Authors: Victoria Hendry
I picked out one of the annuals and reread my favourite stories, the heroine moving across the pages in black and white line drawings, each scene contained in neat frames, her fate in the hands of the master storyteller. And I remembered being sure, as a bairn, that all would turn out well for her. She would win through and be safe. I had slipped from the page of my own story and I didn’t know how it would end. Downstairs, I heard Dad cough and bolt the front door. Duncan’s light switch clicked off and within minutes he began to snore. I wrapped myself in my bedspread, and sat on by the window. My room grew chill round the edges and the rosebuds became small, reproachful faces in the gloomy moonlight. I crept out into the hall to get a glass of water from the kitchen. I could feel, rather than hear, the soft breath of my family, drawing in the night air, dropping mumbled words from their dreams into the silence. The crocheted sole of my slipper caught on a nail in a floorboard and, as I bent down to release it, I noticed that Hannes’ light was on; a bright line seeping under the door in the darkness. I stopped at the threshold, holding my breath to listen for movement. There was a sharp click of a handle
turning
and Mother appeared behind me at her door. ‘What are you doing up, Agnes?’ she asked.
‘I just wanted to check Hamish was okay before I turned in,’ I said, noticing the joint on her big toe looked swollen.
‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘We all need to get our sleep.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t disturb him,’ I said.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Agnes. Make your mind up.’
I knocked softly on the door and pushed it open an inch or two. A figure lay in the bed, its hips and shoulders muffled by the quilt. I heard Mother yawn behind me, and then saw in the mirror that Hannes was sitting behind the door, a blanket over his knees. His eyes were deep pools in the winter of his face, the shaved skin stretched tight over his skull. He didn’t move. My friend was afraid and now I could see only the
fugitive
. I pushed up the lightswitch and closed the door. ‘It looks like he is asleep,’ I said, my heart aching for him. I wanted to go to him, to tell him it would be alright and comfort him as he had comforted me.’
‘Well, off to bed and don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ said Mother.
‘I’ll just get a drink of water from the kitchen,’ I replied, but her door was already closed. I stood there alone, and then crept downstairs, still seeing his doppelgänger lying on the altar of his fear. The stone floor of the kitchen was cold under my feet and the water gushed out of the tap as I turned it on, splashing onto the floor. I watched my reflection in the
window
above the sink sip water from a glass, her face pale, and then I turned to go back upstairs, a sleep-walker in a world undreamt of. Hannes was standing two paces away. I hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen over the noise of the running water. He pressed his finger to his lips, and then sat down at the table. The bread lay on its board under a cloth.
‘Are you hungry?’ I asked, wondering why he had come downstairs in spite of his fear.
He shook his head, and standing up walked towards the back door. I ran across the room and put my hand over his as he reached for the key on its nail in the door frame. It was long and silver, the nail head piercing its eye above ragged teeth.
‘
Bitte
…Please, Agnes,’ he whispered.
I looked down to avoid his eyes. He was standing there in his bare feet. It didn’t look like he was running away. I pulled off my slippers and nodded, longing to escape my restlessness. He slid the key into the lock and turned it. The door opened on the night, his breath suddenly visible in a small cloud that heralded the colder days to come. He took my hand and we walked across the grass which was mossy under foot and onto the cinder path between the raised beds of the vegetable patch. The ash stopped at the end of the garden. I could feel the small ends of burnt coals between my toes. Hannes unlatched the gate and we stepped into the field.
I looked back at the house standing against the sea. The moonlight shone on its grey, slate roof and the closed kitchen door. The curtains were all shut except mine and I had a sudden picture of the bed I had left standing silent, its covers tossed back like a gaping mouth. Hannes slipped some black seeds from an escaped allium into his pocket and then took my hand, leading me along the side of the hedge with a smile. The sky was huge and salty, punctured with stars, light shining through the loose weave of old velvet. There was something brighter than us all up there. I sighed and he pulled me close, slipping an arm round my waist as we walked on the land he was about to leave. I could see Orion and the Three Sisters. I remembered Dad naming them for me, pointing up at the sky’s unguarded face, and crouching down to hold me in his arms as if I might float away in the vastness. Hannes stopped and looked at me, the names of the same stars on the edge of his lips.
