Our Castle by the Sea

by Lucy Strange

  “Let GO!” With my free hand, I grabbed a big lump of chalk, twisted around, and dashed it into Michael’s face as he crouched behind me. The chalk was fossil-dry and it exploded as it slammed into his forehead, but it was enough to stun him. The seconds melted together strangely then, like a gramophone record being played at the wrong speed. Familiar sounds seemed to be bleeding through the air—a thin wailing from the village below, the growl of engines in the sky above. I felt Michael’s grip on my wrist loosen, and he toppled onto his back, swearing. I hauled myself back up onto the grass, away from the edge, pushing my toes into the damp ground, and I ran—up onto the clifftop, towards the Castle and the Daughters of Stone.

  Michael wasn’t far behind me. My legs were burning and I thought my chest would burst, but somehow I kept running. For once in my life, the ghastly, searing terror didn’t freeze me; it kept me moving forward—I knew that with one great stride, Michael could be right there on my heels, able to reach forward and grab a fistful of my hair. So many awful sounds filled the air—the thumping of Michael’s feet behind me, the blasting of the rain-soaked wind, the deafening sound of engines ripping through the sky above, the sharp cracking of the antiaircraft guns up on the south cliff … And then, as I drew closer to them, the song of the Daughters of Stone—clearer than I had ever heard it before. They loomed before me like tombstones—calling to me. An airplane roared above us, a different sound altogether—shrill and insistent and dangerous and getting louder by the second. I knew exactly what it was. I threw myself to the ground just as the bomb pounded into the clifftop. The whole world went white, then black, and I was aware of the sensation of moving against my will—up at first, up through the air, and then the ground falling away beneath me and everything suddenly rushing down, down …

  I am falling through the air in a thousand broken pieces. I am the wreckage of a person, I am rubble. I am exactly the same as the vast chunk of chalk-rock that is falling with me—the universe does not know the difference between us, and it does not care. The chalk and I are falling at the same speed, and soon we will both smash and shatter into bone-white dust.

  Everything is quiet now.

  Perhaps it is a dream, I think, but I know that it is real. Everything that just happened was real. A moment ago, the world exploded, and the white cliffs fell.

  The hostile engines in the sky above have roared away over the water, vanishing into the smoke.

  I am still falling, and I think perhaps it would be best if I could keep falling forever. But then comes the unbearable jolt as my body slams into the ground … There is no pain. I am surprised that there is no pain. There is nothing but darkness and the song of the stones. But something feels strange. Different. Because now the song is coming from deep within my own body.

  And I know that I am part of the legend at last.

  When I opened my eyes, it was to the dark pink light of dawn. I was lying on the damp turf of the clifftop. The song of the Daughters of Stone was like a needle piercing through my nightmares, a beautiful beesting. My head was turned towards the sea, and the first rays of sunlight burst like a thousand golden stars from the glowing horizon. It was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.

  I felt very cold, but I was aware of someone moving around close to me. They seemed to be untying something from my shoulders and putting a blanket over my body, gently tucking it in around me. They were whispering soothing words. I tried to turn my head to see, but it hurt too much.

  “Pa?” I said. My voice was a sleepy growl.

  And then there was a face—a deeply lined face, with bright blue eyes and white hair that blew wildly about in the breeze.

  “It’s me, Petra. It’s Joe.”

  Spooky Joe? I didn’t understand. “How … ?”

  “It doesn’t matter now. I came looking for you and your sister after the air raid.”

  The air raid. Yes.

  “I fell,” I muttered, aware that my voice sounded far away. There was dust in my throat, and my body felt very strange, but I couldn’t work out why. “There was a bomb.” I coughed, and icicles of pain stabbed through my chest, neck, and shoulders.

  “Yes,” said Joe. “There was a bomb, Petra. It just missed the lighthouse. It blew away a chunk of the cliff, and you fell down onto a ledge below. I climbed down and brought you back up. You’ve been unconscious all night. I’ve just been back to the Castle to fetch blankets, and I tried to call for an ambulance, but the telephone was dead.”

