Mum was out with our little brother, Hugh; our father was working in his study. My sister Beryl, aged ten, and I, aged twelve, were sheltering from drizzle in a basement room opening onto the small garden of our rented house in the German Colony, Jerusalem.
We were making up a play about hidden treasure in secret tunnels, a common theme in our dramatic re-enactments, when we heard a motor vehicle race down our road, screech to a halt outside the front garden gate that opened onto a side street. The gate was the only break in the rolls of barbed wire that isolated our garden from the outside world. We were supposed to keep it locked at all times, but we never did except at night. We ran outside to see an army lieutenant leaping out of a jeep, and Dad running down the steps from our living quarters.
The lieutenant opened the gate and started talking even before Dad stopped running, "We've got this unexploded bomb down the road, Sir. In the King David grounds actually, Sir. Proving a bit tricky. The Major thought you could suss it out, Sir."
"Yes, yes," Dad interrupted "I've just taken the telephone call. I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve briefed my children. Oh, there you are, Peggy, Beryl. I have to go out now, so you will be on your own. You are not to leave the premises until your mother returns, do you hear.”
We nodded; he jumped into the jeep. The driver roared off.
Here was the chance for which I had been waiting. Saying nothing to Beryl, I raced upstairs, removed Dad's largest chisel from his tool set, and ran round to the back of house that faced the main street. Close to the short stretch of iron railings that divided our back garden from the grounds of the adjoining disused tile factory there was a concrete block built against our house wall. On top of the block, there was an iron inspection cover I had been trying to lift off for weeks. Now I used the chisel to lever it, and then pushed against it, but the cover slid too far and crashed onto the path. It would be too heavy for me to lift back, but I would worry about that later. For the present, I hitched up my dress, clambered onto the narrow edge of the concrete block. A rusty, iron ladder led to a patch of translucent, slightly rippling sunlit water, part of the rainwater collected each winter in the cistern below the house.
I was looking for a platform above water level, a hiding place for whenever I felt the need to be alone. There wasn’t one but, right at the back of the cistern, I thought I could make out something even more interesting. I needed a closer look.
I started to climb down the ladder but as I put a foot on the third rung down part of the ladder broke away from the wall. I was so taken by surprise I nearly fell into the water below. I realised reluctantly that to continue the climb down would be going beyond the bounds of common sense so I hauled myself back up the shaking ladder. I was determined though to find out if I had been right about what I thought I had seen. I was sitting on the concrete ledge figuring a way to get down when Beryl came round the corner.
“Why have you stopped playing?” she asked, her face screwed into crossness.
“It’s just possible that I have found a secret tunnel at the back of the cistern,” I explained, “but I need to get my head further down to make sure, and the ladder isn’t safe to step on. You’ll have to hold onto my legs when I tell you.”
I hung my shoulders over the ledge and felt for the top rung of the ladder with outstretched arms.
“Hold on now,” I ordered, and as soon as Beryl had grabbed my ankles, I walked down the rungs on my hands. I let my eyes adjust to the gloom, and there, as I thought, well above water level were cloister like arches in the two furthest walls and I fancied I could just make out a solid wall beyond them. The puzzling thing was the cistern was longer than our house. I worked out that the wall to my right was under the tile factory. I started back
"It’s true," I told Beryl as I sat on the edge of the block recuperating from a painful climb back, “I’ve found a real secret tunnel at the back of the cistern."
Beryl lifted herself to stare over the edge of the block,
“I am not going down there,” she declared
“I know,” I replied “I am not expecting you to. It’s too dangerous. But part of the secret passage is under the tile factory. We can try to get through there."
"We're not allowed to leave the premises."
“The tile factory is on the premises,” I claimed and I pointed to the dividing spear shaped iron bars, “Otherwise there’d be barbed wire covering the railing. We can climb over easily."
"No!" Beryl hunched into her obstinate posture
"You don’t want to explore the secret tunnel filled with treasure?"
“No. It’s trespassing.”
“You can keep half the treasure we find.”
I detected the slightest loosening of her backbone.
“I won’t help you with your homework and you’ll get into trouble at school.”
“All right then,” Beryl yielded “But you’ll have to help me over.”
While I clung to a spike with one hand and lifted Beryl over the fence with the other, the sun broke through the clouds as if approving our actions.
The tile factory next door was built half underground so that its narrow windows, mere slits of dirty glass, looked like miniature French windows from the outside. No door was immediately visible.
“There’s a door at the back,” I said “I can see it from my bedroom window.” so we went round.
Six stone steps descended to a rough wooden door with no keyhole. I turned the makeshift handle but the door refused to open. When I pushed hard against it the bottom yielded slightly but top refused to budge.
