The Balaclava Brigade

A Stranger in our Midst

“Hey, someone’s coming,” Jimmy whispered as he peered up the road into the deepening gloom.

I listened to the uneven clip clop of the approaching footsteps on the pavement.

 “The way that person’s walking is really funny,” I observed.

Georgie, Jimmy’s his elder brother, bit into a huge wedge of his mum’s homemade cake.

“Who do you reckon it is?” he asked, his mouth full of crumbs.

“I don’t know,” I replied half-heartedly, for I was feeling very hungry, and at that particular moment I was far more interested in Georgie’s piece of cake.

The three of us were sitting on top of a brick wall, facing the main road which ran through the middle of our village. The evening light of a glorious late summer’s day had faded rapidly and dusk had fallen. For some time the darkening village scene had been silent, empty and still, but the air remained warm and gentle upon our faces. I watched longingly as the last morsel of Georgie’s cake disappeared into his mouth, and then I glanced up the road. Coming towards us was a dark, indistinct figure.

As the moving shape drew nearer, it crossed to the other side of the street. I had the impression that it was a tall, slim man wearing a trilby hat and a long, dark overcoat. In his left hand he was carrying a large suitcase. He was stooping forward as he walked, his head bowed, the collar of his coat turned up, and his eyes fixed upon the pavement in front of him. He was scurrying along as if he was in a hurry. But the most noticeable thing about him was his peculiar gait. His head bobbed up and down as he walked, and he had the pronounced limp of someone who had injured a foot or an ankle.

Georgie, Jimmy and I remained absolutely silent, our eyes following that shadowy figure as he hurried by on the other side. After he had disappeared from view we continued to peer into the darkness, listening to his footsteps echoing unevenly as one foot struck the pavement more heavily than the other.

“He’s not from round here,” mumbled Georgie indistinctly, his mouth full of cake.

“Nobody round here wears that kind of hat,” confirmed his brother “All the blokes round Stretton wear flat caps.”

“Yeah, I didn’t recognise that chap at all,” I added.

That person was definitely a complete stranger, for none of us had ever seen him before. The presence of this strange man was unusual because our village was very small and it was wartime. Since the start of the war we had never seen strangers walking around Stretton. Unfortunately we had not been able to have a good look at this person in the darkness, for there were no street lamps alight. It was August 1940, Britain was at war with Germany, and there was a strict black-out across the entire country. At night it was an offence for anyone to shine lights after dark in case German aircrews flying overhead saw them and dropped their bombs, thinking that there was an important target below. Each window in every house and cottage was furnished with thick black-out curtains, so that not even the smallest chink of light was allowed to escape.