My Friend the Enemy (4 page)

‘This is pretty exciting, don't you think?' Kim said.

‘Aye.'

‘I bet you don't get many crashes here.'

‘No. Not many.'

‘So what's the most exciting thing you've seen? Apart from this?'

I thought for a moment. ‘Prob'ly when the soldiers first came.'

‘Doesn't
sound
very exciting.'

‘Well, it was. They took over Bennett Hall and put up these giant tents and an assault course. They built pillboxes out on the links, too. They're like these little concrete houses with slits in 'em for machine guns and—'

‘I know what a pillbox is.'

‘Oh. Well. They put mines on the beach,' I said. ‘And in the sea. There's tank traps an' these big poles stuck right
into the sand to stop gliders from landing.'

Kim nodded her approval. ‘I've seen them.'

‘There's mines on the links, too,' I went on. ‘We used to play down there all the time, but we're not allowed any more, in case we get blown up.' Then I remembered about Mr Bennett's young collie that went missing. Everyone said she'd gone onto the links and tripped a mine.
Blown into a cloud of blood and meat,
was what the boys said at school.

‘A dog got through the fence on the beach an' exploded,' I said.

‘Wow. You saw that? What did it look like?' She turned so she was facing me. All her attention was on me.

I shook my head. ‘I didn't actually see it, but—'

‘Doesn't count, then.'

‘Well, there was the time a mine came ashore. One of them big 'uns with the spikes sticking out all over the place. They had to evacuate half the village.'

‘Did it explode?' Her eyes sparkled and her face lit up. She was more alive than anything I'd ever seen, and I thought I could look at her at all day.

‘No.' I wanted to make her happy, she seemed so keen for it to have blown up, but I was a terrible liar and was sure that if I tried to make up a story, she'd know it.

‘Oh well.' She shrugged.

‘What about you, like? What's the most excitin' thing you ever saw?'

She puffed out her cheeks and looked up at the sky, as if there were just too many exciting moments to choose from. ‘I saw a barrage balloon get loose once. It floated all over the place causing all sorts of trouble.' She lifted her
hand and pretended it was a loose balloon. ‘And there was the time I saw a parachute caught up on the tail of a plane.'

‘Was there a man on it?'

Her face took on a grim expression and she nodded. ‘One of ours.'

‘Oh.'

‘Another time a bomb landed just down the street. We were in the shelter when it happened but it felt like the whole world was coming down around us, and when the raid was over we went out to see half the street gone. Some of the houses were nothing but dust and bricks.'

‘That must have been
terrifyin
'.'

‘I suppose so. Anyway, we went out to see who could collect the best souvenirs. I found a piece of the bomb.'

‘How do you know?'

‘That it's a piece of bomb?' She shrugged. ‘You can just tell. I'll show it to you sometime.'

‘Maybe I can get a souvenir from this,' I said, liking the idea of having a memento of the occasion. Then something occurred to me. ‘Was anyone in them houses that got bombed?'

‘I think so.'

And for a second we looked at each other, half understanding what she had just said. There was a touch of embarrassment and we looked back down the hill. We were young enough for the war to bring excitement, but we were also just old enough to feel there was something deeper. Something darker. Lives were being lost.

But the thought was snatched away when someone
spoke behind me.

‘Hey, did you scrape your knee, puny lad? Did you have to get your mammy to kiss it better?'

Trevor Ridley was fifteen and big for his age. His hands were thick and grubby, his dark hair cut close to his scalp, his face twisted in a permanent scowl. His dad was a farmer and wasn't allowed to fight because his job was too important, but that made Trevor feel left out. While his friends talked about their brave dads, he could only stay quiet. He didn't see it as good luck that his family was unbroken, while other people's had been split. He only saw that he couldn't boast about his soldiering dad, and that made him ashamed.

My dad, on the other hand, had gone away with a uniform and a rifle to battle the Germans, and somehow that didn't seem fair. While my dad was fighting for his life, Trevor Ridley's was tending his animals and growing vegetables which were taken away to be split into rations. And while I desperately wanted my dad to come home, Trevor Ridley wished his would go away. To me, just twelve years old, it seemed as if the whole world had been turned on its head and I couldn't wait for the war to be over so that everything would be back to normal.

