A Game of Soldiers Read online

  Thomas nodded.

  ‘If you let us down once more,’ Michael finished, ‘you’re for it. Understand?’

  Thomas did. Michael took his shoulder, and shoved it hard. He jumped onto the first hummock, got his balance, and fled. Michael and Sarah watched him running down the moor.

  ‘Right,’ said Michael. ‘Let’s try and move him. Let’s see if we can get Maria shifted.’

  But the soldier was in the middle of a wave of agony. They got him halfway to his feet, the blanket round his shoulders, but they could see it was no good. His face was pale and washed with a freezing sweat. Each time he tried to put weight on his legs he almost passed out. A low, frightening noise came constantly from his throat.

  ‘You’ve got to move, you’ve got to,’ said Sarah. ‘We’ve got to hide you from the men.’

  ‘We’ve got to hide him from bloody Thomas,’ said Michael. ‘Thomas and his great big mouth.’

  The soldier sagged down. They could hardly hold his weight.

  ‘Soldiers come?’ he croaked. ‘Not tell soldiers?’

  ‘Not the soldiers, no,’ said Sarah, urgently. ‘It’s farmers. They’re angry. They have guns. The soldiers are all right. We’ve got to hide you from the men.’

  The soldier, nearly upright, put weight onto his left leg. He made a sharp groaning noise, a swallowed scream. He doubled over.

  ‘No. Hurting. Ah. Hurting.’

  The children, distraught, supported him as he sank downwards. His face was awful.

  ‘Lie back, lie back,’ said Sarah. ‘Oh Michael, he’s in agony.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Michael. He helped the soldier to support himself against the wall, not far from the inner entrance. Together, they spread the blanket loosely over his legs.

  ‘Come on, Maria,’ said Michael. ‘You lie back. You’re not going anywhere. Lie back.’

  Thomas, over the brow of the next low hill, kept looking back, although he knew he could not see the shelter. He wished he could, he missed the sight of it, he was lonely.

  ‘I don’t think it’s fair,’ he said out loud. ‘What am I meant to be here for? Why couldn’t I stay with them? It’s stupid.’

  He was bending for a lump of rock to chuck, just to make himself feel better, when he heard a noise above the wind. A new noise. He stood upright and scanned the horizon.

  As the wind bustled round the moorland the noise grew louder.

  It was an engine.

  Sarah, by the outer wall, was also looking down the moor. She had left the soldier because she could hardly bear to look at him. She was desperately afraid, now. Afraid of what might happen.

  As Michael joined her she said: ‘Michael, we’ve got to call the soldiers in, it’s the only hope. They’ll give him drugs and stuff, he’ll be a prisoner of war, they’ll put him on a stretcher in a helicopter. It’s the only hope.’

  ‘But he’s terrified of them,’ Michael replied. ‘I know it’s stupid, but he’s petrified. It’s propaganda, I suppose. He must believe the British Army are…well, it’s crazy.’

  He paused.

  ‘It is crazy isn’t it?’ he went on. ‘We’re scared of the farmers, and he’s scared of the soldiers. And we’ll both be wrong, I bet. It’s stupid; stupid; stupid. It’s games, Sarah, just games. Like us…like me thinking we could’ve…killed him. You know.’

  Before Sarah could reply, she saw the bobble-hat, and then the face. It was Thomas, bursting over the brow of the hill, running like a maniac. She let out a squeak.

  ‘Oh Michael! It must be the farmers! He’s— Oh no! Listen!’

  As Thomas bounded fully over the top, a helicopter rose into view behind him. The noise, hidden by the hill and the strong wind it was battling against, reached them a second later. From where they were, it looked as if it was almost on top of him, attacking him from behind like an enormous dragonfly. They could see his arms waving, they could see his mouth shouting as the machine passed over him, and thud-thud-thudded on its way towards them.

  ‘The Army,’ Michael said. He said it softly. ‘Thank God for that. They’ve got here first.’

  Sarah and Michael turned to each other, with smiles splitting their faces. Smiles of huge relief.

  From inside the shelter, the voice of the soldier came to them. It was hoarse with fear.

  ‘Soldiers? Not tell soldiers! They kill! They kill!’

  Sarah ran to the doorway. She hardly noticed that the soldier was on his knees, holding his rifle like a crutch, trying to stand. She shouted joyfully, above the growing noise of the helicopter: ‘No! They’ll save you! The British are coming! Good men! Good! They’ll save you.’

  As she rejoined Michael, a stream of men in combat gear appeared at the top of the hill. They spread across the horizon, then followed the helicopter. They ran crouched down, they held rifles at the ready, they had darkened faces. A new fear seized both of them at once. It was a terrifying sight.

