My Friend the Enemy (7 page)

I took a deep breath and together we crept from the plane.

Once outside, I glanced back to see if the soldiers were in sight, but they were hidden behind part of the fuselage. I could still hear them talking, but they were too far away for me to hear what they were saying.

‘Come on,' Kim whispered, and together we made a run for it.

I kept low, bent at the waist, as I pumped my legs as fast as they would go. They were still shaking from the fright, and they trembled as I ran, but I gritted my teeth and kept going. I sprinted alongside Kim, not looking at her, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the darkness of the woods at the edge of the field. Once or twice, I kicked the tops of the furrows, showering soil, but I managed to stay up and keep on.

When we reached the treeline, we dropped into the shadows, puffing and panting, exhilarated by the run. ‘They're still in there,' I said between breaths. ‘His face was . . .' I stopped without finishing my sentence. ‘It was horrible. He was all burnt up. It hardly even looked like a
person. I was so scared.'

‘I saw it, too.'

‘He had no eyes.'

‘Are you all right?' ‘Aye,' I said, shaking myself. ‘Aye, I'm fine. It's just . . . it was . . . you know.'

‘We shouldn't have gone in there.'

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘I mean, it was bad an' I was scared, but . . . well, it was fun too. In a scary way.'

‘Yeah. Hey, you find something?'

‘What?'

‘In your hand.'

‘Oh, aye.' I'd almost forgotten I'd picked it up, but now I held out my hand and looked at the metal object in my fingers. ‘I
have
found something,' I said. ‘I really have.'

GUN

W
e sat in the undergrowth just inside the line of trees, and looked at the object I'd found. There wasn't much light, so it was hard to see, but we knew exactly what it was.

‘It's a gun,' Kim said. Her voice was quiet, less than a whisper. There was no one close enough to hear us, but something about the darkness and the plane and the dead airman made us speak in hushed tones like we were in church.

‘Aye,' I said, turning it over in my hands before gripping the handle and aiming it out into the night.

‘You think it still works?'

I lowered it and shrugged. ‘Don't know.'

‘Do you even know how to work it?'

‘Not really.'

She took it from me and felt its weight. ‘Good souvenir. Best I've seen.'

‘You should have it,' I said without thinking. ‘It was your idea to come.'

‘No way, you have to keep it. You found it; it's the rule. Finders keepers.' She put it down between us and we said nothing for a while. I could hear Kim breathing in and out.

‘That smell in there,' I said. ‘I half wished I had me gas mask. I'd always thought the inside of
that
smelt bad, but . . .' I looked at Kim. ‘We got 'em fitted at the school hall last year.'

‘Us, too,' Kim said.

‘Some of the bairns got masks with a kind of Donald Duck beak that made a fartin' noise when they breathed out, then the teachers made us parade around the playground wearin' 'em, and it was so funny.'

‘They smell awful,' Kim said. ‘Makes me feel . . . trapped. I hate mine.'

‘It's nothing compared to the smell back there.'

Kim nodded, but she didn't say anything.

After a few minutes, she crawled away from the cover of the trees and lay down on her back in the soil. ‘There are so many stars,' she said. ‘Have you ever really looked at them?'

‘All the time.' I picked up the gun and went to sit beside her. ‘Me da' knows all their names. Well, maybe not
all
of them, like, but a lot of them.' I put the weapon down beside me and looked out at the dark shape of the plane,
but we were too far away to see the guards now.

‘Seems as if there's loads more now. More than before,' she said. ‘With all the lights in town, you could hardly see them, but now . . .'

‘Me da' said in Newcastle it's like daylight when all the street lamps are switched on.'

Kim laughed quietly. ‘It was never
that
light.'

‘Don't laugh.'

‘Why not? It's funny.'

‘It's what me da' told me.'

Kim turned her head so she could see me sitting beside her. ‘Sorry. I didn't mean to . . .'

‘That's all right,' I said.

‘You miss him a lot.'

‘Aye.'

‘I miss my brother.'

‘Is he really a pilot?'

