Escape from Shangri-La (14 page)

‘I always kept her photo in my book of poems. When they searched me they found the book, of course, and the photo of Lucie Alice inside, but they never took much notice of it. They must've thought it was my girl back home. They let me keep my book of poems and the photo too.

‘I spent a few uncomfortable nights in a prison cell, with a few other soldiers they'd rounded up. They questioned me over and over again about the people who had hidden me, but I just played dumb and shrugged my way through it. I kept saying I didn't know who they were, nor anything about them. In the end, I think they believed me. “We'll find them anyway. We know their names. They can't run for ever,” said the
officer. “And when we do, we'll put them up against a wall and shoot them.” Then he wished me a happy war in my prison camp and packed me off with the others in a lorry to Germany.'

I was so wrapped up in his story that I had quite forgotten my condensed milk. I remembered now. I sucked in another mouthful and waited for him to begin again.

‘Prison camp was all boredom, cabbagey old soup, black bread and boredom. And the winters were cold, Cessie, so cold you couldn't sleep. Still, I had my
Golden Treasury
and my photo of Lucie Alice. That was something. Worst of all was not knowing all that time about what had happened to Lucie Alice and her mother. I wanted to write to them, but I couldn't, could I? I didn't want to give them away. They'd read your letters, everything you wrote. There were so many things I hated about that place: the locked doors at night, the searchlights, and the dogs and the wire all around us; and always these little Hitlers bawling at us, telling us what to do, what not to do. I'd look at the birds, Cessie. I'd watch them take off and fly out over the wire, go wherever they wanted. And I'd look out of the window of my hut sometimes, and I'd think those are the same stars they're looking at back in Lowestoft,
the same stars Lucie Alice is looking at, if she's still alive. I never stopped thinking about her.

‘I taught myself French. It was hard at first, but I had a pal in the camp who knew a bit of French, and he gave me a hand. We got hold of all the French books we could – you can learn an awful lot in five years if you haven't got much else to do. And I wanted to learn because I wanted to be able to talk her language when I got out, when the war was over.

‘The best thing of all though wasn't the French lessons, it was the Red Cross parcels. It was like Christmas every time they came.' He held up his tin of condensed milk. ‘That's when I first tasted this – out of a Red Cross parcel in the camp.

‘Those five years behind the wire were like a lifetime. Then one morning we woke up and the guards were gone. The gates were open and there were American soldiers marching down the road towards the camp! It was all over and done with. I was twenty-one years old and there was only one thing I was sure about – I was never ever going to allow myself to be shut up again. The war ended soon after and I was sent back home to England.

‘I wrote to Lucie Alice, telling what had happened, asking how she was, thanking her and her mother for
all they'd done for me. I told her I still loved her and I always would. I even asked her to marry me. But she never wrote back. I wrote again and again. No reply. Then one of the letters was sent back. “Not known”, it said on the envelope. After that, I'll be honest with you, I tried to put her out of my mind. If she was dead, it had been my fault. Then I met your grandmother, and things took another turn.

‘I'd found a job boatbuilding in Hull, and I was delivering a fishing boat from Hull down to Bradwell. I liked the place, liked the people. There was a job in a small boatyard, and so I stayed. Then one evening I bumped into Cecilia down on the quay. She was looking at the sunset and I was looking at her. Pretty as a picture, she was. Six months later we were married. We found a place to live, and then little Arthur comes along. The boatbuilding business wasn't going that well. I did a bit of fishing too on the side to make ends meet. Things weren't easy, but we were doing all right, I thought, making a living of sorts.'

For a few moments Popsicle said nothing more. I thought he'd finished, but then he went on. ‘The truth is, Cessie, I should never have done what I did. I should never have got married. Sometimes I think I only did it to make myself forget Lucie Alice, and that wasn't fair
on your grandmother. We were never suited. She knew it. I knew it. We were just making each other more and more miserable every day. I was off drinking in the Green Man, drowning my sorrows, and she began to hate me for not loving her like I should have. I don't blame her. Then she met this other fellow, this Bill; and off she went, her and Bill and little Arthur, and that's the last I saw of them. Not exactly a happy-ever-after story, is it?'

