My Friend the Enemy Read online

  ‘You heard what they said.’

  Kim opened the water bottle again and put it to the man’s lips. When he had drunk, he made a low moaning noise and closed his eyes as if he were fighting to stay awake.

  Kim crouched on her haunches and studied him as she might have studied a wounded hedgehog curled beneath a hedge. ‘We can’t capture him,’ she said, coming to a decision.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not if they’re going to kill him. It wouldn’t be right. You said so yourself.’

  ‘What do we do then? Leave him here? We can’t have Germans runnin’ around the country, can we?’ I thought how much my words sounded like Mam’s.

  ‘I don’t think he’s in much of a state to go running around anywhere,’ Kim said.

  ‘Maybe he’s a spy, tryin’ to trick us.’

  Kim shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I think he needs help. He’s wounded.’

  ‘We could go to Doctor Jacobs. He’s really nice and—’

  ‘He’d tell the soldiers,’ Kim said. ‘He’s a grown-up, they always do things like that. What we need is somewhere for him to hide.’

  ‘Hide? We can’t—’

  ‘Yeah. We can help him get better, and then he can escape over the sea. Go back to Norway where their base is.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d get that far,’ I said. ‘It’s a canny long way, isn’t it? Anyway, we can’t just free ’im to go off and fight the English again. He’s German. We have to turn him over to the sergeant. It’s our duty.’

  ‘So he can shoot him?’

  ‘D’you really think he will?’

  ‘I do.’ Kim turned to look at me and I wasn’t sure what to say. This man was a German. He was the enemy. I shouldn’t even think about helping him. But, at the same time, he didn’t look very dangerous. He was crying, for goodness sake. I didn’t think he deserved to be shot, so maybe we should help him. And then there was Kim – brave Kim – and how much I wanted to show her how brave I could be.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Kim said with a shrug. ‘About my brother.’

  ‘What about ’im?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he’s a pilot, isn’t he?’

  ‘So?’ The word came out before I really thought about it. Of course it mattered that her brother was a pilot. I looked back in the direction of the crashed plane and knew Kim had seen what I had seen. The difference was that when I saw those bodies, they were German airmen, but when Kim saw them, it would have made her think of her brother, Josh.

  ‘Well, we haven’t heard from him for such a long time.’

  ‘We haven’t heard from me da’ either. That doesn’t mean—’

  ‘No but . . . you know . . . what if it did mean something? What if my brother got shot down?’

  ‘He hasn’t.’

  ‘But what if something does happen to him? Or to your dad? What if . . . I mean, wouldn’t you want someone to help him? If someone found him – someone like us – wouldn’t you want them to help him?’

  ‘You mean, like, if we help him, maybe someone would help my da’ and your brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I knew what she meant. I sometimes played games in my head, thinking that if I could run to the end of the road in less than ten seconds, then it would mean we’d get a letter from Dad. Or if I could get to the top of the hill before Mam could take in the washing, then it would mean there’d be a rabbit in the snare that day. Only this was more serious. More important.

  I looked down at the German lying there, silent now, and imagined it was Dad in some far-off place, hurt and afraid. It was hard to imagine him being afraid. He was always so strong.

  ‘They’re all right,’ I said. ‘Me da’ and your brother. They’re all right, I just know it. And anyway, they’re not German, are they?’ I remembered the posters on the village noticeboard, and the ones they put up in the shops. The pictures were scary, letting us know how bad the Germans were, telling us that all they wanted to do was kill us. ‘They don’t bomb us and—’

  ‘Stop making it all so complicated, Peter. He’s wounded and he needs help. The sergeant will shoot him if they find him, so it’s up to us. We have to help him. We have to look after him.’ She began to sound excited. ‘Hey, that will be our souvenir. The best souvenir ever.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean him. The German. He’ll be our souvenir.’

  ‘A person? I thought we were looking for metal stuff. Small things.’

  ‘This will be even better.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a good idea. What if someone finds out?’