‘Flying Wellingtons,' she said. ‘And I don't mean the boots.'

‘I know what a Wellington bomber is,' I told her, and for a moment I tried to imagine what it would be like to fly one, but after the crash, I wasn't so sure I'd ever want to. And that made me think about how Kim must feel, having seen what was inside the smashed-up Heinkel. I wanted to say something to her, about her brother being a pilot and about the crash, but I couldn't think of the right thing. ‘How old are you?' I said, changing the subject instead.

‘Twelve.'

‘Same as me. What month?'

‘April.'

‘Mine's May.'

‘You ever seen a dead body before?' she asked.

‘No.'

‘Me neither.' She took a deep breath. ‘I didn't think it would be like that. It was the worst thing ever.'

‘Aye.'

And we were quiet again, so I lay back and stared at the stars, too, trying to remember some of the ones Dad had pointed out to me. He'd said that people could use them to find their way at night, and I wondered if he was doing that right now, somewhere else in the world.

‘That's Orion up there.' I pointed. ‘See the three stars in a row?'

Kim shuffled closer, putting her head against mine so she could follow the line of my finger. Her hair was soft and it tickled my cheek. She smelt clean.

‘Those three are Orion's Belt,' I said. ‘And at the corners you can see the rest of him.' I traced the tip of my finger around the stars, drawing the outline of the hunter Orion.

‘Which ones?' Kim asked, but I didn't get the chance to tell her again, because we heard someone cough. It was unmistakeable. A quiet cough, as if someone was trying not to be heard.

Kim grabbed my hand, pulling it down so I was no longer pointing. She put her finger on her lips, telling me to be quiet.

‘Someone's there,' she whispered.

The cough again.

‘It's behind us,' I said, turning around. ‘In the woods.'

‘Maybe the soldiers came after us,' Kim said. ‘That Sergeant Wilkes.'

‘Can't be. We'd have seen them comin'.'

‘Others, then,' Kim suggested. ‘The ones who're looking for the German.'

‘We'd have heard them in the woods.' And then a thought came to me. ‘Unless they've been there all along. From when we got here.'

‘Maybe it's the German.'

‘I want to see.'

‘What?'

‘I want to see who it is.' I didn't know why I said it. Perhaps it was to prove to myself that I could be brave just like Kim, but whatever it was, something made me want to see.

I picked up the pistol and started to crawl towards the trees.

Kim grabbed my shirt. ‘Don't.'

I pulled her hand away and pushed to a crouch, creeping right into the edge of the woods. Once I'd passed the first trunks of hazel and oak, I stood up and took a soft step forward. Dad had shown me how to walk quietly in the woods. He said he had to do it all the time at night, be as quiet as possible when he was hunting poachers.

I put down my right heel and rolled onto the ball of my foot, feeling for anything that might snap and make a noise. I took extra care to remember I was wearing wellies – something I'd forgotten earlier – and, moving like that, I crept deeper into the trees, coming closer to the barbed wire fence.

And then I saw him.

Highlighted by a sliver of moonlight that cut through the leaves above, I saw a man, sitting back against one of the fence posts.

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at him.

A stick snapped behind me, making me spin around to find Kim standing just behind me.

‘Who is it?' she asked.

‘I don't know,' I said turning back to look at the immobile figure.

‘Is he asleep? Or dead?'

I was mesmerised by him. My whole body had gone cold with fear. My stomach tingled, my hands trembled, my muscles tightened.

And then he spoke – ‘Bitter,' – and he put his arm up as if to protect his face. ‘Bitter.'

I stayed as I was, my breath going right out of me. ‘Bitter.' He said it over and over again.

‘Bitter.' His voice quiet, his arms across his face.

Kim grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back. ‘Let's go,' she said.

When she broke the spell like that, I turned to run, my instinct was to do as Kim said, but before I took a step, I had second thoughts. Something made me stop.

I resisted her, tugging my arm away, inching closer so I could look down at the man half-sitting, half-lying on the ground. My breathing was shallow, my throat was dry.

