Pa woke me before dawn the next morning. He didn’t mean to, but I heard the floorboard sigh as he came past our room. Mags was still fast asleep.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t get up, Pet. I’m just going out in the boat for the day. I’ll be back tonight.’
Had he forgotten that I was there when he said he would take the lifeboat to Dunkirk? Perhaps he wanted to convince me that what he was doing was not dangerous at all – just a spot of fishing on an early summer’s day. Or perhaps he was trying to convince himself.
‘Take care, please, Pet,’ Pa said. ‘Look after the lighthouse, and look after that stubborn sister of yours too. Remember to go straight into the cellar if you hear the air-raid siren or planes overhead.’
‘Yes, Pa,’ I said.
‘Promise me.’
‘I promise.’
I wanted to reach out to him with both arms like I did when I was tiny. I wanted him to scoop me up so I could tuck my knees against his chest and bury my face in his shoulder. I couldn’t bear the thought of him going so far away, sailing straight into the clutches of Hitler’s army. And I couldn’t bear the thought of him coming home, only to turn himself in at the police station as a traitor. I had hardly slept a wink that night. Pa, the voice in my head whispered. Pa is the traitor . . . And then that dreadful headline again – TRAITORS TO BE HANGED . . .
‘I’ll see you tonight, then, my darling,’ he said, bending over to kiss me on the forehead.
The floorboard creaked as he turned away, and after a few seconds I heard the kitchen door open and close.
I shut my eyes and tried to get back to sleep.
I don’t know how long I lay there, my tired eyelids flickering in the gloom, but eventually I gave up on sleep altogether, threw back the blanket and went over to my sister’s bed.
‘Mags,’ I whispered. I don’t know what I was going to say to her, I just knew I couldn’t bear to be alone in the darkness any more. Should I tell her about Pa, about what I had heard through the speaking tube? I sat down on the edge of her bed and touched the shoulder-shaped lump of blanket. ‘Mags . . . ?’
But there was no shoulder beneath my hand, there was only blanket and pillow.
Mags wasn’t there.
It was a hideous moment, like biting into an apple that turns out to be soft and rotten inside. I pulled the blanket right back, just to be sure, and there on her bedsheet was a note addressed to me:
Pet,
I’m going to Dunkirk. Pa doesn’t know, so please don’t tell him – I’m hoping to get back before he does, so he won’t even have a chance to be worried or angry. I have to go too, Pet. Do you remember when I left school, and I said that history was happening all around us? This is my chance to be part of it. I know that I am meant to do this, and I know you will understand.
I’m taking the motor boat – I did some work on the engine yesterday afternoon and got it running nicely. She’ll be just fine. I know she’ll look after me, Pet, so try not to worry too much.
We’ll both be home tonight.
Love from Mags x
No, no, no, Mags . . . The note shivered between my finger and thumb, and I noticed that my knife-cut from the day before had healed into a thick black scab under my nail. My breathing was shallow and panicky. Light – I needed light, and air. I pulled up the blackout blind, flung open the window, and was dazzled by the brightness of the day outside.
Inside me, though, everything was still dark and cold and terrifying.
I was completely alone.
I couldn’t bring myself to eat any breakfast. Instead, I went up to the lantern room with a blanket around my shoulders, opened up Pa’s brass telescope, and put it to my eye.
I watched all the boats leaving Stonegate harbour – a little flock of them – fishing boats, mainly, but some sailing boats too and a couple of private motor boats. They were joined further out to sea by bigger vessels from Dover, Folkestone, Deal and Ramsgate – leisure boats, yachts, paddle steamers . . . All these people, I thought. All these people, setting off across the Channel to help rescue our soldiers.
I filled in Pa’s logbook, trying to find a bit of comfort in this familiar responsibility. I recorded the date, the weather, and the details of as many of the Dunkirk boats as I could. I knew plenty of them by name.
I saw the old lifeboat, and the dark, squarish figure of my Pa steering her out of the harbour. The urge to call to him swelled in my throat – he looked so close through the telescope! – but I knew there was no way that he would be able to hear me. Some way behind him – a safe distance behind, I thought – I saw the rusty motor boat, Faith. Two strong feelings were fighting against each other: pride in my crazy, courageous sister, and anger at her for having deserted me. I allowed myself to feel both, watching the whole shoal of boats until their various shapes and colours began to be lost amongst the shifting patterns of sunlight on the waves. The smaller they became, the more I was aware of a painful, pulling sensation in my chest, as if someone had tied a rope around my heart and was tugging at it harder and harder.
I couldn’t bear to watch any more. I was just about to head back down to the kitchen when one more boat caught my eye. It was one of the Briggs’s family fishing boats, and it was zipping along at a terrific rate, chasing the wake of the last craft of the flotilla – my sister’s rusty motor boat.
‘Kipper?’ I said out loud, taking up the telescope again. It must be. I had never thought of Kipper Briggs as the heroic type, but perhaps, just like Mags, he had decided that this was his chance to be part of history. He wanted to make a difference too.
Kipper’s was the last boat to leave Stonegate. I folded up the telescope and made my way down the lighthouse stairs, trying to think of ways to make the time between morning and evening pass quickly; I knew it was going to be hours and hours until they came back.