Dancing in the Moonlight (35 page)

So much wasted time.

They had reached the end of their line now and were standing waist-deep in salty water, the soldiers in front of them scrambling into the small boat waiting for them. Willy climbed aboard, and
as he did so the skipper of the vessel said to Jacob, ‘Sorry, pal, he’s the last one I can take.’

Jacob nodded, but the next moment Willy had splashed down into the waves again, saying, ‘No offence, matey, but he’s me lucky mascot.’ He called to one of the youngsters,
‘Here, mate, you go in this one. I’ll wait for the next bus. There’s bound to be one along sooner or later.’

He joined Jacob, saying somewhat sheepishly, ‘We’ve been shoulder-to-shoulder thus far, that’s the way I see it. All right?’

Touched, but knowing better than to show it, as Willy was embarrassed enough, Jacob grinned. They’d watched each other’s backs from day one, but he didn’t know if he would have
refused the boat. ‘I thought for a minute there I was going to be spared your jokes on the way home.’

‘Is that so?’ Willy pulled his helmet more firmly over his forehead. ‘Did you hear the one about—’

It took them both by surprise. One moment the little boat had been speeding away with its occupants sandwiched in like sardines in a can, and the next it was blown out of the water by a direct
hit, fragmenting into a hundred pieces as bodies flew through the air.

Willy swore softly, but didn’t say another word. There were no words to say, after all. The lad who had taken his place had been a baby-faced, gangly youth, who had thanked him as
he’d climbed into the small motor cruiser.

When their turn came, it was a fishing boat that picked them up and the gnarled fisherman and his son who were manning the craft that was their livelihood were characters. ‘Let’s be
having you, boyos,’ the fisherman shouted as, weary unto death, they climbed aboard. ‘You’re an orderly lot and no mistake. There’s more pushing and shoving in the queue
outside the pie shop of a Friday night. An’ just so you know, I’ve got no intention of going to meet my Maker courtesy of Jerry, so you’ll be back on British soil afore too
long.’

It was comforting. Bravado, most certainly, but comforting nonetheless.

‘We’ve lost two destroyers four or five miles out in the last twenty-four hours, so I’m giving you a ride home meself. That’s if there’s no objections? No, I
thought not. All right, we’re chock-full, so the next stop is England, boys.’

Exhausted, cold and wet through, his teeth chattering from standing in the icy French sea, Jacob shut his eyes for a minute or two as the boat began to chug away, but then he turned his head and
looked back towards the beach. They were leaving column upon column of British troops waiting for evacuation, and from a distance it reminded him of stone walls dividing miles of fields; some of
the formations were in squares and others were simply long lines. They had been told that British soldiers were sharing with French formations in holding the rearguard, fighting furiously to the
south end of the bridgehead to keep the Germans back from pouring into Dunkirk and storming the beach. They were either going to be killed or captured, he thought wearily, and if he got out of this
slaughter alive he would owe his life to those men he’d never meet or be able to thank.

It was a big ‘if, though. German aircraft, torpedo boats and U-boats were operating in the Channel and even if they cleared this mess and got out to sea, it wouldn’t be plain
sailing. Not by a long chalk. But anything was better than waiting on that damn beach being bombed and machine-gunned by an enemy in the sky above them, who was faceless and without pity. If anyone
had told him a few years back that he would be capable of hating men he had never seen and of wishing every last man, woman and child of a nation to deepest hell, he wouldn’t have believed
them.

‘Here, mate.’ He came out of the black morass of his thoughts to find Willy snapping a small bar of chocolate in two and handing him half.

‘What the . . .?’ Jacob stared at his friend in amazement. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘I’ve been keeping it for this moment.’ Willy grinned at the expression on Jacob’s dumbfounded face. ‘For a little celebration if we ever got away. I swopped my
watch for it, with that French kid we were talking to on the last day of the march before we got to Dunkirk.’

‘You’ve had it all that time?’ Jacob thought of the endless days on the beach when he’d been near fainting with hunger. ‘What if we’d been killed before we
reached the boat?’