By standing on Beryl's back while she leaned against the wall, I squeezed my fingers through a gap between the top of the door and a stone lintel. I found it had been closed with a bolt. I drew it back, and we both tumbled onto the stone slabs of a short lobby. I picked myself up and then Beryl, and we went forward to a narrow, central corridor that dividing two rows of tiny workshops with no doors. Each workshop had a dusty workbench and narrow window. Rusty tools lay scattered on the floor but no proper treasure. At one end of the corridor, we saw a smooth, wooden door. I turned the handle without much hope but to my surprise, it opened easily revealing a dark passage. Beryl didn’t like the dark. She refused to explore any further so I walked through alone. The door banged shut and I could see nothing. I stood still, a strong smell of damp whitewash in my nostrils, daring myself to go on. Then as my eyes adjusted, I became conscious of a faint orange glow ahead. With a hand touching each wall of the passage, I groped my way towards it. Suddenly there was light behind me and Beryl came rushing in shouting, “Don’t leave me by myself. Come back.” The door slammed shut again. Beryl clung to my skirt trying to pull me towards the door, but I walked on. The wall on my right ended and we turned a corner into a passage where eerie amber light wavered through arches set higher than my head and played patterns on a distempered wall opposite.
Beryl screeched, buried her face in my back but I shook her off and stretched up to grip the sill of an arch. I hauled myself up to peer over and looked into the cistern. The light that had frightened us was only sunlight beaming from a hole in the ceiling, bouncing off rippling water.
"Its only our cistern," I told Beryl as I jumped down.
"I don't care. I want to go back"
“Not now we’ve come so far,” I told her and marched along the corridor to the next turn in the corridor. There we found a half open door in the wall. "The treasure room," I told Beryl, before I stepped in, and then stood still in shock.
Deep inside, I had always known that hidden treasure didn’t happen in real life only in stories and games but here was a room full of genuine treasure. Chalices and vases glinted in cabinets at the back. Nearer the door stood furniture inlaid with ivory and precious stones while the dark sides of the room appeared to be lined with metal pirate boxes. I didn’t know what to do next.
Beryl lacked my reservations. She pushed round me squeaking in delight and grabbed a beautifully etched silver hand mirror lying on a table, "This one's mine."
"Put it down." I said slowly. If the treasure existed in space and time I was knew we couldn't just take it. It would be subject to all the laws of reality about stealing and vandalism.
"Why?" Beryl demanded, "It's our treasure. We found it."
"Yes" I agreed, knowing I couldn’t explain why things were different now, "but we have to plan properly,” I prevaricated, "We must explore first and get proper treasure bags."
"Hurry then," Beryl urged, moving to a trunk.
"But we can't explore properly now," I pointed out, "We need a torch, now put the mirror down."
I led a reluctant Beryl outside, back over the fence.
From my bedroom I retrieved the torch under my pillow, ran back onto the balcony only to find Mum and Hugh coming through the gate.
To tell the truth I wasn't sorry to see her. I needed time to think about this treasure. Hiding the torch behind my back, I told Mum about Dad and the unexploded bomb. She let go of Hugh and gripped her hands until her knuckles went white.
"The idiot," she wailed, "He’s in no fit state. His fingers aren't steady. He'll blow himself up."
For a moment my stomach knotted but then I realised it was just my mother panicking. She didn’t seem to realise how good at things my father was. Of course, he wouldn’t get himself killed
As I thought, Mum needn’t have worried. Dad came home before tea, beaming. "I did it." he exclaimed, "I dismantled the bomb no one else could tackle. My fingers were as steady as a rock. I can't be in such a bad way."
"William Gordon Foster," Mum snapped, "You are a fool. You have no right to be playing heroes. You are a civilian. The army won’t provide us with a pension if you get yourself killed."
I thought things through that night. Treasure trove was real. I had read about people finding it in England and being able to keep it so perhaps it was all right to take it. I hadn't realised however that treasure would be so bulky. Even if Beryl and I managed to get it over the fence, where could we hide it? Most of it wouldn’t be much use to us anyway. What would we want with a lot of furniture however beautiful it was? The best thing to do would be to sell it to buy something we did want like bicycles and tennis racquets. How did one set about selling treasure?
I could see we would have to bring Mum and Dad into it eventually, but not just yet. I wanted to keep hold of the magic of it for as long as possible. We would visit it again in secret just the once, I decided. The best time would be while Mum and Dad were having their Sunday afternoon nap.
So, after washing up the Sunday lunch dishes, Beryl and I set off but got no farther than the balcony before finding a British Policeman knocking at our front door. "Is your father in?" the policeman asked. I was sure he had come about our burglary. My hands trembled round the torch I had hidden behind my back
I told Beryl to go into Mum and Dad's bedroom, the next room along the balcony and tell them about our visitor. I looked through the door as she went in and saw Dad leap out of bed in his underpants, draw on his trousers,
"Tell the man I'm just coming."
