The Island Girls

Chapter 25

25

POOLE – MAY 1941

Peggy relaxed in the stillness between sleeping and waking, not willing for the night to end and for the day, with all its yet to be revealed troubles ahead, to start. She relished the comfort of her bed and shut her ears to the sounds of planes overhead that were beginning to encroach upon her dreams until, eventually, reason kicked in and she understood that if she could hear planes, she had no business resting in her bed and should get to the shelter, and fast.

She rolled onto her side and gasped with shock, allowing river water into her mouth, understanding nothing. She choked and coughed and scrambled for a firm hold of something – anything – but felt only reeds that cut her fingers as she grabbed for them.

She was not in bed, but floating in the river still, and she could not tell how long she’d been that way. The night was still black as coal and, thankfully, there was no wind at all, but each part of her body that was raised above the level of the water now felt the sting of chill, wet against the cool night air.

Slowly, memories began to return. The launch, the chase, the argument on what she now knew as Charlie’s Dutch boat, the gunshot, the sound of two men falling into the water, one after the other. The hand that had reached up and grasped her arm, and how she’d hoped it was Charlie and wanted to pull him out but had fallen into the river herself instead.

She lay on the riverbank, having pulled herself out by finding a foothold in the muddy clay and pulling on the reeds. She held her hands as close to her face as she could, and tried to decide if the darkness that spread over her palms was mud or blood. Her head ached and she touched a hand to her temple and found a sizeable bump there. Enough trying for now , her mind told her. Rest a while , and she dozed.

When she woke, which might have been a few minutes or an hour later, the night was still dark and the planes she’d heard earlier were gone. She sat up, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and then looked about. All three boats were still tied up together and there was no sign of anyone else. Her clothes had dried out considerably, and she was missing one shoe. She stood and lumbered around the riverbank calling for Charlie. A few minutes later, she tried a tentative call for Klaus. Nothing. No one. Where the hell could they be? There had only been the one gunshot – except for the second shot that she now remembered firing by accident.

Peggy made her way to the launch, checking inside, in case one of the men had made it on board. Then another thought occurred, and she bent over the side of the Dutch boat moored beside her launch. Curled on the floor was the shape of a body. Her heart quickened and she looked around for the gun, which lay on the cockpit floor where she must have dropped it before she fell in. The memories were vague and seemed to come to mind in the wrong order.

She took ten deep breaths, while remaining perfectly still, watching the body. It could be Charlie, though in this darkness, it could also be Klaus. She crept silently over the sides of the two boats and into the cockpit of the Dutch boat – Charlie’s boat as she now knew it to be. The body did not stir. She crouched down and picked up the gun, and, remembering her accident, checked the safety switch was set correctly. Then she reached out and shoved him on the shoulder. He did not stir. She leant closer to the face and pushed harder to turn him over, which he did with a lifeless thump on the floor of the boat. She jumped back in horror, and heard herself whimper. Klaus was dead.

So where in this hellish night was Charlie? she asked herself as she scanned the water, which was easier to see now that her eyes had grown more accustomed to the darkness.

‘Charlie!’ she called again and listened. Something moved on the bank but it was small. Probably only a vole, or a water rat. She thought through the possibilities about the situation she was dealing with now. The true spy was dead, at her feet, and quite possibly by her hand, if he’d been shot. The innocent, half-German, half-Dutch Hans/Charlie for whom she had come to know great affection might well be dead, but was, at the very least, missing. And Darrell, the honest, fun, lovely, trustworthy, helpful Australian airman without whose love she could not imagine going on, had absolutely no idea she was out here alone, and probably thought she’d been cheating on him with Charlie. This thought was enough to switch up the gears in her brain and begin a rescue plan.

Within a few moments, she had untied the launch from the Dutch boat and started the engine, backing it slowly – ever so slowly, because Charlie was still unaccounted for in this river water – out from the riverbank. Her dad’s fishing dinghy was still tied firmly to the side of the launch and she adjusted the rope so that it towed a safe distance behind. Then, when she had travelled a few hundred yards downstream, she let the throttle go and, defying the speed limit, drove the launch at full speed back in towards Poole Quay.