  ‘We’d better go and warn them, though,’ said Michael. ‘We’d better just explain.’

  Thomas, racing and careering towards them, was still waving his arms and shouting. Still the helicopter’s beating roar drowned everything. Sarah and Michael suddenly began to run towards him, towards the helicopter, towards the stream of men. As they ran, they saw Thomas fall, and the soldiers pass him.

  Sarah opened her mouth to shout, but the helicopter was overhead. It was as if its sound were battering her, it was appalling. She could see the men close-to now, their faces intent and urgent.

  ‘He’s a boy,’ screamed Michael. ‘He’s harmless! He’s just a boy!’

  The men were bursting past them, an unstoppable tide. Sarah tried to seize one, but was brushed aside. Their eyes were fixed in concentration.

  She screamed into the thunder: ‘He’s badly hurt! A prisoner! He needs your help!’

  Then Michael and Sarah appeared to be alone, cocooned in noise and terror. The helicopter and the men had passed them by.

  And as Thomas reached them, screaming hysterically, they heard the shots.

  A burst, or flurry. The clipped, sharp bark of rifles.

  Then, as they all three watched in utter silence, the helicopter landed.

  Chapter Twelve

  That night there were no sounds of war, but Thomas was the only one who slept. He slept after he had cried himself exhausted, and Red Bear’s fur was soaked. He had a sore bottom and legs from where his father had punished him, and he dreamed his awful dream. It woke him up twice, tense with horror, and each time, he cried himself to sleep again. Thinking of the soldier, and of giving him a drink, and of feeding him little bits of corned beef from the sandwiches.

  In his bed, Michael lay on his back for endless hours, holding his knife on his stomach as a comforter. He felt sick and stunned with the shock of it all, but with little twinges of excitement, despite himself. The men and the helicopter had been terrifying, true – but marvellous, as well. The noise, the urgency, the… Then he would remember Maria, and the shots. Then he would squirm, and twist, and worry.

  What had his father said? It served the devil right. Of course it served him right. He was a soldier, fighting in a war, and he’d got what was coming to him. Michael had tried to explain that it had not been like that, but his father had laughed.

  ‘He was there, so he bought it,’ he said. ‘What did you expect them to do – give him a kiss or something? You know what they say, Mike. All’s fair in love and war.’

  But he was injured, thought Michael. He was ill. He was a prisoner of war. Well – he should have been. What had gone wrong? Surely that was not what should have happened? Surely there were rules?

  Sarah was in her parents’ bed, and for once they told her things. Hard things, nasty things. She had told them everything, and she had asked them why.

  ‘Look, Sarah-love,’ said Dad, when they had heard it all three times at least. ‘There could be lots of ways it happened, and lots of reasons. It could have been an accident, it could have been deliberate, it co
uld have been—’

  ‘How, an accident?’ asked Sarah. ‘He was hurt. He could hardly move. He needed help.’

  ‘He had a rifle,’ her mother said.

  ‘Yes, he used it as a crutch. He was—’

  ‘Listen, darling,’ interrupted Dad, ‘you’ve got to listen. Calmly. We can only tell you what might have happened. You’ll have to make your own mind up in the end, you know. But there are possibilities. Do you want to hear?’

  Sarah wanted to hear. She wanted to talk. She wanted to be with them, awake, whatever happened. Her father pointed out that the soldiers could have been afraid, or jumpy, or confused – and that they could have been shot at first.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Did you see the shooting?’

  ‘Well no, but—’

  ‘But nothing, Sarah. Those are just the things that might have happened. Those men might have gone up to the doorway, and he might have been sitting there, even in the state you say he was in, and he might have shot at them. It might have been panic. Or…’

  Sarah turned this over and over in her mind. The soldier shoot at them?

  As if reading her thoughts, her mother said: ‘That’s what he was there for, after all.’

  ‘But do you believe it?’ Sarah asked.

  Her father’s laugh rumbled in the darkened bedroom.

  ‘You were there, my love,’ he said. ‘We weren’t. Practically anything can happen in war, I do believe that. As for the rest. Well…you were there.’

  Sarah buried her face in her mother’s nightie then, to try to blot out images. She knew what she believed.

  Up on the freezing moor, pressed into the mud of the shelter floor by a soldier’s boot, the cassette-player lay silently.

  There was a scrap of scarf not far from it, fluttering in the wind, and three slices of bread and butter. In the ashes of the fire lay the remains of the kettle, melted and black.

  But the soldier’s remains were gone.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve