Dover Beach

by Leslie Thomas

  The plane curved away and joined the others. Four of the balloons above the town were now burning and staggering downwards, their cables hung slack. The anti-aircraft guns were firing like sledgehammers. Then, with a final joyful swoop, the planes came in and loosed their machine guns into the two silver elephants hanging half a mile from the hill.

  One of the balloons exploded without fuss, no more than a puff of smoke and a sizzle of flame. The cable below it fell clear. The fresh breeze, coming from the east, blew the other blazing balloon towards the hill. ‘Christ,’ said Dunphy, placing his mug of tea on the grass. ‘It’s coming at us!’

  Low and fiery it ambled threateningly towards them. The soldiers began to scatter. Men ran into each other. The women clambered back into the canteen.

  The swollen silver bag came across the lip of the cliff, like a mythical fire monster, touching the grass and rolling as it roared. The soldiers in its path ran away, wildly shouting. The balloon skimmed the ground again and bounced. It settled, like a massive hen on a nest, on the only obstacle in its path – the canteen.

  There came an almost soundless mushroom of flame. Dunphy clambered to his knees and bawled to his men. He ran over the springing grass. The air was full of burning smoke. The soldiers came running. ‘Get the ropes!’ shouted the sergeant. ‘Get the bloody ropes! Pull it off!’

  They caught the trailing cables and pulled, forcing what was left of the burning balloon sideways. But the van was on fire. Dunphy rushed to the rear door and threw it open. He climbed in. It was burning hot and black, the smoke was choking. Two of the women were crawling like fat children. ‘Out, get out!’ he shouted. Some of the soldiers came in the door and dragged the women out. ‘Come on, love. Let’s ’ave yer.’

  The third woman, the one who had been in charge, was sprawled below the smoke, her clothes and her hair on fire. Dunphy, breathing red hot air, bent and picked her heavily from the floor, half-carrying, half-dragging her through the open door.

  ‘Help! Help me!’ he shouted. His men rushed, taking the woman from him, trying to beat out the flames with their hands. Dunphy stumbled with them. ‘Roll her – roll her on the grass!’ he choked. He fell on his knees.

  The soldiers put the woman down and rolled her in the grass. They rolled her down the slope. ‘Watch it! Watch what you’re doing!’ shouted Dunphy sitting on the ground. Smoke was coming from his mouth. His hair was singed. ‘You’ll roll her over the fucking cliff!’

  They almost did as the surface dipped. But they stopped and stood up, each one gasping. The woman lay senseless between them almost without clothes, her face burned black. The man who had driven the van hauling the canteen appeared. He looked at her, turned and went back to the van. Without hurry he came with a clean tablecloth. While the soldiers watched, shocked and stunned, he opened it and carefully placed it across her body. He adjusted the edges. The German planes had gone and the sky was a summer morning blue. ‘Bastards,’ he said.

  Chapter Eight

  COTTON DID NOT want to immediately alarm the old couple; they would have enough cause for it, he thought, when they realised why he had come. So he left the constable in the car at the foot of the brief hill. The young policeman, Gates, had been rejected by the army because his feet could not be trusted, so he had opted for the police and now spent hours on the beat trudging the streets of Dover. He was grateful for the respite, sitting in the police car. Cotton said to him: ‘These people are harmless. The old boy used to have a second-hand bookshop in Stargate Street. They’ll have a fit if they see you in uniform coming to their front door.’

  ‘Like the Gestapo,’ suggested Gates.

  Cotton sighed. ‘They’ve got to be told they’re going to be interned under the Emergency Regulations. Suspect aliens. And strange lights have been reported up here.’

  It was only a short path up to the house but it was steep and open to the wind, and he wondered how they managed it. He paused at the top and, nudged by the stiff breeze, turned and viewed the town in its defile in the cliffs – the curve of its beach cluttered now with gaunt barbed-wire coils – then over the harbour and its thin grey boats and ships, and beyond the breakwater and the block-ship, out to the glinting Channel. The French coast lay like a frieze across the horizon.