It was still dark when Duncan woke me from my doze in my chair in the early morning. ‘Get ready,’ he said. ‘We’re
leaving
.’ He looked as if he hadn’t slept much, either.
‘I thought we were going on the evening tide,’ I said.
‘We were, but it appears your Irish friend speaks German in his sleep.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m not going to ask,’ he said. ‘You are my sister.’
‘He’s a farmer, Duncan.’
‘Well, he might have been, but he is something else now.’
‘He told me they were starving. No one could afford bread. The National Socialists gave them money to live on if they joined the Party.’
‘And that makes it all right? Well, he’s not staying here. I’ll put him ashore on neutral territory, but I’m doing it for you, not him.’
‘He is a good man, Duncan.’
‘He didn’t come here on holiday, Aggie. We are at war. Don’t think because I am not in uniform that I am not fighting.’
I nodded. I couldn’t tell him Hannes had helped me. Duncan wouldn’t have understood. There was still the sanity of the farm here, man and beast, wheat and barley. Old rhythms, no unpredictable harvests of words. He wouldn’t have
understood
what it was like to live on a dark, spiral stair with taped up windows; to find out that the people who should love you, could also hurt you.
‘What is his real name?’ he asked.
‘Hannes.’
‘Hannes. Hamish. Very good,’ he laughed, and I saw the man in him who was bigger than the war. I hoped I might find forgiveness. ‘Hannes what?’
‘I don’t know. He’s from outside Venice, no, Vienna.’
‘And you know that, do you?’
‘That’s what he said.’ I pulled the dictionary out of my bag.
‘And books never lie, either,’ said Duncan. ‘Well, we are not taking that. Tell your man to get his coat. I’ll meet you at the harbour.’
Hannes and I crept out of the front door. We could hear Duncan’s feet ahead of us on the track. Small stones rattled under his boots and there was the creak of the gate as he climbed over. Hannes now seemed reluctant to leave, and I pulled his arm to make him walk faster. He tried to speak to me, but his voice carried in the early morning air and some of the words were German. I put my finger to my lips. We were
almost at the harbour when I thought I saw a man cross the road ahead of us. He had a gun over his forearm, but when we drew level with the trees he had passed, there was no sign of him. Perhaps he had moved further into the wood. Hannes’ eyes darted from side to side and he hunched down into his coat. The black handle of one of Professor Schramml’s knives stuck out of his pocket. I pulled it out and threw it into a ditch.
‘Schon wieder Waffenlos
– defenceless,’ he said, and tucked my arm through his. I pulled myself free and walked faster.
Duncan was getting the
Driftwood
ready to cast off when we arrived. Her tyres bumped against the harbour wall as the first swell of the morning tide rushed in at the entrance. Her paint was still sharp in bold green and blue, and her name was freshly painted. I climbed down the ladder, which was slippery with bladderwrack, and Hannes followed. Duncan indicated that he should lie down on the nets at the back of the trawler, and threw folds of it on top of him.
‘I hope you’re happy with your catch?’ he said, taking my arm. ‘Don’t ever do anything like this again.’
‘I’m sorry. I want to come home to the farm.’
‘What about Jeff?’
‘It’s over.’
He nodded as if it wasn’t a surprise, but I had thought he liked Jeff. ‘Good luck explaining that to Mother. St Anthony’s ears will be burning tonight,’ he said.
‘Well, Dad will support my divorce. He’s a Protestant.’
‘Divorce? Don’t start a war here, Aggie. It’s hard enough already.’ He waved at the machine gun mounted on the
wheelhouse
. ‘I am supposed to shoot boggles in the night with that.’
He looked over to where Hannes lay in the net, and then turned away and cast off.
I pulled the rope in for him as it trailed in the dark water and he set the boat’s course out past Dunure and Ailsa Craig.
It was quiet at sea. The sun was just beginning to rise into a bank of cloud. The waves and sky were grey, and a lone seagull glided in our wake. Duncan smoked his pipe, leaning out of
the wheelhouse window. An hour into the trip, I took Hannes a cup of tea from Duncan’s flask. It was laced with whisky.
