Panic

~7~

My hands gripped at the metal railing and my knuckles faded to a pale shade. All around the ship waters tossed and churned, driving the small rowing boats over-filled with soldiers, rising and falling, their noses dipping and scooping up the salty water. I used my thumb to wipe away the teardrops forming from my eyes and tried my best to keep the shaky breath exhaled from my lips silent.

Behind me, Tommy lay against a heavy steel door, the shine on it reflecting an orange glow from fires on the shoreline back onto his relaxed face. No battle-brave façade showed on his face, and for a minute I could almost believe we could both be young adults falling in love.

That couldn't be what this is though; earth and flames had buried my brain, while water and air had suffocated my heart, and this was my subconscious way of dealing with the trauma. As soon as I got to Britain I would just be the helpless little French girl with a broken heart, and Tommy had just played along to stop me from turning against him. He probably had a girl friend, some village beauty everyone chased, some handsome friends who were already heroes of the war, a loving family celebrating his well being, and I would be cowering under a building from the rain, haunted by ghosts of the past.

My grip tightened around the railing harder and harder, until I lost any sense of feeling in my fingers. I suddenly pushed myself back from the railings and let out an angered scream that was picked up in the wind and rain and flung across the ocean. I looked over to the beach, and then beyond it. The flickering of red flames, the gaps where there should have been buildings. The rubble that should have been streets.

Dunkerque. The comfort of the name and the place was just a distant memory, like the overwhelming joy of Christmas you had felt as a child that now just lifted your spirits slightly from the gloom of winter. The rain you had once danced in now just made everything darker and colder. The planes which had fascinated me and made my breath catch in my throat and sent a glimmer through my eyes, had been trying to kill me. No Spitfires out here, no family to comfort me. No victorious escape. The soldiers had something to get back to, something to look forward to, but I was just leaving every remaining memory behind to curl into the flames.

Something made me raise my hand up towards the collar of my jacket, somehow still on my back throughout all the struggle. I slipped the buttons through their holes, until the wind whipped the two sides apart and caused my blouse to flutter in the backlash. Instantly I was soaked, the cold squeezing at my lungs, demanding I pulled the coat back around me. Reaching my fingers inside a pocket, I felt the sudden smooth flimsiness of paper. Clasping my hand around it, I pulled out a photograph.

It was recent, non of the ink had any sign of decolourisation and the paper was barely tattered. I was stood in the water, trousers rolled up to my knees in a ridiculous fashion statement. Next to me was my brother, his arm wrapped around my shoulders and a smile on his face as he gazed at me with unconditional love. No matter what I had done, how I had hurt him with words or disappointed him with actions, my brother had never stopped loving me. This was from last autumn, when the news of the war had only just arrived. Our family had gone down to the beaches to enjoy one of the last warm days still lingering from summer.

On the other side of the paper was another picture, this one a while older, even if the development was new. My mother stood in an incredibly pretty frock which draped around her ankles, and stood next to her was my dad, extremely smart in his air force uniform. The smiles and love evident in each others eyes brought a slight smile to my face, and I felt my whole chest warm. A slight lump formed itself in the back of my throat and I touched a thumb to my mother's cheek. I had watched her burn, heard her words echo in my mind.