Written by Ailsa Fraser
Author’s Note: Over the summer, I visited relatives in North Devon and took a boat trip up the coastline. The story that Sheracombe Waterfall was used for water and washing by German submarine crews operating in the Bristol Channel to sink industrial ships is a true one, confirmed by multiple sources. But unconfirmed aspects of the story suggest that they would creep along the cliffs in the night to Combe Martin to steal from the gardens there, where wartime residents would be growing a lot of their own food. Some residents formed a truce with them: if a house had a green bottle in the window, the Germans were welcome to take some food, but not all of it, so the theft did not leave families starving. There is no indication whether this is true or not, and indeed my uncle doubted it could be, as the path from Combe Martin to the waterfall is difficult even in daylight. But it struck a chord with me and this story was born.
Robbie couldn’t sleep. The moonlight was bright, the sky cloudless. It had been hot recently, even though September was well underway, and the window cracked open. Sounds of the night chattered in his ear.
Sometimes he heard the bombers flying toward Bristol. A few years ago, they’d been every night. News of devastation had trickled out, along with trainloads of kids bound for the countryside. Robbie’s school had been packed with strangers. He’d complained about it to Dad when he came home from the war, but he had just said that Robbie had to do his patriotic duty too and put up with them, then he had gone right back to the air force within the week. It was the Germans he had to blame, Dad said. Those animals were the ones responsible.
They would win soon, he said. But they didn’t. That was years ago, and even the Bristol kids had grown boring. The bombers never came to North Devon. There was nothing to bomb.
Robbie lay in bed and worried about his carrots.
Everyone was growing their own vegetables, now. School had a competition to see who could grow the biggest. Robbie knew his potatoes were rotten, and his turnips had been eaten young and hard when they were out of rations. But his carrots, he was proud of. His carrots were going to win.
There was no way he’d let a Bristol kid beat him.
The competition was tomorrow afternoon. This morning, he and Mum had washed the carrots and laid them to dry on the kitchen table. One of them was the size of his forearm. That would be big enough, surely? He wouldn’t know until tomorrow.
Outside the window, he heard something crunch.
He sat up and listened hard. Nothing but the wind in the trees, the groaning of the old farmhouse, and the snuffling snores of Arthur sleeping in his crib against the other wall. Animals ate carrots, didn’t they? What if a rabbit or a fox got into the kitchen and stole them? It wouldn’t matter how big they were then.
Robbie crawled up onto his knees and lifted himself up to peer out of the window. The small bedroom he shared with his brother overlooked the back garden, where his little gardening plot huddled against the house. But he saw nothing. It was pitch dark.
This was what he needed those carrots for. That was why he’d begged Mum to dig up the turnips to eat unripe instead of his champion carrots. Carrots helped you see in the dark.
He didn’t hear anything else, but by now his heart was working like an engine. He padded downstairs and into the darkened kitchen, then waited for his eyes to adjust.
The brightest spot was the window in the moonlight, and the green bottle Mum used to hold poppies sitting on the windowsill. The sink was a white ghost beneath it. Then the old wood of the floor, the doors, then the old paintings and drawings on the walls… When Robbie squinted at the table, his heart skipped a beat.
Half of his carrots were gone.
Robbie’s breathing grew heavy. He stared at the table, and his eyes welled with tears, turning the dark, fuzzy room even darker and fuzzier. Just to be sure, he felt with his hands, counting. There were thirteen carrots on the table.
He’d dug up twenty-five.
The tears rolled down his cheek. He choked his sobs—even from here, he could wake up Arthur if he was too loud. And it was a pain to get him back to sleep again. Mum called him their personal air raid siren. He’d screeched when Dad had last visited, and when Dad had given Mum a look and she’d ignored him, Arthur had only cried harder.
So, Robbie held his breath to keep from sobbing and stared down at the tiny stubby carrots those animals had left him with. How had they even got in here? The kitchen door swung open, sure, but they’d never had foxes creeping in before! And they would’ve taken all the carrots, not just the biggest ones…
A flash of movement. Robbie looked up. In the window, silhouetted against the moon, was a man.
As Robbie watched, the man brought his arm up to his mouth and, with a deafening relish, bit into a carrot.
The crunch cut right through him. Robbie couldn’t help it: he gasped. The man whipped around; his cap shifted on his head. From this angle, his face was distorted by the green bottle, so all Robbie saw was a bulging eye bulge even more at the sight of him. Then he ran.
Robbie sprinted after him.
The kitchen door slammed shut behind him. The grass drenched his slippers in dew. But the thief was racing toward the back wall and vaulting it like he’d done it a thousand times before, which was worse for him because Robbie had done it a thousand times before, and he followed right after him.
He landed, crouching, in a cow pat.
Their house was on the edge of Combe Martin. Long fields stretched ahead. A handful of cows turned to look at him, but most didn’t. They’d ignored the thief as well. Odd. They didn’t like strangers.
But Robbie could still see him in the distance. He’d slowed to a walk now, thinking he’d lost him. His night vision clearly wasn’t as good.
Robbie had been training for this. When the bombers flew overhead, he’d eaten as many carrots as he could and took to sitting on the cliff by Sheracombe Waterfall to look out to sea in the dark. Mum hated it so much he stopped, but he’d watched for those bombers every night. He could hear them, but you needed to see them to shoot them. John Cunningham, ace RAF pilot, could do it. He’d shot down so many German planes because of his carrot eyes—Robbie had read about him in the papers. When Robbie became a pilot like Dad, he’d need to see in the dark as well.
