold so much of our butter to the government; the rest still went to the hotels. The newspapers might call us Black Marketeers, but I reckon we were a vital part of the war effort.
We moved our special butter around after dark, secretly, in my dad’s old car. The car was special, in so far as it had a little boot most other cars didn’t have, under the back seat. You could only get to it by lifting the seat up on the inside.
It worked a treat, ’til the summer of 1940 and the fall of France. Then Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, came on the radio, and called for fit men between sixteen and sixty to volunteer for the Home Guard. On the news they said that a million men had come forward in the first week.
A million nuisances! Us lads went to watch our local Home Guard drilling in ou
r schoolyard. We were a bit mad, because we’d used to play football in that yard in the evenings.
To us it was our yard. But they just nicked it, without a by-your-leave. And what a mess they were! A lot of those useless individuals didn’t know their right foot from their left.
They were drilled by the landlord of the pub, who’d been a sergeant in the Royal Engineers. He had a bellow like a bull; we soon learnt to imitate it to perfection, and we’d stand there shouting “About turn!” in his voice, and having them marching slap into the entrance of the girls’ toilets. Laugh!
Finally, he’d get so mad he’d come tearing out of the gate and chase us. But he never caught anybody but little Billy Swan, who’d only come to watch and who wasn’t shouting false drill-commands at all. I mean, if they couldn’t catch kids, how were they going to catch Jerry paratroopers?
But they were soon on patrol, defending Britain’s shores by night because they were too busy making a living during the day.
I’m glad the Germans didn’t come then. Those Home Guard were a sight! They only had half the uniforms they needed, but they’d shared them out so that some had battledress tops over their usual corduroy trousers, and others had battledress trousers with a clean white shirt on top, that their wives had carefully ironed for them. So the Jerries could see them clearly in the dark, I suppose!
They had three shotguns among them and the rest had hayforks. And they had this little Austin Ten which the blacksmith had turned into an armoured car with sheets of half-inch steel, which made it so heavy that the tyres ran nearly flat and it could only do about five miles an hour.
But they still used it for the only thing they were good for. Road-blocks. They’d pick any road at random and half-block it with their armoured car, and stop every car that passed and search it for Nazi spies and saboteurs, and secret radios and explosives and such.
It didn’t help our butter-smuggling at all. My father did what he could. He joined the Home Guard himself, with the idea that the Home Guard wouldn’t stop and search a mate’s car, especially if the mate was in Home Guard uniform.
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