by Lucy Strange
“I should have finished you off,” Mrs. Baron screeched. “You nasty little—”
Then Michael spoke. He had been silent all this time, listening to Mags tell her story. “I do love you, Magda,” he said. “I didn’t to begin with—you were just part of the plan. But I do love you now, I swear.” His mother’s face grimaced, sickened. Michael shuffled towards my sister and opened his green eyes wide. I remembered the way they used to sparkle, but it wasn’t like this—crazed, feverish. “Starting the fires, cutting the telephone lines, telling you a few white lies along the way—even the fact that I had to threaten your sister that night—they were all necessary—just means to an end. Sometimes you have to be ruthless.”
Mags suddenly locked her eyes upon him, and I saw that they were as cold as pebbles. “You threatened my sister?” she whispered.
“Yes—and I’m sorry I had to do that, but anyone can see that sacrifices have to be made if people like you and me are to have the future we deserve. Anyone can see that welcoming the invasion is the quickest route to peace. The only right side in this war is the winning side.” He was moving even closer to her now. “And I want you to be on that side with me, Mags. It’s not too late. Our police will have no power at all when Hitler’s army arrives—they’re on their way right now! I will look after you, I promise.” He reached out a filthy, handcuffed paw and took my sister’s hand. He was looking steadily at her as he lifted her fingers towards his lips and kissed them.
I studied her face. I waited.
I knew what was coming because I knew my sister, and I knew that look. “I don’t really need looking after, thank you, Michael. And even if I did, I don’t think you’d be in a position to do so,” she said, pulling her hand away very gently, and then wiping it on her coat in disgust. “After all, it’s the death penalty for traitors.”
It was after midnight that Grandpa Joe got home. He came into the cottage pale and exhausted, his white hair dripping with rain. As soon as the all clear had been given, he had walked all the way back to us from Dover through the cold and rain. I thought that it was the sort of magnificent thing my Pa would have done.
“I knew it!” he said when we told him about everything that had happened. “I knew that Baron woman was up to something. Months ago, I saw her out early in the morning heading to the telephone box on the Dover Road. She made a habit of it, and I thought it was so odd I even started writing it all down—like the posters say—you know, report anything unusual or suspicious. But then a pair of monkeys turned up one morning …”
Mags and I looked at each other. I felt my cheeks redden as I remembered Mags scampering across the grass to steal Joe’s scribbled note.
“The whole thing went clean out of my head after your Pa died …” And he shook his head, angry at himself. “Why on earth did I trust her? Why did I leave you alone? You could have been killed last night, the pair of you.”
“We’re all right, though, Grandpa Joe,” I said. And then I thought about what he’d just said. “So the MB on that piece of paper was Mrs. Baron—not Michael?”
“That’s right,” he said. “Meredith Baron. There was a picture of her in the local news, and I’d seen her in the village a few times.”
“Meredith?” I’d never thought of the Baron as someone who might possess a first name. “And the TB stood for telephone box!” I said, triumphantly.
Grandpa Joe chuckled: “You’ve cracked it, Pet.”
“Hardly a complicated code, though,” said Mags.
“I don’t know,” I said, “I could never make sense of the numbers.”
“What did they look like?”
“Four digits and then a gap and then six more.”
“Like this.” Grandpa Joe wrote a row of numbers on the back of the newspaper that sat on the kitchen table. He smiled gently at the puzzle:
0032 011140
“You should be able to get this, Pet. You help with the lighthouse logbook often enough.”
And suddenly it became clear.
“They’re times, aren’t they?” I said. I remembered that when Pa recorded the weather or shipping information in his logbook, he didn’t write the time in words as twenty past six, or five o’clock, and he didn’t use any dots or colons either—he wrote the time like this: 0620 or 0500. “So the longer numbers are the date,” I said. “I remember they all ended with 40. So 0032 011140 is …”
“Is well past your bedtime, ladies,” Grandpa Joe said, standing up. “Now are you sure we don’t need to get you a doctor, Mags?”