  ‘Come on, you started this. Don’t go all gutless on me now.’

  ‘I’m not, it’s just—’

  ‘Where can we take him? Are there some outbuildings or something? A barn, maybe?’

  ‘They’ll search all of them.’

  ‘Somewhere no one’ll find him, then.’

  ‘I don’t think we should,’ I said.

  ‘We have to,’ Kim said. ‘What if it was Josh? Or your dad?’

  ‘It isn’t, though, is it?’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Maybe if we look after him, someone will look after Josh. Or your dad. We have to.’

  And there was something about the way she said those last three words that made me feel very sad. Doing something to help the German had become important to Kim, as if it would make a difference to what happened to her brother. She thought if we were kind to him, then someone would be kind to Josh. None of us talked much about how much we missed our dads and brothers and uncles and cousins who were away fighting. No one ever wanted to look scared or weak or upset. But we were all of those things all of the time, and Kim had decided that doing this would make her feel better.

  ‘Please,’ she said again and I found myself thinking of all the places we might hide a German. It didn’t seem right that we were going to try to keep him, but it also didn’t seem quite real. It felt as if, any minute now, an adult would step from around the wreckage of the plane and take charge of everything, and the adventure would be over. I was excited and scared and confused and sad all at the same time. Excited because we had found him, but scared because he was a German and he might try to kill us. I was also afraid of how much trouble we’d be in if we were caught, but Kim was right – he seemed just as frightened as we were – and I couldn’t stand the thought that he might be killed if we turned him over. I couldn’t bear to think something like that might happen to Dad.

  So it was all of those things that made me tell her about my den. I’d never told anyone else except Dad. Not even Mam.

  ‘There is a place,’ I said. ‘A good place. The best hidin’ place ever.’

  THE BEST HIDING PLACE EVER

  How are we going to get him over the fence?’ Kim said. ‘Isn’t there a gate or something?’

  Dad had put it up years ago, three lines of barbed wire attached to wooden fence posts, just a few trees deep into the woods. Most of the fences around there were old and rusted and falling apart, but Dad kept this one in good condition. He always repaired it if it started to sag, and he always coated the posts to keep them protected from the weather. The wire was taut and even, right along its length, except for one spot.

  ‘No gate,’ I said. ‘But there’s a place. It’s over here.’ I pointed along the fence, showing her a space between two posts where I had snipped away the lower two pieces of barbed wire. Dad had let me do the cutting, saying it could be my special way in and out. He always stepped over the wire. I’d watched him do it so many times, over and over, but his legs were long and his hands were hard, so he never snagged his clothes or cut himself. I, though, was always cutting my fingers, scraping my legs, tearing my clothes, and ending up getting told off by Mam so, one day, Dad took me to the fence and pulled a pair of wire-cutters from his bag. He told me where to snip the wire so it would make a place for me to get through and, after that, I never ripped my clothes on the barbs again.

  ‘You
sure you want to do this?’ I said to Kim as we came to the gap.

  ‘Yeah. I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I mean, yes. I’m sure.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘All right, then.’

  Kim and I could crawl though the gap easy enough, but getting the airman through was a different matter. It was hard pushing and pulling him through a gap made for a child, trying to do it without hurting him. His flight suit snagged on the wire a few times, and it ripped in places along the back. It might have even cut his skin once or twice, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He just went where we made him go, as if he was under our spell.

  When he was through, we rested a few minutes. Kim gave him some water and I stood by, holding the pistol.

  ‘We should get a move on,’ I said. ‘It’s gettin’ late.’

  ‘Are you tired?’ Kim asked.

  I hadn’t had time to think about being tired. ‘Not really.’ There were too many other things for me to think about. ‘But we can’t take too long. Come on, let’s get movin’.’