  The telephone was dead. Michael Baron. He had been there on the clifftop. What had happened to him? “Was there anyone else? When you found me?”

  “No. No one else. Was your sister with you?”

  “Mags. No. She’s still in the cave.”

  “Dragon Bay Cave? In the tunnel?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll go and get her.”

  But he didn’t need to. I could hear her voice.

  “Petra? PET!”

  “She’s all right,” Joe called to her. “She’s all right, Magda.”

  My sister was running. I could feel the thudding of her feet, hear her breaths getting closer. And then she was on her knees beside me, cradling my face, and she was crying.

  “Pet—I’m so sorry—are you all right? Are you really all right?”

  I tried to turn towards her but for some reason I couldn’t move. I suddenly realized what it was about my body that felt so very, very wrong.

  “Mags,” I whispered, trying to keep the terror from my voice.

  My sister took my hand. “What is it, Pet?”

  “Mags. I can’t feel my legs.”

  “She needs an ambulance,” Joe said in a low voice. “As soon as possible. Can you run down to the village? You’ll be quicker than me.”

  “Yes,” my sister breathed. “Yes, of course.” She kissed me on the forehead, and I felt her tears wet against my skin and hair. “I’ll be back before you know it, Pet.”

  And she was gone again.

  I lay there, staring up into the flaming ribbons of cloud above, trying hard to remember everything that had happened the evening before: Michael cutting the telephone line, the fight with Magda, the police station, the chase across the clifftop, the bomb, falling through the air …

  After a while I started to feel very, very tired. My eyes closed against the brightening sunlight.

  “Stay awake,” Joe said.

  Thoughts swirled sleepily in my mind like honey in hot milk. The song of the stones was a lullaby now.

  I could feel Joe’s hand on my arm. “Stay awake, Pet. Listen to me. Open your eyes.”

  I opened them and tried to make his face come into focus. A strange thought swam into my head.

  “You know about Dragon Bay Cave, Joe,” I whispered. “You know the tunnel?”

  “Know about it?” He smiled then—and it was something wonderful. His eyes lit up, bright blue. “I dug it.”

  I didn’t understand—Joe had only moved to the village last summer.

  “How do you think I got down to the beach so quickly when that German bomber came down?”

  “But …”

  “Don’t worry about it now, Petra.”

  “And the telephone—I locked the lighthouse …”

  “I’ll explain,” he said. “I’ll explain everything.”

  Then there were voices coming closer. My sister had brought half of the village with her. Mrs. Baron was there, and Edie from the bakery, and two policemen too—though it didn’t look like the oily one was with them.

  “The ambulance is on its way,” Mags said.

  I could hear Mrs. Baron’s voice: “You should have gone! You should both have been on that wretched bus. I said it was too dangerous for you to stay here—if you’d gone, then none of this would have happened!” She sounded angry and terribly anxious, close to tears.

  My sister’s voice was quieter. She was kneeling beside me again. “I should have been with you, Pet. I shouldn’t have let you go alone. I’m so so
rry.”

  “It’s all right, Mags,” I managed to say.

  Edie gave me a sip of water.

  Mrs. Baron was talking to the policemen.

  “Michael, my son, Michael—he hasn’t been home since the air raid …”

  “He was here,” I whispered.

  “What? What did she say?” And everyone was suddenly quiet. Mrs. Baron bent down towards me. “Michael was here?”

  One of the policemen bent down too. “During the air raid? Are you sure, miss? He was up here on the cliff when the bomb fell?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Baron’s face was white, stricken. Both her hands were pressed flat to her heart. Mags had gone pale too. They were both looking at the policemen, who had retreated a few paces away and were talking to one another quietly.

  “It doesn’t look good …”

  “A search party …”

  “Check the beach under the cliffs, we’ll need to go through the rock-fall …”

  Then Mag’s voice: “I’m sure it’s all right, Mrs. Baron,” she said as she stood up. “I’m sure he’ll be all right. I’ll help search.”

