RABBIT

Kim re-dressed Erik’s wounded arm with our stolen bandages while I emptied the pan. I was glad he’d put the cloth over the top of it because the smell in the den was awful, and there was a lot of weight in the pan. I took it into the woods and turned my head as I flung it into the undergrowth. Afterwards, I swooshed it about in the deepest part of the burn and went back to Kim and Erik. It was only as I returned that I realised I hadn’t been worried about leaving Kim alone with him.

When everything was cleaned up, we gave Erik the food we’d managed to get, and we all sat looking at each other. Talking was difficult because Erik hardly knew any English and we hardly knew any German, but we managed to communicate in simple ways. Sometimes it made us laugh when we were all making shapes in the air with our hands, pointing, looking up in the hope of inspiration. Kim had a nice laugh, quiet and sweet, but sometimes she snorted and slapped her leg if something was really funny. Erik didn’t so much laugh as smile, showing a slightly crooked row of front teeth.

That day, he dusted his hands across the ground in front of him to make it flat, and took a stick. He drew a shape in the dirt and pointed at it saying, ‘Deutschland.’

I knew the shape and we knew the name. There was a map of the world on the wall in the classroom at school, and the teacher had shown us where Germany was.

Erik put the stick close to one edge of his drawing and said, ‘Hamburg.’ Then he wrote the word into the dirt. He tapped his chest and said ‘Erik, Hamburg.’

‘You’re from Hamburg?’

‘Hamburg,’ he said nodding.

Then he said something else in German that we didn’t understand and left us shaking our heads, so he rubbed away his drawing and started again. This time he drew a long blob and pointed at it saying, ‘England.’ Then he drew another blob and said, ‘Norwegen.’

‘Norwegen?’ I repeated and looked at Kim. ‘Is that Norway?’

‘You were in Norway?’ Kim asked him. We knew where that was, too, because they’d showed us that at school. The Germans had invaded and taken it over last year.

‘Ja. Norway. Norwegen.’ Erik patted his chest, then he thought for a second before pointing at me and saying. ‘Peter farter?’

As soon as he said it, Kim and I looked at each other and smiled. The smile turned into a laugh and Kim did that thing where she snorted and slapped her thigh. We laughed so much there were tears in Kim’s eyes, but when I looked at Erik, he was confused, so I stopped myself laughing and said, ‘Farter?’ Then I put my lips on my forearm and blew, making a loud, wet sound.

Erik looked even more confused now. ‘Furzen?’ He shook his head. ‘Nein. No. Vater. Papa.’

‘He means father,’ Kim said, wiping away the tears. ‘I think he wants to know where your dad is.’

Suddenly it wasn’t funny any more, and I was thinking about Dad. It didn’t seem right that we were laughing and he was out there somewhere, far away, and we hadn’t heard from him for such a long time.

‘Africa,’ I said. ‘He’s in Africa.’

‘Afrika,’ Erik nodded. ‘Bad,’ he said. ‘War bad.’

‘Germans are bad,’ I replied.

Erik stared at me, shaking his head.

‘So why do you keep bombing us?’ I said, but he couldn’t understand, so I pointed at him and put my hands out as if I was an aeroplane. Then I made bomb noises and pointed at myself. ‘You bomb us. Germans are bad.’

Erik stared for a while longer. ‘Nein,’ he said. ‘No. No. Nazi bad. German gut.’ He put his hand on his chest. ‘Erik. Nazi. No.’

*

When we left, Kim and I went further into the woods to check the snares.

‘Mam says maybe all Germans don’t want to bomb us,’ I said.

‘She’s probably right. I suppose they’re not all Nazis. Like Erik; he’s not, is he?’

‘So why was he in the plane, then?’

‘He probably had to be,’ Kim said. ‘You think everyone here really wants to go and fight? I bet your dad would rather be at home with you and your mum. I know Josh would rather be here.’