‘Then we wouldn’t have needed it any more anyway.’ Willy was delighted with Jacob’s reaction, being forever the showman. ‘And you’d have been none the
wiser.’ He watched as Jacob crammed the whole four squares of his share into his mouth, not chewing, but just letting them melt in an ecstasy of taste. ‘Now, aren’t you glad I
waited till now?’

Strangely he was. Not simply because of the taste and smell and wonderful sensation of the smooth warm chocolate filling his mouth, but because a moment ago he’d been in the darkest place
he could ever remember, filled with a hatred so strong it had blotted out everything good in the world. A reaction, maybe, to the waiting and fear and the massacre going on around him, but he had
wanted to kill and destroy, and take satisfaction from it. And that wasn’t him, that wasn’t Jacob Crawford. He wasn’t an animal.

He let his tongue savour the sticky sweetness as the boat chugged further out to sea, so tired he could barely register the explosions going on around him. Willy could have kept the whole bar to
himself and eaten it without him knowing – it would have been easy. But he hadn’t. And why? Because he was a good man, a fine man. Along with many others. The world wasn’t all
bad. It stood to reason that even among the Germans there were good men, although he couldn’t see that right now.

Willy’s eyes were shut and his head was lolling on his chest, a smear of chocolate at the side of his mouth. Jacob smiled wearily, his last conscious thought before he fell asleep himself
being, ‘We’re fighting for right, and with blokes like Willy on our side, we’ll beat ’em yet. They don’t know what they’ve taken on with us British.’

Twenty-four hours later, on June 4th, the beaches of Dunkirk were littered with decaying bodies and the twisted shapes of hundreds of battered vehicles and weapons of all
kinds. But Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Army by more than a thousand boats, varying in size from a Royal Navy anti-aircraft cruiser down to dinghies that were sailed across the
Channel by their civilian owners, was complete.

Crowds, waving Union Jacks and yelling ‘Well done, boys’, were waiting on the shores of the south-coast ports as more than 338,000 troops who had been rescued were fed and given
shelter before they were put aboard trains for barracks or home or hospitals.

Lucy had heard no word from Jacob or John as she listened to the speech of Winston Churchill that day and, like thousands of other women nationwide, she didn’t know if her loved ones were
coming home. She sat with Donald and the others clustered around the wireless, heart-sore and tired and frightened by the threat of invasion, as the Prime Minister spoke the words she was to
remember for the rest of her life:

‘Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or
fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the sea and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air; we shall defend our island,
whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender; and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet,
would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the Old.’

There was a deep silence after Lucy turned the wireless off. Daisy, who had flatly refused to be evacuated to the country when war broke out, was sitting between Flora and Bess, both of whom had
tears running down their cheeks. But Daisy wasn’t crying, and it was she who broke the quiet when she said, her young clear voice ringing with conviction, ‘
I
shall fight them in
the streets. I’d rather die than become a Nazi slave.’

‘It won’t come to that.’ Donald spoke, but his eyes were on Lucy. He knew she was worried to death about John and, as the days had gone on and there’d been no word, they
were all fearing the worst. Matthew had just turned seventeen and she was concerned that if they lowered the call-up age to eighteen, as had been suggested once or twice in the newspapers, he would
be conscripted the following year, which was an added worry. But there was something else, something he couldn’t put his finger on. He knew that Jacob Crawford had come to the house before
he’d gone away to fight, Ruby had told him so, but when he’d tried to broach the matter with Lucy, she had gently but firmly refused to discuss Jacob or any of the Crawfords, come to
that. In Ruby’s own forthright way she’d let him know they’d had to leave the day after he’d skedaddled – as she put it – and described the subsequent week or so
of living rough with all its horrors, before the fishmonger had taken them in. But Lucy hadn’t said a word about that time. Ruby had given him the impression Lucy had married the man to
secure them a home, but when he had plucked up the courage and tentatively asked about her husband, Lucy’s face had been soft and her voice warm as she said, ‘He was a grand man,
Donald. A wonderful man, and his boys are just like him.’ That was all very well, but it didn’t explain why Lucy had cut Enid Crawford out of her life so completely.