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Baron looked genuinely grateful. “We’ll search together, Magda.”

  “Did you say the girls should have been evacuated yesterday, Mrs. Baron?” one of the policemen asked then.

  “What? Yes,” she said, distracted. She could only think of Michael now.

  “I was just going to suggest that I could contact the local authority on your behalf so you don’t have to worry—”

  But another voice cut the policeman off. “There’ll be no need for that,” Joe said, very steadily. “I’ll be looking after them both now. I’ll take care of my granddaughters.”

  Spooky Joe was our grandfather. He was Pa’s dad.

  In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he just sat beside me very quietly, his hand on my arm. My thoughts were blurred and strange, but I was dimly aware that a few pieces of the puzzle were falling quietly into place at last: his piercing blue eyes and familiar, square shoulders; the fact that I had mistaken his silhouette for Pa in the rowing boat that night; his face when I called the King Edward “our boat” (he had built the boat for my Pa when Pa was just a boy). I remembered seeing Pa wave to Joe on the morning the German bomber crashed into the cabbage field, and it had been clear that Mutti knew who he was too, though she had refused to tell me when I’d asked.

  I thought sleepily about all the children I knew who had grown up with their cuddly grans who gave them pennies for sweets, and their kind old grandpops who took them to play cricket on the beach. And I thought how odd it was that I had never even thought to ask Pa about his parents. I had always just accepted that it was only the four of us. Why had they never told us about him? Why hadn’t they spoken to him since he had moved back to Stonegate?

  It was a few days later that I found out the answers.

  I woke up from a long deep sleep to find Joe sitting beside my hospital bed. I tried to sit up and roll towards him, but then remembered—for what felt like the hundredth time already—that my legs didn’t seem to be working properly. I turned my head instead, the hospital sheet cool and crisp against my neck and cheek.

  “Hello, Spooky Joe,” I said.

  His eyes twinkled. “That’s Grandpa Joe to you, young lady. How are you feeling?”

  “All right, thank you. Less bruised than yesterday.”

  “Your legs?”

  I shook my head. “Still nothing.”

  He nodded, swallowed hard, and looked towards the window, which was pink with geraniums.

  “Joe,” I said. “Tell me about the tunnel. You said you dug it. You said you’d explain …”

  “I did, didn’t I?” He took a long breath. “Well, I didn’t exactly dig the tunnel, if I’m honest—I redug it,” he admitted. “The main shaft was dug out by smugglers hundreds of years ago, but most of the top section had collapsed in. My brother, Charlie, and I dug it out again.” He paused. “When we was about your age, I reckon. Feels like lifetimes ago.”

  “Your brother?”

  I thought his eyes became glassy then. He leaned forward a little, pressed my hand between his, and took another deep breath. “We went off to the war together, Charlie and me. The Great War I mean, of course, not this one. Poor Charlie got killed. I haven’t … I haven’t talked about it much since. I can’t bear to think about the things that happened. The things I saw.”

  I felt that I could almost see the shadows of memories behind his eyes.

  “But I need to tell you this, I think, Pet.” He waited for a moment, and then he said, “It was in the war—in the trenches. My brother went out into no-man’s-land to help a lad who’d got hit by shrapnel the day before. We could hear him out there, crying with the pain. He was frightened, calling for his mum.” Joe shook his head, as if to shake the sound from his mind. “We’d listened to him all through that night and Charlie couldn’t take it any longer. He got up at dawn and just said, ‘I’m going to get him. I’m going to bring him back here to the trench, and if I can’t, I’ll just have to put a bullet in the poor boy’s brain.’ We couldn’t stop him.”

  He paused as if trying to decide if he could continue. He swallowed and took another breath. “The boy was very badly hurt and all caught up in barbed wire too. Charlie tried to untangle him and then …” Joe breathed heavily. Once, twice. “Then the machine guns started. Charlie held up his hands to show he was unarmed—he was just collecting a casualty. But they blew him to bits. Charlie and the other injured boy—just blew them to bits on the barbed wire.”

