Gus kicked a stone against the wall.
“Well now you know,” he said. “I lied.”
“Is he a Nazi?”
“No.” Gus looked her straight in the eye. “He hates Hitler and everything he stands for. He’s lived in this country for years. He’s an engineer. He builds bridges. He worked for the British Government before the war.”
“You don’t even have a German surname,” said Edie, still trying to make sense of it all. “You’re called Smith. Or was that a lie too?”
“Smith – Schmidt. Same thing.” Gus shrugged. “Papa changed it a few years ago. He sensed trouble was coming and it might be easier not to have such a German-sounding name. Gus is short for Gustaf and Greta is Gretchen… ”
“The ration cards!” said Edie, remembering the first time she had met the children on the train. Gus had tried to rub away their names when Greta spilt the tea. He had thrown their evacuee luggage labels out of the window too. “You did all that on purpose, to disguise who you really were.”
“It wasn’t such a lie,” said Gus. “Not really. Our mother was English. Our grandmother has pictures of the king in every room… We have lived in Britain our whole lives. We really are Gus and Greta Smith.”
Edie glanced sideways. Greta was still crouched in the dark, babbling away to the airman. As weak as he must be, she had managed to make him laugh somehow.
“I didn’t even know she remembered how to speak any German,” whispered Gus. “We never use it with each other any more. As soon as Papa knew the war was coming, he made us speak English instead. He said it was safer. Even at home. Greta was so little then, I thought she must have forgotten it all by now.”
As if to prove the point, she looked up at Gus and asked. “What’s the German word for piglets?”
“I don’t know,” he growled. But Edie was sure he was lying.
“So where is your father now?” she asked. “If he’s not a fighter pilot, I mean.”
“Shh!” Gus put his finger to his lips and led Edie a couple of paces further away. “Greta thinks he really is in the airforce,” he whispered. “Military police came at the crack of dawn and took him away as if he were a criminal. Now he’s been interned in a prisoner-of-war camp. My grandmother thinks I don’t know, but I do. It’s what’s happened to all the Germans who live in Britain. Austrians and Italians too. He’s been locked up just because of where he was born – because he has the wrong passport. He loves this country but nobody even asked him who he would fight for if he had the choice.”
“Oh, Gus, I’m so sorry.” Edie was glad it was dark. She felt her cheeks redden. She couldn’t look him in the eye. She thought of all the times she had complained about not being able to see Fliss. All the while, Gus and Greta’s father had been in prison and Gus had been keeping it all bottled up inside him, pretending his father was away on top-secret missions. No wonder he had seemed so cross and sad sometimes. “You never got any post,” she whispered. “I didn’t even think to ask.”
“I asked Papa not to write to us,” said Gus miserably. “I didn’t want everyone knowing where the letters were coming from. Imagine if Perky had seen a prison-camp postmark.”
“He wouldn’t have told anyone,” said Edie. But she wasn’t sure that was true – and the Snigsons would probably march up to Three Chimneys with their bayonets drawn if they ever found out the Smith children had enemy blood in them.
“Aunt Roberta would never have taken us in the first place if she had known we were German,” said Gus.
“Of course she would!” Edie was certain about that. “Uncle Peter would have told her to.”
“Not with his work for the government,” hissed Gus. “Think of all those secret papers he has. They would have insisted we move on, or made him give up his job instead.”
“Nonsense!” said Edie. “Nobody would seriously think that you and Greta could be spies … ”
“Not until now, perhaps,” said Gus and he looked back towards Greta and the young German.
Edie’s stomach flipped over. He was right. They couldn’t hide it much longer. Soon everyone would know she and Gus had helped an enemy airman escape from the crash. “Why didn’t you say anything?” she gasped. “On that day when we saved the train.” The airman had been shouting at them in German but Gus had shown no sign that he understood. Except… She remembered now… The airman had raced up the bank, waving a stick in the air. She’d thought Gus was going to fight with him, but instead he had joined him making flagpoles. “He told you what to do,” she gasped.
“I wasn’t the one who lied to Len Snigson!” barked Gus. “I wasn’t the one who said we hadn’t seen any enemy airman escape. You were the one who started that… All I did was back you up.”
“Oh, Gus!” She knew it was true. She steadied herself against the wall of the tunnel. Everyone would think it had been his idea to let the German airman get away. They would say Gus was a Nazi traitor. “What have I done?”
Gus shook his head. “What have we done. We’re in this together. I am just as much to blame as you are, no matter what I just said.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. It was kind of him to be so noble – but it made no difference whose fault it was really. They were going to be in terrible trouble. All of them.
“What are we going to do now?” She groaned. “What are we going to do about him?” She pointed towards the airman slumped in the dark.
“You shouldn’t point!” said Greta. “It’s rude. His name is Karl. And he says he
