Time to Say Goodbye (28 page)

She had been staring up at the bundle which she now knew to be a man, her eyes watering against the brilliance of the sunshine, and now she looked at Rufus, who was whining and staring upwards. As she watched he reared up on to his hind legs, his front paws on the craggy trunk of the yew, and then he turned his head and there was something in his expression which brought the blood rushing to Debby’s cheeks. It was as though he was saying ‘You’ve got to do something! If I wasn’t a dog I’d be up that tree before you could say knife!’

Debby took a deep, steadying breath and began, very cautiously at first, to climb the tree. And the climb proved not to be so bad after all, so long as she did not look down.

She reached her objective and looked for the first time into that strange damaged face. His flying helmet hid his hair completely, but she saw that he had a high-bridged nose and square cheekbones with hollows beneath. His mouth gaped, but his chin was deeply cleft and the stubble on his jaw was dirt-streaked. She imagined that the burns which she could see on his face and neck had happened before he had baled out and the livid cuts and bruises would have been inflicted as he had plunged through the upper branches of the great trees, to come to rest in the fork of the yew. At the sight of his ruined face she felt both fear and revulsion and wished with all her heart that Imogen had been with her; not Rita, who would scoff at her fears, but Immy who would understand. Leaning close, she saw that the man’s eyes were closed and forced herself to put out a tentative hand, meaning to touch him, but before she could do so his heavy lids lifted and he spoke. His voice was hoarse and cracked, and when she snatched her hand back he spoke again. ‘
Wasser
. . . water,’ he croaked, and with the word she noticed his dry, split lips and realised his desperate need.

Water! Of course, he had been caught up there for hours, possibly days, with the sun beating down on him, unable to move so much as a finger; his thirst must be almost unbelievable, and at the thought of what he must have suffered both fear and revulsion left her. It might have been Laurie or Dave, or even Josh. She stiffened her back; they were a long way from the river or a stream, but even as she began to tell him rather shakily that she would try to fetch water she remembered the bottle of cold tea in her satchel.

‘Right. I’ll fetch you a drink,’ she said, speaking slowly and clearly. When he had asked for water he had spoken in German; she supposed Rita was right that he was an enemy, but suddenly to Deb he was just a young man in need. ‘I won’t be gone long. Stay there!’ It was not until she was halfway down the tree that she realised the foolishness of her last remark. Stay there, indeed! The poor devil had no choice but to stay there, but then he was in no state to quibble over her choice of words.

At the bottom of the tree Rufus greeted her wildly, leaping up and licking her chin, giving little whines of pleasure as though he knew how frightened she had been and was congratulating her on her courage. He stood close to her, pressed against her knees, whilst she extracted the bottle of cold tea from her satchel. It was only about a quarter full and she wished she had not drunk so greedily earlier in the day, but then she remembered how they had been told on a first aid course in the Guides that only small drinks should be given to sick or wounded people. Satisfied, she slid her arms through the straps of the satchel, gave Rufus’s head a valedictory pat and began to climb once more. She reached the man, but he seemed to have lost consciousness again and when she tried to trickle some tea into his half open, smashed mouth he did not swallow and it occurred to her that he might choke if she continued. How she longed for someone to join her, to tell her what she should do! Then she remembered how Mrs Pilgrim had once fed a tiny motherless lamb by dipping the corner of a soft cloth into a pan of warm milk and giving it to the little creature to suck. Hastily, Debby produced the handkerchief she kept in her knicker leg – luckily it was quite clean – splashed a little tea on to it, and wetted the man’s lips and dry, almost stick-like tongue. At first there was no response, so she squeezed the handkerchief in order that a few drops might fall into the man’s mouth, and presently had the satisfaction of realising from the convulsive movement of his throat that he was swallowing, though his eyes remained closed. She was still slowly feeding him the liquid, drop by drop, when she heard a commotion from below, and realised that rescue had arrived. She turned to the young man. ‘Can you hear that?’ she whispered. ‘That means Imogen and Rita and the men from the village are coming to get you down. I wonder how they found us, though? Because I said I’d wait at the foot of the tree and keep calling out once I heard them approaching.’

Understandably, the young man made no reply, and Debby was about to explain that she would have to stop feeding him the tea and return to earth when she heard a voice echoing up from the ground below.

