Free Katie's War by Aubrey Flegg Page B

waves as they raced in towards the shore. All she could see was the light reflected on their surfaces, then her eyes were drawn through the glitter to the honey-brown water-world below.
    â€˜It began when I went to meet Father at the station,’ she said.

CHAPTER 8
Matches!
    Secrets, Megan, are terrible things. Your twin brother is growing up fast. But why did she tell me? Why me? She has this game, see. Pretends I don’t speak English – shuts me up, I suppose. At any rate, there she stood, her ragged skirt blowing and the waves of the Shannon dashing against her feet, and she told me everything. All the years she has nursed her father, silenced by the fear that he was mad, convinced he was a coward fleeing from some dreadful shame …
    * * *
    â€˜F ather does not wantmeany more now,’ said Katie as she finished her story. She gazed at the clouded sky while little waves dashed against the sloping stones at the edge of the lake. ‘I gave him everything, Dafydd! I gave him my childhood, thinking he was sick, afraid he was mad. It didn’t seem to matter that he was a coward or ashamed while he was sick. Now your Dad says it’sjust shell-shock and you, who never met him in your life before, can cure him with a word. “Angry” is all you said, and he was better . I don’t know where I am, Dafydd. Is he sick, is he a coward, is he mad, or can’t he face up to things because he ran away? Talk to me, Dafydd. Our game is over; I want to know.’
    Out on the lake wind whipped at the water in front of an advancing storm. Katie took off her shoes and dipped her feet into the cool water. She thought of Barney and hoped there would be no thunder. Perhaps Dafydd had nothing to say. She looked down at him. He was folded up now, compact, legs crossed, looking out over the lake. She was surprised and a little frightened at the energy that seemed to be locked up inside him. ‘Answer me, Dafydd!’ she demanded.
    â€˜There is a story told among the Welsh miners who came back from the war of an Irishman who forgot his matches,’ Dafydd began.
    â€˜What? … Oh go on.’
    â€˜The Welsh were the miners in the war, see. The idea was to dig tunnels under the ground – secretly, like – until the tunnel was right under the German trenches. You dug out a room there and filled it with explosives. Then, just before a big attack you would set it off. Kill a lot of Germans, but chiefly it made a gap for the soldiers to get through.’
    Katie shivered.
    â€˜Yes, it was horrible, but the Germans were doing it too. Dad talks of listening to them chattering away in their tunnel as they dug past in the opposite direction. Question of who got to the end first.’
    â€˜What happened if they met in the middle?’
    â€˜They bashed at each other with picks and shovels, hand to hand. Not nice. There was no-one in your Dad’s tunnel when he found it though.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ asked Katie.
    Dafydd looked up at her. ‘He really told you nothing about all this?’
    Katie stepped back out of the water and sat down, dropping her head on her knees. ‘Just tell me!’ she mumbled.
    â€˜One night an Irish sergeant was out on patrol in no-man’s land when he and his men took shelter in a deep shell-hole quite close to a German machine-gun position. The soldiers hated that machine-gun but this was as close as they had ever managed to get to it. It had been raining and most of the shell holes had water in them, but this one was dry. Why was that? Where had the water gone to? the sergeant wondered. He crawled down, and there, to his surprise, was a hole; he wriggled into it. The shell had broken into a tunnel. It must have been one that the Germans had been digging towards the Irish trenches, but it was quite old. They must have abandoned it when the shell burst into it.
    The sergeant could hardly believe his luck. In one direction it led