My Friend the Enemy Read online

  After that there was a long silence, then someone cleared their throat loudly.

  ‘Aye, well, we’re here to relieve you, anyway,’ said the sergeant. ‘There’s not a lot of searching we can do at night, and we need to keep this place well guarded.’ He stressed those last two words as an accusation.

  ‘One of the bodies slipped,’ said Doctor Jacobs. ‘We thought there was someone inside.’

  ‘Well, they won’t be there much longer,’ he replied. ‘We’re gettin’ them out as soon as it’s light enough to see what we’re doing.’

  All the time they were talking, I’d been lying still with my eyes squeezed shut, so it came as a shock when I felt Kim tap me gently on the foot. I flinched and looked up, seeing her crouched by my feet. She beckoned with one hand and I sat up slowly.

  She pointed at me, then at herself, then at the open end of the plane. She wasn’t pointing in the direction of the hill, though, but away at the woods, where I’d been earlier that day. I understood, straight away, what she meant. There was no way we could make a run for it in the direction of the hill, but if we were quiet, we might be able to get out while the men were arguing, and make our way to the woods. Once inside, we’d be well hidden, and we could double back around.

  I nodded and got up into a kneeling position, feeling something hard and angular digging into my knee. I tried not to think about the body lying close by, and reached down to pick up the object. Then Kim tugged gently on my sleeve and beckoned.

  I took a deep breath and together we crept from the plane.

  Once outside, I glanced back to see if the soldiers were in sight, but they were hidden behind part of the fuselage. I could still hear them talking, but they were too far away for me to hear what they were saying.

  ‘Come on,’ Kim whispered, and together we made a run for it.

  I kept low, bent at the waist, as I pumped my legs as fast as they would go. They were still shaking from the fright, and they trembled as I ran, but I gritted my teeth and kept going. I sprinted alongside Kim, not looking at her, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the darkness of the woods at the edge of the field. Once or twice, I kicked the tops of the furrows, showering soil, but I managed to stay up and keep on.

  When we reached the treeline, we dropped into the shadows, puffing and panting, exhilarated by the run. ‘They’re still in there,’ I said between breaths. ‘His face was . . .’ I stopped without finishing my sentence. ‘It was horrible. He was all burnt up. It hardly even looked like a person. I was so scared.’

  ‘I saw it, too.’

  ‘He had no eyes.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Aye,’ I said, shaking myself. ‘Aye, I’m fine. It’s just . . . it was . . . you know.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have gone in there.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I mean, it was bad an’ I was scared, but . . . well, it was fun too. In a scary way.’

  ‘Yeah. Hey, you find something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In your hand.’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ I’d almost forgotten I’d picked it up, but now I held out my hand and looked at the metal object in my fingers. ‘I have found something,’ I said. ‘I really have.’

  GUN

  We sat in the undergrowth just inside the line of trees, and looked at the object I’d found. There wasn’t much light, so it was hard to see, but we knew exactly what it was.

  ‘It’s a gun,’ Kim said. Her voice was quiet, less than a whisper. There was no one close enough to hear us, but something about the darkness and the plane and the dead airman made us speak in hushed tones like we were in church.

  ‘Aye,’ I said, turning it over in my hands before gripping the handle and aiming it out into the night.

  ‘You think it still works?’

  I lowered it and shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Do you even know how to work it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She took it from me and felt its weight. ‘Good souvenir. Best I’ve seen.’

  ‘You should have it,’ I said without thinking. ‘It was your idea to come.’

  ‘No way, you have to keep it. You found it; it’s the rule. Finders keepers.’ She put it down between us and we said nothing for a while. I could hear Kim breathing in and out.

  ‘That smell in there,’ I said. ‘I half wished I had me gas mask. I’d always thought the inside of that smelt bad, but . . .’ I looked at Kim. ‘We got ’em fitted at the school hall last year.’

  ‘Us, too,’ Kim said.

  ‘Some of the bairns got masks with a kind of Donald Duck beak that made a fartin’ noise when they breathed out, then the teachers made us parade around the playground wearin’ ’em, and it was so funny.’

  ‘They smell awful,’ Kim said. ‘Makes me feel . . . trapped. I hate mine.’

  ‘It’s nothing compared to the smell back there.’

  Kim nodded, but she didn’t say anything.

  After a few minutes, she crawled away from the cover of the trees and lay down on her back in the soil. ‘There are so many stars,’ she said. ‘Have you ever really looked at them?’

  ‘All the time.’ I picked up the gun and went to sit beside her. ‘Me da’ knows all their names. Well, maybe not all of them, like, but a lot of them.’ I put the weapon down beside me and looked out at the dark shape of the plane, but we were too far away to see the guards now.

  ‘Seems as if there’s loads more now. More than before,’ she said. ‘With all the lights in town, you could hardly see them, but now . . .’

  ‘Me da’ said in Newcastle it’s like daylight when all the street lamps are switched on.’

  Kim laughed quietly. ‘It was never that light.’

  ‘Don’t laugh.’

  ‘Why not? It’s funny.’

  ‘It’s what me da’ told me.’

  Kim turned her head so she could see me sitting beside her. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘You miss him a lot.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I miss my brother.’

