Our Castle by the Sea

by Lucy Strange

  “Why did you do it, Mr. Smith? Who contacted you?”

  Pa said nothing for a few moments. Then he just said, “I had no choice. That is all I am able to say, Inspector. I had no choice.”

  “What do you mean exactly?”

  “I mean that if you were torn between loyalty to your country and love for your family, what would you choose? What would you actually choose?”

  Pinstripe said quietly: “I’m afraid I couldn’t say, Mr. Smith. But in the eyes of the law, you have committed treason. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Pa said. “I understand.”

  The pulse in my jaw throbbed against my fingers. A drop of blood fell from my thumb and splashed onto the concrete floor of the lantern room.

  Pinstripe had known it was my Pa. When he said that good people do bad things, he hadn’t been talking about Mutti at all …

  “There’s just one thing I need to ask,” Pa said. “I realize this is probably not something you are allowed to do, Inspector, but I need to ask you not to arrest me today. Could you give me, please, until tomorrow night?”

  I heard Pinstripe’s chair shifting on the floor. He tried to interrupt, but Pa kept talking.

  “I’m not going to do anything else, sir, you have my word. I sent one package and that is all I ever intended to send. There are no more secrets I can share. There is no more damage I can do. But I can do something else—something good.”

  “What are you proposing?”

  “Let me take the lifeboat over to Dunkirk to help rescue our boys,” Pa said. “They’ve been appealing on the wireless—anyone able to handle a boat. Well, that’s me. I can do something good. Please, Inspector. I’m not asking you as a policeman, I’m asking you as a man. My daughter Magda is so desperate to go, but I can’t let her—and I know that if I don’t, she will. She’s full of fire, but she’s so young. Let me go. Let my last act in this war be one that saves lives. Please …”

  There was a terrible strain in Pa’s voice now, a wheezing and cracking, and I realized that he was crying again. There were tears running down my cheeks and both my hands were shaking, but I still kept the speaking tube clamped tightly to my ear, even though my right arm was now numb and bloodless. I tried not to sniff. I couldn’t let them hear me.

  “And what happens when you get back?” Pinstripe said after a moment.

  “When I get back, I’ll walk straight into the police station and turn myself in.”

  Everything was quiet for a moment. I tried to imagine what was happening. Perhaps the two of them were shaking hands. There was the sound of chairs moving on the kitchen floor, and then I heard the door open and close, and there was silence again.

  I replaced the brass whistle on the end of the speaking tube and hung it from its bracket on the wall. The blood surged back into my deadened arm like molten lead.

  Pa woke me before dawn the next morning. He didn’t mean to, but I heard the floorboard sigh as he came past our room. Mags was still fast asleep.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Don’t get up, Pet. I’m just going out in the boat for the day. I’ll be back tonight.”

  Had he forgotten that I was there when he said he would take the lifeboat to Dunkirk? Perhaps he wanted to convince me that what he was doing was not dangerous at all—just a spot of fishing on an early summer’s day. Or perhaps he was trying to convince himself.

  “Take care, please, Pet,” Pa said. “Look after the lighthouse, and look after that stubborn sister of yours too. Remember to go straight into the cellar if you hear the air raid siren or planes overhead.”

  “Yes, Pa,” I said.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  I wanted to reach out to him with both arms like I did when I was tiny. I wanted him to scoop me up so I could tuck my knees against his chest and bury my face in his shoulder. I couldn’t bear the thought of him going so far away, sailing straight into the clutches of Hitler’s army. And I couldn’t bear the thought of him coming home only to turn himself in at the police station as a traitor. I had hardly slept a wink that night. Pa, the voice in my head whispered. Pa is the traitor … And then that dreadful headline again—TRAITORS TO BE HANGED …

  “I’ll see you tonight, then, my darling,” he said, bending over to kiss me on the forehead.

  I heard the kitchen door open and close.

  I shut my eyes and tried to get back to sleep.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, my tired eyelids flickering in the gloom, but eventually I gave up on sleep altogether, threw back the blanket, and went over to my sister’s bed.