‘Not exactly,' I said. ‘What about the lifeboat? You must've found it again somehow.'

‘I was coming to that. After Cecilia left, and little Arthur, I never lived in a proper house again, not till I come to live with you anyway. I picked up work here and there in boatyards all over the country, and I made decent money too. But I always lived on a boat, always on the water. I moved around, became a bit of a water gypsy, I suppose. I went where the work was, wherever I felt like going. Then, maybe ten years ago, I came across this old lifeboat rotting away in a boatyard in Poole. You guessed it, it was the
Michael Hardy
. Pure luck. I'd saved a bit, over the years – nothing much to spend it on, I suppose. She was going for a song, and so I bought her. It took me five years to put her to rights, back to what she was. I only changed one thing, her
name. I called her
Lucie Alice
. I don't have to tell you why, do I?'

I needed to ask something else and now seemed the right moment.

‘But I still don't understand, Popsicle. Why didn't you go back to France and look for her, for Lucie Alice?'

He sighed, and then smiled sadly. ‘I've been asking myself that same question, just about every day of my life, I should think. Up to now it's always been the same answer, and it's not easy to explain, Cessie. But I'll try. It's like this. Whilst I don't know what happened to her, I've got hope, some little hope that she's still alive somewhere. The chances are of course that she's been dead all these years, I know that; but if I don't know that for certain, then at least I can think of her as if she's still alive, can't I? Once I'd found out that she was dead, then it'd be the end of all my hope, wouldn't it? And let's say I did find her and she was alive after all, what would she think of me, I mean after what I'd done? I'd betrayed her, hadn't I? Her and her mother. I looked out of that window when I shouldn't have. So I'd lose both ways, wouldn't I? That's what I thought, until . . . until now that is.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Well, I was sitting here thinking, just before you
came. That little stroke I had – it was a warning, that's how I see it. It was telling me something, telling me that for better or worse, and before it's too late, I'd better go and look for Lucie Alice and find out what really did happen all those years ago. And then maybe, just maybe, I can put things right between us. I've been running away from this all my life, Cessie. Not any more. Not any more. I even know the street where she lived. It's in the photo. You've got to look carefully, but it's there.'

He showed me the photo again and, sure enough, I could just make out the street name above Lucie Alice's head:
Rue de la Paix
.

‘It's not far,' Popsicle went on. ‘And you never know, Cessie, I could get lucky. Maybe I'll find her. Maybe she'll still be there.'

The idea came into my head at once and I didn't hesitate. ‘Can I come? Please, Popsicle, I can help. Honest I can. You'll need someone to help, won't you? I can do the mooring ropes. I can be on look-out. I can cook. Anything. Please?'

He was looking at me long and thoughtfully. ‘You and me, Cessie, we think like one person sometimes, I swear we do. I was just wondering how I was going to manage the old girl all the way over to Dunkirk on my
own.' He reached forward suddenly and took my hand. ‘Would you do it?' he asked. ‘Would you really come with me?'

‘When?' I said. ‘When do we go?'

‘Soon as I've fixed a few things up,' he said. ‘Soon as the tide's right.'

AN HOUR LATER POPSICLE WAS STILL BENDING over his charts. There were tins of condensed milk all around to hold the edges down. He'd done his calcula-tions in complete silence, his brow furrowed in deep concentration.

‘Almost there, Cessie,' he said at last, reaching across the table for a slim grey booklet. ‘Tides,' he went on, as he searched for the right page. ‘Mariner's bible, this is. You've got to know the time of the tides, high tide, low tide. You can't move unless you know that. It should be just about right Saturday next, that's what I'm hoping. One thing you've always got to remember about the sea, Cessie, is that you can only do what she'll let you do.' He found what he was looking for. ‘I thought so. I thought so. Full moon Saturday night. High tide just
after midnight. Perfect. Could be cloud cover, of course, but that doesn't matter. We'll have enough light to see our way out of here. We don't want it blowing a gale of course. Keep our fingers crossed, eh? With a bit of luck we'll make it in five or six hours. It's sixty-three miles to Dunkirk, less than I thought. We should be there before first light. We'll come in in the dark. Better that way. If they don't see us, then there won't be any questions, will there? And if they do see us, well then, we'll just have to talk our way out of trouble, won't we? Done it before.' He closed the book. ‘So, you'll need to be here by midnight next Saturday. Are you sure you can make it?'

