My Friend the Enemy (16 page)

When he'd finished, he sent us on our way, telling us to be careful and stay out of trouble, but we hardly took any notice of him. We just wanted to be away from him as quickly as possible, escaping with our stolen medical supplies and going to Erik.

‘Good idea trying to get some information out of him,' Kim said. ‘You'd make a good spy. And trying to throw them off the scent was clever, too – up the coast to look for a boat? I like that.'

‘Don't s'pose it'll do much good,' I said.

‘You never know. It's worth a try.'

About halfway along the street, I changed my pace, walking more slowly.

‘What's wrong?' asked Kim. ‘Why have you slowed down?'

I stopped and spoke to her, still watching the boys standing in front of the noticeboard. ‘Maybe we should go back and help clear up.'

‘What are you talking about? We need to go to Erik.'

‘I just think . . . maybe we should help. You know.'

‘Wait a minute,' Kim said. ‘Is this because of that boy Ridley over there?'

I shrugged.

‘Don't be so silly,' she said. ‘After everything we've done. You and me just captured a German soldier!'

‘Not really captured,' I said.

‘Well, maybe not, but we got him, didn't we? There's soldiers looking all over for him but
we've
got him. I reckon you're braver than any of those monkeys, so what's the matter with you?'

When she said it that way, it did sound silly, but I couldn't explain it right then. I didn't understand my own feelings. Trevor Ridley frightened me because even when I tried to make him leave me alone, he always overpowered me. He and his friends had always got the better of me. And then there were the things he said about Mam – about Mr Bennett taking a fancy to her – and those things made me so mad. And what made it worse was that sometimes his comments got right under my skin and I wondered if they were true. Maybe Mam
was
going to forget about Dad. Maybe she
was
going to go and live with Mr Bennett. He came round to our house so much, it could have been true and, even though deep down I was sure it wasn't, Trevor Ridley was always there to add a grain of doubt.

‘You're not going to run away,' Kim said.

I looked along the street at the boys.

‘And anyway,' she went on, ‘I promised you that next time he said anything, I'd give him a bloody nose. Come on.' She put her arm around my shoulder and I reluctantly walked with her.

Trevor Ridley had spotted us coming and was ready with something to say as soon as we came close. ‘Oh look, it's that baby Peter Dixon and his evacuee lass. Or is it a lad? I can never tell.'

I started to walk past them, but heard Kim say beside me, ‘Looks like one of the pigs escaped from your dad's farm.'

‘Don't try to be clever,' Ridley said, coming to stand in front of us, with his friends behind him.

‘A
fat
pig,' Kim said.

I just wanted to walk away, but I couldn't leave Kim on her own. Anyway, being with her made me feel stronger, so I stood straight beside her, trying to make myself look taller. ‘A fat, clarty one,' I said, and my whole body tingled with fear and excitement.

Trevor Ridley raised his eyebrows. ‘Feelin' brave, are you? Finally got a friend, so you're feelin' brave.' He looked Kim up and down. ‘Even if she is a lass.'

‘At least I'm not a fat pig,' she returned.

Ridley stared at her, tightening his jaw, then looked at me. ‘I saw what you two just did.'

My heart stopped.

‘Saw you with your hand in the doctor's bag.' He looked at Kim and narrowed his eyes. ‘What're you two up to, liftin' stuff off the doctor?'

My mouth was dry. I could hardly speak. ‘Nowt,' I said, my tongue clicking. ‘We're not doing nowt.'

Ridley sniffed hard and came closer. ‘Maybe I should go tell 'im what I saw.'

‘We didn't do nowt,' I said again.

Ridley lifted a hand and jabbed his pointed finger right against my chest. ‘You're a liar, Peter Dixon, and you're in a lot of bother.'

Kim shrugged. ‘No one would believe you. Everyone knows what you're like.'

‘What's that s'posed to mean?' Ridley snapped his head round to look at her.

‘Just that you're a liar and everyone knows you're trouble.
Especially
the doctor,' she said. ‘
Especially
after he caught you at the wreck the other night.'

