My Friend the Enemy (6 page)

‘It'll be fun.'

‘It'll be
dangerous
.' I watched Mr Shaw and the other man come to the tail end of the plane.

‘Of course it will,' she said. ‘That's the fun of it.'

‘But—'

‘And what's the worst they'll do?' she asked. ‘Tell your mam?'

‘That's bad enough.'

‘Then we have to make sure we don't get caught.'

‘What about the plane, though? Is it safe?'

‘Safe?' she asked with a wicked smile. ‘Where would be the fun in that?'

The Home Guardsmen disappeared from sight.

‘Come on.' Kim got to her feet. ‘Follow me.'

And, with those words, she dashed away down the hill.

I hesitated for a second, a million thoughts in my head. So many tiny details to influence my decision, but one thing overpowered all the others. I wanted to be with Kim, and I wanted to do what she did.

So I ran, too. Straight down the hill, towards the wreck.

BODIES

I
was both terrified and excited as I followed Kim. The breeze that rushed around me was cold on my face and arms. The tops of my wellies battered against my shins and calves, smacking back and forth. It was like the sound of thunder in my ears – surely the Home Guardsmen would hear me running. Surely the noises would reach them and they would come to investigate.

But no one came.

They were on the other side of the crash site, probably almost half a field away from where I was.

I chased Kim down to where the plane was lying flat on its belly, the fuselage ripped into two pieces. The tail section was at least twenty yards away, crooked and bent,
as if twisted away by giant hands. It was blackened by flames, but the swastika was visible in the moonlight. The main body was also charred by the fire and riddled with holes from the exploding ammunition, but it was more or less a broken tube, crushed at one end, open at the other. The open end was ragged with uneven fingers of ripped and twisted metal.

I slowed down as I came close to it, seeing Kim stop, glance around, and then climb inside. When I reached the same spot, I took a deep breath and followed.

The smell was awful. The acrid stench of burnt rubber and oil and fuel mixed together to make something I thought would be unbearable for any longer than a few seconds. It filled my head with a thick blackness. I could taste it in my throat, feel it burning my nostrils. And there was the hint of another smell, too; something not quite so unpleasant, but horrible all the same. Sickening. A kind of sweetness, like the smell of bacon on the grill, but it was almost completely drowned by the stink of the fire.

I lifted my shirt and put it across my nose, but it did nothing to take the smell away, so I let it drop back to my chest.

Kim was crouching in what would have been the inside of the aeroplane, bending over to examine a handful of ash and broken pieces. She held it up and showed it to me before gently putting it back on the ground with a quiet tinkling of metal against metal, the ash clouding about her knees. ‘Cartridges,' she whispered. ‘From the machine gun. They're still warm.'

I put one finger to my lips and she nodded agreement.
Talking was too much of a risk. The Home Guard would hear us.

Kim reached out and took my hand in hers. Her skin was soft and a little damp, like it had been earlier that day. She turned my hand over and picked up a cartridge from the floor, placing it on my palm.

I liked her holding my hand like that, and I didn't take the brass casing until Kim closed my fingers around it so my fist was inside hers. The metal cartridge was, indeed, warm, but I could hardly concentrate on it at all.

I looked up at Kim, seeing her watching me with those sparkling eyes and, for a moment, we stayed like that. Then she smiled and took her hand away, patting my pocket. She leant close to my ear.

‘Souvenir,' she whispered.

I nodded and put the bullet casing in my pocket, just as she tapped me and pointed into the darkness at the nose of the plane. She put her fingers to her eyes and pointed again.
Let's look deeper inside
.

I gave her a thumbs-up and tried not to look scared.

Kim kept low and went further in. She moved slowly, careful with her footing. Once she was a little way ahead, I began to follow, trying to be quiet, but my wellies were a little too big and I misjudged my footing. I stepped on a loose pile of bullet casings, and the whole lot gave way under me, sliding out in all directions.

The sound of metal on metal was loud in the confines of the crashed plane. It was like hard rain pelting a tin roof. The ping and clatter of the casings echoed as if the noise would never stop. And, like stepping on a pile of
marbles, the spent cartridges moved against each other like little rollers, and I stumbled backwards, my feet slipping out from beneath me.

