Escape from Shangri-La (13 page)

‘I was fifteen years old, big for my age and strong too. I was out there, along with half the town, when the new lifeboat was launched. Forty-six foot, Watson cabin-type, she was; bright yellow funnel, shining blue with a red stripe round the gunwales. I never saw anything so beautiful in all my life.

‘Later that day, I was walking round her in the shed at the top of the slipway, stroking her from end to end, when I first saw her name:
Michael Hardy
. Now I don't know who gave me my name when I was little, but all my life I'd been called Michael, Michael Stevens. And here was this lifeboat with half my own name on her. Silly, maybe, but I knew then that it was a meant thing with me and the
Michael Hardy
, that we belonged together. One day I would be a lifeboatman in that boat. I would pull on the blue jersey and the yellow oilskins. I would climb up into that boat and go roaring down the slipway. I would go to sea in her and save lives. So I went right up to the coxswain – I can't remember his name now, a great big bearded fellow – I walked right up to him next day in the town and I asked him, point blank. He laughed, and shook his head. “You're far too young,” he says. “Come back in a couple of years,” he says. I'll tell you, Cessie, I went away and I cried like a baby.

‘By now everyone was talking about the war they knew was coming, but all I could think about was how they wouldn't let me join the crew of the
Michael Hardy
. I mooched about the beach all that summer. Every time I saw the lifeboat go down the slipway it was just more salt in the wound.'

The boat creaked above our heads and Popsicle looked up and smiled. ‘I swear she talks to me sometimes. She listens too. The things she's seen in her time. The things she's heard. You know about Dunkirk, d'you?'

‘Not much,' I said.

‘And why should you? Long time ago, all of it. Summer of 1940, and there was a right old mess going on over there in France. The German army was knocking all hell out of everyone. They pushed the whole jolly lot of us back to the sea at Dunkirk: British, French, Belgians, all sorts. There were 250,000 men on the beaches of Northern France that had to be fetched back home; the whole army, or what was left of it. It was all on the radio, in the papers too. Next thing I heard, the navy were in Lowestoft, looking for all the boats they could find to bring the boys back home off the beaches. They were going to take the
Michael Hardy
over to Dunkirk. Well, I wasn't going to miss out on that, was I?

‘No one was looking for stowaways, so it was easy enough. I crept on board the night before and found myself a hiding-place in the locker right under the bow, just about where my bed is now. I was too cold to sleep, too excited. Next morning there was a lot of stamping about and shouting up on deck. Then we were
thundering down the slipway. We hit the sea with a great crash – it fairly shook me up, I can tell you. I thought I had broken every bone in my body. I remember the engines were pounding, and I was sick, sick as a dog with all the pitching and rolling. And it was cold, Cessie, bitter cold down there, and dark too. Never been so cold in all my life. I couldn't feel my feet at all. But honest to God, I'd never been so happy. I was at sea at last, in a lifeboat, in the
Michael Hardy
.

‘I can't be sure, but I think I was more than a day down there in that locker before they found me. And do you know how they found me? I sneezed. They found me because I sneezed. I was hauled up on deck to explain myself. The officer wasn't best pleased, I can tell you. But what could he do? We were in the middle of the English Channel and the weather was blowing up a gale. He could hardly have me chucked overboard, could he? So he just gave me a right rollicking and sent me down to the galley to brew up the tea.

‘Pretty soon after that they were all far too busy to bother with me anyway. There were fighter planes, Stukas, Messerschmitts, all diving at us out of nowhere; and ahead of us were great plumes of black smoke along the coast as if the whole place was on fire. And the little ships. All shapes and sizes. Hundreds of them, all
ferrying the soldiers from the beaches to the Navy ships standing offshore. We waited until nightfall and then we went in close, into the harbour – or what was left of it. The whole sky was red with fire.

‘We heard the soldiers first, and then we saw them. Lines and lines of them waist high, shoulder high in the water, helmets askew, rifles held over their heads. They were shouting at us, and some of them were crying. First time I'd ever seen grown men cry. They were grabbing at the ropes and we were hauling them on board. And off we went packed to the gunwales. You couldn't move for soldiers.