‘Ich möchte aufstehen,’
he said, pointing at his legs.
‘Can he stretch his legs, Duncan?’ I called.
Duncan looked round the horizon. ‘If he keeps low.’
Hannes sat against the side of the boat and rubbed his calves, looking around him. The thin thread of the boat’s course was leading him back to his old life; a life larger than the flat where we had known each other. He smiled at me. The skin round his eyes crinkled, but I didn’t smile back. I could see the other man he was now. A small furrow appeared between his brows, and I turned away. He sat hugging his knees
staring
out at the horizon, and I stood in the wheelhouse with Duncan. The sea rolled beneath the boat in the long ridges of an onshore tide.
It was Hannes who spotted the conning tower of the U-boat gliding towards us. The gun was manned and three men in heavy coats stood on the deck, one looking straight at us through his binoculars. ‘Take the wheel, Agnes,’ Duncan shouted, jumping towards the gun, but Hannes stood up and waved. ‘
Es lebe Ossian
!’ he shouted. ‘
Es lebe Ossian
.’
His voice carried over the still, cold water. The gull cried.
The gunner on the U-boat lowered his sights and looked towards his captain, who raised a hand. I was close enough to see he was bearded, and then the black wall of the submarine passed in front of us, the propellers churning the water with a low humming sound. Duncan cut the engine and hove to. We were sitting in the water, rising and falling on the swell. The water gurgled in the heads as the huge machine passed in front of us, its black back shining like a whale.
‘They let us go,’ I said, but Duncan was not happy. He stood looking after the sub, which was submerging, hiding from the sea planes at Lough Erne. ‘They are hunting, Aggie. They probably have bigger fish to fry.’
He spat into the water and turned to face Hannes. ‘What did he say?’ he asked me.
‘Ossian,’ said Hannes. ‘
Ein Held der Schotten
. A Scottish hero.’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Duncan. ‘What the hell are we doing, Aggie?’
‘Wagner,’ said Hannes. ‘Schubert.’
‘Get him back under the nets,’ said Duncan, ‘before I kill him.’
He went into the wheelhouse and slammed the door,
coaxing
the engine back into life. I remembered stories of old scores settled at sea. The accidents that weren’t questioned, although everyone knew they were the last page of a longer story. As the sun rose higher, Ireland appeared as a thin, grey line on the horizon and grew steadily bigger. The moon still floated behind us, growing paler in the light.
We put Hannes ashore above Dundalk Bay. ‘Go to the authorities,’ said Duncan. ‘They will find you a place to stay, or lock you up. Either way, it will be an end to this madness.’
‘
Herzlichen Dank
, Agnes,’ shouted Hannes as he jumped into the shallows to wade up the beach. ‘
Meine kleine Zauberin
.’ He waved and turned away. He looked very small, alone on the shore.
‘What did he say?’ Duncan asked.
‘I don’t know. You wouldn’t let me bring the dictionary.’
He laughed then. ‘You’re sixpence short of the full shilling, sis,’ he said, and throttled the boat round.
‘Maybe Hannes won’t fight if he gets back. The vines will need him.’
‘Or maybe he will be straight back in a plane.’ Duncan sighed. ‘He’s part of the war machine. It eats all the little
people
and spits out the bones.’
Duncan burnt the dictionary when we got back. Mother looked on but said nothing. I thought I saw some German
handwriting
on the flyleaf as it curled in the flames, but as I stood up to pull it back out, Mother held it down with the poker. I sat back down. ‘Let it go, Agnes,’ she said.
I opened my mouth to reply, but from the way she said it, I knew it would never be mentioned again. ‘Remember you have a family,’ she said, and picked up her pail of scraps for the hens. From the window, I saw her walk down the path and the hens came running to greet her. Duncan stood up and put on the wireless. The RAF had dropped bombs on Düsseldorf or somewhere, and Mussolini had banned people from listening to ghost voices on the wireless. Was that who we were – ghost voices? Hannes was moving back towards that world. Duncan lit his pipe and followed Mother into the garden.