  Oh God. “Poor Charlie,” I breathed.

  “Yes.”

  I squeezed Joe’s old hand.

  “I’m sorry, Pet,” Joe said. “It’s horrible to hear, I know.”

  I had never heard anyone speaking about the last war like this. It had always seemed sealed up, closed over, like a scarred wound.

  “But you need to know what happened to Charlie to understand why … why things went so wrong between me and your Pa.”

  I looked at him. His eyes were so like my Pa’s—round and ocean blue—and full of sad, sad stories. I thought of the wedding photograph and suddenly I understood.

  “Mutti?” I whispered.

  “Yes. Your mother.” He looked down at the floor. “We couldn’t accept it—your grandmother and I. We couldn’t understand how our son could fall in love with a German girl, not after that war, after Charlie … My wife was very ill by then, and the news that they were getting married was the end of her. Your Pa and I haven’t spoken since the day of her funeral. I moved away just after.”

  I thought of Pa and Mutti’s lonely wedding day; the solemn, haunted faces of the bride and groom. My grandmother, Pa’s mother, had died just before he married Mutti, and Joe had always blamed them for her death.

  “And time goes by, doesn’t it—it’s frightening how quickly time goes by.” Joe’s eyes were brimming with tears now. His gnarled hand clasped mine.

  All those lost years …

  “I came back to try to build a bridge with your Pa, but then this war started, and everything just came flooding back again.”

  I thought about him calling Mutti “Jerry” in Mrs. Rossi’s bakery. Joe had come back to Stonegate to try to put the past behind him, but he had not been able to, and Pa had died before the rift could be mended.

  “I spent so long hating what I thought was the enemy,” he whispered hoarsely, “but I was wrong. Time is the greatest enemy of all.” He looked right into my eyes then, and for a moment it was as if Pa were there with me. “Every bit of hate left me the moment I saw that lump blown out of the cliff and you all crumpled up on the ledge below, Petra. I thought I’d lost you as well as your Pa.”

  He looked terribly lost then, terribly alone.

  I wanted to put my arms around him, but I couldn’t sit up.

  “Our Mutti didn’t kill your brother, Grandpa Joe,” I said. I tried to swallow the
rough, painful lump in my throat. “Our Mutti is the most gentle person in the whole world.”

  Joe sobbed once and tears spilled down his weatherworn cheeks. He squeezed my hand more tightly between his. “I’m sure she is, Petra,” he said.

  I heard the faint calls of seagulls from somewhere beyond the window.

  “And she does beautiful paintings—of the sea, and the cliffs, and the lighthouse. I think you would like her.”

  Joe wiped his eyes. He nodded, trying to smile. “I … I’ve never actually spoken to her.”

  “You will,” I said, and I was surprised by the strength and certainty that was there in my voice. “You will, Grandpa Joe.”

  It was later that afternoon that the doctor came to tell me the bad news.

  “It’s broken, Miss Smith,” he said. “Your back. Broken in two different places, we think.”

  I was falling through the air again with the chalk dust and the chunk of clifftop. Once more, I felt the jolt as my body slammed into the ledge below. Broken. Broken in two places. There was only darkness—darkness and the song of the stones.

  “Will it heal?” My voice sounded much braver and calmer than I felt inside.

  “The back itself will heal with time,” he said. “But we don’t know yet about the nerves in your spine that are responsible for the feeling and movement in your legs. It may be that the nerves are just bruised.” His expression changed then. “But it’s quite possible, Miss Smith, that they may never fully recover. It’s possible, I’m afraid, that you might never walk again.”

  This had been my nightmare all my life, both sleeping and awake—to be frozen. Petrified. Paralyzed. But this was not how I had expected it to happen. And there was something else unexpected too: I did not feel as helpless as I had expected to feel. Do you know what the name Petra means? I can tell you now if you don’t know. It means rock. Stone.