Finn
After I bit the policeman and they arrested Philly for hitting the other one with her walking stick to stop him from grabbing me too, they kept us at the police station until late in the afternoon, when Dad came to get us.
Luckily, one of the policemen at the station spoke pretty good English, but it had still taken quite a lot of explaining, with the help of a French – English dictionary, to work out what was going on, once everyone had calmed down.
Philly was brilliant. She demanded to know what they thought they were doing, arresting people who were simply minding their own business and enjoying the lovely holiday they were having on the island.
‘This boy was spotted loitering close to the gates of the prison,’ the gendarme said. ‘And then he climbed down into the moat. He was behaving in a very suspicious manner. Do you not understand it’s a prohibited area?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Philly retorted. ‘There’s nothing there to say so. Tourists pass right by those gates the whole time. Show me the signs that say it’s prohibited.’
‘But, Madame, it may not exactly be advertised, precisely because of the tourists, but it’s a high-security prison ,’ the man said again, emphasising the word.
‘Surely you can understand, this is not a suitable place for anyone to be hanging around, let alone a child. And he was making notes on a piece of paper. He was picked up on the security cameras and, when asked what he was up to, he couldn’t give a reasonable answer. ’
‘He was just looking at the names carved into the stones,’ Philly said. ‘Show him, Finn.’
I didn’t really want to show them both of the rubbings I’d done because I had a hunch they were going to confiscate them, so I just pulled out from my pocket the one I’d done beside the gate, of Bernard Leblanc VI–IX–1859, and handed it over.
‘You see,’ said Philly. ‘It’s a hobby of his, taking rubbings of the names. He collects them.’
The man looked at the piece of paper and then back at me again and then he put it into a folder on his desk, along with some other notes he’d been taking of things like our full names, our dates of birth and the address of the house. My hunch had been correct, he didn’t give it back.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I believe your story. But you must understand, a couple of inmates managed to escape two years ago – we can’t risk that happening again, not with such high-risk prisoners in a residential area.
That aside, there is also the matter of the biting of one of my colleagues.
And your assault on another of them as well, Madame. ’
‘What do you mean, my assault! I merely reached out with my walking stick to try to prevent my young and terrified companion here from defending himself a second time when provoked in an entirely unjustifiable manner. I can’t help it if your colleague got in the way when I was simply trying to protect him for his own good. ’
There was quite a long pause then while the gendarme looked up some of the words Philly had used in the dictionary. Then he made some more notes, and he raised his eyebrows and scratched his head a lot while he was writing them.
All of this had taken quite a lot of time.
Then the policeman asked for Dad’s mobile number so they could call him to verify our story and take us home.
But the phone was probably out of reach of any reception, and we explained he was on a boat, sailing to Fort Boyard, and that made the policeman raise his eyebrows and scratch his head again even more for a bit.
‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll have to wait here until he gets back then, so he can vouch for you.’
I wondered if they were going to lock us up in the cells, but Philly said they couldn’t do that to me because I was a Minor. Instead, they let us sit in the office and one of the gendarmes went off and came back with ice creams for us, so they actually turned out to be kind in the end.
Dad was pretty upset when he came into the police station.
Philly and the gendarme had to explain everything all over again, to reassure him that we weren’t going to be prosecuted for a breach of the peace and GBH (which is what it’s called when you bite a policeman).
And then, at last, we were allowed to go home, as long as I promised not to take any more rubbings right beside the gates and never to climb down into the moat again.
I was happy to do that. Because I didn’t need to look there again. I already had what I needed.
When we were safely home and we were sitting on the porch, I took the other piece of paper out of my pocket and showed Philly the name and date I’d found, carved into the stones beside the place where the donkeys were grazing. I hadn’t even had a chance to laminate it yet.
Her eyes went really big, and she wrapped her arms around herself. Then her mouth went all wobbly and she let out a single big sob, and tears rolled down her cheeks as she read the words:
B.C. Delaney
22.8.1944