Page 49 of The Island Girls

‘Charlie! Charlie, where are you?’ she cried, peering over the edge of the boat into the water and reeds below, where small splashing sounds still mingled with grunts.

‘Charlie? Is that you?’ She moved to the other end of the boat, trying to see the men in the water, and as she moved, she kicked something hard and solid on the floor. She bent down to feel for it. The pistol. She must have dropped it after she pulled the trigger. She knew it had held six bullets to begin with, and so she held it carefully, sticky with blood as it was, in her shaking hand, and called for Charlie again.

‘Charlie? Where are you?’ she called desperately and leant over the side of the boat. A hand reached up and she caught it, pulling with all her strength, hoping against hope this was Charlie’s arm and she could pull him out of the water. But the arm was stronger than her, or the pull was heavier than she’d expected, and she slipped and fell.

As Peggy fell into the water, being pulled by her left arm, the gun in her right hand went off, and then she was under the water, tumbling into the inky black night of the river.

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, thegunshot, 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 twoboats 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.

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