I had to hear what the policeman told Dad so I could think of a reasonable explanation so I drew Beryl back when she came out, but she wasn’t staying. She dived into her own room and slammed the door. I watched as the Police Officer and Dad held a consultation but they whispered so softly I could hear nothing. Then they went downstairs and knocked on the caretaker’s door, talked to him before walking up our street onto the main road,
I crept down into the back garden and noticed the iron cover had been replaced over the hatch. I saw Dad and the policeman in the tile factory grounds. Dad waved to me to go back but strangely he did not look cross with me. I returned to the courtyard and sat on the seat under the pepper tree until Dad and the policeman came back. They took no notice of me but went straight upstairs. Beryl peeped out of her bedroom saw not in trouble and me alone and came down. I told her what I had seen.
When the policeman left at last, Dad locked the gate, and hid the key in a hole in the pepper tree. Beryl and followed him up the steps. "What was all that about?" Mum asked as she came out of her bedroom.
Dad laughed, "The new superintendent thinks the Stern Gang are taking an interest in the tile factory."
Mum did not find it so amusing. She bit her lip, "Will, we must find someone to take in the children for a while."
Dad shook his head. "Lot of nonsense. There's nothing there for terrorists."
I pulled Beryl out of the room, and whispered, "The Stern Gang are after our treasure. We'll have to risk getting as much of it as we can tomorrow, straight after school, while Mum’s busy getting tea. Let’s hope Hugh doesn’t want to play with us. We can put it in the garden basement and hide it under dressing up clothes."
"What if the Stern Gang have already stolen it," Beryl said.
That was what I was afraid of.
Next day when we had climbed over the fence, we found the door into the tile factory was locked again. It still refused to open after I had drawn back the bolt. I found a massive beam jammed against the back.
We hunted amongst piles of old machinery rusting beneath the weeds, until I found a thin iron bar with a hooked end.
I was wiggling the bar underneath the door and pushing when I had a horrendous thought. There was only the one door into the tile factory. Whoever had placed that beam against the back of the door must still be inside.
I think we had better go home,” I said to Beryl, “Mum will be looking for us.” I withdrew the bar sharply and caught its hooked end hard against the bottom of the door. The beam slithered, fell with a loud crash and rolled noisily across the lobby. The door swung open. I couldn’t move. I just stared at the doorway expecting the Stern Gang to come pouring out.
When nothing happened, I managed to stand up and realised there had to be a secret entrance that we hadn't found. I tiptoed inside and Beryl followed
Keeping behind the door at the end of the corridor, I opened it slowly, listened but could hear nothing. I switched on the torch and peered round. My legs didn’t want to carry on but I forced them. Luckily, Beryl hadn’t been worried about how the door could have been locked from the inside. She followed me with less fuss than on Saturday. Now I began to worry about the Stern Gang being still present and more about them having removed the treasure but when we reached the treasure room it was still there
We looked at the trunks first. They were all locked. I tried to drag one to the door. It was too heavy. "Only pure gold can weigh that much." I told Beryl. I still didn’t fancy the idea of breaking it open though.
Suddenly the whole room vibrated with an ear splitting, rattling that vibrated through every item of treasure. The complete back wall of the room shot up and we were blinded by light. I felt as rigid and incapable of movement as a statue. I wondered if I had been shot and this is what it felt like to be dead.
"You'd better come out now," a man’s voice called.
Cautiously I opened my eyes, stared through a gap between the two glass cabinets, into our own courtyard and saw the British policeman and an Arabic police sergeant replacing revolvers into their holsters. I heard Mum shriek
"You've rescued my children. The Lord be praised."
She came running in and hugged Beryl
The inspector shook his head "I don't think it is quite like that " He stared at me "It was you two girls who broke into the factory, wasn’t it?”
I hung my head, and heard a vehicle screeched to a halt outside our gate. I looked up and saw Dad leaping out of a Post Office van. He ran over and hugged me. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t telling me off.
"You have them back then without too much difficulty?" he asked the policeman
"They were never taken." the Inspector replied.
He turned to me, “What made you break the door down?"
“We were hunting for Secret Treasure." I explained.
"And we found it." Beryl added. from over Mum’s shoulder, "We got here before the Stern Gang went off with it."
"The Stern Gang may be responsible for many crimes," the Inspector commented "but they can be exonerated from all involvement with this case."
Dad let go of me and stood up straight. "Peggy, Beryl." he thundered "Go to my study and wait for me."
"And just what do you think you were doing, messing about with the Mullers' furniture?" he said when he joined us.
“Who are the Mullers?" I asked.
"The Germans who owned this house."
Well I knew I had been right about hidden treasure not happening in the real world