I didn't know how long Trevor and his two friends had been standing there, I hadn't noticed them earlier, but he must have been behind some of the others. Either way, it didn't really make any difference – he was here, which meant I was going to have to leave. I didn't want to. I wanted to stay and talk to Kim; to watch the way her upturned nose wrinkled; to see her chewing at the inside
of her cheek. I wanted to see the way the low evening sun turned her hair blue. But, instead, I stood up and turned around, seeing that all the other boys and girls were looking at me, waiting for my reaction.

‘You goin' to run away to Mammy?' said Trevor.

‘She won't be interested,' Bob Cummings said with a laugh. ‘I saw her goin' home with her fancy man, Mr Bennett.'

I hated it when people said things like that. It made my blood boil.

‘Me da' reckons your mam gets whatever she wants from his lordship since your da's not around,' said Trevor. ‘Wouldn't surprise me if you end up livin' with him.'

Adam Thornhill sniggered like an animal, raising his upper lip to show oversized teeth that made me think of horses. ‘That's right, isn't it? Mr Bennett gives your mam what-ever-she-needs.'

I couldn't think of anything to say. All those other people watching me like that as Trevor Ridley and his two friends stood there like thugs, the three of them in a line, looking down at me.

The others laughed nervously and I stared at the three boys, feeling my anger rising. Anger mixed with fear, that is. Trevor was bigger than me, older than me and stronger than me. There wasn't much I could do.

‘Why don't you pick on someone your own size?' a voice said, taking me by surprise. In fact, it took everyone by surprise, because no one ever faced up to Ridley and his gang.

Kim stood up beside me, close enough for our
shoulders to be touching.

Ridley looked taken aback. ‘Who the hell are you?'

‘Just leave him alone,' Kim said.

‘You s'posed to be a lad or a lass?' Ridley asked.

‘A girl, of course. Which are you supposed to be?'

Ridley opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't think of anything clever to say, so he closed it again.

‘Or maybe you're supposed to be a fish,' Kim said, opening and closing her own mouth a few times. The insult was followed by a wave of silence. There was the gentle sigh of the evening breeze and the sound of the soldiers working on the wreck, but that was all. The others who were sitting on the crest of the hill had all focused their attention on Kim.

And then the first of them laughed. A girl, no older than seven or eight.

‘Shut your gob,' Ridley spat, pointing a finger.

The little girl stopped, but Kim carried on taunting him.

‘Or maybe you're just a chicken,' she said. ‘Picking on people smaller than you.'

And then another child sniggered, followed by another, until almost all of them were looking up at Ridley, taking his power away from him.

‘Stop it,' he said, turning about, glaring at each of them. ‘Stop it or I'll—'

‘Or you'll what?' Kim asked. ‘Bully them in front of all these grown-ups and soldiers?'

Now Trevor looked over at the adults grouped not far away, the sergeant close by, and the soldiers at the foot of
the hill, then he turned back to Kim, red-faced and fuming. He looked as if he was about to say something, but he didn't get the chance, because just then there was a loud crack, a sharp gunshot, and everything erupted into chaos.

‘Incoming!' one of the soldiers yelled at his comrades, and they all dived to the ground. ‘Get down!' he shouted up at the rest of us, waving his arms. ‘Get down!'

There was a moment of confusion, none of us quite sure what was happening as the adults began screaming and waving at us as they dropped to the grass. It was as if we were frozen to the spot by the sudden madness. Sergeant Wilkes yelled, his face contorting as he hurried over and pulled the first of us to the ground. He threw Tom Chambers down, grabbing other girls and boys, toppling them like trees and shouting like a lunatic before we all began to take cover. More loud cracks split the evening as the machine-gun ammunition, heated by the fire inside the plane, began to go off. The air was filled with the crackle of gunfire. Bullets were whizzing into the sky, zipping overhead, battering the inside of the plane and smacking into the soil around the base of the hill.

One of the soldiers screamed out in pain and doubled up, clutching his thigh.

‘He's hit!' another shouted, and began crawling towards the wounded man as blood blossomed on the leg of his uniform trousers, spreading out until they were dark red.

All around, bullets hammered into the field, sending up spurts of loose soil as the soldiers dragged their
comrade away. They pulled him backwards up the hill until they were at the top, close to us and away from the centre of the confusion.

Doctor Jacobs was already waiting for him, down on his knees. He didn't seem to care about the bullets as he went to the wounded man, using blunt-ended scissors to slit open the trouser leg.