‘Bitter,' he said again.

‘What's wrong with 'im?' I said, swallowing my fear and surprising myself that I hadn't run away. My curiosity
was growing, drowning my fear. ‘Is he drunk?' I took a step closer.

‘Drunk?' she asked, trying to pull me away once more. ‘What d'you mean?'

‘Why's he keep sayin' “bitter”? What's “bitter”?'

Kim pulled me harder. ‘What are you talking about, you idiot? He's saying “please”.
Bitte
is German for “please”.'

And then I understood why she was pulling me away. We had found the missing German. And if I knew anything about Germans, it was that they were brutal killers. They were animals raging for the blood of Englishmen. I had been told enough times what they were capable of, and I knew that if I stayed here any longer, he would kill us both.

But this man didn't seem as if he was trying to kill anyone.

‘Is it 'im?' I said. ‘The one on the parachute?'

‘Must be.'

I stared down at him. ‘Why's he saying
please
? Why's he scared of us?'

‘I don't know. Maybe . . .' She stopped.

‘What?' I said. ‘Maybe what?'

‘Look at what you're holding.'

I lifted my hand and looked at the pistol. ‘He's frightened of me.'

‘Come on, let's get help.' Kim turned. ‘We'll get the soldiers.'

But I put out a hand and stopped her.

‘What?' she said. ‘We'll be heroes. Everyone'll be
talking about us if we find him. We need to get someone.'

‘We're not s'posed to be out here. Remember the curfew?'

‘Forget that,' Kim said. ‘They'll be too proud of us to tell us off.'

‘Then maybe we should capture him ourselves,' I said, feeling brave. ‘We've got the gun.'

‘No way.'

‘Imagine it. You and me.'

‘I don't think—'

‘
We
capture the German. How about that?'

Kim was silent. I could almost hear her thinking about it, but when she eventually spoke, it was to say, ‘You're mad.'

‘Maybe,' I replied. ‘But look how frightened he is. More frightened than us.'

‘You really think we should?'

‘Definitely.'

She sighed. Turned away. Took a few steps and then stopped. Kim stood still for a moment then came back to me and nodded once. ‘All right, then,' she said. ‘We'll do it. We'll take him to the soldiers.'

THE SOUVENIR

T
he man didn't do anything at all. He just sat there as if he'd given up and decided enough was enough. There was no point in running any more, so he was sitting with his back against the fence post, his legs stretched out and his arms by his sides.

I raised my arm and pointed the gun.

‘
Bitte
,' he said. He said other words, too, but I couldn't understand them, and it sounded as if he was having trouble talking at all. The light wasn't that good, but we could see enough to know his face was streaked and the left arm of his flight suit was torn from shoulder to cuff. It glistened wet with what I imagined to be blood.

‘Get up,' I said in my strictest voice. ‘You're coming with us.'

‘He doesn't know what you're saying,' Kim said.

‘You tell 'im then.'

‘How am
I
going to tell him?'

‘You speak German.'

‘I know how to say “please”; it doesn't mean I can speak German.'

‘All right, well . . . get up!' I made a lifting motion with my hands, flicking the pistol up and down, but that only alarmed the airman even more and he flinched away from us. He looked the way I'd felt when Trevor Ridley had picked on me earlier that evening, and seeing him react that way made me feel sorry for him. I started to feel bad for frightening him.

‘I'm not going to hurt you,' I said. ‘I just want you to stand up.'

‘
Wasser
,' he said.

‘Vasa?'

‘He wants water,' Kim said.

‘We haven't got any.'

‘I have. I brought it in case we got thirsty.'

I stared at him. ‘Maybe we should give 'im some, then.' ‘Really?'

‘I don't think he's dangerous. I mean, he doesn't
look
dangerous. What do you reckon? A bit of water should be all right.'