At the Custom House steps, she worked quickly to tie the boat up, and pulled the dinghy in close again, locked the launch cabin and took the key with her, throwing her one shoe back into the boat and going barefoot. The quay was deserted. She heard the church clock strike for a quarter past three, and then, the sound of planes overhead again. She could run for her parents but what was she to tell them? She couldn’t share any of the details about who or why or what owing to the nature of what she’d been tasked with doing by Fletcher. And, besides that, if she arrived home looking like this in the middle of the night, that would be the end of her trying to do anything to find Charlie.

There was nobody in the Customs House or the harbour master’s office at this early hour of the morning, so she knew not to bother there. She ran to the police call box at the bottom of the high street, and picked up the receiver, but put it down again immediately, thinking about her options of who she could talk to about what, considering the secretive nature of her mission with Charlie. As she stood beside the police call box, the air-raid siren went off, and within moments, there was movement in the street, with people running to take cover in the public shelters.

Rose Stevens. She lived just a short run away and Peggy needed to see Rose, or Major Carter. She couldn’t divulge much information, but as head of Field Security, he would understand, surely. He lived somewhere in Parkstone – miles away – but Peggy knew that Rose lived with her sister, Daisy, in Market Street, just near the Guildhall, and so she cut through the lanes to Church Street, ran alongside the churchyard and on into Market Street, pausing for breath outside the almshouses before pushing on again, the siren wailing the whole time.

‘Excuse me, miss, do you want to shelter with us?’ called a man from his front door as Peggy ran by. She must have looked as though she was desperately trying to find cover from the air raid.

‘I’m going to my friend’s house, thanks. I’ll be all right!’ she called as she ran on.

When she reached Rose and Daisy’s door, she loudly rapped the knocker four times, and then waited as the siren wailed and Home Guard men ran past to take their places at the anti-aircraft guns, shouting to one another all the while.

She knocked again, six times, and louder. Still nothing. The shelter, she realised. They would have gone out their back door to their shelter.

‘You need to take cover, love!’ called an old Home Guard soldier, stopping when he saw her at the front of the house.

‘Just going round the back to the shelter now,’ she cried in reply as she ran down the lane beside the house where Rose lived. She found the shelter and pulled open the door, much to the shock of the women inside it. Daisy Carter, Rose’s sister, was resting along one of the beds on one side, with a pillow behind her and a very pregnant belly before her.

‘Peggy! What on earth?’ asked Rose, moving to make room for Peggy as she slipped inside the shelter and pulled the door shut behind her. They still had a candle lit, having only been there themselves for a few minutes, getting settled.

Peggy regarded Daisy and looked again to Rose, unsure what she could say in front of Major Carter’s assistant’s sister, let alone what she should reveal to Rose. She gathered her thoughts and decided on a version of the night’s events that shouldn’t interfere with the promise she had made to hold these affairs secret.

‘I followed someone who had stolen the launch boat, Rose, all the way up the Wareham River. He had another boat kept there, and was with a man who is not from around here,’ she said with a pointed look, glancing at Daisy, who had shut her eyes and seemed to be trying to sleep.

‘In fact, as it turns out, the man I was following is not from around here either,’ she said. ‘There was a gunshot, or two, and I was in the water – look at me, my clothes are still damp, and I lost my shoes,’ said Peggy, for the first time in the whole affair beginning to feel a bit the worse for wear. Her feet were sore and thrumming with pain now, she realised.

‘Where are they now – these others?’ asked Rose, glancing at Daisy, who was breathing deeply in sleep by this time.

‘That’s just the problem, Rose,’ hissed Peggy. ‘All three of us were in the water at one stage. One man is dead in the cockpit of the boat on the river, but I’ve no idea where —’ She stopped herself just in time. ‘Where the man I was following is now. He might be near the river, he could be injured, or worse. I need help to find him, Rose, and I also need to use the telephone at the pottery to make an urgent call,’ she said and then, as if the final act of asking for help had switched a valve, the tears began to fall, and Peggy sobbed.

Rose breathed hard and fast while she considered the options, looking about the inside of the Anderson shelter as if the answers were written on the tin walls.

‘We need Major Carter’s help,’ Rose said, getting up to push open the door and peering out of the shelter. ‘It doesn’t sound as though this is coming to much out here, Peggy. Come on, follow me. Daisy will be all right,’ she said, more to comfort herself as she left her heavily pregnant sister in the shelter.

‘We’ll have to stick to the lanes – the Home Guard boys won’t like us being out during a raid,’ said Rose as she led Peggy to the lane that ran between the terraced houses in Market Street and those behind.