‘Aye.’ It was Dad’s duty to go, I knew that, and Mam said he’d gone away to protect us but I couldn’t help thinking Kim was right.

‘So maybe Erik didn’t want to go, either,’ she said.

‘I never thought about it like that. People being made to go to war. Sounds unfair.’

‘Lots of things are unfair,’ Kim said.

‘I s’pose.’ I thought about Dad not being allowed back after Dunkirk like Kim’s brother was, and I thought about how he had gone to fight while others had stayed at home. People like Trevor Ridley’s dad. The more I thought about it, the more unfair it felt, and that made me feel even more sorry for Erik. Maybe he’d never even wanted to go up in a plane. Maybe he never wanted to fight anybody. And, for the first time, it occurred to me that he must have a mam and dad too. Sisters and brothers, even, or a girlfriend or wife or something. They were probably all at home right now, wondering where he was. Maybe they were worried too; worried because they hadn’t had a letter from him, just like we hadn’t had one from Dad.

The first two snares we came to were empty, but when we came to the third, I saw straight away that the slack had been pulled tight against the peg.

‘I think we got one,’ I said hurrying over.

Kim ran alongside me, asking, ‘Where is it?’

I got down on my knees and beckoned her close. ‘Under there.’ Close to the snare, there was a tuft of undergrowth which the rabbit was using for cover. The animal was crouched low to the ground, its ears pinned right back.

Kim leant close, putting her hand on my arm. ‘That’s amazing,’ she said. ‘You got one.’

‘We got one. You helped put these out.’

She nodded, her mouth slightly open.

‘It looks so soft,’ she said. ‘And look at its eyes.’

I took the tethering cord in my fingers and held it firm as I reached out to clasp the rabbit around the back of the neck. Gripping it that way, I grabbed its back legs with my other hand and pulled it from the undergrowth, holding it out for Kim to see. The rabbit hardly struggled at all. Its legs kicked once or twice, but that was it.

‘What now?’ Kim asked.

‘Break its neck.’

Kim grimaced.

‘Turn around if you don’t want to see,’ I said.

‘It’s all right.’ Kim nodded. ‘Go on.’

I held the rabbit’s head close to the ground and twisted as I pulled the hind legs back, giving a good tug, and felt the rabbit go limp.

‘That’s it?’ Kim asked.

‘That’s it.’

For a while, Kim sat with her legs crossed, looking at the rabbit laid out on the ground in front of us.

‘I’ve eaten rabbit,’ she said after a while. ‘Quite nice, really. Never seen one killed, though.’ She looked up. ‘I suppose you’ve done that lots of times, have you?’

‘A few. I don’t really like doin’ it. I don’t want to do it, but we have to.’

Kim thought about it for a moment. ‘What does it feel like?’

‘Doesn’t feel like anything . . . I . . . No, it does feel like something. It feels like Mam’s gonna to be happy. It feels like there’s something better than tripe to eat, and it feels like we won’t be hungry tomorrow.’ I thought about letting Kim take it home – she had helped to set the snares, after all – but I knew how pleased Mam would be. She loved rabbit. And one time, when I brought one home, she saw me from the kitchen window and she said it reminded her of watching Dad come home with a rabbit for the pot.

‘Maybe I’ll try next time,’ Kim said. ‘Be a proper country person. Like you.’

‘You sure?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s just . . . you look a bit shocked.’

‘Not shocked,’ she said. ‘I think it’s brilliant. You just caught an animal and now you’re going to take it home to eat. What could be better than that?’

And the way she looked at me – that was the first time I realised Kim felt about me the same way I felt about her.

Kim didn’t say much on the way back, but she kept looking down at the rabbit I was carrying. I had its hind feet in my right hand, its head hanging towards the ground, and I felt so good. All around the world, the war raged. Bombs were being dropped and bullets were being fired, but right here, in these woods, I felt happy. I was with my best friend, and I was about to make Mam happy.

For a few moments, everything was just as it should be.