He followed the thief at a distance. Through the cow fields and over toward the cliffs. In fact, Robbie realised, the thief was walking back toward Sheracombe Waterfall.
It wasn’t an easy walk even in daylight. Mum hated it. But Robbie had done it before, and apparently so had the thief. He took it in long strides and didn’t hesitate. The sea crashed far below them; they weren’t too far from the edge. Robbie hesitated—then he kept following.
When he crested the top of the cliff, the first thing he heard was laughter.
It broke like a wave on the silence. Robbie scrambled closer to the waterfall, doing his best to stay low in the heather. There was no cover here. A gang of naked men were chatting under the fall of water. A strange-looking boat had run aground on the beach. The language they spoke sounded guttural but friendly; it took a moment for Robbie to remember the lessons Mum used to give him and realise it was German.
Before he could so much as flinch in realisation, a hand clamped around his mouth and dragged him back.
Robbie bit down hard. The man holding him said some German words that sounded harsh and threw Robbie down on the heather, hard enough it hurt. Robbie tried to scramble to his feet, but then the German spoke, his voice quiet and accented.
“I have a gun. Do not move.”
Robbie squinted. “I can’t see it.”
The German scoffed and moved closer, until Robbie could see both his gun and his pale face. It was the thief, of course.
Robbie was angrier than he was scared. “You stole my carrots!”
But the German was staring. “Emma?”
“What?”
“No. Robert,” he corrected, peering. He looked older than Robbie had thought. His blond hair seemed silver in this light, and there were so many lines in his face. He looked the same age as Mum. “What are you doing here?”
“You stole my carrots!” Robbie said again. And—“Why do you know my mum’s name?”
“You look like her.” Then another German swear. “Your carrots?”
Robbie looked like both his parents. They all had brown hair and eyes, except Arthur, whose were blond and blue. But he ignored that bit. “I need them to win the competition. Give them back.” He narrowed his eyes. “I bet you’ve eaten them already.”
To his surprise, the German lowered his gun. He reached into a knapsack he had at his side and rummaged for a moment, then pulled out a fistful of carrots. They both inspected them—Robbie with disdain, the German with something like panic.
“Your competition isn’t until next week, I thought,” he said.
“It’s tomorrow.”
“I have eaten some of them,” the German admitted. “But I saved the bigger ones for the others. You can … you can still win.” He held them out.
Robbie took one with suspicion. It did seem to be the biggest one.
He accepted and counted them all. Six in total.
“We need to eat.” It was a terrible apology. “There is no food in a tin can underwater.”
Robbie frowned. “You’re a submariner?”
“I—”
“You are! You’re from a U-boat!” Realisation dawned. “You attack the boats coming out of Bristol! You’re gonna make us lose the war—”
The German stepped back. “Take your carrots and go home, Robert,” he said.
“How do you know my name?”
“You will need your rest if you are going to win.”
“You’re not answering any of my questions.”
“How is Artus?” the German asked. He sounded desperate.
“What?”
“Your brother.”
“Arthur?” Robbie wanted to ask again, but he knew he wouldn’t get an answer. “Fine. Cries a lot.”
It was too dark to see his reaction to that information.
“Go home,” the German said. “You are wet and cold.” Before Robbie could object, he turned and walked away, back toward the waterfall.
Robbie stayed for a little longer, watching them. Should he turn them in? Should he report them? They were the enemy. They were trying to stop Britain from winning the war.
The German kept glancing up in his direction even as he rejoined his crew, but he couldn’t see him. No more answers presented themselves, so eventually, Robbie turned around and went home, clutching his carrots in his hand.
When he got back to the farmhouse, all the candles were lit. Mum was standing in the kitchen doorway with Arthur wailing at her chest. The light streamed out around her. When she saw Robbie approaching, tired, muddy, and sore, she swore.
“Robbie!” She seized him and pressed him against her. Arthur still screamed, right in his ear. “Where were you? I saw two sets of footprints and I thought…”
He glanced around the garden. She was right. You could see the large boots of a man running, and a boy’s smaller slippers.
“What were you doing?”
Robbie hesitated. “An animal tried to steal my carrots. I went to get them back.”
“An animal?”
Mum looked at the footprints. Then she looked back at Robbie.
Something in her expression shifted. He thought he saw tears in her eyes.
“An animal stole them,” she agreed. “But you got the biggest ones back?”
“I want to win.”
“You will.”
“We’ll win.”
He didn’t mean the carrots.
Mum smiled. “You did most of the work, Robbie.”
But Robbie was looking at Arthur, who’d calmed down and was watching him out of big blue eyes. His hair, fine and sparse, was the palest blond Robbie had ever seen.
Robbie looked back at Mum, who was watching him with a frown. He considered telling her what had happened. He considered going around tomorrow morning telling everyone about the Germans on their doorstep.
Instead, they went back inside. Mum put Arthur to sleep then helped him clean off the retrieved carrots again. As she did, she took the green bottle of poppies down from the windowsill.
“You’ll win,” she assured him again. “You’ve worked so hard.”
But Robbie wasn’t sure what winning meant, anymore.
Image credit: “Combe Martin” by TrotterFechan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Retrospect Journal 