  “Mags,” I whispered. I didn’t know what I was going to say to her, I just knew I couldn’t bear to be alone in the darkness anymore. Should I tell her about Pa, about what I had heard through the speaking tube? I sat down on the edge of her bed and touched the shoulder-shaped lump of blanket. “Mags …”

  But there was no shoulder beneath my hand; there was only blanket and pillow.

  Mags wasn’t there.

  It was a hideous moment, like biting into an apple that turns out to be soft and rotten inside. I pulled the blanket right back, just to be sure, and there on her bedsheet was a handwritten note addressed to me.

  Pet,

  I’m going to Dunkirk. Pa doesn’t know, so please don’t tell him—I’m hoping to get back before he does, so he won’t even have a chance to be worried or angry. I have to go too, Pet. Do you remember when I left school, and I said that history was happening all around us? This is my chance to be part of it. I know that I am meant to do this, and I know you will understand.

  I’m taking the motorboat—I did some work on the engine yesterday afternoon and got it running nicely. She’ll be just fine. I know she’ll look after me, Pet, so try not to worry too much.

  We’ll both be home tonight.

  Love from Mags x

  No, no, no—Mags … The note shivered between my finger and thumb, and I noticed that my knife cut from the day before had healed into a thick black scab under my nail. My breathing was shallow and panicky. Light, I needed light, and air. I pulled up the blackout blind, flung open the window, and was dazzled by the brightness of the day outside.

  Inside me, though, everything was still dark and cold and terrifying.

  I was completely alone.

  I couldn’t bring myself to eat any breakfast. Instead, I went up to the lantern room with a blanket around my shoulders, opened up Pa’s brass telescope, and put it to my eye.

  I watched all the boats leaving Stonegate harbor—a little flock of them—fishing boats mainly, but some sailing boats too and a couple of private motorboats. They were joined farther out to sea by bigger vessels from Dover, Folkestone, Deal, and Ramsgate—leisure boats, yachts, paddle steamers … All these people, I thought. All these people, setting off across the Channel to help rescue our soldiers.

  I filled in Pa’s logbook, trying to find a bit of comfort in this familiar responsibility. I recorded the date, the weather, and the details of as many of the Dunkirk boats as I could. I knew plenty of them by name.

  I saw the old lifeboat, and the dark, squarish figure of my Pa steering her out of the harbor. The urge to call to him swelled in my throat—he looked so close through the telescope!—but I knew there was no way that he would be able to hear me. Some way behind him—A safe distance behind, I thought—I saw the rusty motorboat, Faith. Two strong feelings were fighting against each other—pride in my crazy, courageous sister, and anger at her for having deserted me. I allowed myself to feel both, watching the whole shoal of boats until their various shapes and colors began to be lost amongst the shifting patterns of sunlight on the waves. The smaller they became, the more I was aware of a painful, pulling sensation in my chest, as if someone had tied a rope around my heart and was tugging at it harder and harder.

  I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. I was just about to head back down to the kitchen, when one more boat caught my eye. It was one of the
Briggs family fishing boats, and it was zipping along at a terrific rate—chasing the wake of the last craft of the flotilla—my sister’s rusty motorboat.

  “Kipper?” I said out loud, taking up the telescope again. It must have been. I had never thought of Kipper Briggs as the heroic type but perhaps, just like Mags, he had decided that this was his chance to be part of history. He wanted to make a difference too.

  Kipper’s was the last boat to leave Stonegate. I folded up the telescope and made my way down the lighthouse stairs, trying to think of ways to make the time between morning and evening pass quickly; I knew it was going to be hours and hours until they came back.

  I fed Barnaby. I polished the lamp. I cleaned the cottage from top to bottom. I weeded the vegetable patch. I washed clothes and mangled them and hung them out to dry. I mended my torn coat. I did every little job I could find that needed doing, and it was still only four o’clock. The cottage was horribly quiet.

  I locked up the main door to the lighthouse. We never really bothered locking the cottage door, but keeping the lighthouse secure was one of Pa’s strictest rules.

  I found my pencils and sketchbook in my room, and went to sit out on the clifftop. I had hardly drawn anything since Mutti had been taken away, but my head and my heart were so full this afternoon that it was the only thing I could think of that might make me feel a bit better.

