We didn’t see Kipper again until the day the gas masks arrived. What a horrible day that was – and what a horrible thing a gas mask is. I know it could save my life, of course – I’m not stupid. I just can’t help finding it terrifying. Sometimes I can feel my gas mask looking at me from its home on the kitchen sideboard – with its round, glassy, goggle eyes, and its round mouth too – fixed in an O of horror. It is always there, ready to be strapped on in an ugly, rubbery panic should the moment ever come.
We were summoned to collect our gas masks just a few weeks after the blackout started. Everyone queued up in the village hall and we were issued with a mask one at a time, while the vicar’s wife ticked our names off her list with a blunt pencil. Then we all had to sit down in rows.
There must have been about fifty of us there in the village hall that day. Kipper Briggs sat at the back with his father and, when I turned around to look at him, he raised his chin and just glared past me towards the front of the hall, where Mrs Baron, our headmistress, was demonstrating how the gas masks worked.
I remember watching Mrs Baron as she was speaking to us all, and deciding that if she were a bird, she would probably be a kestrel. She was wearing her usual tweed suit with a pearl-coloured scarf around her neck. Her hair was done up in a neat bronze twist, and her narrow grey eyes darted about as she spoke. Mrs Baron was probably the busiest lady in Stonegate. She and her son Michael had moved to our village from London about three years ago and she had swiftly become what Pa called ‘a pillar of the community’. Not only was she the headmistress of our school but she was also a magistrate at the court in Dover.
‘So,’ she was saying, ‘I shall, for the time being at least, be the village’s Air Raid Precaution, or ARP, warden.’
‘What?’ a voice called out rudely from the back. ‘ARP warden? As well as headmistress and Justice of the flamin’ Peace?’ It was Arthur Briggs, Kipper’s father.
‘Yes, Arthur,’ Mrs Baron replied, deploying the tolerant smile she usually reserved for the children who shouted out stupid things in class. ‘Unless you fancy the job, of course?’
‘You’re welcome to it, I’m sure,’ muttered Briggs, adding a sarcastic ‘M’lady’ under his breath. Then I heard him mutter to Kipper, ‘Fingers in too many pies, that one . . . She’ll be Queen of flamin’ England next.’
Very wisely, Mrs Baron chose to ignore Arthur Briggs and was now pressing on with instructions on how to use the gas masks, but I found it very difficult to concentrate, because Mags was fanning herself, flapping her gas mask instructions right next to my face, and it kept making me blink. She seemed to be in a sort of trance, staring intently towards the front of the hall. I nudged her, and when she eventually looked at me, I swatted her gas mask instructions right out of her hand. Mags scowled and elbowed me hard in the ribs, making me squeak. I was immediately aware that Mrs Baron had stopped talking and was looking straight at me. My stomach went tight. Other people were turning to look at me now too.
‘This is no laughing matter, young lady,’ she said, pressing her lips together and shaking her head in disappointment. ‘This device could save your life, you know. Come along, Petra. Come up here and I’ll show you how it works.’
I squeezed past Mags, out of our row, and made my way to the front of the hall to stand beside Mrs Baron. I felt like a magician’s assistant about to be sawn in half. I hoped no one could see that my knees were shaking.
I had always rather liked Mrs Baron, but right now she was my least favourite person on the whole planet – after Mags, of course. I glared at my sister and tried not to make eye contact with Mutti and Pa, who were smiling at me proudly as if I had been picked to play the lead part in the school play. I noticed Mrs Baron’s handsome sixteen-year-old son Michael was also smiling, and I hoped that my cheeks weren’t too beetroot-red.
Then I realized that Mrs Baron’s eagle-eyes had settled expectantly upon me and I hadn’t been listening to a single word she had been saying.
‘Off you go, Petra,’ she said, gesturing to the mask I was clutching in my hands.
I knew exactly what was going to happen next. What always happened to me when I was this frightened. I froze.
Mrs Baron sighed. ‘Like this, dear . . .’ And quite suddenly she had taken the gas mask out of my rigid hands, pressed it on to my face and was pulling the tight strap over the top of my head.
I was underwater. I was drowning.
The village hall became a sinking ship, swaying its way down to the bottom of the deepest, greenest sea, taking me and everyone else with it. My whole head was pinched with pressure and I gasped for air, hearing a strange, alien hiss as I managed to draw in a little dizzying oxygen, just enough to keep me alive for a few agonizing seconds, until, at last, I felt a hand on the back of my head pulling the strap off again – and then – oh, the relief! – I could breathe once more – I could move! I folded in half, hands on my shaking knees, tongue hanging out of my mouth, trying to inhale enough clean air to get rid of the bitter, rubbery taste of the mask.
‘Are you all right, Petra?’ Mrs Baron said, rubbing my back soothingly. ‘It is a bit odd at first, I know, but don’t worry – you’ll get used to it with practice!’ She gave a sympathetic little laugh and everyone else in the village hall laughed too.
My face burnt with embarrassment as I made my way unsteadily out of the door along with the rest of the village, my gas mask safely back in its cardboard box. I took a deep, cool breath of the seaside air and turned my face up towards the sun, as if its light could somehow bleach away the horror of the last few minutes.
‘You did well, Petra,’ said a voice beside me. I turned to see Michael Baron’s sparkling green eyes looking down at me. ‘I felt quite queasy the first time I tried to breathe through one of these. Tastes horrible, doesn’t it?’
‘Disgusting,’ I agreed, and started to feel a bit better, but then I was knocked sideways by my idiotic sister bumping into me. Michael gave us both a cheerful wink before he turned left and started striding off up the hill.
‘Thanks for nothing, Mags,’ I hissed through gritted teeth.
She just gave me a sarcastic little grin.
Michael turned back then and called to us: ‘By the way, are you two ladies entering the crabbing competition tomorrow?’
‘I didn’t think it was happening this year,’ Magda replied.
‘Of course it’s happening – not going to let a silly little thing like a war get in the way of an important tradition like crabbing, are you?’
Mags laughed.
‘And it’ll be fun beating Kipper again . . .’ Michael timed this remark beautifully, just as Kipper and his father emerged from the village hall. ‘Calls himself a fisherman, but last year he couldn’t even catch a cold, could you, Kipper?’
Kipper glared at Michael and started to turn away. But Mr Briggs went crimson. He shoved Kipper forward with a snarl, as if encouraging his son to fight Michael Baron on the spot, but Kipper shrugged him off, stuck his hands in his pockets and sloped off down the hill towards the harbour. After spitting on the cobbles, and cursing ‘the flamin’ high and mighty Barons’, his father followed him.
Michael raised his eyes to heaven and grinned. ‘Well, I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow, then, ladies!’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Crabbing, Mags?’ I said. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Of course!’ she insisted, smiling broadly. ‘It’s a tradition! Come on, Pet. We’ll take the rowing boat and a picnic – it’ll be fun.’
I didn’t really want to go, but I could see it was suddenly important to Mags, and she hadn’t looked this happy about anything since the war had begun.
‘Fine,’ I grumbled. ‘Just promise me you won’t get too competitive about it. I don’t want to be drifting about in the boat for hours and hours until it gets dark.’ Just the thought of it made me feel cold and sick.
‘I promise,’ she said. But she had that wild, excited look in her eye.
I should have known then that something was going to go wrong.