So we weren’t evacuated, and nor were any of the other children from our village. Not yet, at any rate. The early months of the war slid quietly by. Christmas and New Year came and went. The blossoms of spring had just started to fade when Hitler invaded France, and the war truly began. Terrible things started to happen one after the other then, with the dreadful, unstoppable momentum of storm waves at sea.
We listened to the wireless every night, and every night it was clear that the German army was getting closer and closer to our little island: sweeping through the Netherlands and Belgium; surging up through France. It is difficult to describe what we all felt, but I can tell you that my Wyrm nightmare tormented me every single night – a monster crawling from the water and clawing its way up the cliffs to the Castle. A monster from which I knew there could be no escape.
After the eeriness of the Twilight War, the darkness was now upon us at last. People continued to go about their everyday business, of course – weeding the garden and sweeping the step, and their words were defiant . . . But everyone was afraid. They were afraid that we would be next.
At about six o’clock one morning, I sat up in bed, suddenly and completely awake. Something was wrong. Smoke.
The smell of a burning building is unmistakable; even my dozing, dreaming brain knew that this was not a smell from the kitchen stove or the sitting-room hearth or even a bonfire. I leapt out of bed, yelling to Mags, and ran through the cottage from end to end, expecting to see flames at any moment. I burst through the kitchen door and stared up at the lighthouse too. But there was no fire to be seen.
Then I heard Mutti’s voice behind me – she was up and dressed already: ‘The village, Petra – it’s all right, my darling – it’s coming from the village.’ She put her arm around me. ‘Over here – look . . .’
We went towards the cliff path and I saw it straight away: a cloud of dirty grey smoke. It sat over the village below, bulging and billowing. The breeze pulled at the smoke, tearing off woolly skeins of it and carrying them up towards us.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s on fire?’
‘The village hall,’ Mutti said, ‘according to the postman.’
I tried to make out the shapes of the familiar buildings, but everything was obscured by the smoke. The bell of a fire engine echoed over the fields.
Mags and I dressed quickly and ran down to the village, but by the time we got there the fire was almost completely extinguished. A crowd had gathered in the street. Some people were still wearing slippers and dressing gowns. They frowned and folded their arms and shook their heads and muttered to each other.
The smoke was dispersing already, but the firemen were still pumping water on to the walls of the village hall and the nearby church tower, to prevent the fire from rekindling and spreading. On the opposite side of the road, all that remained of the Scout hut was a pile of charred metal struts and some blackened sheets of corrugated iron. It had been little more than a large shed, tucked between the school house and some old cottages, and now there was nothing left of it. Mags and I sidled around the crowd to get a better look. The stench of smoke was fierce here, and I knew Mutti would insist on washing our hair this evening, whether we liked it or not.
I looked at the two buildings – from one side of the street to the other. It didn’t make any sense. ‘How could the fire have spread?’ Mags muttered. ‘The buildings aren’t even touching – they’re on opposite sides of the road.’
I nodded.
One of the firemen was rummaging around under the bushes beside the remains of the Scout hut, right next to where my sister and I were standing. He found something – a large tin, and he used a stick to pull it out of the nettles. He passed it to the senior fireman standing next to the engine. They spoke quietly, but we were just close enough to hear.
‘Paraffin?’
He sniffed at the can. ‘Petrol, I think. Could make it easier to trace, seeing as it’s being rationed so strictly now.’
The captain nodded in agreement. ‘It’s what we thought, then. And I’ve just been told it was being used as a base for the Local Defence Volunteers. We need to inform the police.’
The Local Defence Volunteers? Pa had just signed up. There had been an announcement on the wireless – all able-bodied men aged seventeen to sixty-five who were too young or too old to fight, or were in the reserved professions, were asked to volunteer for the LDV to help defend the country in the event of an invasion. Just this week the village hall had been agreed upon as the base for meeting and training, and the Scout hut had been secured for storing equipment. And then, only a few days later, both buildings had been set on fire.
Mags and I left the crowd at the village hall and walked towards the shops. Mutti had said she would meet us outside the butchers.
After we had been walking quietly for a moment, Mags said, ‘So it was deliberate, then? Someone set the village hall and the Scout hut on fire deliberately? With petrol?’
‘It looks like that,’ I said.
‘But why? And why target the LDV? Pa said they haven’t even got properly started yet. He was getting all cross about it – do you remember?’
I did. Pa had been talking to Mutti last night. He had said the volunteers were so frustrated with the lack of proper equipment that a plan was being cooked up by the local farmers to arm the LDV with their own collection of rabbit rifles and shotguns. They were taking matters into their own hands.
‘Maybe it’s got nothing to do with the LDV or the war. Maybe it was a personal vendetta.’ I said. ‘Or an act of passion.’
Mags rolled her eyes at me. ‘An act of passion, Pet? In Stonegate Scout hut? I very much doubt it.’
Then we saw Mutti waiting there for us outside the butcher’s shop. She was looking at Magda with a peculiar, worried expression on her face. When we got closer, she shook the expression away and handed my sister the ration book.
‘See if you can get some bacon, please, Mags,’ Mutti said, with a quick smile. ‘Pet, let’s go and see Mrs Rossi at the bakery.’
‘Flames as high as the church tower,’ one woman said. ‘We thought it was the end of days!’ There was quite a queue at the bakery, and everyone was talking about the fire.
‘Was it children, do you think?’ said another. ‘I heard some of the lads got their hands on a recipe for a sort of homemade bomb that you can make in lemonade bottles. If Jerry shows up, they’re planning on chucking them at him!’
‘If Jerry shows up,’ someone else echoed, ‘I’ll be chucking more than flamin’ lemonade bottles – I’ll chuck the kitchen sink’n’all!’
People laughed. But then there was another voice from the front of the queue, low and cold: ‘The thing is, ladies, Jerry’s already here – isn’t she?’
It was an old man I didn’t recognize, and he had turned around to stare straight at my mother. There was a terrible silence. I looked at Mutti. What was she going to say?
But Mutti didn’t say anything at all. She looked at me, and then looked down so no one could see the tears that had already started in her eyes. Someone giggled. Someone else shuffled her feet, and then whispered in her friend’s ear. My face was burning. Perhaps I should say something – Don’t talk about my mother like that, you nasty old man!
But then Mrs Rossi said very briskly, ‘Thank you, sir. Who’s next, please, ladies?’ and the dreadful silence eased.
When we got to the front of the queue, Mrs Rossi leant across the counter to Mutti and whispered, ‘Don’t pay any attention to him, my dear.’
Mutti nodded. Her eyes were very sad. ‘He lost his brother in the Great War, I believe.’
She knew this horrible man? But I had never seen him before in my life.
‘Ah.’ Mrs Rossi seemed to understand. ‘He finds it hard to be kind, then, I think,’ Mrs Rossi said. ‘Hard to forgive.’
‘Yes. It is very difficult for him.’
‘Difficult for you too,’ Mrs Rossi said, her chocolate-brown eyes looking at Mutti with sympathy. She and her husband were from Italy – she knew what it was to feel like an outsider in a village like ours. I saw her slip an extra bun into our paper bag. ‘Difficult for all of us, my dear.’