“I’m fine,” she said, rubbing her head. “Just a bump.”
Joe smiled at the two of us with his sad eyes that shone just like Pa’s, and then he wheeled me through the passageway to the bedroom. “Pair of troopers, you two,” he said quietly. “Pair of bloody troopers.”
I tried to sleep, but all night long there were noises drifting up to the Castle from the bay below: voices and engines—blurred sounds amidst the rushing of the waves and the rain. Then, at last, silence. Pinstripe had said the military would be dealing with everything now. He had said not to worry. But I needed to know what those sounds meant.
Had any of the landing craft made it to the shore? Had our men got there in time?
It wasn’t until the next morning that we found out what had happened. Mags ran down to the village at first light to ask Edie what she had heard, but she knew nothing about any of it, and neither did anyone else. She said she knew Kipper’s fishing fleet had gone out as usual. In the end, Mags went to the police station and found Pinstripe.
It turned out that the planned landing had not been the glorious invasion that Mrs. Baron and Michael had anticipated: There had been only three landing boats—and they had all turned back as soon as I had changed the signal from the lighthouse. The U-boat had simply melted away into the dark water.
“It’s as if it never even happened,” I said to Pinstripe.
Mags had brought him back to the lighthouse with her. We sat together in the lantern room, and she brought us up a tray of tea and two buttered slices of fruitcake before disappearing back to the kitchen. I was glad she didn’t stay. There were things I wanted to ask the detective that would have upset or embarrassed my sister, following the revelations of the night before. Perhaps she felt the same.
Pinstripe told me that he had had suspicions about Mrs. Baron and her son for some time—particularly regarding the incidents of sabotage. It turned out that Mrs. Baron’s husband had been a member of the British Union of Fascists. He had even taken his family to one of Hitler’s rallies in Germany. Mrs. Baron moved away from London after his death, somehow managing to conceal her own political beliefs from the authorities. For the last year or so, she and Michael had been working to help prepare for the invasion. She had been taking orders from a friend of her husband’s in Berlin—sending him packages of information and coded messages via a secret collection point—the telephone box on the Dover Road.
“The piece of paper you left at the police station gave us an important breakthrough,” Pinstripe said. “The one you left with the constable on the night you reported Michael Baron.” He settled himself into the wicker chair with his cup of tea and smiled at me. “An excellent bit of detective work there.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Grandpa Joe.”
“Ah.” Pinstripe took the scrap of paper from his pocket. “Well, it was vital evidence. We knew when and where the packages were arriving in London, so as soon as we received this list, we knew we could place Mrs. Baron at the drop-off point on exactly those days.”
I looked at the scrap of paper, amazed that it had turned out to be useful after all. “I didn’t think the policeman was going to give it to you,” I said, remembering the sneer on Oily’s face as he suggested that I was just a spiteful little girl.
“He didn’t at first,” Pinstripe admitted. “But when I arrived at the police station later that evening, he told me that the scruffy child from the lighthouse had been
in with some tall tale about the magistrate’s son, and that she had the cheek to bother him with this bit of scribbled nonsense.”
I blushed at the bit about being scruffy.
“I knew what it meant as soon as I saw it,” he went on. “Mrs. Baron went very quiet after Michael went missing, though. The deliveries to London seemed to stop altogether, so there was no chance of catching her red-handed. And you won’t believe the trouble I had trying to get a warrant to search a magistrate’s house. It was only after your sister came to the police station yesterday and Michael was arrested that we were finally granted permission to search the property.
“We found some papers belonging to her late husband; a Nazi flag, which they were intending on flying from their window in the event of an invasion; and a set of instructions for her to signal to the U-boat. That note had yesterday’s date on it. When I realized that the lighthouse was part of her plan, I came up to the Castle straightaway. And the rest you know, Petra.”
“Yes.” The rest I knew.
I watched a young seagull launching into the air, gliding all the way down from the top of the lighthouse, over the raw edge of the cliff.