‘Awful terrible wounds they had, some of them; and they were sea-sick too. Poor blighters. It doesn't bear thinking about. Terrified they were, some of them. And I was too. We were all frightened. I mean you couldn't not be. You could see the sea on fire where a ship had gone down, and there were men in the water screaming, and the shells kept coming and coming; and you knew that sooner or later one of them had to hit you.

‘We'd done a couple of trips to and from the beaches when it happened. I was sitting high up on the bow of the boat, a crowd of soldiers all round me, when I saw this shape come towards us out of the darkness. It took me a few seconds before I realised it was a boat, and a
few more before I saw that it was coming straight for us. She rammed us amidships and I was knocked right over the side and into the cold of the sea. Down I went. I never thought I'd come up, but I did. I was kicking and screaming for all I was worth, but it didn't do me any good. I just sank again like a stone.'

‘Couldn't you swim?' I asked.

‘Still can't,' said Popsicle, shaking his head. ‘Isn't that mad? I've spent all my silly life on boats, and I still can't swim. So, anyway, I thought I was going to drown for certain; but suddenly there were arms round me and lifting me, and at last I was breathing blessed air again. It was one of the soldiers. He still had his tin hat on too. I remember that. “Hang on,” he says. And I did, for dear life. He swum me ashore and we staggered up the sand and into the dunes.

‘Of course we didn't sleep a wink. We were wet through to the skin, and freezing. The shelling never stopped all night long. Not a night I'd care to live through again, I can tell you.

‘He was a nice young fellow, the one who pulled me out. We got chatting, the two of us. He'd only been in the army a few months, he said, and he'd done nothing but retreat the whole time. I told him about how I'd stowed away on the
Michael Hardy
. “Well,” he says,
“you'd better find yourself a uniform, and be quick about it; because if we don't get off the beaches and the Germans catch us, then they'll think you're a spy and they'll shoot you for certain.” Do you know what he did? He took off his battledress top and gave it to me, there and then. “Here,” he says. “You'd best have this, just in case. About the same size, we are.” And it was true, too. Him and me, like two peas in a pod. So I put it on.

‘Five minutes later, that's all, and we were sitting there side by side shivering in the dunes, when the fighters came back, strafing and bombing all along the beach. Everyone was running for it; but there was nowhere to run to, I could see that. The soldier and me, we just stayed where we were and flattened ourselves in the sand. The ground shook, like an earthquake it was, and the sand showered down on us. I thought it would never stop. There was a horrible silence after that. Then I heard the crying and the moaning. I felt blood on my face, warm blood. I knew I'd been hit in the head. There wasn't much pain, but my head was spinning. I seemed to be floating, almost like I was in the sea, and it was getting darker all around me, darker than it should have been. I remember the soldier's eyes were open in the darkness. They were looking straight at me, but he
wasn't seeing me. I knew he was dead. I knew then that I would soon be dead, just like he was. I was sure of it. I wasn't frightened any more. Funny that.

‘I woke up and there were gulls flying overhead, screeching just like they did at home. I thought for a moment I was back home in Lowestoft. I really did. But not for long. I sat up and looked around me. The tide was up. There was no more shelling. It was quiet, like the quiet after a storm. The place was littered with trucks, jeeps, guns – some still burning – and there were bodies, everywhere bodies lying on the sand. One of the soldiers rolled over in the shallows, and he seemed for a moment to be alive. He wasn't. No one was, except me. The armada of little ships was gone, except for the wrecks left behind out at sea – or beached – and there were dozens of them, dozens. The soldier who had saved me was still looking at me. I had to get away.

‘I got to my feet and climbed up over the dunes. No one was moving in the town. Everyone was dead, or everyone was gone – that's what it felt like anyway. I wandered up into the smoking ruins of the town, not knowing where I was going nor why. I suppose I was just looking for someone who was alive, anyone. My legs wouldn't work like they should and I kept reeling and stumbling up against the walls of the houses. Then
they just gave way completely, and I found myself sitting down in the doorway of a house and I couldn't move any more. I heard a sort of rumbling and a rattling, and it was coming closer and getting louder all the time.

‘Suddenly the door opened behind me and I was dragged in off the street. I found myself in a darkened room and there was this lady standing over me, her finger to her lips. She didn't want me to talk. So I didn't. She was peeping out through the closed shutters. I crawled over to have a look. Tanks, and there were soldiers behind them, German soldiers, hundreds of them.