Ridley dropped his hand and narrowed his eyes. ‘What d'you know about that?'

Kim shrugged again.

‘Who told ya?'

‘No one. I just know.'

Trevor looked flustered for a moment, knowing he wasn't going to get anything else out of her, but he wasn't one for just giving up, so he turned to me and sneered. ‘Your mam gone to live with his lordship yet? Or is she waitin' for your da' to get shot first?'

Even Cummings and Thornhill were shocked by that, and one of them took a sudden breath in surprise.

‘Take that back,' Kim said. ‘Take it back now.'

‘Why don't you try making me?' he said. ‘Or are you—' But before he could finish, I stepped forward and
swung at him harder than I imagined I was able. I tightened my fingers into a fist and hit Trevor Ridley square on the nose as hard as I could. I felt the cartilage squash under my knuckles, and he sat down on the pavement as if he'd been hit with a sledgehammer.

Behind him, the other boys took a step back.

I shook the pain from my hand and looked at my knuckles, and then down at Trevor Ridley who was staring up at me, one hand on his nose.

Kim stepped forward, looking at the other boys, raising her fists like a boxer. ‘Anyone else want to have a try?' she asked.

None of them answered. It was as if they were all too stunned to react. Bob Cummings and Adam Thornhill just stared, mouths open. Even
I
felt as if I'd been frozen to the pavement, and it was only when Trevor began to get to his feet that Kim tugged my shirt.

‘Let's go,' she whispered.

I stepped back, not quite believing what I'd just done. Kim pulled me.

‘Now,' she said.

Bob and Adam had come to life again and were reaching down to help Trevor stand.

Kim yanked me hard this time.

‘Run!' she said.

And with those words the spell was broken and we both turned and ran. We raced along the pavement, and we kept on going until we reached the end of the street. Turning the corner, we ducked between some houses and came out onto the road at the bottom of the fields. We
stopped by one of the concrete roadblocks and looked at each other.

‘That was brilliant,' she said between breaths.

‘My hand hurts. It was my bad hand, too. The one I cut.'

‘Yeah, but it's worth it, isn't it? I mean, you should have seen their faces. Ha! You should have seen
your
face. I think you surprised yourself more than anyone else.'

I still couldn't quite believe I'd hit Trevor Ridley, knocked him right down on his backside, but I'd looked back at him as we ran away, and I'd seen him get to his feet and point after us.

‘This isn't going to be the end of it, though, is it?' I said.

‘Course it is,' Kim said. ‘He won't bother you again; not now. Everyone knows that if you stand up to a bully, they leave you alone.'

‘I'm not so sure.' I had seen the look on Trevor's face and it scared me. ‘I don't think he's gonna forget about this. And he knows we took stuff outta Doctor Jacobs's bag.'

‘Doesn't matter.'

‘D'you not think we're in trouble?' I asked as we crossed the road and headed over the field towards the hill.

‘Because of the supplies? No. I don't think so.'

‘What if he tells someone?'

‘Who would he tell? Anyway, no one would believe him.'

‘I just can't stop thinking about it. This isn't the end of it. What if—'

‘
I
can't stop thinking about that punch,' Kim said. ‘Does it still hurt?'

‘A bit.'

She stopped and took my hand in hers. ‘Doesn't look bruised,' she said.

I watched her as she turned my hand over, studying it closely.

‘Can you waggle your fingers?'

I moved them about.

‘I reckon you'll live,' she said, rubbing the fingers between both hands for a moment. ‘What about your cut?'

I shrugged. ‘It's fine.'

‘Let me see.'

I let her pick away the edge of the bandage with her fingernail, then pull it back to reveal the cut. ‘It's still bleeding.'

‘Only a bit.'

‘I've got an idea,' she said. ‘Give me your knife.'

‘Why?'

‘You'll see.'

I fished the penknife out of my pocket and gave it to Kim. I watched her open the blade and put the cutting edge against her palm. Without taking her eyes off me, she gritted her teeth and pulled the blade along her skin. It wasn't a big cut, but when she squeezed it, the blood oozed out. Then she folded the knife and gave it back to me before taking my hand and pressing the two cuts together.