I tried to stay upright. I put my arms out and tried to keep my balance, but I knew I was going to fall. And I knew that anyone close to the plane would have heard the racket from inside.

As I fell, my fingers grasped something soft and held tight, but whatever I had grabbed wasn't fixed to anything and I continued to go down, pulling it with me. With the tinkle of spent bullet casings raining around me, I hit the floor of the plane with a loud crash.

‘What the hell was that?' Mr Shaw's voice sounded as if it was right beside me. Loud and deep and thick with accent. ‘You heard that, right?'

I looked over at the place where I'd last seen Kim, but she was gone. I imagined she'd found a dark corner to squeeze into and was keeping as quiet as possible.

‘Probably just the plane settling again,' said the other voice, and I identified the soft tones of Doctor Jacobs.

As quietly as possible, I shuffled back, pulling myself under some debris.

‘You hear that? Somethin' movin'? Think them lads is back?' Mr Shaw said. ‘They're trouble, they are; all three of 'em.'

‘Well, yes, but I don't think they'd come back.'

‘Still. Better check, eh?' It sounded as if Mr Shaw was taking his job very seriously. Either that, or he was hoping for some action. ‘Might be that German come back.'

There was a moment of quiet, then I heard Doctor
Jacobs sigh. ‘All right. Come on.'

The next few moments passed in slow motion, as if they were a dream. I stayed where I was, hardly breathing, blood whooshing in my ears as the footsteps came nearer. I pressed my lips together, biting them between my front teeth as the two men came so close that I could hear their heavy breathing. I heard them step over pieces of the wreckage and come right to the open end of the fuselage.

‘Who's in there?' Mr Shaw said, and I knew he'd be pointing his rifle right into the darkness. ‘Who is it?'

Even the night didn't dare make a sound.

‘WHO GOES THERE?'

Not a whisper.

‘Give me the torch,' said Mr Shaw.

‘That's not a good idea,' the doctor replied. ‘You know, with the blackout and everything.'

‘I'll be quick. We have to check. This could be important.'

‘I don't think—'

‘Just give me the torch, Simon.'

There was a long pause, the sound of fumbling, then a beam of light cut into the darkness of the plane. It swept from side to side.

‘Nothing there,' said the doctor.

Then the light came close to where I was hiding. It passed just inches from my face, and I squeezed my eyes shut and wished I could shrink to the size of an insect.

‘It's 'im,' said Mr Shaw, and I knew I'd been found. ‘Look.'

Thinking I was caught, that there was no point in
hiding any more, I was about to move, but when I opened my eyes, I saw they weren't talking about me. I was well covered by the shadow of what I'd hidden under, but a few inches away, the circle of orange torchlight illuminated the face of a dead German.

‘He's slipped to one side,' said Mr Shaw.

He was lying on his back, right next to me, but his legs were twisted too far around to the side, as if they had been put on backwards. His arms, ragged with charred flesh and fabric that had become part of him, were bent underneath, like an old rag doll, and there were places where he'd been scorched right down to the bone. Turned towards me, his face was a craggy mess, his mouth open in a silent scream, his eye sockets nothing more than burnt-out blackened holes. It was hard to believe what I was looking at had once been a person.

I must have pulled him when I'd slipped back. That's what I'd grabbed hold of. The dead German had been close enough for me to reach out and drag him down with me as I fell.

And now I realised what the sweet smell was. It was the smell of cooked human flesh.

I only looked at the body for a fraction of a second before I squeezed my eyes shut again, but it was enough to take in all that information. It was in my head like a photograph. An image I would remember for the rest of my life. I bit my lips harder, desperate to shout out, but determined not to.

‘What the bloody hell's going on here?' said a voice I'd heard before but couldn't quite put a face to.

The light snapped off and I was in darkness once again. I put my hand to my mouth to stop myself from making a noise. That horrible burnt body was so close to me. That face with the flesh missing. I tried to not to think about it; tried not to keep seeing it in my mind.

‘What do you two think you're doin'? You tryin' to bring the whole of the Luftwaffe down on us?'