‘That poor woman, she had to drag me all the way up the stairs. I couldn't help myself much. By the time we got to the top I knew there were two of them, one had me by the legs, the other had her arms under my shoulders. They took me into a bedroom and I thought they'd put me on the bed, but they didn't. They put me in a clothes cupboard instead, a great big thing it was and it smelled of mothballs. They turned out to be mother and daughter, and they looked like it too. Same dark hair, pale skin. They were terrified, just like I was. But the young one, she gave me a smile, the sort of smile that said it was going to be all right. “Lucie Alice,” she whispered, “
Je suis Lucie Alice
.” Then she closed the
cupboard door and I was left in the darkness lying at the bottom of that musty old cupboard, the clothes dangling all around my face.'

Popsicle's voice was faltering now as he went on. ‘The things they did for me, those two. Patched me up, fed me, cared for me, just like I was their family. No one ever treated me like that before, not in my whole life. For days and days, they let me out only for five minutes at a time, to stretch my legs, go to the toilet – that sort of thing. I knew why, of course. I could hear the soldiers, plain enough, just outside, down in the street. I had to stay in the cupboard, and I wasn't ever to come out unless they said so. I did as I was told and stayed put, and it was just as well I did too. They came looking. One evening it was. I was half asleep in the bottom of my cupboard. I heard them coming up the stairs and into the room, stamping around in their boots. I curled myself up tight under the clothes, closed my eyes, and stopped breathing. They opened the cupboard door too, had a look, but they never moved the clothes, so they never found me. But if they had . . .

‘You've got to remember, Cessie, that if they'd found me they'd have shot the two of them for sure. That's something, eh? They did that for me, and they didn't even know me. After the house had been searched that
time, they reckoned it was safer. So they let me out of my cupboard a bit more often, and for longer too; but I still had to stay in my room and stay away from the window. I was never to open the shutters, Lucie Alice told me, never to look out of the window.

‘Of course, I couldn't understand much of what they were saying, not to start with; but I got the gist of it all right. They were going to find a way to get me out and back home to England. But it would take time. I had to be patient. I didn't mind waiting, I can tell you. The more I saw of Lucie Alice, the less I wanted to go home anyway. She'd come to my room often, and not only to bring me my meals either. She did most of the talking, and every day I understood better and better what she was saying.

‘We only had a month together, Cessie, but I loved that girl. I really loved her.' He picked up the photograph. ‘She gave me this. “So you won't forget me,” she said. See what she wrote on the back? “
Pour toujours
.” Means “For ever”. And she meant it too, I know she did.' He turned the photograph over in his hand. ‘Great brown eyes she had, Cessie, and her hair . . . I never touched anyone else's hair before hers. Soft as air.' It was a moment or two before he was able to go on.

‘She kept warning me and warning me to stay in the cupboard, just in case. But I hated it in that cupboard, Cessie. I couldn't stand being shut up; and, besides, I couldn't read my book in there. I had this book of poems called
The Golden Treasury
. I'd found it in the pocket of that soldier's battledress. Bit wrinkled with the damp it was, but you could read it, just about. First time I'd ever read any poems. Wonderful they were. Wonderful. So anyway, from time to time, I'd come out of my cupboard and read my poems. I'd read them out loud too, and learn them off by heart. One morning I was on my own in the house and I'd been reading a few of my poems. Maybe I was feeling a bit restless. I don't know. But I did what Lucie Alice always told me not to do – I went to the window. I thought it was safe enough. I couldn't see anyone down in the street, so I opened the shutter just a little and peeked out.

‘I hadn't noticed the soldier. He was standing just across the street from me, under the lamppost, and he was smoking. He was blowing smoke rings in the air and watching them float away up towards me. Our eyes met just for a moment, but that was all it took. Before I even reached my cupboard I heard the street door crash open and boots pounding up the stairs. I had the cupboard door almost closed, but I was too late. He wrenched it
out of my hand and there I was crouching in amongst the clothes, and he was smiling down at me like a cat that's got a mouse. Then there were other soldiers in the room. They hauled me out and I was marched off down the street with my hands in the air, a rifle jabbing into my back. We'd just turned the corner into the wide road along the seafront, when I saw Lucie Alice coming towards us on the same pavement, a loaf of bread under her arm. We both knew there mustn't be a flicker of recognition between us. That was the last I ever saw of her.