Webb nodded. “I remember them, each and every one.”
“Word went round like wildfire, and it was as if we’d lost them all at once. Small village like this, and we’d lost nigh on all our boys.”
Yeoman cleared his throat. Then George Chambers, whom Maisie had visited, looked directly at Webb, raising his hand to speak.
“All I’ve got to say is, that it got us all here, right here.” He thumped his chest. “It felt like we had one big heart that was breaking, here in the village, and we didn’t know what to do. How to get rid of the . . . the pain.”
Maisie looked at Webb, at his fingers, curled and frozen as he clutched his glass, which she feared might break.
Whyte took up the story. “Then, that night, we’d all been in here. You know, Pim—Webb—you know how it was, how we’d always come here, to talk of village matters, sort things out. Well, we were here, talking of the boys, wondering how we would all get through it. And that young Sandermere was in.”
“I refused to serve him, not only on account of his age, but by the smell of him he’d already been at his father’s brandy,” said Yeoman.
Whyte continued. “It’s not as if anyone would ever listen to him, as a rule. Not as if he was respected, like his brother, Henry, and his father before him.” He shook his head and brushed his hand across his forehead. “But he was going on about the Hun this, and Fritz that, and we all sort of joined in. It was somewhere to put the—you know—the hate.” He looked around the room, his discomfort at such candor causing him to shrink back against the wall.
Yeoman spoke again. “We was all talking, about the boys, about the war and the Germans, when we heard that drone. It was strange, a sort of muffled whirring. Bill over there said, ’Can you hear that?’ Then Sandermere stumbled outside and looked up and came running back. ’It’s a Zeppelin!’ he shouted. Someone said, ’Don’t be bloody silly, boy, you’re one over the top. What would a Zeppelin want here?’ The Hun had taken enough of our boys over there.”
“Then we heard it,” said another man, who also took off his cap as he spoke, looking with intent at Webb, as if willing him to understand.
“The explosion,” added Yeoman. “Down at the smithy.” He coughed and held his chest. “We all rushed out, and the fire was already well out of control, but someone started running to the telephone kiosk in the next village, to call out the fire brigade.”
Whyte took up the story. “We had to do something, so we all ran down to the smithy to do what we did today, to put out the fire, which was in the barn next door.” He looked at Webb. “Your people were at the bakery, son. Your father never came down to the inn as a rule, on account of being up early to start the ovens.”
Webb swallowed deeply, his eyes watery yet his gaze unflinching. He said nothing, but looked around the room to see who might take up the story. Maisie turned to Yeoman, who spoke again.
“We thought the smith was dead. Couple of people had gone to his house, but there was no answer, so we thought he’d been in the barn—always pottering at night, the smith.” He paused, then reached behind the bar for a brandy bottle and a tot glass. He filled the glass, downed the amber liquid in one gulp, and poured a second time. “Then that Sandermere boy started again, yelling about vengeance, about revenge. Then he says, for us all to hear—” He turned to Webb. “I’m sorry, lad, I am so sorry—are you sure you want to hear this?”
Webb nodded and reached for the brandy bottle, pouring a measure into his empty beer glass. “Go on, Mr. Yeoman. I’m listening.”
“Sandermere said, ’Them von Martins called the Zeppelin to kill us all.’ He kept screaming and yelling that you were really Germans, that you weren’t Dutch at all, and that you’d avoided being sent to an internment camp because your father had lied. He said your sister Anna had told him that your name was really von Martin, not van Maarten, and you were spies.” He choked back tears, and the villagers clustered closer together. “And we had no doubt, because our boys were dead, and our village had been bombed, that he was telling the truth. He just kept screaming to go and get them, that they must pay with their lives. It—it’s hard to tell it now, but it was as if we’d been struck by madness. We weren’t ordinary people anymore, we were one big monster, an animal out of control going after the enemy, who had to pay. And we let a drunken boy lead us, with his filthy ideas and his taunting, until we believed we had to make the enemy suffer, for our sons and for our village.”
Webb did not look up but asked, in an almost whisper, “And what did you do?”
“We had fire in our hands, and we had fire in our hearts, and we ran, a mob holding pieces of burning wood from the barn, nothing but a rabble with Sandermere at the head, moving toward the bakery. And the terrible thing is, your parents were running down the street, to see if they could help.” He choked back tears and put his head in his hands.
Whyte took up the story again. “Then they saw us coming, with Sandermere shouting, ’There they are, Fritz and his wife!’ And Jacob put his arm around Bettin and ran back to the bakery. She was screaming for Anna, to go indoors—the girl was just coming out to see what she could do—and they all hurried inside.” He stopped to take a breath, rubbing his chest as if winded by his memories. “I don’t know where the paraffin came from, but soon the bakery was burning, and we bayed like animals, for the blood of the German family we’d been told lived inside.”
Mrs. Pendle stepped forward, her voice low, as she spoke. “We were the devil himself that night. It was as if all the terrible things you ever thought in your life had made lunatics of us, and we could not stop. We are murderers, each and every one of us, because we killed an innocent family. It doesn’t matter where they came from, they were innocent. And we are ashamed. We are so ashamed.”
Fred Yeoman spoke again. “I don’t know when we came to our senses. The house had almost burned by the time the fire brigade came, and the men who were sent by the authorities had no questions for us. And the smith had been out on the railway lines, picking up coal for his fires, so he wasn’t dead after all.” He moved to place his hand on Webb’s shoulder, then drew back. “The next day, we all saw the truth of what we’d done. It’s been like a sickness ever since. A few have moved away, but it’s hard to do with a village like this. You know your own, and you know where you belong. We’ll never get over it, never. We’ll bear that cross, all of us, forever, and there’s not one of us that goes to bed at night and doesn’t hear the screams.”
“Then, the next day, we found out you were presumed dead,” said Whyte. “And the lie went on, a whole family killed by the war. Soon we all began to believe the tale, though we never forgot that lunacy, that insanity that laid claim to every single one of us.” He looked around the room, as if to dare a contradiction. “Then the fires began, each year, about the same time as the anniversary of the Zeppelin raid. And we believed we were being haunted, that the spirit of Pim Martin had come home to drive us into our graves, had come for his due. So we didn’t report the fires, because we knew we had it coming to us. We deserved to die, if it came to that.”
Silence enveloped the room. No one stirred, no one coughed or shuffled their feet. Only the fire crackled in the grate, the odd spark spitting out onto the hearth as the logs smoldered.
Yeoman was the first to move, pulling down tot glasses and filling them with brandy. He began speaking as he poured. “And the thing is, I never did find out—I don’t think anyone did—why Sandermere went off like that. He’d been seen with Anna, was sweet on her, so why would he do such a thing? I never knew whether it was a mania or the drink that made him accuse like he did, that made him lie and cause death into the bargain.” He set the bottle down and looked at Maisie, as if for help. “And he’s had us by the throat since it happened, reminding us that we were all in it together and if one talked, we’d all be branded killers.”