It was impossible to see where the bullet had gone in, because it was bleeding so much. I'd never seen anything like it – the most blood I'd ever seen in one go was the time one of the younger boys fell off the wall at school and split his head open. This was much worse, though. The blood was thick and red and kept on flowing, draining out of him and onto the grass. Doctor Jacobs pulled bandages and pads and swabs from his bag and began wiping it away so he could get to the wound. I could hardly take my eyes off it.

When the gunfire settled down, the lieutenant crawled up the hill to the rest of us. ‘We need to clear this whole area,' he said to the sergeant. ‘Get everybody to move back. Everyone away. No one's to come round here.'

For a moment, no one moved. At the bottom of the hill, the plane was becoming quiet. The crackle and spit of the bullets had almost stopped. We tore our eyes from the wounded man and looked at the man in charge.

‘Well, go on then,' the sergeant said. ‘You heard the lieutenant. Clear off. All of you.'

Still we watched him.

‘Go! Get out of here!'

Now people began to get to their knees and crawl
back, moving beyond the top of the hill, where they stood and milled around for a while before the sergeant shooed us away for good.

‘And there's a curfew tonight,' the lieutenant told us as we left. ‘No one out after dark. There might be a German on the loose. Keep your eyes peeled.'

*

I was still shaking when Kim and I crossed the field on the other side of the hill and headed towards my house. So much had happened. Seeing the plane crash had been incredible, all the fire and bullets and blood, but it wasn't the best thing that had happened to me that day. Meeting Kim was far more important, and I knew something special had happened. So when we reached the other end of the field and it was time for me to turn home, I wished I had further to go; that I could walk with her for the rest of the evening.

‘Do you really think there's a German on the loose?' I said.

‘You saw the parachute, didn't you?'

‘Aye.'

‘Well, then. What do
you
think?'

‘Don't know.' I thought about the posters of Germans they put up on the village noticeboard. They always looked so dangerous. ‘You think we're safe? I mean, if there really is a German wandering about, what d'you think he'd do? You think he'd look for people to kill, or . . .' I shrugged.

‘One German?' Kim said. ‘I don't think there's much he
could
do. There's soldiers everywhere. Anyway, they've
probably found him already.'

‘Aye.' I nodded. ‘Hey, d'you want to come to mine, like?' I asked when we reached the track. ‘You could have tea. Mam wouldn't mind.'

‘Can't,' she said. ‘I'd better go back, otherwise . . . well, my aunt doesn't like it when I'm not there on time. I'm already late as it is and she'll be batty with worry, probably. I'm surprised she hasn't come after me.'

‘Oh. All right.' I kicked at a loose stone.

‘Can you get out tonight, though?' she asked.

‘What?'

‘Can you get out? Sneak out, I mean.'

‘Why?'

‘Meet me on the top of the hill at ten o'clock.'

‘What for?'

‘We're going souvenir hunting.'

‘With that German out there? And the soldier said there's a curfew.'

‘What's the matter?' Kim said. ‘You scared?'

‘Course not.'

‘Well, then,' she said starting to run. ‘I'll see you later.'

LETTERS

M
am was standing at the kitchen window, staring out as if she'd been watching for me.

Mr Bennett was there, too, right beside her, so close they were almost touching.

‘Did we miss anything exciting?' he asked, when I came in.

I shrugged.

‘Don't keep us in suspense.' He moved away from Mam and went to the strong wooden table that was right in the middle of the kitchen. It had been there as long as I could remember. And when Mr Bennett sat down, I thought about how Dad would sit there to clean his shotgun, and Mam would get mad with him for making a mess. Dad
would tell her not to get so het up and he'd look across at me and wink as if we were sharing a joke.

There wasn't a gun there now, though. Instead, there were two cups, side by side.

‘Well, I don't think much of it at all,' said Mam. ‘It might be excitin' for you young'uns, but all that racket nearly frightened the life out of me. And then all that smoke coming this way, ruinin' my washing? Now everythin' smells and we're on the last of the soap powder and—'

‘I might be able to get you some more of that,' Mr Bennett said.

‘Oh, I don't want you to go to no bother.'

‘No trouble at all,' he said, lifting his cup and taking a sip. He screwed up his face as if he'd drunk something nasty, then looked into the cup and swallowed hard before putting it back down again. His tea must have gone cold. ‘Maybe I can get a few bits and pieces for you, too, Peter. I don't suppose you'd say no to a few sweets, eh?'