Cocooned in Mother’s perfect silence over the guest we had never had, I stayed on the farm through the potato
harvest
, grubbing in the earth for the tatties, which were hard and round in their bed of soil. I pulled them from the roots of the tumbled, green plants, splitting the thin, white veins that held them. I tried to forget the city and Jeff and Hannes. Douglas seemed like a character in a film, someone who had once loomed above me on the screen. I knew the shape of his
lips and the sound of his voice; I knew the way his eyes
crinkled
when he laughed, but he seemed unreal, as if he lived in another world.
Jeff’s letters from the prison grew more and more pitiful, keeping me tied to him. I had sent his ID card to the governor, and Jeff wrote to say that he was disappointed that I had
cancelled
my visit, but was glad to know I was safe. He was feeling weak with the cold and thought he might be getting
arthritis
. He said that Douglas’ bid to become Rector of Edinburgh University had been defeated despite the best efforts of the student SNP members to have him elected from behind bars. He was running out of paper as Sylvia had flu and was unable to bring more, so it would be his last letter for a while. In my heart I didn’t want any more letters from him and I knew I couldn’t stay married to him. I didn’t want his children, or to live in his gloomy flat, locked in a war over dust with Mrs MacDougall.
Dad had his lawyer draw up the papers to file for my divorce while Mother turned Father Xavier’s tea salty with her tears. I could picture them praying for me and I expected to hear all about what a bad Catholic I was when she got home, but all she said was she had found out that a marriage in a registry office had never been a real marriage in the eyes of the Church, so there was nothing to worry about. Father Xavier had been a great comfort, she said.
The land turned over to sleep after the harvest and I took to putting on my wellingtons and walking out along the coastal path with the dogs. The sheep were nibbling at the turnips Mother now made into jam with dye and packets of wooden pips from the Ministry of Food. The fields were muddy when I jumped down from the gates between them, and the dogs flew over behind me, bounding across the bare earth to chase the gulls from their kingdom with gleeful barks. I wished the swing of their tails could wipe my slate clean, and I carried the small, hard stone of my betrayal as a pain in my chest, or rolled it between my fingers in a deep pocket. It never left me and I
avoided my old friends, saying I was too sad about Jeff to go to tea, or a ceilidh, even on my birthday.
At the end of October, the usual stream of bairns came guising at the back door on Halloween, and sang in their reedy voices with their arms round each other. I pressed pennies and pieces of tablet made from Mother’s sugar ration into the hands of witches, who bristled with brooms to clear the path to hell. Dad drew on his pipe and smiled at their blind turnip lanterns dancing on gales of laughter. I envied them. I was becoming a hollow woman, scooped out, my face a mask. Mother gripped my wrist in the circle between her thumb and forefinger in the morning and said I was getting too thin. ‘We’ll need to fatten you up before winter, or you’ll freeze,’ she said, and I nodded, but there was ice on the inside of my window by
mid-November
, and nothing could warm me.
I applied to visit Jeff in the first week of December to let him know I wanted to divorce him, but when I arrived at the prison the warder told me there was a smallpox outbreak and I should go home. ‘I am sorry, Mrs McCaffrey,’ he said, ‘it would seem you’ve had a wasted journey.’
I didn’t have the heart to leave the divorce papers with him and so I took them with me. Perhaps when the outbreak was over, I could sort it out. I sat on the Morningside tram with my chin pressed down into my scarf.
The flat was dark and cold. When I went down to the back garden to see if I could find a last brussels sprout or stick of rhubarb, there was little sign of my bonfire, just the metal top of one of the coat hangers lying in the grass, dusted with frost. It sparkled, a question mark lying at my feet, but I had no answers. The vegetables had all died back and I ate the
pickles
and bread Mother had packed, then tried to take Mrs MacDougall a piece of home-cured ham.
‘I think it would be better if we weren’t seen together,’ she said, and shut the door without taking the food. I knew she would be standing just round the corner of her hall, out of sight of the letter box, listening to see what I did next.
‘He’s gone, Mrs MacDougall. To Ireland,’ I shouted through the flap, but I only heard the scuff of her slippers on the linoleum as she scuttled away, and her kitchen door closing.
