She was right. From between the gorse thorns, I could just make out the door of the cottage opening, and then a figure appeared. A squarish figure in a long, dark coat. The clifftop breeze whipped at his white hair and he turned up his collar. I had seen this man before.
‘Do you remember, Mags? On the day the German bomber crashed – he was standing there on the ridge watching the whole thing. Staring at us.’
‘Yes,’ Mags breathed. ‘Yes! That was him. That was Spooky Joe . . .’
‘He’s the old man who was so horrid to Mutti in the bakery. He called her Jerry.’
My sister’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s he doing?’
Spooky Joe was doing something very peculiar. He edged his way around the side of the cottage nearest us and lowered himself down so that he was lying on his front in the grass. Then he wriggled inland and uphill. From the top of that rise he could see all the way down to the Dover Road – the view was almost as good as from the lighthouse. He rolled on to his side and pulled some things from his coat pocket. He put a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Then he appeared to write or draw something on a piece of paper.
Mags looked at me triumphantly. ‘I knew it, Pet!’ she whispered. ‘I knew he was the spy!’
‘But he’s facing inland,’ I hissed. ‘What on earth is he looking at?’
‘I don’t know. Stonegate church? The telephone box? I need to see what he’s writing down . . .’
We kept watching. Spooky Joe squinted through the binoculars again and continued to scribble for a minute, then he crawled back down the hill, pushed himself up and went into the cottage, leaving the paper weighed down by the binoculars.
‘I’m going to go and have a look,’ said Mags.
‘Are you mad?’ I whispered. ‘He’s probably just gone in to get something. He’ll come back at any moment! Mags!’
But she was already running across the grass.
My eyes flicked back and forth between the door of the cottage and my insane sister. My heart was drumming fast and my breathing was changing. Oh, God, not now . . . I could feel the dreaded pins-and-needles feeling starting in my fingertips.
Mags was nearly at the top of the rise, trying to keep low but moving as quickly as possible. Just as she reached the piece of paper on the grass, there was a tapping noise behind her and she spun around. A loud grating sound followed, and a bang – a window being flung open – and then a voice: ‘HEY!’
Mags stared for a second, then grabbed the piece of paper and started running back towards me at full pelt. But she didn’t reach the gorse bush. At the last moment, she swerved and made for the cliff path instead. Perhaps she thought it would be quicker to sprint down to the village that way. But Spooky Joe wasn’t chasing her – he came through the door of the cottage, and then he stopped. There was a skidding sound just a few yards away from me – shoes on loose stone – and a scream. Mags!
My limbs had gone all weak and watery and I was panting for breath – I couldn’t stand up properly. I managed to crawl a little to the other side of the gorse bush. Mags had run straight into a coil of barbed wire and was trying to disentangle herself, looking around desperately and pulling at the barbs with bleeding fingers.
Then there was a voice: ‘Well, fancy seeing you up here, Miss Smith. Bright and early, as usual.’ It wasn’t an old man’s voice, it was boyish and cheerful – a voice full of ease and charm. Michael Baron.
‘Looks like you could do with a bit of help,’ he said. He knelt down beside her and examined the tangle of wire and fabric. ‘Don’t,’ he said, stopping her from grabbing at the wire. ‘Don’t, Magda – you’ll hurt yourself.’ My sister twisted around again, still frightened of being pursued by Spooky Joe, but he had gone. The door of the cottage was shut.
‘It’s all right,’ Michael said soothingly, ‘I’ve got just the thing.’ He reached into a pocket and pulled out some sort of tool or penknife. He clipped at the wires one by one, carefully disentangling them from Mags’s clothes.
‘Thank you, Michael,’ she said, a little calmer now. I noticed that the piece of paper had gone from her hand – she must have put it in her pocket. She looked down at him.
Michael grinned up at her. ‘A Boy Scout is always prepared, Miss Smith,’ he said with a wink. ‘Not that I’m a Boy Scout any more . . .’
Mags laughed. I had never heard her laugh like that.
He stood up then. ‘Hang on,’ he said, his voice a bit softer. ‘What’s this?’ He reached towards her face and gently untangled a bit of dead gorse from a strand of hair that had escaped from beneath her hat.
Mags’s eyes were locked on his and her face flushed pink. ‘Thank you, Michael.’
‘My pleasure, Miss Smith. Anything to help a damson in distress.’
‘No. More like a damson,’ he said, and touched her blushing cheek. I watched my sister’s face turn an even darker shade of pink.
‘I’m just up here for a walk with my sister . . .’
‘Oh, yes?’ He looked around. It must have been a bit odd that he couldn’t see me. I stood up on trembling legs and waved at him from behind my gorse bush. He waved back at me, looking only slightly puzzled. ‘Are you going down to work on your boat this morning?’ he asked my sister.
She hesitated, tucking her ears firmly beneath her woolly hat. Then she smiled and said, ‘Yes. You can come too if you like, Michael.’
So they set off together and I tagged along behind, glancing back over my shoulder every now and then to make sure Spooky Joe wasn’t following us. What had he been up to? It had certainly looked like spying of some sort, but what could he have been looking at? And what was written on the piece of paper Mags had taken? I wanted Michael Baron to go away so that we could have a look and discuss it properly, but as I watched them walking along together, side by side, it became clear that any conversation with my sister was going to have to wait until later.