Mags had a bath and then fell deeply asleep, curled up on her bed in her striped pyjamas.
Kipper helped me make tea in the kitchen. We ate corned beef sandwiches made with the last of the week’s stale loaf.
‘Tell me what happened, Kipper.’
‘Where do you want me to start?’ he said.
‘At the beginning.’
‘Right. Well – I wasn’t planning on going to Dunkirk. Mum’s found things very difficult since Dad was . . . you know . . .’
I nodded. I understood why he didn’t want to say it out loud.
‘Well, I said I wouldn’t go. I was down at the harbour early morning yesterday, helping our lads get the boats ready for the trip, when I saw Mags there, fiddling with her clapped-out old motor boat. It never occurred to me that she was actually planning on crossing the Channel in that rust-bucket. Anyway – pretty much everyone else had left, and I was just about to head home to Mum when I heard Mags start up the motor and I saw her and the rust-bucket go chugging out of the harbour.’
‘What did you do?’ I knew the answer to that question already.
‘There was one of our boats still moored up. I jumped straight in and followed her,’ he said. He couldn’t look at me then, just kept his eyes fixed on the flagstone floor. ‘I know boats, and I knew that boat would never make it to France.’
‘She did make it to France,’ said a voice at the doorway. ‘She just didn’t make it home again.’
Mags was awake.
‘Come and sit by the stove, Mags,’ I said. ‘You need to keep warm.’
She sat down beside me, and we huddled close together like spooked sheep. I inspected the wound on her arm and changed the dressing, wrapping a clean bandage around and around, and fixing it with a safety pin.
‘So Faith did make it to Dunkirk,’ I prompted.
‘Only just,’ murmured Kipper.
‘The crossing was fine,’ Mags said quietly. ‘There were lots of planes in the sky, though. I saw a German fighter brought down by Hurricanes, and another by the guns on a minesweeper.
‘That was where I lost you – in the confusion of that plane coming down,’ said Kipper. ‘We still had a couple of miles to go till the French coast when I last saw you in the rust-bucket.’
Mags gave him a look.
‘In Faith, I mean.’
‘She packed up about a mile from Dunkirk, just after I passed the minesweeper,’ Mags said. ‘The engine puttered out and stopped, and there was nothing I could do to get her started again.’
‘What did you do?’
‘A very kind man helped me.’
‘Who?’
‘Our Pa.’
‘Pa found you?’
‘He had spotted me behind him and was already on his way back to meet me when I broke down. I imagine he was planning on sending me straight home, but when it became clear the motor boat wasn’t going anywhere, I joined him in the lifeboat and we towed Faith behind us. I think he was very angry with me, but he didn’t say anything. He seemed sort of . . . proud as well as angry.’
I knew exactly how he felt.
‘When we got to France, the soldiers were lined up on the beaches, waiting to be collected. It reminded me of playtime at school, when we were little. The teacher rang the bell and we would line up on the field to go back into the classroom. Do you remember?’
‘Yes.’
Kipper nodded too. School felt like something from another lifetime. We were different creatures now.
‘There were dead bodies,’ Kipper said in a low voice. ‘Shot, or killed in explosions, or drowned and washed up on the sand. Some men looked like they’d given up hope and were sitting by themselves, all bent over and shaking. Others were trying to wade or swim out to the ships waiting in the deep water.’
‘We could go right into the shallows to collect them, though,’ Mags went on, ‘because the lifeboat was so much smaller. We took fifteen men at a time – ten in the lifeboat itself and five in the motor boat, tagging along behind. We ferried them to the destroyers and paddle steamers. We must have taken a hundred men out to the Margate Queen alone.’
‘I saw her,’ I said. ‘I saw the Margate Queen coming home.’
‘They got back safely, then?’
‘Yes.’ Mags held her mug of tea against her chest, as if her heart needed the heat.
‘One man was panicking in the water. A body floated past him – it had been burnt, I think – and this man just couldn’t bear it. He started screaming and trying to swim out towards us. He dragged a man under and they both nearly drowned.’
‘What happened?’