Just about everything was rationed – clothes, sweets, sugar, meat, tea – but some things were easier for us to get because we lived in the countryside. We had a few hens, so we could get eggs, and we had a bit of a garden, so we could grow vegetables. We kept all the scraps and slops in a bin outside and Trevor Ridley's dad came on a pony and trap once a week to collect them for the pigs. Sometimes he'd slip us a chop or a couple of slices of bacon as a way of saying thank you, but no one could get the things that Mr Bennett could.

‘That would be nice, wouldn't it?' Mam said. ‘Mr
Bennett's very kind, isn't he?'

‘Mm.'

‘Well, I won't stay any longer,' he said, getting to his feet. ‘I suppose I should go and find out what's going on with the crash. See if the lieutenant needs anything.'

He came close to Mam again, the two of them just a few inches apart.

Mam smiled like she was embarrassed about something, and glanced at me. ‘Aye. All right. Bye, then.'

Mr Bennett nodded, paused for a moment, then came to ruffle my hair before he turned and let himself out.

When he was gone, I flattened my hair back down with one hand.

‘So who was that lad I just saw you with?' Mam said. ‘Someone new?'

‘She's not a lad.'

‘Really?' Mam went to the window again and looked out, as if Kim might still be there. She stood for a while, just staring out. ‘Hm, well,' she said. ‘Looked like a lad to me.'

‘Well, she's not. She's a lass and she's called Kim.'

‘Excuse me,' Mam said in a sarcastic voice as she came back to me. ‘And how are you feeling, pet? Your knees all right?'

‘Fine.'

‘You feel dizzy at all?' she asked. ‘Sick? Does anything hurt?'

‘No.' I sat down at the table.

She nodded gently. ‘Good.'

‘Someone got out of the plane,' I said. ‘Jumped. There
was a parachute.'

‘Did they catch 'im?' She looked worried.

‘Not yet. But the soldiers said they will.'

‘Well, let's hope they do. We can't have Germans runnin' around all over the country, now can we?' She went through into the scullery as she spoke.

From my pocket, I took the penknife Dad had given me. It had two blades – one large and one small – and the handle was made of fake pearl that had a yellowy tinge to it. I opened the small blade, and used the tip to scrape dirt from under my fingernails. ‘What will they do if they catch 'im?'

‘What's that?' she asked, coming back into the kitchen carrying a small package wrapped in paper.

‘What will they do to 'im?' I said again. ‘If they catch 'im?

‘Haven't a clue.'

‘Will they shoot 'im?'

‘They might. And you can stop doing that,' she said. ‘We're not animals.'

I closed the knife and squeezed it in my fist.

‘Now, let's get some tea on, shall we?'

‘What is it?'

For a moment she looked at the package as if she wasn't going to tell me. ‘Tripe.'

I pulled a face. ‘Isn't there anythin' else?'

‘Don't go gettin' all pernickety, young lad, there's lots of people who'd be happy to eat your tripe. This is all we've got left until we can collect the rations from Mr Shaw. Maybe, if we're very lucky, Mr Bennett will bring us
somethin' tomorrow.' She looked at me with a hopeful smile.

‘Tell 'im to keep it. I'd rather have tripe.'

‘What?'

I thought about Trevor and his father over at the Ridley farm. I thought about Dad fighting a war in Africa – a country I'd hardly even heard of. And I thought about what Ridley had said about Mr Bennett; about him coming here, trying to take Dad's place.

‘I don't like 'im,' I said. ‘And I don't like 'im comin' here.'

Mam swallowed hard and put a hand on the fireplace. The surround was deep black and shining because Mam had scrubbed it with a shoe brush just yesterday.

‘Why ever not?' she asked.

‘He's always coming since me da' left.'

‘He's looking after us. Your da' worked hard for him and now he's repaying us. He's looking after us until your da' gets back.'

‘People are sayin' he's your fancy man.'

‘Are they really?' She looked indignant, but there was something else there too. An expression the children at school had when they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't have. ‘Well, he's been very kind, and people can say whatever they like. You'd do well to rem—'

‘I don't want him givin' us stuff and I don't like him comin' here all the time.'

‘It's not up to you, young man.'

‘I'm the man of the house now.'

Something like a smile came to her lips and her
expression softened. ‘Aye, I s'pose you are, pet, but you're not an adult, and there's a lot of things you don't understand. We all do what we have to.'

I looked at my penknife and opened the blade. Opened and shut it. Opened and shut it.

‘It's hard for us looking after you on me own.'