‘Blood brothers,' she said. ‘Or blood brother and sister.'

‘Aye.'

We held our hands together like that for a while, both of us squeezing hard and looking right at each other. When we let go, I put my hand to my mouth and sucked away the blood.

‘You gave him a right good wallop,' Kim said, sealing the end of the ritual. ‘Just what he deserved.' She put her arm around my shoulder, and we walked towards the hill, best friends.

RABBIT

K
im re-dressed Erik's wounded arm with our stolen bandages while I emptied the pan. I was glad he'd put the cloth over the top of it because the smell in the den was awful, and there was a lot of weight in the pan. I took it into the woods and turned my head as I flung it into the undergrowth. Afterwards, I swooshed it about in the deepest part of the burn and went back to Kim and Erik. It was only as I returned that I realised I hadn't been worried about leaving Kim alone with him.

When everything was cleaned up, we gave Erik the food we'd managed to get, and we all sat looking at each other. Talking was difficult because Erik hardly knew any English and we hardly knew any German, but we
managed to communicate in simple ways. Sometimes it made us laugh when we were all making shapes in the air with our hands, pointing, looking up in the hope of inspiration. Kim had a nice laugh, quiet and sweet, but sometimes she snorted and slapped her leg if something was really funny. Erik didn't so much laugh as smile, showing a slightly crooked row of front teeth.

That day, he dusted his hands across the ground in front of him to make it flat, and took a stick. He drew a shape in the dirt and pointed at it saying, ‘Deutschland.'

I knew the shape and we knew the name. There was a map of the world on the wall in the classroom at school, and the teacher had shown us where Germany was.

Erik put the stick close to one edge of his drawing and said, ‘Hamburg.' Then he wrote the word into the dirt. He tapped his chest and said ‘Erik, Hamburg.'

‘You're from Hamburg?'

‘Hamburg,' he said nodding.

Then he said something else in German that we didn't understand and left us shaking our heads, so he rubbed away his drawing and started again. This time he drew a long blob and pointed at it saying, ‘England.' Then he drew another blob and said, ‘
Norwegen
.'

‘
Norwegen
?' I repeated and looked at Kim. ‘Is that Norway?'

‘You were in Norway?' Kim asked him. We knew where that was, too, because they'd showed us that at school. The Germans had invaded and taken it over last year.

‘
Ja
. Norway.
Norwegen
.' Erik patted his chest, then he
thought for a second before pointing at me and saying. ‘Peter farter?'

As soon as he said it, Kim and I looked at each other and smiled. The smile turned into a laugh and Kim did that thing where she snorted and slapped her thigh. We laughed so much there were tears in Kim's eyes, but when I looked at Erik, he was confused, so I stopped myself laughing and said, ‘Farter?' Then I put my lips on my forearm and blew, making a loud, wet sound.

Erik looked even more confused now. ‘
Furzen
?' He shook his head. ‘
Nein
. No.
Vater. Papa
.'

‘He means father,' Kim said, wiping away the tears. ‘I think he wants to know where your dad is.'

Suddenly it wasn't funny any more, and I was thinking about Dad. It didn't seem right that we were laughing and he was out there somewhere, far away, and we hadn't heard from him for such a long time.

‘Africa,' I said. ‘He's in Africa.'

‘Afrika,' Erik nodded. ‘Bad,' he said. ‘War bad.'

‘
Germans
are bad,' I replied.

Erik stared at me, shaking his head.

‘So why do you keep bombing us?' I said, but he couldn't understand, so I pointed at him and put my hands out as if I was an aeroplane. Then I made bomb noises and pointed at myself. ‘You bomb us. Germans are bad.'

Erik stared for a while longer. ‘Nein,' he said. ‘No. No.
Nazi
bad. German
gut
.' He put his hand on his chest. ‘Erik. Nazi. No.'

*

When we left, Kim and I went further into the woods to check the snares.

‘Mam says maybe all Germans don't want to bomb us,' I said.

‘She's probably right. I suppose they're not all Nazis. Like Erik; he's not, is he?'