  I settled down on the dry grass with my back against the smallest standing stone. I drew the cliffs, the clouds, the water—flat, barren, and gray—and the dull shape of the Wyrm, sleeping just below the surface. I drew myself as a tiny, hunched figure looking out across the sea towards the empty horizon. I’ll draw the Daughters of Stone, I thought. But, when I did, something very odd happened. My hand didn’t draw four ancient standing stones—it drew four girls, dressed in long white gowns. They were upright, defiant, their hair blowing in the wind, and their arms stretched out towards the sea. They stood, two of them either side of the tiny, hunched figure of Pet Smith. I rubbed out that pitiful little shape and drew myself again, standing up with the Daughters, my hair blowing in the wind just like theirs. A high note trembled in the air like a thread of silver.

  My skin prickled.

  I drew a boat on the water, and another and another, and when I next looked up at the sea, I saw that something magical had happened. I dropped my sketchbook and pencils on the grass. A miracle.

  The first one was white. Just the spray of a wave, perhaps, or a spark of reflected evening sun, but then it became clearer: an angular little shape, like folded paper, carving its way through the navy sea. A sailing boat. And after the first one, the other boats started appearing on the horizon—three, five, eight, twenty, fifty, or more—just like my drawing … There should be singing, I thought, a chorus. There should be a fanfare of trumpets—they are coming home—just look at them!

  Fishing boats, steamers, yachts, trawlers started to emerge from the haze. The decks of the larger ships and steamers were dark with army uniforms—hundreds of men crowded together. As the boats approached the coast, they fanned out—each heading to its own home harbor. I imagined the view from the perspective of one of the soldiers: the white cliffs of England opening up before them like a mother’s open arms. I waved to one of the boats but I couldn’t see if anyone waved back. I must have been a tiny little shape to them. The sun was setting behind me now. They would only be able to make out a dot on the clifftop. A dot, a tower, and four old boulders.

  Then I recognized one of the larger boats. The Margate Queen. She was a paddle steamer we had been on once during a summer excursion to Margate. It was so odd to see her in this way. The Margate Queen meant fish & chips, Punch & Judy, buckets & shovels … and yet here she was—a warship: an enormous lifeboat, saving the lives of hundreds of men.

  As the sun faded, it became colder up there on the clifftop. I fetched my blanket from the cottage and wrapped it around my shoulders and over my head to make a sort of tent.

  What do I do if they don’t come back tonight? My mind whispered anxiously. What do I do if they never come back? Will I wait here forever?

  What was the alternative? I couldn’t face the idea of going back to sit in the empty kitchen by myself. It was better to wait here on the cliffs with the stones. I felt closer to Pa and Mags somehow.

  Another cluster of boats. Then a long gap and a boat on its own, but it wasn’t Mags’s motorboat or the lifeboat either; it was a little dinghy.

  I gazed at it as the world darkened around me. Its sail was ragged with bullet holes and it felt like a terrible omen. There were no more boats on the horizon.

  I pulled the blanket tightly around me and lay down on the cold grass. I should try to get a little sleep, I thought. But then I looked up at the thousands of stars in the vast sky above and shuddered. I closed my eyes tightly. I don’t think I can.

  But I must have, because when I opened my eyes again, I was stiff with the cold, and the light had changed from black to a cool milky gray. A few pale stars still freckled the sky, but it was almost morning.

  Had there been a shooting star? I couldn’t remember if I’d seen it as I was falling asleep or if I’d dreamt it. I felt hollow and lost, haunted by the hours of dark, silent loneliness since Pa and Mags had left. I pressed my hands together, trying to squeeze some warmth into my freezing fingers. There was a strange, low mist creeping across the sea.

  They aren’t coming home. They would be back by now if they were coming.

  Then, without any warning, the idea was there in my head, and I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to sing. Fear shivered through me as I turned towards the Daughters of Stone.

  The fishermen’s daughters sang a song of love and loyalty and sacrifice to bring their fathers safely home. This was the moment that I had always known about in my bones, ever since Pa first told me the legend of the stones. This was the moment in which I would finally become part of this ancient story. The sky wrapped around me, gray as fate, enveloping me together with the stones and the cold-smoking sea.