  I stuck the gun into the front of my trousers and we went both sides of him. He was shaking and kept muttering words we didn’t understand, but he was weak – too weak to fight us, anyway. He could hardly stand on his own, so we draped his arms around our shoulders, like the soldiers had done earlier with their wounded friend, and we made our way through the trees. He wasn’t big, but he was heavy for us and we struggled with his weight, moving slowly.

  I supported the airman with my left shoulder and kept the torch in my right hand, shining it ahead of us from time to time, but only in short bursts when needed. There were no paths in the wood, so we had to be careful where we were walking. There were thick brambles and areas where the nettles grew at least as high as my chin, so I had to make sure I didn’t lead us the wrong way.

  The wood was almost silent. It was a long time since I’d been in there at night, and it was strange for it to be so quiet. All I could hear now was the tinkling of the burn and the rustle of the wind in the treetops. When I used to come in with Dad, though, there was always plenty of noise. The birds made a racket sometimes, and they gave you a right scare if you disturbed them and they exploded from the undergrowth with a rush of beating wings.

  We waded across the burn at the shallowest point, the cold water coming over Kim’s shoes and soaking the leather, and carried on. The airman grew heavier and heavier as he grew weaker and weaker, until we felt as if we were carrying his whole weight.

  ‘What are those for?’ Kim said, pointing at one of the pens, picked out in the torchlight. It was waist height and about twelve feet long, one of a few that stood in a row, like miniature barracks.

  ‘Rearin’ pheasants,’ I said.

  ‘Pheasants?’

  ‘Aye. The birds.’

  ‘I know what pheasants are,’ she said, ‘but why put them in cages like that?’

  ‘Me da’s the gamekeeper here,’ I said. ‘Well, when he gets back, like. He rears the pheasants for shootin’.’

  ‘He helps them grow so he can shoot them?’

  ‘He doesn’t shoot ’em; it’s the posh lot that do that.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For fun, I s’pose. There’s no birds here now, though.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  The pens were all overgrown with weeds and nettles pushing through the wire mesh, and there was no movement in them at all. Before the war, Dad used to come out here at night, ‘do his rounds’ he used to say, looking for poachers and foxes. I wished he was here now. He’d know exactly what to do with the man we’d found. And I was sure he wouldn’t have just shot him. He would have done the right thing, just like we were trying to.

  ‘How much further?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Not much.’ It seemed like we’d come a long way, but I knew it was because we were carrying the man. If we’d been on our own, we would have made it there in just a few minutes.

  A little further along and we saw the dark shape of the shed. ‘That’s where me da’ keeps the feed,’ I said. ‘There’s a little burner in there, too, so he can make tea.’

  ‘That’s your hiding place?’

  ‘No. I reckon if anyone was lookin’ for ’im, they’d look in there.’

  ‘I would.’

  We passed the shed, a few more yards, and came to the place where the undergrowth was thick and matted. ‘In here,’ I said. ‘He can hide in here.’

  ‘Where?’

  Behind the shed, hidden in the deepest part of the wood, a cluster of shrubs grew so large and close and thick it was as if there was a solid mass of green, spotted with large flowers the colour of blood. Hawthorn and rhododendron were tangled there among other plants that had names Dad had told me but I’d forgotten. In the winter it looked like an impassable huddle of dark sticks and knotted wood, but now, when summer was in full swing, it was a beautiful growth of leaves. And only I knew that to one side, close to the foot of a sycamore tree, there was a single place where the sticks and the twigs that supported those leaves didn’t meet. It was a spot where I’d cut the branches with my own penknife to allow me to crawl inside, where there was a hollow large enough for me to stretch out and lie down. In there – in my place – I could almost stand up straight, and I could probably have cut away enough height for that if I’d wanted to, but I liked the area just as it was.

  I led Kim around the shrubs and showed her the entrance to my hiding place. ‘Right here.’

  We bundled the German through the hole in the tangle of twigs and leaves and creepers and pulled him into the cavernous interior. Towards the back grew the thick trunk of another sycamore, so we leant him against it and sat back to stare at him.