‘So why was he in the plane, then?'

‘He probably had to be,' Kim said. ‘You think everyone
here
really wants to go and fight? I bet your dad would rather be at home with you and your mum. I know Josh would rather be here.'

‘Aye.' It was Dad's duty to go, I knew that, and Mam said he'd gone away to protect us but I couldn't help thinking Kim was right.

‘So maybe Erik didn't want to go, either,' she said.

‘I never thought about it like that. People being made to go to war. Sounds unfair.'

‘Lots of things are unfair,' Kim said.

‘I s'pose.' I thought about Dad not being allowed back after Dunkirk like Kim's brother was, and I thought about how he had gone to fight while others had stayed at home. People like Trevor Ridley's dad. The more I thought about it, the more unfair it felt, and that made me feel even more sorry for Erik. Maybe he'd never even wanted to go up in a plane. Maybe he never wanted to fight anybody. And, for the first time, it occurred to me that he must have a mam and dad too. Sisters and brothers, even, or a girlfriend or wife or something. They were probably all at home right now, wondering where he was. Maybe they were worried too; worried because they hadn't had a
letter from him, just like we hadn't had one from Dad.

The first two snares we came to were empty, but when we came to the third, I saw straight away that the slack had been pulled tight against the peg.

‘I think we got one,' I said hurrying over.

Kim ran alongside me, asking, ‘Where is it?'

I got down on my knees and beckoned her close. ‘Under there.' Close to the snare, there was a tuft of undergrowth which the rabbit was using for cover. The animal was crouched low to the ground, its ears pinned right back.

Kim leant close, putting her hand on my arm. ‘That's amazing,' she said. ‘You got one.'

‘
We
got one. You helped put these out.'

She nodded, her mouth slightly open.

‘It looks so soft,' she said. ‘And look at its eyes.'

I took the tethering cord in my fingers and held it firm as I reached out to clasp the rabbit around the back of the neck. Gripping it that way, I grabbed its back legs with my other hand and pulled it from the undergrowth, holding it out for Kim to see. The rabbit hardly struggled at all. Its legs kicked once or twice, but that was it.

‘What now?' Kim asked.

‘Break its neck.'

Kim grimaced.

‘Turn around if you don't want to see,' I said.

‘It's all right.' Kim nodded. ‘Go on.'

I held the rabbit's head close to the ground and twisted as I pulled the hind legs back, giving a good tug, and felt the rabbit go limp.

‘That's it?' Kim asked.

‘That's it.'

For a while, Kim sat with her legs crossed, looking at the rabbit laid out on the ground in front of us.

‘I've eaten rabbit,' she said after a while. ‘Quite nice, really. Never seen one killed, though.' She looked up. ‘I suppose you've done that lots of times, have you?'

‘A few. I don't really like doin' it. I don't
want
to do it, but we have to.'

Kim thought about it for a moment. ‘What does it feel like?'

‘Doesn't feel like anything . . . I . . . No, it
does
feel like something. It feels like Mam's gonna to be happy. It feels like there's something better than tripe to eat, and it feels like we won't be hungry tomorrow.' I thought about letting Kim take it home – she
had
helped to set the snares, after all – but I knew how pleased Mam would be. She loved rabbit. And one time, when I brought one home, she saw me from the kitchen window and she said it reminded her of watching Dad come home with a rabbit for the pot.

‘Maybe I'll try next time,' Kim said. ‘Be a proper country person. Like you.'

‘You sure?'

‘Of course.'

‘It's just . . . you look a bit shocked.'

‘Not shocked,' she said. ‘I think it's brilliant. You just caught an animal and now you're going to take it home to eat. What could be better than that?'

And the way she looked at me – that was the first time
I realised Kim felt about me the same way I felt about her.

Kim didn't say much on the way back, but she kept looking down at the rabbit I was carrying. I had its hind feet in my right hand, its head hanging towards the ground, and I felt so good. All around the world, the war raged. Bombs were being dropped and bullets were being fired, but right here, in these woods, I felt happy. I was with my best friend, and I was about to make Mam happy.

For a few moments, everything was just as it should be.