The next day, I called the switchboard at the prison to ask when I could see Jeff, but the woman said in a very bright voice, ‘Please hold the line while I connect you to the
infirmary
, Mrs McCaffrey.’
A tired-sounding man cleared his throat as he spoke into the receiver and asked me to sit down. ‘I understand from the warder who reported your visit yesterday, that you didn’t receive our telegram with regard to your husband’s health. Are you alone, Mrs McCaffrey? If so, I would advise you to ask someone to come in to sit with you. I have some difficult news.’
‘There is no one I can ask,’ I said.
‘Well, I regret to inform you that your husband has
succumbed
to the outbreak and has developed bronchopneumonia, which is a not uncommon complication in smallpox. I regret to say that he is very poorly indeed. I was hopeful he might respond to treatment but, in his weakened condition, I’m afraid you might have to prepare yourself for the worst.’
I never heard what he said next. I dropped the receiver and my knees buckled. I lay on the floor crying for a long time and I thought I might choke, the tears came so fast. My head felt too heavy to lift and I heard myself saying, ‘My poor Og, my poor Og,’ over and over again. Every time I thought of his curly hair on our pillow in the sun all those months ago, I cried harder, and it surprised me because I thought I hated him.
Early the next day, I cycled over to Saughton and a warder led me through the barred gates of the prison and tiled halls to the infirmary, gently, one hand on my elbow, as if I was already a widow. A nurse tied me into a green gown, which smelt of disinfectant, and secured a thick mask over my nose and mouth. When I saw Jeff, I knew it was too late. I was only allowed to look at him from behind a window in the corridor, although they wheeled his bed nearer the glass. He opened his eyes once, but didn’t speak. I didn’t know if he could see me or
not. Small craters had burst on his cheeks and neck, and his chest rose and fell as if he was running. He was trapped in a battlefield. Through the afternoon and overnight, I watched his breathing slow and his face slacken, and then he was gone. His body looked soft, as if he was sleeping on his side, with his hands folded one on top of the other as if in prayer. I couldn’t cry, although a howl was growing in my chest, but it seemed wrong to let it out in that moment of stillness, as if it might call him back or disturb him. He looked as if something very big had happened that needed all his attention, and I sat on in a tent of black-out blinds, which shut out the whole world, and the path that had led us here. An orderly entered the sick room, held a mirror in front of Jeff’s lips and opened the
window
to let his soul go. He didn’t look at me, as if Jeff’s death was shameful and I was part of it. I sat there staring at the floor until a nurse guided me away to a small room, where she gave me a cup of tea. ‘I’ll need to give you an injection,’ she said. ‘Please roll up your sleeve… and… all done. Quarantine yourself at home for twelve days. If you feel at all feverish, you must contact your doctor immediately. I am sorry for your loss, dear, but we are unable to release the body, so you must be brave. He’s in God’s arms now. Our undertaker will deliver the ashes to your house, and I can assure you it will all be carried out with the greatest respect.’
She turned a page of her notebook. ‘Now, can you just
confirm
your address, please?’
She paused with her pen over the sheet of paper. ‘Take your time. The doctor will sign the death certificate for you and forward it. Do you have any questions?’
I shook my head.
That night, I cried under my quilt, muffling my screams until I thought I would suffocate, and it was there in the dark as I tried to sleep that I first felt the strangeness in my belly. I lay on my back, my hands exploring the shape of my stomach, which had tightened into a small mound. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before. I thought my weight gain was the
new regime at home. Mother had been feeding me up with meat from the farm and sago pudding, and I had only ever had to put my rags out on the line once in a blue moon. I thought it was being wartime thin for so long that had stopped Aunt Ruby’s visit. I wasn’t sure what to do now. I didn’t want to be a mother on my own and I began to cry again as if there was an unlimited supply of tears in my body and I hadn’t shed a single one. In the morning, I took some castor oil and climbed into a very hot bath, but nothing happened. I didn’t know where to find the women I heard helped with these things, and I didn’t want to make God angry, so I prayed that I would have the strength to deal with whatever happened. Perhaps it would never come to life.