by Chloe Mayer
‘Why is Daddy crying?’
‘What? No he isn’t.’ He held a door open to one of the cubicles. ‘Would you rather go in there?’
‘He is. I saw him.’
‘Oh, that! That’s all the onions in his gravy! Haven’t you ever heard onions make you cry?’
I nodded uncertainly.
‘There you are then. Bit embarrassing, really. Probably best not mention it – you don’t want to make him feel bad about it. We’ll just give him a moment. With the women. He’ll be all right when we get back.’
Poor Daddy! I hoped the onions in my gravy wouldn’t make me cry. I’d scrape it off my meat when we got back to the table. I would offer to scrape it off Daddy’s as well, but I didn’t want to embarrass him for crying. I’d let him scrape his own sauce off.
Back at home, Daddy said he thought he needed a quick nap, so he went upstairs to his bedroom. We had tea in the sitting room but Daddy still didn’t come down and, when it started to get dark, Grandpa and Granny said they might as well go and have an early night in their room at the pub.
‘But we should wake him up to say goodbye first,’ Granny said. ‘We’ve hardly seen him.’
Mother started to stand up from her armchair. ‘I can wake him …?’
‘No, let him sleep,’ Grandpa said. ‘That’s all he needs. He’s exhausted, that’s all. Touch of – what do they call it? – battle fatigue. He’ll be right as rain after a good sleep.’
When they left, I fiddled with my bow tie until it came off and Mother put the wireless on and made one of her special drinks. I wandered upstairs and listened outside Daddy’s door. It was quiet.
I pushed the door open and tiptoed to his bed. He’d put on his pyjamas, which made him look more like Daddy – I didn’t really like his green soldier uniform after all, I decided. It was interesting to watch his face as he slept because I could tell he was dreaming – his mouth was open slightly and his eyelids were twitching. His eyes snapped open suddenly and he sat straight up and grabbed me with a gasp, which made us both jump.
‘Ah, Daniel!’ He laughed a little bit and lay back down. ‘It’s you. What are you up to?’
I shrugged.
I wondered if I should tell him there was a Troll in Bambury. But then I thought I probably shouldn’t worry him when he’d be leaving again first thing in the morning.
‘I’m doing a good job looking after Mother,’ I said finally.
He laughed again. ‘I know you are. I can see. You’ve been a very good boy.’
‘Yes.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I’m doing a lot of hush-hush work around the house to make sure she’s protected.’
‘Speak up, there’s a good boy! There’s such a ringing in my ears.’
I repeated what I’d said. He smiled and reached out an arm to ruffle my hair. ‘Excellent. Good boy.’
He yawned and pulled back the corner of his eiderdown and I climbed in. It was like climbing into a warm cocoon as he pulled the covers across us and curled up around me. I was wrapped up tight like a butterfly. I still had my clothes on so it was quite hot, but it felt so nice being surrounded by his body. I knew I was probably a bit old to be sleeping in his bed because I was nine – I was very little the last time I remembered doing this, and that was when I’d had a bad dream. But it seemed to me that Daddy had been having a bad dream himself, so I was happy to stay if it stopped him being scared.
His nose was above the top of my head and his breath tickled me as it moved against my hair, but in a nice way. His breathing got deeper and deeper and I could tell he’d fallen asleep again. It was so peaceful lying in his arms I felt myself falling under as well, and although I woke for a minute when I heard Mother going to her own room, I was soon fast asleep again and we stayed wrapped up together all night.
Things were always better when Daddy was at home, and I wished he didn’t have to leave so soon. It was early, so I left him sleeping and went to the bathroom. We hadn’t done any arm wrestling yet, I thought as I brushed my teeth, and I was sure I’d be able to beat him properly now without him letting me win. Grandpa and Granny hadn’t arrived yet to take us to London to see Daddy off, and Mother was still asleep in her room, so we definitely had time for a few matches once he was up.
But he wasn’t in his bed when I went back and I couldn’t find him anywhere.
I thought he must have gone out somewhere and felt a bit upset because he hadn’t told me. But then for some reason I thought I’d just check the garden.
It was then I heard a funny noise in the air-raid shelter. It almost sounded like weeping. I listened for a minute or two, then knocked at the door.
‘Daddy?’
The noise stopped immediately, but the door didn’t open and after a while I went away.
9
Their world seemed to her much larger than her own; they could sail across the oceans in their ships and climb mountains that rose above the clouds …
From The Little Mermaid
Annabel was exhausted by Reggie’s visit – and the close proximity of his parents – and spent almost two days in bed after he left. But on the second day she fancied some fresh air so decided to pop to the High Street to do some shopping that afternoon.
It was lovely and warm and she only needed a thin cardigan over her floral dress. The boy saw her as she was heading out of the front door with her wicker basket and she allowed him to accompany her. She thought perhaps he was a bit sad since his father had left and she felt a little badly for him. She held open the garden gate for him and in a spontaneous rush of feeling placed her hand on the crown of his head as he passed through, making him smile up at her.
She headed to the greengrocer’s, Sid Mitchell’s shop, for some fruit and vegetables. Occasionally she was able to get gin from under his counter, too. She always told him it was for her father, who liked a tipple. When they entered, Mr Mitchell was discussing the new PoW camp with the pimply adolescent who was his assistant.
Annabel wandered over to the box of carrots and began to select a few; the hotel had inspired her to cook a hot meal.
‘But who’s in charge of them, like?’ the teenager asked.
‘Well,’ Mr Mitchell said, ‘they all go out to different farms in the day, and then the farmers are in charge of them. But the actual camp itself, which is on a field that used to be part of Ray Dawson’s land, is being run by an old boy who was a colonel in the Great War.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
Annabel shifted position so she could watch as the pair talked. Mr Mitchell had grown his thin grey hair long on one side and then combed it over his scalp as though the strands would hide his baldness. He sat on a stool behind the counter, while the youth leaned back against some shelves, intent on his boss’s words.
‘I forget his name, the colonel,’ Mr Mitchell said. ‘But he’s on to a good little number there – he spends his days inside a hut reading the Racing Post and drinking Bovril, from what I’ve heard. He just has to do a roll-call twice a day and that’s a day’s work for him.’
This sounded highly unlikely to Annabel. Surely the camp’s perimeters would be closely guarded by soldiers or even the Home Guard? The same thought must have occurred to the grocer’s assistant, for he sounded nervous when he said it didn’t sound as if the camp was ‘exactly secure, like’.
Annabel moved towards the potatoes, the boy trailing by her side.
‘Oh, don’t you fret about that now,’ the grocer told his assistant. ‘Security’s all but unnecessary in a place like that. They don’t send us high-level Nazis down here, do they? No, course not. They ship them somewhere top secret, Gawd knows where. Somewhere guarded, somewhere where they can break them down for information. Somewhere up in Scotland more than likely. Or one of those funny little islands off the mainland. Or maybe somewhere abroad.’
Annabel saw the youth’s eyes widen as he took this in, but he remained silent.
‘This might seem like the whole world to you, lad
, but Bambury is just a, you know, just a tiny speck on the map. Mark my words; none of those Jerries in that camp is anything other than a low-level nobody. And because we’re so rural, we’re so far out of the way that if they ran away from the camp, where could they even run to?’
At this, the grocer’s assistant opened his mouth to interject, but the grocer wasn’t finished.
‘And they don’t just ship them here willy-nilly. They classify them first, interrogate them all. You look next time you see one about the village – he’ll have a diamond-shaped bit of cloth sewn to the back of his work shirt. They colour-code them all. If they’re a high-ranking officer, or have really strong Nazi views, they have to wear a black patch. If they’re anti-Nazi they’ll wear a white one, and anyone else is put in grey. All the ones I’ve seen in Bambury are grey, because most people are shades of grey, aren’t they, if you think about it? But in any case, they’re just the normal Germans. They’re not really Nazis at all.’