Peggy was breathless as she ran to keep up with Rose, who had forgotten Peggy had no shoes, and was calling her plan as she ran.

‘We’ll go to the pottery and I’ll call Major Carter from there. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll raise the navy at Sandbanks, and the RAF at Hamworthy – or both. But the major will have more sway with them, you see? And you can make your call there too, whatever that’s about,’ explained Rose as they reached the open quay and she led Peggy around to a back door. Here she felt behind a loose brick where they apparently kept a spare key.

Within minutes, Rose had spoken to the major, who’d instructed them to wait there for his call.

Peggy picked up the receiver and gave the operator the Whitehall number that Fletcher had told her. It rang twice and she began to wonder if anyone would be manning the phone at this hour, when a prim voice answered. Peggy gave the coded message that meant she had found a spy and needed backup. The curt response was simply. ‘Very well, thank you for your call,’ and then the phone went dead, leaving Peggy perplexed.

Peggy went over to the window, looking out across the harbour. The decoy fires on Brownsea Island were lit, but all else was darkness, until she saw a flare go up from the lifeboat house. The night was calm, still no wind, and there couldn’t possibly be any ships in danger.

‘That’s odd, Rose,’ she said. ‘The lifeboat is going out – look, here they come now,’ she said as men ran from the darkness of surrounding streets and into the lifeboat house. Just a few minutes later, the boat was launched and headed out, not to the harbour entrance and out to sea, but to the inner harbour, westwards towards the Wareham River. The time was now nearing four in the morning and Peggy could see the first light of dawn creeping up over the harbour entrance in the east.

The telephone rang and Rose answered it at once, just as Peggy saw one of the small Royal Navy seaplanes taking off from Sandbanks and heading west too. Rose indicated the phone call was for her, and when she answered, she heard the familiar voice of Fletcher.

‘Well done, Peggy,’ he said, after she’d checked Rose was out of earshot and briefly relayed the night’s events. ‘Major Carter has already had the lifeboat launched, and the navy are sending out a search plane. Patricia from the harbour master’s office is being called, and she will meet you at the launch. You’re to go back with her up the river to the site of this Dutch boat,’ Fletcher explained. ‘And have the major’s assistant wait for a phone call from me.’

‘Yes, sir. We’ll catch up to the lifeboat pretty fast – the old Thomas Kirk Wright is not known for her speed, but can handle the shallow water better than our launch. They’ll be able to explore more of the inlets than we can,’ said Peggy, shifting into practical boatwoman mode.

Peggy ran down the front stairs and out the foyer doors, which Rose locked behind her. On the quay, there was still no sign of activity, but as she ran along to the launch, the all-clear sounded. That was something, at least, that they no longer had to worry about.

Patricia met Peggy at the launch, and they were as breathless as each other while Peggy explained where they were going. She untied her dad’s dinghy and tied it up to the quay, hoping it would still be there when they got back and knowing her dad would have her guts for garters if she lost it. They set off at high speed in the launch and were soon on the tail of the lifeboat and shouting instructions as to where exactly to find the Dutch boat.

When the lifeboat pulled alongside the Dutch boat, Peggy held the launch back, expecting at any moment to see them lift the dead body of a man aboard the lifeboat. But they did not. Peggy crept the launch forward and called out to ask what was going on. There was no response except to wait.

The lifeboat crew were searching the boat and some had jumped ashore and were looking around the riverbank.

‘What’s happening?’ called Peggy. ‘The body of the dead man is in the cockpit of that boat!’ she called.

‘No, it’s not, love. There’s blood on the sole ’ere, but no body. Are you sure he was dead?’ asked one of the crew, looking down into the base of the cockpit. Peggy thought back to a short time ago, when she was last here. She had seen a lifeless body. She had turned him over and seen it was Klaus. He had not moved. But had she checked his pulse, or listened for his breath? She couldn’t be sure now.

‘There was another man here as well – and we were all in the water at some stage,’ she said, wanting them to direct their search to Charlie. She knew now that he was innocent, but had some more interrogating of her own to do with him.

The search went on for several hours, with lifeboat men walking up and down the banks, swimming across the river, checking between the reeds. The seaplane swooped overhead again and again, checking the meadows beside the river.

And they found nothing. Not even the body of Klaus. As the sun began to rise on a fresh new day, Peggy’s hopes fell further with each passing moment.