  The house was a chalet, built in the early 1900s for the view. It had not been painted since years before the war and its woodwork was peeling so badly he was tempted to pull a piece of paint away. It was next to his nose. But he left it. The windows were draped with unwashed lace curtains. Cotton took a preparatory breath, knocked, and sensed rather than heard the shuffling approach within. The door was opened with such difficulty that he helped by giving it a push. Eventually it was rattled away and an old wispy lady in a Bavarian apron stood uncertainly blinking through rimless spectacles. ‘Not today, but thank you,’ she said.

  She made to shut the door again but he gently held it. Her eyes brightened with concern and she said: ‘Vot?’

  ‘Mrs Heine, I would like a word with you and your husband,’ said Cotton carefully.

  He produced his warrant card which she examined with her eyes only an inch away, but then again said: ‘Vot?’

  ‘May I come in please? I am the police, you understand.’

  She examined him, his appearance. ‘No clothes,’ she said pointing at his sports jacket. ‘The Gestapo always had clean uniform.’

  ‘I am not the Gestapo.’ He decided to shock her. ‘We’ve had reports that somebody in this house has been signalling with a torch to German submarines.’

  It sounded ridiculous, these things always did. But he had to make a report. The old lady considered it, then stepped aside. Cotton saw that the hallway and the room beyond were crammed with books, piled ceiling high like an inner defensive wall. Scarcely any light seeped into the passage and only a little more into the room where he now found himself. There was a low window, the sun seeping in almost at floor level. Books climbed every wall. There was a smell of leather and old grime.

  Cotton had seen the old man before, standing outside his dishevelled Dover shop as if determined to prevent anyone entering. Now he was sitting in a round chair, reading a book, sunlight bathing his slippers. He was wearing wiry glasses like his wife’s and he stooped as he sat as if to get a better view of Cotton.

  It was the wife who spoke. ‘This man asks if any persons have been signalling to German submarines mit a torch.’

  ‘Maybe,’ shrugged the old man. ‘But it is not us. You are employed by the authorities?’

  Cotton introduced himself fully and displayed his warrant card again. ‘You are, I take it, Mr and Mrs Heine.’

  ‘Gustav and Marie,’ said the man. He smiled thinly but fondly at his wife.

  Cotton got to the point. ‘There have been reports to the police in Dover of a light seen flashing up here, at night, possibly signalling an enemy vessel, a submarine or some such ship, offshore.’ Again looking at them, their helplessness, he thought how unlikely it sounded.

  Mrs Heine took some books from another rounded chair and brushed it, briefly but enough to send up voluminous dust, before inviting him to sit down. The old man looked calmly at Cotton. ‘We could be shot?’ he said.

  ‘No, no, no.’ Cotton held up his hands. ‘Nobody is going to be shot. Have you been outside with a torch at night? It is against the blackout regulations for a start.’

  ‘Our little dog, Hermann, we let him out at night,’ said Mrs Heine.

  ‘So he does his business,’ her husband added apologetically. As if he had heard his name an elderly dachshund, dull eyed and dusty, wriggled to Mr Heine’s feet. ‘Then he gets lost in the dark,’ the old man said.

  The old lady gave a quaint, obedient curtsy, said: ‘I will bring you coffee,’ and shuffled from the room.

  Cotton took from his pocket a document. ‘This is your aliens record,’ he said trying to sound authoritarian. ‘You have been in this country since 1937? Is that correct? Why did you come here?’

&nb
sp; ‘It was not to see the Coronation,’ said Mr Heine. He nodded as if pleased with the joke.

  ‘Why did you come?’ repeated Cotton patiently.

  ‘To keep away from Hitler. Every Jew was getting a knock on his door. So we came here.’

  ‘Why Dover?’

  ‘It was the nearest place when we left the ferry boat.’ He looked about him as if for help. ‘We had much luggage, books, so we did not go anywhere further. But I would not signal submarines. Just because we have a foreign name, and our voices, does not mean we would do that.’ He paused as if considering his next words, then said: ‘Last year, at the beginning of the war, we were taken away from here, you understand – as they say, evacuated. With many other old people from Dover.’

  Mrs Heine reappeared with the smallest cup Cotton had ever seen, like something from a child’s teaset. He had to hold the handle with the tips of his thumb and first finger. ‘And they sent us to the Krankenhaus,’ she put in heavily.