  ‘Is he really a pilot?’

  ‘Flying Wellingtons,’ she said. ‘And I don’t mean the boots.’

  ‘I know what a Wellington bomber is,’ I told her, and for a moment I tried to imagine what it would be like to fly one, but after the crash, I wasn’t so sure I’d ever want to. And that made me think about how Kim must feel, having seen what was inside the smashed-up Heinkel. I wanted to say something to her, about her brother being a pilot and about the crash, but I couldn’t think of the right thing. ‘How old are you?’ I said, changing the subject instead.

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Same as me. What month?’

  ‘April.’

  ‘Mine’s May.’

  ‘You ever seen a dead body before?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t think it would be like that. It was the worst thing ever.’

  ‘Aye.’

  And we were quiet again, so I lay back and stared at the stars, too, trying to remember some of the ones Dad had pointed out to me. He’d said that people could use them to find their way at night, and I wondered if he was doing that right now, somewhere else in the world.

  ‘That’s Orion up there.’ I pointed. ‘See the three stars in a row?’

  Kim shuffled closer, putting her head against mine so she could follow the line of my finger. Her hair was soft and it tickled my cheek. She smelt clean.

  ‘Those three are Orion’s Belt,’ I said. ‘And at the corners you can see the rest of him.’ I traced the tip of my finger around the stars, drawing the outline of the hunter Orion.

  ‘Which ones?’ Kim asked, but I didn’t get the chance to tell her again, because we heard someone cough. It was unmistakeable. A quiet cough, as if someone was trying not to be heard.

  Kim grabbed my hand, pulling it down so I was no longer pointing. She put her finger on her lips,
telling me to be quiet.

  ‘Someone’s there,’ she whispered.

  The cough again.

  ‘It’s behind us,’ I said, turning around. ‘In the woods.’

  ‘Maybe the soldiers came after us,’ Kim said. ‘That Sergeant Wilkes.’

  ‘Can’t be. We’d have seen them comin’.’

  ‘Others, then,’ Kim suggested. ‘The ones who’re looking for the German.’

  ‘We’d have heard them in the woods.’ And then a thought came to me. ‘Unless they’ve been there all along. From when we got here.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the German.’

  ‘I want to see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to see who it is.’ I didn’t know why I said it. Perhaps it was to prove to myself that I could be brave just like Kim, but whatever it was, something made me want to see.

  I picked up the pistol and started to crawl towards the trees.

  Kim grabbed my shirt. ‘Don’t.’

  I pulled her hand away and pushed to a crouch, creeping right into the edge of the woods. Once I’d passed the first trunks of hazel and oak, I stood up and took a soft step forward. Dad had shown me how to walk quietly in the woods. He said he had to do it all the time at night, be as quiet as possible when he was hunting poachers.

  I put down my right heel and rolled onto the ball of my foot, feeling for anything that might snap and make a noise. I took extra care to remember I was wearing wellies – something I’d forgotten earlier – and, moving like that, I crept deeper into the trees, coming closer to the barbed wire fence.

  And then I saw him.

  Highlighted by a sliver of moonlight that cut through the leaves above, I saw a man, sitting back against one of the fence posts.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at him.

  A stick snapped behind me, making me spin around to find Kim standing just behind me.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said turning back to look at the immobile figure.

  ‘Is he asleep? Or dead?’

  I was mesmerised by him. My whole body had gone cold with fear. My stomach tingled, my hands trembled, my muscles tightened.

  And then he spoke – ‘Bitter,’ – and he put his arm up as if to protect his face. ‘Bitter.’

  I stayed as I was, my breath going right out of me. ‘Bitter.’ He said it over and over again.

  ‘Bitter.’ His voice quiet, his arms across his face.

  Kim grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  When she broke the spell like that, I turned to run, my instinct was to do as Kim said, but before I took a step, I had second thoughts. Something made me stop.

  I resisted her, tugging my arm away, inching closer so I could look down at the man half-sitting, half-lying on the ground. My breathing was shallow, my throat was dry.

  ‘Bitter,’ he said again.

  ‘What’s wrong with ’im?’ I said, swallowing my fear and surprising myself that I hadn’t run away. My curiosity was growing, drowning my fear. ‘Is he drunk?’ I took a step closer.

  ‘Drunk?’ she asked, trying to pull me away once more. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Why’s he keep sayin’ “bitter”? What’s “bitter”?’

  Kim pulled me harder. ‘What are you talking about, you idiot? He’s saying “please”. Bitte is German for “please”.’

  And then I understood why she was pulling me away. We had found the missing German. And if I knew anything about Germans, it was that they were brutal killers. They were animals raging for the blood of Englishmen. I had been told enough times what they were capable of, and I knew that if I stayed here any longer, he would kill us both.

  But this man didn’t seem as if he was trying to kill anyone.

  ‘Is it ’im?’ I said. ‘The one on the parachute?’

  ‘Must be.’

  I stared down at him. ‘Why’s he saying please? Why’s he scared of us?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Maybe what?’

  ‘Look at what you’re holding.’

