With Mags down at the harbour working on the old lifeboat, and Pa up in the service room, I was left in charge of dinner. Since Mutti had gone, we had taken it in turns to cook, and I wanted to make the three of us a special meal that night as a surprise for Pa. The trouble was, the more I tried to make it special, the more it felt like a last supper. I kept blinking back tears that welled up out of nowhere.
I was peeling potatoes at the sink when I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye – someone was in our garden – and then, before I could catch my breath, there was a sharp rapping sound on the door. I jumped, and the potato knife slipped in my wet hand, slicing through the soft pink skin under my thumbnail. I cursed under my breath and dried my hands as best I could, wrapping a clean cloth around my bleeding thumb. By the time I opened the door, my heart was flipping about like an eel.
It was Pinstripe.
‘Oh. Hello,’ I said.
‘Hello.’
And then Pa’s voice was in the kitchen behind me. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to come up here to find me, Inspector,’ he said. His voice was oddly formal – the same tone he used when he spoke to the Admiralty on the telephone, but more stilted.
‘Well, I thought I’d save you the trouble of coming down to the station,’ the detective said, removing his hat. ‘And there was always the risk that you might . . . change your mind.’
Change his mind about what?
Pinstripe gave me one of those looks that grownups are very good at, and said, ‘Perhaps you could leave us to have a little chat in peace, Petra?’
I looked at Pa. What’s going on? Is it something to do with Mutti? But his face wore a strange, hard expression – all closed up. His hands gripped the top of the kitchen chair too tightly.
I went away, leaving them to their ‘little chat’. I didn’t go to my room, though. I had a plan. I unbolted the heavy door that linked the cottage to the lighthouse, feeling the chill of the concrete through my socks. I crept up the stairs.
Up in the lantern room, I went straight to the speaking tube, carefully removed the brass whistle and put the funnelled end to my ear. I sat down, trying not to breathe too loudly. I stared out through the glass into the blue of the day, and listened.
‘I had been waiting to hear from you, Mr Smith.’ That was Pinstripe. He must have been sitting a bit further away from the speaking tube – on the other side of the table; his voice was quieter than Pa’s.
‘Waiting? Then you knew?’
I caught my breath. Knew what?
‘I’ve had suspicions since I came here to the lighthouse on the day of your wife’s tribunal. We took one of your old logbooks, and I’ve been comparing your charts with the diagrams we seized.’
‘Ah.’
A cold, sick feeling started spreading through my body.
‘I needed stronger proof and was about to bring you in for questioning when I received your telephone call.’
Proof? Was he saying it was Pa? That Pa was the traitor? But . . .
‘I only sent that one package, sir. Just one package of information.’
My heart pounded so hard I thought it might burst. I saw that the blood from the cut under my thumbnail was soaking, bright red, through the cloth.
‘But why, Mr Smith? You’re not on the side of the Nazis, are you?’
Of course he’s not, I wanted to scream down the tube. Of course he’s not! I pressed my clammy hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming it out loud.
But Pa didn’t say anything.
‘Why now? Why tell me the truth now?’
Pa cleared his throat. ‘You know why. My wife has made a confession. And with the new Treachery Act – the sentence . . . It’s all lies, of course – her confession. She must be trying to protect me. She must have found out somehow.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Pinstripe said. ‘She is certainly trying to protect someone. I went to see her yesterday and told her we wouldn’t be using her confession as evidence, as it clearly wasn’t true. She was not able to replicate the diagrams or even explain the meaning of the shipping coordinates.’
The world beyond the window was a swimming haze of sea and sky. I felt as if I were clinging to the top of a mast, swaying sickeningly above the real world. It was all too much – Mutti’s confession, and now Pa’s. It seemed now that Mutti’s life was saved, but Pa – my Pa . . .
‘Why did you do it, Mr Smith? Who contacted you?’
Pa said nothing for a few moments. Then he just said, ‘I had no choice. That is all I am able to say, Inspector. I had no choice.’
‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘I mean that if you were torn between loyalty to your country and love for your family, what would you choose? What would you actually choose?’
Pinstripe said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say, Mr Smith. But in the eyes of the law, you have committed treason. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Pa said. ‘I understand.’
The pulse in my jaw throbbed against my fingers. A drop of blood fell from my thumb and splashed on to the concrete floor of the lantern room.
Pinstripe had known it was my Pa. When he said that good people do bad things, he hadn’t been talking about Mutti at all . . .
‘There’s just one thing I need to ask,’ Pa said. ‘I realize this is probably not something you are allowed to do, Inspector, but I need to ask you not to arrest me today. Could you give me, please, until tomorrow night?’
I heard Pinstripe’s chair shifting on the floor. He tried to interrupt, but Pa kept talking.
‘I’m not going to do anything else, sir – you have my word. I sent one package and that is all I ever intended to send. There are no more secrets I can share. There is no more damage I can do. But I can do something else – something good.’
‘What are you proposing?’
‘Let me take the lifeboat over to Dunkirk to help rescue our boys,’ Pa said. ‘They’ve been appealing on the wireless – anyone able to handle a boat. Well, that’s me. I can do something good. Please, Inspector. I’m not asking you as a policeman, I’m asking you as a man. My daughter Magda is so desperate to go, but I can’t let her – and I know that if I don’t go, she will. She’s full of fire, but she’s so young. Let me go. Let my last act in this war be one that saves lives. Please . . .’
There was a terrible strain in Pa’s voice now, a wheezing and cracking, and I realized that he was crying again. There were tears running down my cheeks and both my hands were shaking, but I still kept the speaking tube clamped tightly to my ear, even though my right arm was now numb and bloodless. I tried not to sniff. I couldn’t let them hear me.
‘And what happens when you get back?’ Pinstripe said after a moment.
‘When I get back, I’ll walk straight into the police station and turn myself in.’
Everything was quiet for a moment. I tried to imagine what was happening. Perhaps the two of them were shaking hands. There was the sound of chairs moving on the kitchen floor, and then I heard the door open and close, and there was silence again.
I replaced the brass whistle in the end of the speaking tube, and hung it from its bracket on the wall. The blood surged back into my deadened arm like molten lead.