  Cotton was wondering how he should drink the black coffee and not swallow it all at once. Mrs Heine had only brought in one cup. ‘The what?’ he asked.

  Mr Heine said: ‘The hospital, a lunatic asylum.’

  ‘A madhouse,’ said his wife. ‘In some place.’ She shook her head as though trying to dismiss the memory.

  ‘One hundred people from here, from Dover,’ continued her husband, ‘all getting old, like us.’ He demonstrated with his hands. ‘They put the women in one place and the men in one place and made us wear the uniform. It was like the Nazis.’

  ‘How long were you there?’ Cotton felt helpless.

  ‘Twelve days,’ said Mr Heine. ‘Then they left the gates open and we got out.’ He made a walking movement with his fingers. ‘It was easy. We walked out, went to a station on a bus and came back here. It took a long time to find our way.’ A bleak look took over his face. ‘Now, I think, we will be sent away again.’

  There was no point in lying. ‘It will not be like before,’ Cotton promised unsurely. ‘Not the Krankenhaus, nor any place like that. You will be sent to a nice holiday spot called the Isle of Man.’

  Mr Heine said glumly: ‘Will they keep us away from each other?’

  Cotton shook his head. ‘No. They won’t do that again. You will all be together. It is a very nice island, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘Not a concentration camp?’ Both pairs of pleading eyes were fixed on his.

  ‘No,’ he said. He finished the tiny drain of coffee in the cup and thanked them for it. He handed it back. She smiled with real fondness at the cup and saucer.

  Mr Heine said: ‘Perhaps we will find friends there.’

  ‘Very probably.’ Cotton made to go, nodding towards the dachshund. ‘Don’t go looking for him at night,’ he said.

  ‘If we go to this place of Man as you call it, and women also, can we take Hermann?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Cotton unsurely. ‘Put him in a basket and cover him up.’ He rose from the hard round chair and, in an almost quaint ceremony, the old German couple each shook his proffered hand.

  ‘You mean us well,’ said Mr Heine with a stiff short bow that made his spectacles slide down his nose. Without hurry, he adjusted them as his wife smiled hopelessly and made another small curtsy.

  ‘Someone will come to see you,’ said Cotton. ‘I will have a word with that department. I’ll make sure that when you leave everything will be safe here.’

  Mrs Heine gave a tight puff that showed the veins in her cheeks. ‘We do not worry,’ she said. She looked about disparagingly. ‘This stuff.’

  ‘We have lost everything before,’ shrugged her husband.

  ‘The authorities will arrange everything,’ said Cotton hoping they would. ‘I will write a report so that they look after you properly. The Isle of Man is an interesting place. Lots of history. Even mountains. You might like it.’

  ‘We will try,’ said the man.

  His wife brightened a touch. ‘Maybe they will like us.’

  They moved towards the front door, down the tunnel-like passage lined on both sides with books. Cotton was trying not to sneeze with the dust. He lifted the latch gratefully.

  The bright day was framed in the doorway, glaringly after the dimness of the interior. Cotton thanked them again and told them not to bother to come out. But the old man followed him below the sagging porch.

  As they moved out into the sun, on the overgrown path, Cotton sensed there was something strange. The old man knew it at once. ‘The birds,’ he said looking at the sky. ‘None of them sing.’

  Cotton was suddenly alarmed. Even the town’s insistent gulls were silent. Mr Heine crouched where he was standing and caught the policeman’s shoulder in a feeble attempt to pull him down. A shattering explosion flew from the centre of the town, and ran up the hillside. Then another. Both men were left crouched on the path. A clump of hydrangeas flew by as if in a wind. Twin columns of smoke rose from the town. There was a cry from behind them, slightly apologetic, and through the open door they saw that the old lady was buried in books, her startled face above the pile with dust and grit rising all around. She began to sneeze violently and her husband struggled to his feet. Cotton got to her first and the two men threw the books aside and pulled her, gasping, from the pile.

  Mr Heine began feeling her limbs as if he knew what he was doing, but she pushed him away spiritedly. ‘It is too late for them to wound me,’ she said.