‘Another soldier grabbed him and put a gun to his head. By the time he got on to the lifeboat he had gone completely quiet. He just sat there – rigid, like a statue. Even when a Spitfire flew low overhead, he didn’t look up. When we got to the Margate Queen, he shook Pa’s hand, but he couldn’t say anything.’
‘What did Pa say?’
Mags’s voice faded to a hoarse whisper. ‘He said, “Thank you, sir. And good luck.” After the man had gone, Pa said to me, “We all have moments we live to regret. We have no idea what fear will do to us until it takes hold.”’
Mags was quiet for a moment. Her breathing was all jumpy. Some of her tea slopped over her fingers and Kipper gently took the cup from her.
‘Mags,’ I said very softly. ‘What happened to Pa?’
She stared at the floor. Her dark hair fell forward over her face.
‘We were on our way home. We’d done our last run out to a destroyer and Pa said we should head back. To be honest, I think he was worried about you being here all by yourself.’
I almost laughed. Pa was there, surrounded by bombs and dogfights and machine guns and dead bodies, and he was worried about me.
‘Then we hit a mine. The bow of the lifeboat exploded and we were both thrown into the water. It’s just a terrible blur now – I-I don’t really know what happened. I remember being underwater and not knowing which way was up. I took a lungful of water and I just thought, This is the end, then.’
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘No. Something hit my arm and I lunged at it. I clung on. It was a boathook. I was hauled along and then a hand grabbed mine and pulled me up out of the water. It was Kipper.’
I looked at Kipper, and thought how odd it was to have him here with us in our kitchen. How different he seemed now from the boy I thought I knew.
‘I heard the explosion,’ Kipper said. ‘Saw it too. I pulled Mags out and we looked for your dad.’
Mags looked at me and I saw a sob rise in her throat. One hand moved up to cover her mouth, as if she couldn’t bear to let the words out. Then: ‘We looked for ages, Pet. The lifeboat sank, and pulled Faith down with it. Bits of boat were bobbing around in the waves. After I’d got my breath, I went back into the water to see if Pa had been trapped or caught on something.’ She swallowed, then she managed to say, ‘He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. I couldn’t find him.’
My throat was aching unbearably, and my chest too. I thought about the lullaby that I had sung to the sea as I prayed for Mags and Pa. I had felt so sure that some kind of magic was working . . . Just enough to bring Mags safely home, I thought. But not enough for my Pa.
We sat in silence. Tears ran, one after another, down my face.
Kipper stood up and said quietly, ‘I’ll leave you two alone, I think. I’d better get back to my mum. I sent word with one of the lads that I was all right, but I’d better get back . . .’ He trailed off. ‘I’m really so sorry about your dad,’ he said, and he went to the door.
‘Thank you, Kipper,’ said Mags.
He turned and nodded to her – holding her gaze for a moment – and then he left.
After a few seconds, I managed to smile and say, ‘Kipper Briggs saved your life.’
Mags shook her head and I saw that she could not understand any of the things that had happened. She just said, ‘He’s a good sailor, Kipper. He can turn that boat on a sixpence. He’ll make a fine captain one day.’
‘Kipper the Skipper,’ I said.
My sister attempted one of her grins.
‘Were you looking for Pa all night, Mags?’
She shook her head. ‘By the time we gave up the search, it was getting late. We couldn’t come back the way we’d come – straight across the Channel – because we wouldn’t have been able to avoid the mines in the dark – or the sandbank, for that matter – so we had to take a different route, a much longer one. We went north-east before crossing the Channel somewhere near Essex and then coming back down the English coast in the early hours of this morning. That route probably saved our lives.’
The magic of the stones helped too, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud.
Then, quite suddenly, Mags gasped and said, ‘I’m so sorry, Pet – I’m sorry I couldn’t save our Pa. He wouldn’t even have been there if I hadn’t . . .’
I put my arms around my big sister’s middle, like I used to when I was a little girl.
I hugged her, but I couldn’t say anything at all, because these are the words that were in my head: Pa drowned in the sea between England and France. He is never coming home. But now he will never be tried as a traitor and no one will ever need to know what he did. I won’t tell Mags, and I won’t tell Mutti. I will keep his terrible secret all by myself and I will never let it go – it is my secret to keep for the rest of my life. And, no matter how much it burns, I will hold on to it tightly.