Kim thought for a moment, then agreed, and took the water bottle from her satchel. It was made of metal, like a soldier's water bottle, and she threw it towards the man. It
landed in the undergrowth beside him with a dull thump and he picked it up in his right hand. He tried to open it, putting the bottle between his thighs to hold it while he twisted the cap, but it was too tight. Then he tried unscrewing it with his teeth, but still couldn't do it. Eventually, he dropped the bottle and began to sob.

‘He's crying,' Kim said.

‘Why?'

‘He's thirsty, I suppose.'

‘And scared.'

‘Yeah. Probably sad that he's lost his friends, too.' She stepped closer to him, picking up the bottle. ‘Keep pointing that gun at him.' She half crouched beside him, ready to escape at any moment, and unscrewed the cap of the water bottle and offered it to him. She waited, watching, but he didn't move. He just looked at her, afraid, so Kim stretched out her hand and lifted it to the man's mouth.

He drank a long, deep drink and moved his head away from the bottle, whispering, ‘
Danke
'.

‘He's hurt,' Kim said, relaxing a little. ‘Not breathing much.'

The airman coughed.

‘I think he might be dying.'

‘Dyin'?'

‘Maybe. I don't know. I'm not a doctor.'

She stayed where she was, suddenly unafraid of the man now she could see he was hurt, and I found myself losing my resolve to keep pointing the gun at him.

‘He looks young,' Kim said.

‘He looks old enough to me.'

‘Maybe to you, but I've got a brother,' she said. ‘He's nineteen – eighteen when I last saw him, and
he
looks about the same age.'

‘You sure? He looks older to me.'

‘No, he's no older than Josh, and that makes him just a teenager.'

‘Who's Josh?'

‘My brother, you clot.'

‘Oh.'

Kim sat down and continued to look at the man. I kept my distance, held the gun up, but it was beginning to feel heavy now. I couldn't keep pointing it all night.

‘We should take him now,' I said. ‘To the soldiers.'

‘What do you think they'll do to him?'

‘I . . .' I shook my head. I hadn't really thought any further than taking him prisoner and becoming a hero. I'd imagined Trevor Ridley's jealousy and I'd seen Kim boasting about the capture, but I hadn't thought about what the soldiers would do with this man.

‘D'you think they'll kill him?' Kim asked. ‘It's what that soldier said today, isn't it? That sergeant. He said they'd shoot him.'

‘He didn't say that. Not exactly.'

‘No, but that's what he meant.'

‘They wouldn't kill him, would they? That would be . . . I don't know. It wouldn't be right. Put him in a camp maybe, but not kill him.'

‘You heard what they said.'

Kim opened the water bottle again and put it to the man's lips. When he had drunk, he made a low moaning
noise and closed his eyes as if he were fighting to stay awake.

Kim crouched on her haunches and studied him as she might have studied a wounded hedgehog curled beneath a hedge. ‘We can't capture him,' she said, coming to a decision.

‘What?'

‘Not if they're going to kill him. It wouldn't be right. You said so yourself.'

‘What do we do then? Leave him here? We can't have Germans runnin' around the country, can we?' I thought how much my words sounded like Mam's.

‘I don't think he's in much of a state to go running around anywhere,' Kim said.

‘Maybe he's a spy, tryin' to trick us.'

Kim shook her head. ‘I don't think so. I think he needs help. He's wounded.'

‘We could go to Doctor Jacobs. He's really nice and—'

‘He'd tell the soldiers,' Kim said. ‘He's a grown-up, they always do things like that. What we need is somewhere for him to hide.'

‘Hide? We can't—'

‘Yeah. We can help him get better, and then he can escape over the sea. Go back to Norway where their base is.'

‘I don't think he'd get that far,' I said. ‘It's a canny long way, isn't it? Anyway, we can't just free 'im to go off and fight the English again. He's German. We have to turn him over to the sergeant. It's our duty.'

‘So he can shoot him?'

‘D'you really think he will?'

‘I do.' Kim turned to look at me and I wasn't sure what to say. This man was a German. He was
the enemy
. I shouldn't even think about helping him. But, at the same time, he didn't look very dangerous. He was crying, for goodness sake. I didn't think he deserved to be shot, so maybe we
should
help him. And then there was Kim – brave Kim – and how much I wanted to show her how brave
I
could be.