‘Sure,' I said. But I wasn't at all sure of any of it. I only knew that I wanted to go with him. Of that I was quite sure.

‘Good girl. But there's one thing you've got to do for me, and I don't want you forgetting it. I want you to leave a note for your mum and your dad. We don't want them worrying themselves to death, do we? Just tell them that you've gone off with me for a couple of days, that I'll bring you back home again soon. And whilst you're at it, tell them goodbye from me. Tell them no hard feelings. Time for me to move on, that's all.'

‘What d'you mean?' I asked.

‘I told you, Cessie. I can't abide being shut in – cupboards, prison camps, Shangri-La – all the same to me. I don't ever want to go back. Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad place, except for that Dragonwoman. I've got good friends up there, and I'll miss them. But it's not for me, not in a million years. No, Cessie, this is my home, this boat. Whatever happens over there in Dunkirk, whether I go barmy or not, here's where I'll end my days, on my own boat, with the sky above me and the sea all around me. It's where I belong.'

I pleaded with him even though I knew it was useless. ‘But I'll tell them. I'll tell Mum and Dad what's happened, that you've remembered everything, and you're better, completely better. You'll be able to come home. They won't send you back to Shangri-La. I know they won't. I won't let them.'

He was shaking his head as I was talking. ‘No, Cessie, don't you go telling them anything of the kind, anything at all come to that. And don't you go blaming them for sending me up to Shangri-La. The way I was carrying on, they had no choice. I was a liability. That's what I was, a liability. I've caused them enough trouble, enough pain.'

‘But you're better,' I insisted, quite unable now to hold back my tears.

‘Yes, I'm better, better than I've ever been, thanks to you – and now I'm going to do just what I should've done all those years ago. I'm going to go over there and find out what happened to Lucie Alice, and I don't want anyone trying to stop me. So we'll keep everything just between the two of us. No one else must know a thing. Promise me, Cessie.'

‘Promise,' I said.

He reached forward and wiped my face with his sleeve. ‘And no more tears either, Cessie. I can't cope at all if you do that.' I did what I could to sniff them back. ‘That's better,' he said. ‘Now, I'll get myself back to Shangri-La, and you'd best get off home quick. They'll be getting anxious, and we don't want that. I've got a thing or two to finish off here, before I go – check the batteries, see if I've got enough diesel in the tanks, that sort of thing. We don't want the engines packing up on us in mid-channel, do we? Not with all those giant tankers steaming up and down.'

He took me up on deck and walked with me as far as the gangplank. ‘Saturday midnight,' he said. ‘Don't be late.' I looked up into his face. It was ghostly white against the dark of the night sky. The thought came over me that Popsicle might not be real at all, that he was a mere figment of my imagination, that maybe I was
living all this only inside a dream. I needed to reassure myself. I stood on tiptoe and threw my arms round his neck. He was real enough. I was down on the towpath before he spoke again.

‘Oh and, Cessie, bring lots of warm clothes, there's a girl. You'll need them. And that fiddle of yours too. Nothing like the sound of music out at sea. It'll keep our spirits up.'

There was plenty of music to face when I got back home. I was hardly in through the front door before it began. I didn't argue, but I did defend myself.

‘I just went looking for him, that's all. What's so wrong with that?' Then I remembered to ask: ‘Haven't they found him yet?'

‘Not yet,' said my mother. I could see that she had been crying. ‘But they will,' she went on. ‘They will find him, won't they, Arthur?' She turned away from me and buried her head in my father's shoulder. It was only then that I realised how much they were suffering, my father as much as my mother. I had a sudden longing to comfort them, to tell them everything I knew, everything that had happened to me that night. But I could not bring myself to do it. Popsicle had confided in me. I'd given him my promise.