It had been hard to get used to that new gap on the clifftop where the bomb had fallen. It reminded me of the jagged tear across the middle of our family tree—Pa and Mutti ripped away from us—just the daughters left behind, so close to the edge …
“Do you think they will ever let Mutti come home?” I said.
“At some point. Provided the authorities believe she is no threat to security. It seems that her cousin in the Gestapo was killed by Resistance fighters in France last month.”
I took in a little sharp breath. “You knew about him?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “And I know that your mother’s communication with him was entirely innocent. It seemed that she was still fond of the little boy she remembered from childhood; she had no idea about the sort of man he had become. It would really be something if her annual Christmas card message of Frohe Weihnachten! turned out to be some kind of complex code.” The lines of his face folded into a smile. “Your mother was convinced that Magda was in trouble, by the way—did you know that? She had asked her where she was going so early in the mornings, and Magda had lied to her—said she was working on the motorboat at the harbor.”
“She didn’t want us to know about Michael.”
“No.”
It was all making sense now. “Mutti suspected Mags had got involved with something bad, didn’t she? That was why she wanted us both to be evacuated.”
“Yes.”
“And that was why she confessed to being a spy. She had no idea it was Pa who’d actually sent the documents—she assumed it must be Mags. She was trying to protect her.”
“That’s right.”
I thought back to Mutti’s letter—Remember that I have told the detective everything he needs to know. I am ready now to write everything down and sign it. I will write that I am guilty. This is really the best way. I love you all so much. This had been her coded message to Mags. Her way of telling her daughter that she was taking the blame, and warning her to keep quiet.
“Mutti was right in a way, though, wasn’t she?” I said. “Mags was helping the Barons to prepare for the enemy landing—although she didn’t really know it.”
“It’s her naïveté that has saved your sister from prosecution,” he said. “Sadly, your father made a conscious decision—he gave in to Mrs. Baron’s blackmail in an attempt to protect your mother.”
“I haven’t told the others,” I said then. “I haven’t told anyone what Pa did.”
Pinstripe looked at me strangely. “How did you know about it, Petra? How did you know that he was responsible for sending the documents?”
I nodded towards the speaking tube. “I found out about Pa in the same way that you heard Mrs. Baron’s confession—through the speaking tube,” I said. “The day before Dunkirk. I heard Pa tell you the truth.”
Pinstripe smiled a little. “Well, there’s no reason for anyone to know now,” he said slowly. “They will find out soon enough what Mrs. Baron did. They will know that your sister was manipulated by Michael Baron, and that your mother is completely innocent. Let them remember your father as the man who saved the lives of many, many people—with his lighthouse and his lifeboat.” He looked straight at me and crinkled up his craggy brow. “But that’s a very heavy secret to carry around all by yourself, Petra.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I’m strong enough to carry it.”
We sat quietly for a while, watching the steady roll of the whale-gray waves. The U-boat had gone, but its cold, threatening presence somehow remained—lurking there in the murky water, just like the Wyrm. But, for now, there will be no more sacrifices, I thought. For now, those monstrous, writhing shadows will have to stay hungry.
I often think about the song I sang when I was sitting up on the cliffs, waiting for Pa and Mags to return from Dunkirk. In the smoky light of that dawn, a spell was woven that would bind me to the magic of the clifftops and the stones forever. The doctor says that the feeling in my legs could come back any day, or it may never come back at all. I try not to think about it. Instead, I think about how proud I am.
I know that I am part of a story that is thousands of years old. In years to come, people will whisper the tale to their children—a tale all about loyalty and love: the legend of the Last Daughter of Stone.
It is about a child who was small and unnoticeable and frightened. A girl whose mother was locked away and whose father was lost at sea, who battled with monsters, braving the raging skies and the darkness of the night to protect her Castle: Defender of the White Cliffs, Dragon Slayer, Daughter of Stone.
Now, when I write the name Petra Zimmermann Smith, it no longer feels several sizes too big for me. I find it is a name that fits me perfectly.
