purple children summary
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Ellis Peters is the "pen name" of Edith Pargeter. As Peters, she wrote mostly detective fiction and used other names for other genres. The Brother Medieval Mysteries is probably her best-known in this category and was made into a TV series, The Brother Cadfael Chronicles. Influenced by her own involvement in the Second World War as a WREN (Women's Royal Navy Service), Pargeter also wrote historical novels and, after a visit to Czechoslovakia, Pargeter translated Czech poetry and prose.
Edith Pargeter's short stories include The Purple Children which is about the British occupation of Cyprus. A young eighteen-year-old British sentry is on duty one evening and is he startled from a sleepy state by a local girl of about fifteen. He overhears her calling her cat and urges her to return home due to the curfew imposed on the town. She insists that she must find her cat because it runs away; her cat cannot be told to observe the curfew.
The girl pleads with the sentry, certain she can find her cat if he will just let her through the gate. He is aware that she is close to tears and considers his "orders," thinking that he must treat the "natives politely," especially as the locals blatantly show their hatred. He decides that this "waif" could not possibly pose a threat and, although he doesn't intend to, he opens the gate and lets her through, staying close to her. Turning his back on the gate he is supposed to be protecting, he follows her. When he sees the cat, he is relieved but it takes a further ten minutes before they can corner it and catch it. She thanks him and almost immediately the girl's real purpose is revealed as a boy jumps down from the flagpole and he and the girl run away, leaving the sentry boy in the courtyard and a commotion around him because he fired his paintball gun to stop the "fugitives." The children have replaced the British flag with their own.
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