Page 11 of The Dark of the Moon
‘Well, it’s only just about a mile along the road. If you can walk two miles on your false leg, then I think you can do it, there and back. If we walk at three miles per hour, we can go there and back in about an hour and a half, allowing a little bit of time to look at gravestones. I think Mum and Dad will take at least that long.’
‘I suppose it will give us even more fresh air,’ she said. Her red-lipsticked lips curved upwards in a nice smile. ‘But we should leave a note for your parents.’
I went to get a piece of paper and a pen from Mum’s study. Once I’d laminated it, we left the note in the middle of the kitchen table, so they’d be sure to see it when they got back with the shopping.I took some extra sheets of paper and a pencil so I could do some more rubbings in the cemetery. She went to get her walking stick and then we set off up the lane between the vines, passing the field with the beehives and the donkeys. The whole island is very flat, and the track is sandy but firm, so it wasn’t hard for Philly to walk. I made sure I matched my steps to hers so I stayed beside her all the way. She asked lots of questions about the vines and the village of Le Bois-Plage-en-Ré. I told her it’s where there’s a big market, with stalls outside and an indoor marketplace too, as well as a long sandy beach, so it’s quite a popular place.
We walked in single file when we got into the village. Some of the streets are very narrow in places and sometimes there’s dog poo to be avoided as well. She kept pointing things out like the hollyhocks that grew outside the houses, and the church tower, and there was more traffic and more people around in the streets and that all got a bit tiring, so I put my ear defenders on. I made sure we didn’t go through the market because it’s way too hectic and noisy and usually full of tourists who crowd your personal space and are too busy buying jars of salt and bars of lavender soap and sun hats to notice if they’re going to stand on your toes or bump into you. Then finally we got to the cemetery, and I lifted the latch on the green wooden gate, and we went in.
I like the cemetery. It’s surrounded by high stone walls and has 2 tall yew trees standing like sentries on either side of the gate. There was no one else in it apart from the usual Old Man who was raking the gravel between the graves. Some of the graves are very ancient and they have daisies growing out of cracks in the stones. Others are bigger family tombs called mausoleums, with several names on them, that look like mini churches or little houses. They’re quite fancy and they often have flowers placed on them. The flowers are mostly plastic ones but there were a few real ones too, which were mostly dead.
Philly walked slowly along the path, peering at the gravestones. She seemed to be searching for something. ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’ I asked, being polite. But I really was interested to know what it was she wanted to find in the cemetery because she had seemed pretty keen to visit it. I still wondered whether it might be her missing leg, even though she’d just laughed when I made my joke about it on the day she arrived.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There are war graves here, did you know that? I want to see them.’
I did know, because of course I’d been there before. When Mum and Dad go to the market to do some shopping, I usually ask if I can wait in the cemetery where it’s quiet and I can do some rubbings. Sometimes they make me come to the market with them because it’s good for me to learn Life Skills and they think it’s a bit macabre for me to be hanging out in the cemetery. But it’s usually peaceful and sunny inside the walls and the Old Man is often there so he can keep an eye on me if there’s any trouble. Mum and Dad recognised him the first time we came in here, so they knew he wasn’t a Stranger. He lives in the smallholding we passed on the way up the lane from the house, where he keeps his bees and the three ancient donkeys, which graze beneath a big walnut tree. He doesn’t talk to me when I go into the cemetery, he just keeps raking the gravel and tidying up the dead flowers on the graves.
‘Some of the war graves are over there,’ I said, pointing to the far corner beside the wall. ‘There’s a propeller from an aeroplane too, which you will probably find very interesting.’
She seemed to perk up a lot when I said that, and she marched down the path pretty speedily for someone with a false leg.
There are 9 war graves in this section. Some have names on them but some of them are for unknown servicemen. Philly was very interested in one that said:
An Airman
Of the
1939 – 1945War
17Th June1940
Known Unto God
It stands in between 2 others, which are for ASailorand ASoldierof the war. Interestingly, they all have the same date on them. This is because they were all on a ship called the RMSLancastria, which was being used to evacuate servicemen and also civilians after the big evacuation from Dunkirk. I looked it up online. It was moored near Saint-Nazaire and had more than 5,000 people on it waiting to be taken back to Britain. It was bombed by a German plane and sunk, and it is believed that over 4,000 people were lost. It’s the United Kingdom’s biggest ever maritime tragedy and it was the single biggest loss of British military personnel during the Second World War. Not many people know that. Bodies washed up on the beaches all along this coast. Some of them washed up on the island and those are the ones that are buried here.
Philly spent a few minutes looking at the gravestone forAn Airmanand came back to it after she’d wandered around to look at the names on the other war graves.
‘Are you looking forsomeonein particular?’ I asked, repeating my earlier question but changing it a bit because I felt we were getting a bit closer to whatever it was she was searching for. I was taking a rubbing of T/4186951SerjeantD MJoneswho was a soldier in the Royal Army Service Corps.
‘I am,’ she said. ‘But this can’t be him. The date’s wrong.’ I told her about the sinking of theLancastriaand she nodded.
‘The propeller is pretty cool, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘It is indeed. Looks like it could have been from a downed Spitfire or Hurricane. I suppose it must have washed up on one of the beaches here too.’
‘There’s another airman buried over there,’ I said, pointing to another section of the war graves. ‘He was from New Zealand. The date’s the sixteenth of October 1942. I don’t suppose that helps?’
She shook her head. ‘I saw that. But no, not the right details.’
‘Maybe we can visit some other cemeteries on the island to see if the person you’re looking for is there instead?’ I said. I quite liked the idea of it being a puzzle that we needed to solve.
She didn’t answer. She just stood there looking at the gravestones and her mouth was turning downwards so I think she must have been feeling a bit sad and tired. Then she looked at her watch and said, ‘Heavens alive, we’ve been here ages. We must be getting back, or your parents will think I’ve abducted you.’ So we walked back to the gate. The Old Man raised his head to look at us as we passed by and he nodded at me, so I think he recognised me, but he didn’t say anything, he just went back to his raking again.
It was hot and Philly was limping quite a lot by the time we got back to the house. Mum and Dad were trying to be polite, but I could tell they were a bit annoyed that we hadn’t been there when they’d got back. Lunch was already on the table.
Afterwards, we all went to our rooms for a Post-Prandial Pause, and I laminatedSerjeantD MJonesand put him in my scrapbook. I lay on my bed and did another Sudoku. This time it was a Fiendish one. I liked the calm, happy feeling I got when I finished it.
Philly
We were all silent on the bus ride to our new workplace at Bletchley Park on that first morning. At the time, I put it down to the early morning start on the part of those who were old hands and to nerves for us new arrivals.