I looked over at her and sighed. ‘I wish me da' was here.'

Mam came over and put her arms around me so my head was on her stomach. She was warm and smelt of soap.

‘I wish he was here, too,' she said. ‘I wish it more than anythin'.'

*

Mam cooked the tripe and put it furry side down on the plate so it didn't look too nasty. There were boiled potatoes and carrots from the garden, too, so I ate the vegetables, avoiding the rubbery blob, pushing it around the plate for a while. I knew I'd go hungry if I didn't eat it, though, because there was nothing else, and if I left it, Mam would only give it to me for my breakfast. Nothing was wasted. Not a thing. So, eventually, I forced it down, cutting it into small pieces so I didn't have to chew it.

When it was gone, and my stomach was as full as it was going to be, Mam went through to the scullery and put the kettle on to boil.

‘I think we deserve a treat, don't you?' she said, taking a teapot from the sideboard and putting a small amount of tea into it. ‘Somethin' sweet.'

She made weak tea and poured it into her cup, adding
a tiny amount of milk. When that was done, she opened the sugar pot in front of us on the table and we both looked in at the last two sugar cubes.

‘One lump or two, vicar?' Mam said in a posh voice, just like she always did when she opened the sugar pot.

‘Just the one for me,' I said with a grin.

Mam dropped her cube into the cup and stirred it gently. I popped mine straight into my mouth and savoured the sweetness as the lump dissolved in my spit. I waited until it had melted into almost nothing, then I ran my tongue around my mouth to find the last taste of it. A few undissolved grains crunched between my teeth.

‘Delicious,' I said.

‘Agreed.' Mam took a sip from her cup and stood. She did a little curtsey and said, ‘I think I'll take this on the settee. Would you care to listen to the wireless?'

Beside the fireplace in the kitchen, there was a huge sideboard. It looked like it was a hundred years old. On top of it was a wireless that Dad bought before he went away to win the war. We didn't have electric in the house so it ran off three big glass-sided accumulator batteries that had handles over the top to make them easy to carry. And when they ran out, it was my job to take them down to the garage to get them recharged for a few pence.

We listened to
Children's Hour
, sitting on the settee, not talking, just listening. We always did that together – Mam called it our ritual – but she only sometimes brought her cup of tea with her.

I looked up at the shotgun on the wall above the sideboard, and then at the small collection of letters that
leant against the wireless. There were only five, all of them from Dad. Mam had read them out when they arrived, her hands shaking with each letter, her mouth tightening as she carefully opened them. Then she had taken out the folded paper, opened it up and breathed out as if she'd been holding her breath the whole time. After that she had smiled at me, a kind of forced smile, and read out what Dad had written.

The letters were all about how much he was missing us and how he couldn't wait till it was all over and he could come home. Each time, Mam had a tear in her eye when she read the words, but I always pretended not to notice.

Mam had tied them together with an old piece of string and put them beside the wireless so we'd think about Dad whenever we sat on the settee and listened to it. We hadn't had a letter for a long time now, but I always looked at his gun and his letters and imagined he was beside us on the settee, with his arm around Mam's shoulder. She would draw her knees up so that her feet were tucked under her and I would do the same. Dad would smell of fresh air and gunpowder and mud and he would laugh at the names and copy the voices that came out of the wireless. And when it was over, he'd listen a while longer, hearing the news, before going back out to check the estate.

I always thought the news was boring, all those voices droning on, and I used to sit on the hooky mat and read a comic instead. But since the war started and Dad went away I listened every night. Without fail.

There'd been something on one time last year, about
Operation Dynamo, and British soldiers retreating from a place called Dunkirk in France. They'd said there might be an invasion after that, and when I looked over at Mam, she'd had one hand on her mouth and she'd gone white. I thought it was because she was frightened of a German invasion, and when I told her it was going to be all right, she hugged me tight. Back then, last year, I hadn't realised why Mam had looked so scared, but I knew now. It's because Dad had been in Dunkirk, and Mam was afraid for him. Afraid for his life.

But I had something else to think about now, and while we listened to the voices, my mind turned to the crash and to the girl I had met out there at the top of the hill. I thought about what she'd said before we parted. And so, for that moment, I forgot about Trevor Ridley and his promise to find a way to deal with me. I forgot about my father fighting a distant war, and I forgot about Mam's struggle to raise me alone. Instead, I thought about Kim, and about going out in the night to collect souvenirs from the crashed plane.