  I lifted my hand and looked at the pistol. ‘He’s frightened of me.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get help.’ Kim turned. ‘We’ll get the soldiers.’

  But I put out a hand and stopped her.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘We’ll be heroes. Everyone’ll be talking about us if we find him. We need to get someone.’

  ‘We’re not s’posed to be out here. Remember the curfew?’

  ‘Forget that,’ Kim said. ‘They’ll be too proud of us to tell us off.’

  ‘Then maybe we should capture him ourselves,’ I said, feeling brave. ‘We’ve got the gun.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Imagine it. You and me.’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘We capture the German. How about that?’

  Kim was silent. I could almost hear her thinking about it, but when she eventually spoke, it was to say, ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘But look how frightened he is. More frightened than us.’

  ‘You really think we should?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  She sighed. Turned away. Took a few steps and then stopped. Kim stood still for a moment then came back to me and nodded once. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll do it. We’ll take him to the soldiers.’

  THE SOUVENIR

  The man didn’t do anything at all. He just sat there as if he’d given up and decided enough was enough. There was no point in running any more, so he was sitting with his back against the fence post, his legs stretched out and his arms by his sides.

  I raised my arm and pointed the gun.

  ‘Bitte,’ he said. He said other words, too, but I couldn’t understand them, and it sounded as if he was having trouble talking at all. The light wasn’t that good, but we could see enough to know his face was streaked and the left arm of his flight suit was torn from shoulder to cuff. It glistened wet with what I imagined to be blood.

  ‘Get up,’ I said in my strictest voice. ‘You’re coming with us.’

  ‘He doesn’t know what you’re saying,’ Kim said.

  ‘You tell ’im then.’

  ‘How am I going to tell him?’

  ‘You speak German.’

  ‘I know how to say “please”; it doesn’t mean I can speak German.’

  ‘All right, well . . . get up!’ I made a lifting motion with my hands, flicking the pistol up and down, but that only alarmed the airman even more and he flinched away from us. He looked the way I’d felt when Trevor Ridley had picked on me earlier that evening, and seeing him react that way made me feel sorry for him. I started to feel bad for frightening him.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I said. ‘I just want you to stand up.’

  ‘Wasser,’ he said.

  ‘Vasa?’

  ‘He wants water,’ Kim said.

  ‘We haven’t got any.’

  ‘I have. I brought it in case we got thirsty.’

  I stared at him. ‘Maybe we should give ’im some, then.’ ‘Really?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s dangerous. I mean, he doesn’t look dangerous. What do you reckon? A bit of water should be all right.’

  Kim thought for a moment, then agreed, and took the water bottle from her satchel. It was made of metal, like a soldier’s water bottle, and she threw it towards the man. It landed in the undergrowth beside him with a dull thump and he picked it up in his right hand. He tried to open it, putting the bottle between his thighs to hold it while he twisted the cap, but it was too tight. Then he tried unscrewing it with his teeth, but still couldn’t do it. Eventually, he dropped the bottle and began to sob.

  ‘He’s crying,’ Kim said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s thirsty, I suppose.’

  ‘And scared.’

  ‘Yeah. Probably sad that he’s lost his friends, too.’
She stepped closer to him, picking up the bottle. ‘Keep pointing that gun at him.’ She half crouched beside him, ready to escape at any moment, and unscrewed the cap of the water bottle and offered it to him. She waited, watching, but he didn’t move. He just looked at her, afraid, so Kim stretched out her hand and lifted it to the man’s mouth.

  He drank a long, deep drink and moved his head away from the bottle, whispering, ‘Danke’.

  ‘He’s hurt,’ Kim said, relaxing a little. ‘Not breathing much.’

  The airman coughed.

  ‘I think he might be dying.’

  ‘Dyin’?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.’

  She stayed where she was, suddenly unafraid of the man now she could see he was hurt, and I found myself losing my resolve to keep pointing the gun at him.

  ‘He looks young,’ Kim said.

  ‘He looks old enough to me.’

  ‘Maybe to you, but I’ve got a brother,’ she said. ‘He’s nineteen – eighteen when I last saw him, and he looks about the same age.’

  ‘You sure? He looks older to me.’

  ‘No, he’s no older than Josh, and that makes him just a teenager.’

  ‘Who’s Josh?’

  ‘My brother, you clot.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Kim sat down and continued to look at the man. I kept my distance, held the gun up, but it was beginning to feel heavy now. I couldn’t keep pointing it all night.

  ‘We should take him now,’ I said. ‘To the soldiers.’

  ‘What do you think they’ll do to him?’

  ‘I . . .’ I shook my head. I hadn’t really thought any further than taking him prisoner and becoming a hero. I’d imagined Trevor Ridley’s jealousy and I’d seen Kim boasting about the capture, but I hadn’t thought about what the soldiers would do with this man.

  ‘D’you think they’ll kill him?’ Kim asked. ‘It’s what that soldier said today, isn’t it? That sergeant. He said they’d shoot him.’

  ‘He didn’t say that. Not exactly.’

  ‘No, but that’s what he meant.’

  ‘They wouldn’t kill him, would they? That would be . . . I don’t know. It wouldn’t be right. Put him in a camp maybe, but not kill him.’