LITMIR.BIZ

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go off and fight the Russians,’ said Peter.

      ‘I wouldn’t like that so much,’ said Paul. ‘It would mean leaving Mama and Papa.’ He loved his parents as only a ten-year-old can. His father was the person he envied, respected and admired more than anyone in the whole world; and Mama was the one he ran to when Papa scolded him.

      ‘There’s more wind now,’ said Peter. The sail was drumming and there were white crests on the waves. ‘Take the helm while I fix the sail.’

      Big storm clouds moved across the hazy sun. It went dark quite suddenly, so that the sky was almost black, with only a shining golden rim on the most distant of the clouds, and a bright shimmer of water along the horizon. ‘Is it a storm?’ said Paul. Two years ago they’d sailed through one of the sudden summer squalls for which this coast was noted. But that was in a bigger boat and with a skilful yachtsman in charge.

      ‘It’s nothing,’ said Peter. But as he said it, bigger waves struck the hull with enough force to make loud thumping noises and toss the small boat from side to side.

      ‘Pull the rudder round,’ said Peter.

      The little blond boy responded manfully, heaving on the tiller to bring the boat head on to the waves. ‘But we’re heading in the wrong direction now. We’re heading out to sea,’ said Paul. The waves were getting bigger and bigger, and when he looked back towards Omi’s house the coast was so far away that it was lost in the haze of rain. Paul was frightened. He watched his brother struggling with the sail. ‘Do you want me to help?’

      ‘Stay at the tiller,’ called Peter loudly. He’d heard the note of fear in his young brother’s voice. He let go a rope for long enough to wave to encourage him. It was then that one of those freak waves that the sea keeps for such moments of carelessness hit the boat. The deck was slippery and Peter’s wet shoes provided no grip upon the varnished woodwork. There was a yell and then Pauli saw the sea swaddle his brother into a dirty-green blanket of water and bundle him away into the fast-moving currents.

      Peter had never been a strong swimmer and hit by half a ton of icy-cold sea water, the breath knocked out of his lungs, he opened his mouth. Instead of the air he needed, he swallowed cold salty water, and felt his stomach retch at the taste of it. Sucked down into the cold water, he somersaulted through a dim green world until he no longer knew which way was up.

      ‘Peter! Peter!’ There was nothing but milky-looking waves and mist, and the boat raced on before the gusting wind. Pauli jumped to his feet to pull the sail down, and before he could move aside the tiller was torn from his hands strongly enough to whack him across the leg, so that he cried out with the pain of it. He couldn’t reef in the sail, he knew he couldn’t: it was something his brother always attended to. ‘Peter! Please, God, help Peter.’

      Some distance away from the boat, Peter came to the surface, spluttering and desperately flailing his arms so that he got no support from the water. Still encumbered in his yellow oilskin jacket, he slid down again into the hateful green, chilly realm from which he’d just fought his way. He closed his mouth only just in time to avoid a second lungful of sea water, and let the water close over him, twisting his arms in a futile attempt to claw his way back to the surface. The green water darkened and went black.

      When Peter saw daylight again, the waves were still high enough to smash across his head. Like leaden pillows, they beat him senseless and scattered a million grey spumy feathers across the heaving sea. He could see no farther than the next wave and hear nothing but the roar of the wind and the crash of water. It seemed like hours since he’d been washed overboard, and – although it was no more than three minutes – he was physically unable to save himself. His small body had already lost heat, till his feet were numb and his fingers stiffening. Besides the temperature drop, his body was bruised and battered by the waves, and his stomach was retching and revolting at the intake of cold salty water.

      There was no sign of the Valhalla, but even had it been close there would have been little chance of Peter’s catching sight of it through the grey-green waves and the white, rainy mist that swirled above them.

      No one ever discovered why little Pauli jumped off the stern of the Valhalla and into the raging water that frightened him so much. Many years later explanations were offered: his wife said it was a desperate wish to destroy himself; a prison psychologist interpreted it as some sort of baptismal desire; and Peter – who heard Pauli talk about it in his sleep – said it was straightforward heroism and in keeping with Pauli’s desire to be a soldier. Pauli himself said it was fear that drove him from the safety of the boat into the water; he felt safer with his brother in the sea than alone on the boat. But that was typical of Pauli, who tried to make a joke out of everything.

      Little Pauli was a strong swimmer and unlike his brother, he was able to divest himself of the oilskin and prepare himself for both the coldness and the strength of the currents into which he plunged. But, like his brother, he was soon disoriented, and couldn’t see past the big waves that washed over him constantly. He swam – or, rather, flailed the heaving ocean top – hoping he was heading back towards the coast. Above him the clouds raced overhead at a speed that made him dizzy.

      The squall kept moving. It passed over them as quickly as it had come, moving out towards Bornholm and Sweden’s southern coast. The racing clouds parted enough to let sunlight flicker across the waves, and then Pauli caught sight of the yellow bundle that was Peter.

      Had Peter been completely conscious, it’s unlikely that the smaller child would have been able to support his brother. All drowning animals panic; they fight and thrash and often kill anything that comes to save them. But Peter was long past that stage. He’d given up trying to survive, and now the cold water had produced in him that drowsiness that is the merciful prelude to exposure and death.

      Peter’s yellow oilskin had kept him afloat. Air was trapped in the back of it, and this had pulled him to the surface when all his will to float had gone. They floated together, Pauli’s arm hooked round his brother’s neck, the pose of an attacker rather than a saviour, and the other arm trying to move them along. The coast was a long way away. Pauli glimpsed it now and again between the waves. There was no chance of swimming that far, even without a comatose brother to support.

      They were floating there for a long time before anything came into sight. It was a boy at the oars of a brightly painted rowboat, trying to get to the Valhalla, who saw first a yellow floppy hat in the water, and then the children, too. The oarsman was little more than a child himself, but he pulled the two children out of the water and into his boat with the easy skill that had come from doing the same thing with his big black mongrel dog, which now sat in the front of the boat, watching the rescue.

      The youth who’d rescued them was a typical village child: hair cut close to the scalp to avoid lice and nits; teeth uneven, broken and missing; strong arms and heavy shoulders, his skin darkened by the outdoors. Only his height and broad chest distinguished him from the other village youths, that and the ability to read well. To what extent it was his height, and to what extent his literacy, that gave him his air of superiority was debated. But there was a strength within him that was apparent to all, a drive that the priest – in a moment of weakness – had once described as ‘demoniacal’.

      The seventeen-year-old Fritz Esser looked at the two half-drowned children huddled together in the bottom of his boat and – despite the pitiful retching of Peter and the shivers that convulsed Pauli’s whole body – decided they were not close to death. He rowed out to where the poor old Valhalla had settled low into the water, its torn sail trailing overboard and its rudder carried away. ‘It will not last long,’ he said, ‘it’s holed.’ Pauli managed to peer over the edge of the rowboat to see what was left of their lovely Valhalla, but Peter was past caring. Esser, aided by the black mongrel, which ran up and down the boat and barked, tried to get the Valhalla in tow, but his line was not long enough, and finally he decided to get the two survivors back to dry land.

      He put them in an old boat shed on the beach. It was a dark, smelly place; the only daylight came through the chinks in its ill-fitting boards. Inside there was space enough for three

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