‘But isn’t it possible that—’
‘No, those PoWs wouldn’t even dream of running in the first place, and I’ll tell you why.’
He took a slow sip from his mug of tea to allow time for a dramatic pause. Annabel picked up a potato and turned it over in her hands as though looking for blemishes.
‘It’s because nobody in their right mind would want to leave.’ He nodded. ‘Just think about it: those young lads can wait out the rest of the war here. Conditions are good, they’re safe from the front lines, no one’s going to kill them and they won’t have to kill anyone else. They’re being fed and yes, they might have to do a bit of manual labour or work on the farms around the village, but the rest of the time they can spend playing cards and putting their feet up. Not a bad life if you can get it. There’s worse ways to spend a war, if you ask me. Like my boy Teddy on the front line.’
At this, the grocer finished his tea with a gulp and slammed his chipped blue mug down on the counter for emphasis.
He looked across at Annabel. ‘Hello, Mrs Patterson. You all right there, love?’
Annabel jumped – she knew she’d been caught eavesdropping – but she gestured to the potatoes and asked what variety they were.
As they headed back through the village, Annabel told the child they were going to walk a little out of their way – in truth go right past their house – in order to have a quick look at the new PoW camp. Apart from the German soldier who chopped the wood, she hadn’t seen any of the other prisoners since they’d arrived in Bambury and felt suddenly curious to see where they were living.
They continued down Ivy Lane, not even stopping to drop the shopping off, and turned left. They passed Dawson’s farm and walked for another twenty minutes along a road lined with straggly hedgerows and fields on either side, until they came to the site.
Annabel stepped off the asphalt onto the grassy verge to look across the top of the bushes. She shifted her basket against her hip as she took in the camp. The boy ran up and down the hedge, crouching to look through it at various points.
Where, just weeks earlier, sheep had grazed, now stood a holding camp for foreign prisoners. She counted ten pre-fabricated dormitory huts, although there was easily space for another ten and a messy pile of building materials indicated more would indeed be built in due course. Only one had thick black curtains at the windows so she guessed that was the only dormitory occupied so far.
The Nissen huts were basic; just corrugated steel structures with rounded roofs and sides that curved into the ground, as though the building had once been a cylinder or tube that had been sliced in half lengthways. She was too far away to see through the windows but imagined what they might look like inside. She thought each one would probably hold about forty beds or so, and visualised twenty metal cots with thin mattresses lining each side of the building. There were a couple of smaller huts off to one side of the field with water tanks on their roofs and she guessed they must be rudimentary bathrooms, with a toilet and basin and perhaps even a basic shower rigged up.
She gazed around the rest of the camp and noticed a smaller, but slightly sturdier, pre-fab and realised that must be the office and sleeping quarters of the old colonel that Mr Mitchell had mentioned. The lone camp ‘guard’.
It still seemed a little strange that an old man was the only defence against roughly forty or so German soldiers, with more to come. It seemed even odder that the men were allowed to walk unescorted to various farms around the village to do their work as though they were leaving for normal jobs in peacetime.
She found it hard to reconcile Bambury’s apparently relaxed attitude to the German soldiers with Reggie’s shaky distress. It made him seem a bit, well, silly.
There hadn’t been reports of any trouble with PoWs in the village and the greengrocer seemed to think they weren’t really any different from the Brits. Just unlucky men who happened to be in the wrong army on the wrong side.
She thought of Johannes, the PoW she’d met, and felt a little sorry for him now; he was just an ordinary man being held prisoner in a strange country.
Perhaps she’d return to see him again soon. She would buy more wood – and this time she’d make a point of being friendly.
10
Before the house, a fire was burning, and round about the fire a man was dancing – hopping from one foot to the other and howling …
From Rumpelstiltskin
At first, I couldn’t find a gap in the leaves big enough for me to see through and I had to try several different spots. I ran up and down impatiently and the tall grass by the side of the road tickled my legs, but I was desperate to see what the PoW camp looked like.