  Her husband pushed some more of the books aside with his foot and Cotton pulled away others. ‘So heavy, books,’ Mr Heine puffed. ‘All books one day will have paper covers and the world will be safer.’

  ‘God knows what that was,’ said Cotton going out into the garden again. Smoke was still rising in two columns from the town. They could hear the bells of the fire engines. ‘There was no air-raid warning.’ He looked into the empty sky. ‘No planes.’

  Mr Heine sniffed at the air. ‘A shell,’ he said confidently. ‘Artillery shell.’

  Cotton realised he was right. ‘Shelling us from France now.’

  ‘The birds keeping shtum told me and then the sound in the sky, like whirr . . .’ said Mr Heine in an oddly pleased way. ‘In the First War I was in the artillery.’ He glanced in a shy way at Cotton. ‘The German artillery, you understand.’

  Three more high-explosive shells burst in Dover that day, killing four people and demolishing a bicycle shop and a bagwash. Sheets from the bagwash were strewn across the street and were used to cover the dead bodies. The attack caused consternation in both low and high places. England had never before been shelled; the land had never been within range of an enemy gun.

  ‘I still intend to sleep in my own bed,’ said Nancy that night. ‘Who knows if you’d be any safer in the shelter? All I can say is the Germans must have some very large guns.’

  Cotton said: ‘This is about as far as their range is. Just another couple of miles of English Channel and we’d be safe.’

  He got up from their supper and they both began the familiar ritual of clearing the table. ‘There’s no time to hide with shells, is there,’ she said running the water into the sink. ‘I wonder how long they take to shoot over here, over the Channel?’

  ‘Seventy seconds.’ Cotton picked up the tea towel. ‘But you need to see the flash and then start counting.’

  ‘And running,’ she said.

  ‘The Germans can’t know what they’re aiming at. You need a spotter plane, or better aiming aids anyway, to know that you’re not just wasting ammunition. Maybe it’s just to terrorise people. And if too many of those things land around the harbour then they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face. If they do invade they’re going to need that harbour.’

  She stopped washing. ‘Do you think they’ll come?’ she asked looking directly at him.

  Cotton put his arms about her and they hugged briefly. He said: ‘Only God and Hitler know. The question is how? If he’d got together some sort of invasion right after Dunkirk, followed us back over
the Channel if you like, then, with parachute troops capturing airfields, he would have had a decent chance. We were in disarray, all over the shop. But he didn’t. Now it’s getting late. He’s given us the best part of three months to pull ourselves together a bit. We’re still weak but we’ll be ready for him after a fashion.’

  ‘He’s got to get across that water,’ she said. ‘It’s like a trench, a ditch, isn’t it.’

  ‘It’s a big ditch. The navy can’t wait for him to try.’

  The telephone rang. It was late. She picked it up. ‘Are you sure, Brenda?’ she said. ‘No, of course you’re not. You can’t be. Frank’s here. I’ll put him on.’

  She offered the receiver to Cotton. ‘It’s Brenda,’ she said. ‘She thinks she’s seen a spy. He came into the pub. She wouldn’t serve him because it was after hours.’

  ‘Everyone keeps seeing spies,’ grumbled Cotton as they drove east, two miles to the village. ‘Kent is apparently crawling with them and we’ve not found one yet. You’ve only got to have a funny eye or a lisp and somebody thinks you’re a Nazi agent.’

  ‘Well, Brenda is frightened and she is my sister. She wouldn’t want to look silly which is why she rang for you. You know she’s very sensible, she wouldn’t just raise the alarm for nothing.’

  The customary Home Guard patrol, mooching along the coastal road, halted them. The four damp men recognised him readily but still demanded his police warrant and examined Nancy’s identity card by a pinpoint torch beam.

  ‘Where you going this time o’night, then?’ asked a man who was a fishmonger in Dover. ‘If I may ask.’

  ‘Going to nab a German spy,’ said Cotton blandly. ‘He called in for a drink at the Merry Mariner at St Margaret’s. After hours.’

  The Home Guard men laughed and waved him on. ‘If I’d said Hitler had swum ashore they’d still wave us on,’ he said to Nancy as they drove.