In the deep recesses of his mind – a place where he hadn’t gone too often because it had stirred up the guilt and shame he’d buried about walking out on Lucy – he had
known that she wouldn’t abandon the others to the workhouse. But he had comforted himself with the fact that she would have gone to Enid Crawford, and the Crawfords would have helped them get
by. Ruby had explained that away by saying that Jacob had been found beaten near to death the same day he’d gone and, with the Crawford house in turmoil, Lucy hadn’t felt she could
burden Enid with their problems. And he could buy that; but why, once Lucy was settled and happy with her fishmonger, hadn’t she gone to see Enid Crawford now and again? That would have been
the natural thing to do. The kind thing. And, above all else, Lucy was kind.

She raised her head now and caught his eye and, seeing her face torn with anxiety, he said again, ‘It won’t come to that, lass. There’s the sea between us and them, we’re
an island, and it’ll make all the difference. They won’t invade British soil, you’ll see.’

Conscious of Daisy’s big eyes on her, Lucy made herself say, briskly and with conviction, ‘I know that, Donald. Now, Daisy and Charley, you set the table and Bess, you can help me
dish up. Let’s eat straight away because Matthew’s away to a meeting about manning anti-aircraft batteries tonight.’

They had just stood up when the doorbell rang shrilly. As one, everyone froze, their eyes shooting to Lucy.

It didn’t have to be a black-edged telegram.
She kept saying the words as a prayer, as she walked out of the sitting room and into the hall, with the others following. Her hand
shaking, she opened the front door.

‘Hello, lass, I’ve lost me key,’ said John, for all the world as though he was returning home after a day at work.

Dolly Williamson called at the house very early the next morning, so early in fact that the birds were barely up, let alone anyone else, but although the rest of the household
was fast asleep, Lucy had been dressed and working downstairs on some paperwork for an hour or two. The previous evening had been a time of thanksgiving and merriment, John’s appearance
transforming the sombre atmosphere in the house and everyone being determined to make his few days of leave happy and memorable, but once she had been alone in her bed her fears for Jacob had had
free rein. The more so now that she knew John was safe.

It was too much to hope that both of them had been spared.
John had played down what he’d been through in front of Daisy and the twins, but she’d heard him talking to Donald
late at night as the two brothers had sat together over a bottle of whisky, and what he’d described had been sheer butchery. Why should God listen to her prayers and save them both, when some
families had lost all their menfolk in one fell swoop? Nevertheless, she had prayed and argued and cried out to God for hours.

She was sitting at her desk in the morning room, which overlooked the street, when she heard the clip-clop of horse’s hooves stop outside the house. Peering out of the window, she saw a
plump little person being helped down from the horse and cart outside and knew instantly, from Jacob’s descriptions in the past, that it could only be Abe and Dolly Williamson.

She opened the door before Dolly had time to knock, and saw that her husband had climbed back into the cart and was staring straight ahead, and that Dolly’s round face was unsmiling. Her
heart giving a great lurch, she said, ‘Is it Jacob?’

Dolly answered just as bluntly. ‘I’ve come with a message from him, if you’re Lucy?’

A message. That meant he was alive. Relief made her knees weak and she had to clutch hold of the door frame as her head swam.

Dolly looked at the woman in front of her keenly. She had asked her name, but she’d known instantly this was the girl who had bedevilled her lad for years and driven him half-barmy. She
was beautiful, even more lovely than she’d prepared herself for, but at the moment she’d turned as white as a sheet and looked as though she was about to faint. In spite of herself,
Dolly felt sorry for her, but then almost immediately she told herself not to be so daft. Lucy Alridge might look as fragile as a flower, but she was made of iron within; she had to be, to have
lived with herself after the way she had treated Jacob. But he’d asked her to come and see Lucy and so she had come. For her lad.