‘Well, how typical of Debby to wander off without a thought for the rest of us!’ Rita said. ‘Good thing it’s the only yew tree in this part of the wood; good thing I spotted the bundle when Mr Huggit and Mr Pilgrim would have gone straight on past. If it hadn’t been for me . . .’

‘Well, I like your bleedin’ cheek!’ That was Josh, who must have got wind of what was happening and joined the rescue party. ‘If it hadn’t been for Rufus we’d still be wandering around in quite the wrong direction, calling Debby’s name and trying to spot the parachute.’

Debby peered down through the branches. ‘I heard you, Rita Jeffries,’ she said furiously. ‘Just remember who it was who wanted to leave the poor chap to die, because he was a German and not one of our boys. Just remember . . .’

But, perhaps fortunately, Imogen’s voice cut across Debby’s furious denunciation. And looking down, Debby could see that there were now several more faces upturned towards her and regretted her words. ‘Debby! How on earth did you get up there?’

Despite her anger, Debby could not help giggling. ‘How do you think?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t fly, and I didn’t fall from the sky like this poor fellow did. I climbed up because he was desperate for something to drink and now I shall climb down.’ She hoped that no one, particularly Rita, could hear the tremble in her voice. She had climbed down the tree to fetch the bottle of tea without any qualms, but then she had been so intent on relieving the unfortunate airman’s thirst that she had barely given a thought to the perils of the climb. Gritting her teeth, she started to descend, whilst below her Mr Pilgrim and one of the farmhands began to erect a ladder and the other men who had joined the rescue party manhandled an ancient door, to which Debby guessed they would presently strap the injured flier.

The moment Debby was on the ground Imogen gave her a hug. ‘You’re braver than the lot of us, isn’t she, Rita?’ she said. ‘We all know you’re afraid of heights, so climbing the tree would have been harder for you than for anybody else. Dr Vaughan doesn’t like heights either so he isn’t going up the ladder; he’ll examine the airman once the other men have got him safely to the ground.’

Debby began to reply but then sank down on the ground beside Rufus, because her knees were trembling so much that she was afraid of falling. She looked up at Rita and saw the other girl’s reddened cheeks and trembling mouth, and was sorry for drawing attention to her outburst earlier. ‘I’m awful sorry I said what I did, Rita,’ she apologised in a subdued tone. ‘I know you didn’t mean a word of it.’

Josh, who had been watching the men erecting the ladder, came over to them and ruffled Debby’s already ruffled hair. ‘Now you’ve given me the lead I suppose I’ll have to start climbing trees too,’ he said cheerfully. He turned to Rita. ‘Care to give me lessons? I’ve heard Woody say you’re as good as any monkey when it comes to climbing.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And as for leaving the fellow in the tree, of course you didn’t mean a word of it, you were just reacting. I mean, we all hate the Nazis, but I’ve heard Laurie say that it’s not a personal thing; when our fellows bomb a German city they try not to think that there are people down there as well as factories and so on.’

It was clear to Debby that Josh was trying to show he did not believe Rita had meant the horrid things she had said, and all might have been well had Rita not decided to justify herself just as the door, with the young man strapped upon it, came gently to earth. All three of them got up and went over to look at the injured man, and Josh was just wondering whether the bloody furrow which slashed his badly burned face was, as Imogen had thought, a rope burn and not the path of a bullet, when Rita spoke once more. ‘Look at that bullet mark. It was probably fired by one of our gunners trying to down a German bomber,’ she commented. ‘If so, this bloke deserves to be in prison for a hundred years.’

Debby had had enough. ‘For God’s sake shut up; save your breath to cool your porridge, as Auntie says,’ she snapped. ‘If you’re trying to prove how horrid you can be, you’re doing a good job of it.’ She glanced around, at the doctor kneeling beside the injured airman, at the men reassembling the ladder and at the others limbering up to lift the door. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here,’ she said briskly. ‘Let’s go home.’

Auntie was making a Woolton pie when the back door burst open and the three girls and Josh came into the room. Auntie had already heard, on a trip into the village, that an airman and his parachute had somehow managed to get tangled up in one of the forestry trees, and guessed at once that the children she regarded as her own responsibility must have been involved. So when they came into the kitchen and all began talking at once she had to disappoint them. ‘Hush,’ she said reprovingly. ‘You don’t have to tell me that one of our brave boys ended up caught in a tree, because I heard the news when I went into the village to see if anyone could sell me some onions. And I was lucky, so I’m making a Woolton pie for our supper tonight. I take it that you four were in on the act? Where’s Woody?’