  I stood up and started to sing. It was the lullaby Mutti used to sing to me when I was a baby—“Der Mond ist aufgegangen.” My lips were dry and my voice shook—I had barely spoken out loud for a day and a night. I sang about the moon and the stars, shadows and mist—“the world in stillness clouded, and soft in twilight shrouded.” I sang about being “in His keeping”—protected and safe through the darkness …

  I was aware of the stones all around me as I sang. I knew from the quickened pulsing of my heart that the ancient magic was not dusty and sleeping: It was alive; it was awake. I didn’t need to look at the stones to know they were listening to me, their granite glittering like frost in the dawn light. Their song floated in the air with mine, a song like gauze or thistledown—I couldn’t hear it, I felt it: fine and strange. The back of my neck prickled, and my skin turned to goose bumps. My hair streamed in the wind, just like it had in my drawing. The sea breezes flapped around me like the beating of feathered wings, whipping the words from my mouth and carrying them away—out over the sea. Was the magic working?

  Then I saw it. A boat, emerging from the mist, heading for our harbor.

  I could hardly breathe. I just watched the boat coming closer and closer to the shore. If it is the lifeboat, I thought, or the motorboat—if it is Pa or Mags, what will happen to me now? Will the Wyrm take my soul? Will I turn to stone? I wrapped my arms around myself. My skin felt numb—rough and goose-bumpy. Perhaps it was happening already.

  Fingers of mist reached up towards me from the sea …

  It is the lifeboat! And, for a moment, I really believed that it was.

  Your brain can do terrible things to you when you are in that sort of state—when you are desperate for something to be true. To this day I could swear that I saw the dark-blue-and-white paintwork, the red trim, the little flag at the front …

  But I saw no such thing. It was not the lifeboat at all. It was Kipper’s fishing boat.

  Ki
pper was safely home then, but not Mags, and not my Pa.

  The sun kept rising slowly. At least it seemed to—I couldn’t see the sun itself—it was hidden, like a burning face behind a widow’s veil of smoke. The horizon glowed red, and the sky reddened too. The scraps of cloud drifting above were as ragged as the sail of that little dinghy, shot through with bullets, crimson.

  Two figures were walking slowly up the cliff path towards the Castle. A gull screamed in the bloodred sky. I squinted in the gloom. Pa? Mags? But I hadn’t seen either of their boats return …

  It wasn’t Pa.

  It was Kipper and, leaning heavily against him, was Mags.

  She had a blanket wrapped around her, her sweater was ripped, and she had a cut on her arm. She walked as if her legs could barely take her weight. Kipper helped her up the steep slope to the Castle. I ran to my sister and clung to her tightly. Her clothes were cold and wet. Beneath the blackened smudges, I could see that her face was bloodless.

  She looked like she needed to say something, but she couldn’t speak. She just stared at me. Whatever it was she had to say, she couldn’t say it.

  I stared back, a huge sob rising painfully in my chest as I realized what this meant. I put my arms around my sister again, pressing my face into her shoulder as I said the words she couldn’t say.

  “Pa isn’t coming home, is he.”

  Mags had a bath and then fell deeply asleep, curled up on her bed in her striped pajamas.

  Kipper helped me make tea in the kitchen. We ate corned beef sandwiches made with the last of the week’s stale loaf.

  “Tell me what happened, Kipper.”

  “Where do you want me to start?” he said.

  “At the beginning.”

  “Right. Well—I wasn’t planning on going to Dunkirk. Mum’s found things very difficult since Dad was … you know …”

  I nodded. I could understand why he didn’t want to say it out loud.

  “Well, I said I wouldn’t go. I was down at the harbor early morning yesterday, helping our lads get the boats ready for the trip when I saw Mags there fiddling with her clapped-out old motorboat. It never occurred to me that she was actually planning on crossing the Channel in that rust bucket. Anyway—pretty much everyone else had left, and I was just about to head home to Mum when I heard Mags start up the motor and I saw her and the rust bucket go chugging out of the harbor.”