  Our souvenir.

  ‘You think he’s dyin’?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want him dyin’ in here.’

  ‘He’s not dying,’ Kim said. ‘At least, I don’t think so. He’s just hurt, that’s all. Hurt and tired.’

  ‘Prob’ly scared, too.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Somewhere not too far away, a scream pierced the night.

  ‘What on earth was that?’ Kim said.

  I looked at her just as the sound came again. Loud and shrill, a high-pitched noise that was a cross between a scream and a dog’s bark.

  ‘Really,’ said Kim. ‘What is that noise? It’s horrible. Sounded like someone being murdered.’

  ‘It’s not horrible,’ I said. ‘I hear it all the time. When I hear it at night, it makes me feel cosy.’

  ‘That noise makes you feel cosy? You’re madder than I thought.’

  Again, the scream split the night.

  ‘It’s a fox,’ I said. ‘Maybe a vixen looking for her cubs.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like it,’ she said.

  ‘It’s just a country sound. You’re not scared, are you?’

  ‘No. Not scared. Just a little . . . concerned, that’s all. It’s creepy.’

  Lying back against the tree, the German airman said nothing. I shone the torch at his face but he didn’t react. His eyes were closed, his arms hanging limp at his sides, his legs stretched out and relaxed so his feet had splayed out sideways to make a V shape.

  ‘Is he dead?’ I whispered, cocooned in our mixture of darkness and orange light.

  ‘I don’t think so. No. He can’t be. Maybe we should check.’

  ‘Check?’

  ‘Listen to his chest,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll know.’

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ I said when I saw how she was looking at me. ‘You wanted to bring ’im here.’

  Kim scratched her head. She took a deep breath through her nose and blew it out of her mouth, puffing her cheeks. ‘All right.’

  I pulled out the pistol. ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t try anythin’.’ I pointed it at him, right at the orange circle of light cast by the torch.

  Kim crawled over on all fours, moving slowly. Closer and closer.

  When she was right beside him, she stopped.
>
  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  Kim looked back at me, pulled a face to show she wasn’t scared, but it quickly passed and I saw her real feelings right there, as if they’d been painted on her. She was just as scared as I was.

  Out in the field, the fox screamed again.

  Kim leant close, turning her head to put an ear against the man’s chest. She paused, then moved closer until she was touching.

  When the airman reached up and grabbed her hand, Kim almost jumped through the tangled web of twigs above us. He gripped her tight, not letting go, as if he had summoned the last of his strength.

  I jumped too, dropping the pistol onto the damp soil at my knees, but in the torchlight I saw the man open his eyes. He looked at Kim, so close to his face, her wrist held tightly in his fist, and he opened his mouth.

  ‘Danke,’ he said, then he let go, his hand dropping beside him as if all his strength was gone.

  Kim shuffled back as quickly as she could, so she was beside me again, and I reached down to grab the pistol. I could hear Kim breathing hard.

  ‘We should go,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’ Kim held her water bottle in her hand and considered it. ‘I’ll leave it for him.’

  ‘You sure?’ I asked. ‘Looks like a canny water bottle. If it was mine, I’d wanna keep it.’

  Kim looked at it, then shook her head and threw it gently so it landed on the German’s lap. ‘He needs it,’ she said.

  We backed out of the den, both of us pretending not to be scared, and walked quickly back to the burn, crossing through the woods without caring about brambles and nettles and thistles. The next morning my legs itched and there were scratches all over me, but right then I didn’t notice them at all. We hurried on, jumping the burn, heading back to the barbed wire fence and escaping out into the field. Only then did we slow down a little, but I still felt as if there was something watching us; as if something might be following us.

  ‘I nearly jumped out of my skin,’ Kim said. ‘He gave me such a scare.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Not as much as me,’ she said. ‘The way he grabbed me. I thought I was going to die.’

  ‘And I dropped the gun,’ I said. ‘It slipped right out of me hand.’