I supposed Mother wanted to check for herself that the prison was secure. She was terribly afraid of the Germans, living alone and all, now Daddy was back fighting the war again.
When I found a little clearing in the bushes so I could spy on the camp at last, I felt a strange flash of recognition – as though I had seen it all once before.
‘Oh,’ I said, surprised. The strange rounded buildings seemed like the mystical cabins I’d seen back in the forest nestled amongst the giant oaks – just before we’d met the woodcutter that time.
Something important was happening; something strange and magical. Both my worlds were colliding, here, in this place. And somehow the woodcutter was able to step between the two. He was the key, I was sure of it.
After a while, Mother turned and set off for home. I stayed staring for a few moments longer, then rushed to follow her.
I’m not afraid of the Germans, I thought, as we walked down the road leading away from the woodchopper’s village, back towards Farmer Dawson’s farm and our cottage. I knew what they were like; they lived in a mystical world, which was often dark, but good always, always prevailed. That was just the way it was.
Still, these were dark times, everybody said so, and they didn’t even know a Troll was lurking around the village.
I didn’t want Mother to worry about all the danger we were in, apart from the war – but there was no need for her to know in any case; I was perfectly prepared to protect her.
I looked at her now, a little way ahead of me, the strong spring breeze threatening to pull her brown hair out into wild tendrils that would whip about her face instead of sitting neatly where it had been set by rollers to fall about her shoulders. I’d taken to watching her lately. Spying on her, in a sense, to make sure she was safe. KEEP MUM, as all the posters said.
I often went round into the front garden and peeked through the sitting-room window to see what she was up to. She mainly sat in the armchair, listening to the wireless and staring into space. Sometimes I secretly trailed her as she went around the village, and watched her queuing for meat at Mr Lupton the butcher’s, or patiently waiting in line to use her rations for sugar or tinned fruit.
It was hard to put my finger on, but I felt a bit strange whenever I thought about how things were when it was just the two of us. It was a shame Daddy was away at war
. I wished he’d been able to stay longer on his visit home. But like all the hero-soldiers and warriors in my fairy tales, he had to protect our kingdom – which meant fighting battles in foreign lands.
I was frightened something bad would happen to him because I loved him, but I was also frightened something bad would happen to him because then things would always be this way. As it was, my life with Mother was … I didn’t know the right word. Confusing? Sometimes almost a bit scary.
Take that letter, for example. The one that made my breath get stuck inside me so that I couldn’t breathe when I read it, no matter how much I tried to suck in the air.
I found it about a year ago, when I was searching the bureau in the hope of finding a map that would lead to buried pirate treasure. I recognised Daddy’s writing from the letters he sent me. I’d never read hers before and thought they’d be pretty much the same as mine. But they weren’t really. I was eight then and couldn’t read all the words. His writing was messier in her letters, more joined-up. But I could read that line. The one that said she didn’t feel a thing for me. And then my breathing just stopped and I thought it wouldn’t start again and I was gasping like a goldfish out of its bowl, drowning in air.
I’m sure now that Daddy must have made a mistake. He must have misheard her – he was having such problems with his ears even now. Look how she liked reading fairy tales to me every night, and how happy she was when she found out she was going to have a baby because I’d be like a real-life Darling.
I just had to be a good boy, that’s all. If I always made sure to be a good boy, she couldn’t help but love me. She’d love me the way Gerda loved Kai; she went to the ends of the earth, right to the North Pole, to save him from the Snow Queen’s clutches.
Sometimes I watched other boys in the village who were out with their mothers. I was careful to watch what they did, how they behaved – how they made their mothers love them. Since I wasn’t really friends with anyone at school, I didn’t know for sure what it was like at their houses. But I had a funny feeling it wasn’t the way things were at mine.