‘Oh, he had a bang on the head and felt dizzy, so he went back to the farm,’ Josh said quickly. ‘Don’t worry, he saw Dr Vaughan and he said Woody was fine.’

‘Yes, Woody’s okay, but it was us – us girls – who found the man wrapped up in his parachute right at the top of an old yew tree,’ Imogen said excitedly. ‘And he wasn’t one of our chaps, Auntie, he was a German, probably a Luftwaffe pilot. On the way home the men were talking and someone said he must have been dangling from that tree for at least two days, unable to help himself. The doctor said he had a lot of broken bones and was badly de . . . dehydrated, so he’ll be in hospital in the city for a good while until he’s well enough to go to a POW camp. And guess what, Auntie? Old Debby climbed the yew tree whilst Rita and I went for help, and you know how frightened Debby is of heights.’

‘I’ve heard tell,’ Auntie said cautiously, ‘but of course I’ve only seen you climbing trees in the orchard. So he was a German flier, was he? Well, that’s one less to shoot down our brave boys.’

‘That’s what I said,’ Rita put in. ‘But these ninnies seem to think we ought to be pleased that he got down alive.
I’m
not pleased. I don’t want him turning his guns on our air force as soon as he’s well enough . . .’

‘Oh Lor’, she’s off again,’ Josh said wearily. He turned to Rita. ‘At first I understood why you were so against the idea of helping the chap in the tree – he was a German after all – but when I heard how badly he was injured . . . for goodness’ sake, Rita, he’ll be no threat to anyone.’ He turned to Auntie. ‘We took him to the village and Dr Vaughan telephoned for an ambulance. The poor fellow was unconscious all the time, but the doc says he’s broken both legs, one arm, and several ribs . . . and he’s horribly burned. Honest to God, Auntie, he’s a mess.’ He glanced across at Rita. ‘I suppose you could say he was fighting for his country the same as we’re fighting for ours. And now let’s forget it.’ He turned to Auntie. ‘I told Mr P I was coming here with the girls and wouldn’t be home in time for tea – would you mind if I invited myself to supper? I love your Woolton pie. But perhaps you’d rather I didn’t stay?’

Whilst he had been talking Auntie had placed the pie in the oven, and now she smiled reassuringly at him. ‘Ridiculous boy, of course you must,’ she said. ‘Why should you not? Everyone’s a trifle overwrought after so much excitement and I’m sure Rita never means half the things she says. Now run upstairs, girls, and tidy yourselves. By the time you’ve done that it will be almost time to eat. Off with you; Josh shall pay for his supper by laying the table whilst you’re gone.’

Upstairs in their room there was an uncomfortable silence whilst the girls washed and changed into clean cotton frocks, but when they were ready, and still had not said a word, Imogen spoke. ‘Pax,’ she said, smiling at Rita. ‘The subject of the airman is now closed. Will you shake on it?’

She half expected Rita to refuse, but after a moment Rita took the offered hand. ‘I suppose since he’s now a prisoner of war there’s nothing more to be said,’ she remarked. ‘And now let’s get at the Woolton pie before Josh eats the lot.’

On Monday Auntie announced that she was going into the city since she had to see an official about acquiring another pig. ‘If I’ve time I’ll pop into the hospital, see how your young German airman is getting on,’ she told them at breakfast. ‘No school today – Mr P needs your help with the haymaking. You’ll have the harvest lunch and tea which Mrs P provides, so no need to even think about cooking, and I’ll be home in time for supper.’ She glanced across the table to where Rita was pushing her porridge spoon moodily round the dish and addressed her. ‘Rita, love, no quarrels today please. When I get back you and I must have a talk.’

Imogen saw Rita flush and said quickly: ‘It’s all right, Auntie, we’ll all be good as gold, and we won’t even mention the Jerry.’ All the girls agreed and they had an excellent day, without so much as one cross word. The boys walked them home, and when Auntie returned a surprise awaited them. She came into the kitchen lugging two obviously heavy baskets, a wide smile on her face. Imogen, toasting bread on a fork extended to the small flame under the Primus, had begun to ask whether she had managed to get some baked beans – they had just opened the last can – when she dumped her baskets and clapped her hands for attention. Josh emerged from the pantry giving a military salute and Woody, pouring tea into mugs, stopped short. ‘What’s up, Auntie?’ he enquired.