They are not interested in us anymore. The enemy planes keep high, soaring above us here on the coast and heading inland instead. Yesterday, Grandpa Joe said that Hitler now seems to be less concerned with invading us, and more concerned with simply bombing London into submission. It is very strange hearing the roar of the engines and knowing that someone’s home is about to be destroyed—a shop, a pub, a whole street—reduced to smoke and rubble.
It is very nearly a year now since Dunkirk. Nearly a year since we lost Pa. I think about him every day, especially when I am alone up in the lantern room. Sometimes I talk to him, telling him all our news. I told him when Mutti was moved to a new internment camp on the Isle of Man—a nicer place, full of artists and musicians. I tell him the gossip from the village, or that Grandpa Joe is well and enjoying being a lighthouse keeper once more, or about how plump and bright-eyed Mags looks these days. Sometimes I just listen to the warm echoes of Pa’s voice in my mind as he tells me stories about shipwrecks and smugglers, mermaids and dragons. Sometimes—just for a second—I allow myself to believe that the tuneless whistling coming from the service room isn’t Grandpa Joe at all—it is actually Pa: He’s just downstairs, and he’ll come up to see me in a minute and salute at me in that silly way of his and call me First Mate. But I don’t let myself imagine that very often, because it makes the sea and the sky go all blurry, and my throat starts to hurt, and the pages of my sketchbook get spoiled with saltwater splodges.
It is a glorious spring day today, and Grandpa Joe and I are the only ones at home. Mags has gone into Dover with Kipper Briggs. They have been stepping out together for a couple of months now. He holds his head up high these days, and I swear he looks handsome in a way that he never did before. Kipper the Skipper. It’s funny, really—there was something terrible inside Michael Baron that we had not known was there, and there was something wonderful inside Kipper. He and Mags spend every Sunday together working on his fleet of fishing boats. Not my idea of romance, but I’ve never seen Mags look so happy and strong. She has stopped using hats and hairdos to disguise her sticking-out ears, and she has Essential Motorboat Maint
enance on permanent loan from the library.
Grandpa Joe has asked Mags to pick up a copy of the Times while she’s in Dover (“because you get a much better shine when you polish the lantern with a good quality newspaper”) and a part we need to repair a worn-out section of the optic mechanism. He says the lighthouse is a beacon of hope and, when the war is over, the lamp will shine all the time, so we need to look after it properly. I am looking forward to the light very much, but I find I am now much less afraid of the darkness.
I am sitting up here in the lantern room, as usual, with Barnaby curled up beside me like an enormous purring cushion. Grandpa Joe is making lunch downstairs in the kitchen. He is singing a sea shanty: “I’ll come home to my darling one, home to my love …”
I listen, and gaze out into the bright morning. My sketchbook is on my lap, my pencil in my hand. There is a peculiar quality to the light today, I think. The sea shimmers strangely, as if it is merely an illusion—a mirror of the blue sky above. The Wyrm lies quiet—deeply asleep. There is no breeze. No sea birds are calling, and there are no boats humming through the water or planes rumbling above. I think I can hear a high, fine thread of song—is it coming from the stones on the clifftop, or is it inside me? It seems to shimmer: It is taut, expectant, magical.
I manage to shift my chair around a little to face inland. I want to draw a different view today.
I draw the overlapping folds of the fields, and the spire of Stonegate church. And then I draw a dot on the distant Dover Road. The dot becomes a car. I draw more quickly— sketching one image after another: the car has taken the track between the pea field and the cabbage field and is stopping by the gate at the end of our garden … I realize I am holding my breath. I flip the page of my sketchbook.
I draw a lady climbing out of the rear door of the car. For the first time since the accident, I feel blood rushing into my legs; my whole body straining to move, to leap up and fly down the stairs towards her, to run down the path and into her arms. But I know that I can’t do that—I must stay here and wait. It isn’t real yet. I must draw it first.