‘We—'

‘Get over here.
Now
.'

There was the sound of stumbling, then the footsteps of Mr Shaw and Doctor Jacobs walking a few yards away from the plane. When they stopped, the voice was speaking again, saying the words with authority. ‘Why aren't you patrolling? We just walked right up behind you without you even noticing.'

‘Sergeant. We thought we heard somethin',' said Mr Shaw, and I knew immediately who he was talking to. Sergeant Wilkes. The one who had been on the hill earlier that day; the one with the mouth that opened more on one side than the other, and the eyes that looked right through you. The one who had grinned like a wolf when he talked about shooting Germans. It made me even more afraid, knowing he was out there, too.

‘So you thought you'd turn on the torch?' he was saying. ‘Invite the Germans to come and bomb us, eh? Is that what you thought?'

‘No.'

‘And no one's supposed to get that close. You might damage vital intelligence, you daft old granddads. No sign of any intelligence right here, is there? '

‘You can't talk to us like that,' said Mr Shaw. ‘Just because your lieutenant isn't here, doesn't mean you can—'

‘I can talk to you however I want,
private
. I have stripes on my shoulder that tell you I'm a sergeant. You got any stripes,
private
? No. I didn't think so. And you call yourselves soldiers? Can't even guard a plane wreck.'

‘I think we're doing rather well,' said Doctor Jacobs.

‘Rather well?' said Sergeant Wilkes. ‘Flashing your torch about, bumbling about like idiots? You call that
rather well
?'

‘I . . .'

‘A parachute was spotted, you know,' the sergeant went on. ‘There might be a Jerry running about, and here you are, standing out like sore thumbs. We've got men looking for 'im but what if he came here and crept up on you and
criiick
—' he made the kind of noise people make when they draw a finger across their throat like it's a knife. ‘How about that,
private
? Two dead old men and Jerry still on the loose. Either that or someone'll drop a bomb on your head. Good job you've got the likes of me around to keep you right. You lot runnin' around on the village green with broom shanks for rifles, banging dustbin lids to make gunfire doesn't make you soldiers, you know. I've never seen anything so ridiculous.'

Someone laughed.

‘We do what we can,' said Mr Shaw. It sounded like he was gritting his teeth.

‘Well, it's not much good from what I can see,' the sergeant scoffed.

‘And we have rifles now,' said Doctor Jacobs. ‘Not broom shanks.'

‘Aye. Ross rifles from the last war,' said Wilkes. ‘With five rounds of ammunition a piece. Hardly gonna stop the invasion with that, are you?'

‘All I have to do is shoot one Jerry,' Mr Shaw said. ‘And there's sixty thousand of us Home Guard, you know. If we all shoot just one Jerry, I reckon that's a canny start. And you never know – I might even get two. I'm a good shot.'

After that there was a long silence, then someone cleared their throat loudly.

‘Aye, well, we're here to relieve you, anyway,' said the sergeant. ‘There's not a lot of searching we can do at night, and we need to keep this place
well guarded
.' He stressed those last two words as an accusation.

‘One of the bodies slipped,' said Doctor Jacobs. ‘We thought there was someone inside.'

‘Well, they won't be there much longer,' he replied. ‘We're gettin' them out as soon as it's light enough to see what we're doing.'

All the time they were talking, I'd been lying still with my eyes squeezed shut, so it came as a shock when I felt Kim tap me gently on the foot. I flinched and looked up, seeing her crouched by my feet. She beckoned with one hand and I sat up slowly.

She pointed at me, then at herself, then at the open end of the plane. She wasn't pointing in the direction of the hill, though, but away at the woods, where I'd been earlier that day. I understood, straight away, what she meant. There was no way we could make a run for it in the
direction of the hill, but if we were quiet, we might be able to get out while the men were arguing, and make our way to the woods. Once inside, we'd be well hidden, and we could double back around.

I nodded and got up into a kneeling position, feeling something hard and angular digging into my knee. I tried not to think about the body lying close by, and reached down to pick up the object. Then Kim tugged gently on my sleeve and beckoned.