‘I was thinking,' Kim said with a shrug. ‘About my brother.'

‘What about 'im?' I asked.

‘Well, he's a pilot, isn't he?'

‘So?' The word came out before I really thought about it.
Of course
it mattered that her brother was a pilot. I looked back in the direction of the crashed plane and knew Kim had seen what I had seen. The difference was that when I saw those bodies, they were German airmen, but when Kim saw them, it would have made her think of her brother, Josh.

‘Well, we haven't heard from him for such a long time.'

‘We haven't heard from me da' either. That doesn't mean—'

‘No but . . . you know . . . what if it
did
mean something? What if my brother got shot down?'

‘He hasn't.'

‘But what if something
does
happen to him? Or to your dad? What if . . . I mean, wouldn't you want someone to help him? If someone found him – someone like us – wouldn't you want them to help him?'

‘You mean, like, if we help him, maybe someone would help my da' and your brother?'

‘Yes.'

I knew what she meant. I sometimes played games in my head, thinking that if I could run to the end of the road in less than ten seconds, then it would mean we'd get a letter from Dad. Or if I could get to the top of the hill before Mam could take in the washing, then it would mean there'd be a rabbit in the snare that day. Only this was more serious. More important.

I looked down at the German lying there, silent now, and imagined it was Dad in some far-off place, hurt and afraid. It was hard to imagine him being afraid. He was always so strong.

‘They're all right,' I said. ‘Me da' and your brother. They're all right, I just know it. And anyway, they're not German, are they?' I remembered the posters on the village noticeboard, and the ones they put up in the shops. The pictures were scary, letting us know how bad the Germans were, telling us that all they wanted to do was kill us. ‘They don't bomb us and—'

‘Stop making it all so complicated, Peter. He's wounded and he needs help. The sergeant will shoot him if they find him, so it's up to us.
We
have to help him.
We
have to look after him.' She began to sound excited. ‘Hey,
that
will be our souvenir. The best souvenir ever.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘I mean
him
. The German.
He'll
be our souvenir.'

‘A person? I thought we were looking for metal stuff. Small things.'

‘This will be even better.'

‘I don't know. I don't think it's a good idea. What if someone finds out?'

‘Come on, you started this. Don't go all gutless on me now.'

‘I'm not, it's just—'

‘Where can we take him? Are there some outbuildings or something? A barn, maybe?'

‘They'll search all of
them
.'

‘Somewhere no one'll find him, then.'

‘I don't think we should,' I said.

‘We have to,' Kim said. ‘What if it was Josh? Or your dad?'

‘It isn't, though, is it?'

‘Please,' she said. ‘Maybe if we look after him, someone will look after Josh. Or your dad. We
have
to.'

And there was something about the way she said those last three words that made me feel very sad. Doing something to help the German had become important to Kim, as if it would make a difference to what happened to her brother. She thought if we were kind to him, then someone would be kind to Josh. None of us talked much about how much we missed our dads and brothers and uncles and cousins who were away fighting. No one ever wanted to look scared or weak or upset. But we were all of those things all of the time, and Kim had decided that doing this would make her feel better.

‘Please,' she said again and I found myself thinking of all the places we might hide a German. It didn't seem right that we were going to try to keep him, but it also
didn't seem quite real. It felt as if, any minute now, an adult would step from around the wreckage of the plane and take charge of everything, and the adventure would be over. I was excited and scared and confused and sad all at the same time. Excited because we had found him, but scared because he was a German and he might try to kill us. I was also afraid of how much trouble we'd be in if we were caught, but Kim was right – he seemed just as frightened as we were – and I couldn't stand the thought that he might be killed if we turned him over. I couldn't bear to think something like that might happen to Dad.

So it was all of those things that made me tell her about my den. I'd never told anyone else except Dad. Not even Mam.

‘There is a place,' I said. ‘A good place. The best hidin' place ever.'