Shadow on the Land (17 page)

‘My elder sister,’ she said promptly, as she poured tea and handed him his cup. ‘We were never close and she seldom wrote to me until just recently, but since then she’s really made up for it. She retired from teaching some years ago and now she has a plan to reveal the delights of country life,’ she went on, as she passed over the plate of egg sandwiches.

‘She sends me the most remarkable stuff. She can’t make up her mind whether to devote the whole volume to smuggling back and forth across the Border, or to broaden it out to include the crimes, follies and misfortunes of the local worthies. They really are quite remarkable when they pontificate.’

‘I don’t think that gift for pontificating is confined to the North,’ he said sharply, ‘though there are those who might suggest it was. Did you read about a certain person who said that “The Irish people would have to be made to understand that they should speak Irish?”’

‘I did, Brendan, I did, and I thought of you at the time,’ she said grinning. ‘And what about the happy maidens?’

‘Ah, but you mustn’t leave out the sturdy children and the athletic youths, and, of course, ourselves,’ he replied, his tone ironic. ‘Do you think we qualify
for sitting beside ‘those firesides which would be the forums for the wisdom of serene old age?’ he asked, his eyebrows raised quizzically.

‘Well, we have the fireside, but I do rather wonder if anybody will ever have a serene old age again.’

‘Why so?’ he asked, regarding her with piercing dark eyes.

‘I think the world is changing,’ she replied. ‘It’s as if the war has opened out our world. We know more about countries and people we’d never even heard of. There are new inventions, not all of them designed for killing. New ideas, new possibilities. If we could jump back fifty years, to when we were children and walk around in that world and then jump back to today and the invasion of an island we’d never even heard off, that would be a beginning. But even better if we could jump fifty years forward. What then? What sort of
Brave New World
might we perceive in 1993?’

Brendan nodded briefly.

‘We’ll be dead and gone, Emily, but I think we can be sure that the happy maidens won’t be speaking Irish, even if they’ve found a way to stay in Ireland in the first place, or managed to find happiness if they have.’

The egg sandwiches disappeared rapidly once Emily had assured him that she would not share them. She explained that she and Alex were once again bidden
to Major Chris Hicks well-supplied table, to meet his new Lieutenants prior to the arrival of his next consignment of young engineers.

‘Do you ever hear what happens to these young men you feed and encourage, Emily?’

‘Individually no,’ she responded shaking her head sadly. ‘The most we hear is when a group has been attached to some larger unit, American or Allied. For instance, there were some of Chris’s lads attached to the Fifth Army in the 160,000 troops that landed in Sicily so we hear the good news from the BBC, like today. But we know the casualty figures get censored. I don’t think Chris knows anything more than we do, certainly he hasn’t up till the present. Though things change all the time, even for him,’ she ended, thinking of the new, larger team they were to meet that evening.

‘Now tell me about this good husband of yours. What news of Lofty?’

‘None whatsoever, I’m sorry to say,’ she replied with a wry smile. ‘Unless Mrs Campbell is struck by memory, I think that’s as far as we can go, but we
have
solved the puzzle of little Jane Ross being Mrs Jane Ross even though she married the son of a lawyer from Boston. Apparently she married a cousin of her adoptive family. A first cousin, rather older than herself, but of course not actually related to her at all.’

‘Ah, I see. And that’s why Hank the Tank was
studying to be a lawyer. Has Jane any other family?’

‘Yes, she has two more sons, one older and one younger than Hank. The older one, Robert, joined a Canadian regiment, the Ottawa Cameron Highlanders, and the young one, Bruce, is in the American Air Force. He’s only a month older than Johnny.’

‘So
you
have three girls and
she
has three boys. I wonder if she wanted a girl as much as Alex wanted a boy.’

‘I never thought of that, Brendan,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll ask her one of these days. Alex wrote to her after he’d been to Manchester, but since then he’s left it to me and she doesn’t seem to mind at all. I’m really rather delighted to have a sister-in-law.’

‘Not surprised she doesn’t mind,’ he said crisply. ‘I’d trade Alex’s letters for yours any day, however much I like the good man.’

Brendan glanced at the clock and down at his empty cup and plate.

‘Like the proverbial beggar, I eat and rise,’ he said, moving slightly in his chair. ‘Look, there’s one thing I must say before I go. There’s going to be massive security in the run up to the Second Front. They’re talking about closing the border to prevent leakage of information. Not only will I not be able to come up, but they’ll start censoring letters. Don’t let it stop you, Emily. Even if we can only talk about literature, at least I’ll know how you are. Promise me you’ll go on writing?’

She nodded vigorously and thought of all she’d read about security.

‘You’re probably right about closing the Border,’ she agreed. ‘Some of what the newspapers are saying about spies able to move up and down quite freely does seem quite sensible. My friend Dolly says they never even look in her handbag when she goes to see her sister. She could have a sheaf of State Secrets in it, for all the attention they pay. In fact, in Dolly’s handbag, you could probably conceal the parts for a new tank,’ she said, smiling. ‘But I promise I’ll still write and so must you.’

‘Oh yes, you won’t stop me doing that,’ he replied forcefully, as he pulled out a small packet from his jacket pocket. ‘A little offering,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Food for the mind, but the sandwiches will be much more use to me on the way back to Dublin.’

She walked out to the car with him and observed the change in the colour and texture of the panelling where repairs had been done after his brush with an Army lorry back in April ’42. What a long, long time ago it seemed, she thought, as she waved him off down the avenue.

‘Do you really think they’ll close the Border before the Second Front?’ Emily asked, as they drove down Rathdrum Hill, turned left at the bottom and headed for the Castlewellan Camp on what had turned into a lovely, summer’s evening.

‘Can’t see how they can myself,’ Alex replied, relaxing at the wheel. ‘There’s thousands of Southern workers coming over the Border to work every week and going home at weekends and there’s legitimate trade as well as smuggling. Think what problems stopping all that would be.’

‘So if people have to be kept out, it means they’d lose their jobs. And if trade had to stop, that would be even more jobs. That would be dreadful. And we wouldn’t know how long it was going on for, would we?’

‘No, we wouldn’t,’ he agreed matter-of-factly. ‘Sometimes the powers that be don’t know themselves what’s happening. Sometimes they have to put out false information as part of strategy. If you lose your job, it doesn’t matter which it is. You still have no money for next week.’

‘The border is amazingly long for such a small country,’ she began, ‘it’s so full of twists and turns. And there’s bog and mountain and lakes and forest along it, as well as towns and villages.’

She’d gone back to the atlas after Brendan had left to study the wiggly line that had caused so much heartache in the course of their lives. She been even more surprised than she’d expected at the length she traced with her finger.

‘Think of trying to close off the border in Fermanagh when half of it is lake or islands,’ she said, ‘and then there’s the Sperrins and the hill country of
South Armagh down to Slieve Gullion and …’

‘And if you’re determined to get through and have local knowledge, what chance do British or American troops have of stopping you?’ Alex demanded, interrupting her. ‘Smugglers seem to have no difficulty from what you read to me,’ he said, his tone lightening.

‘That’s true.’

She smiled to herself and looked across at him, his face sombre, his eyes on the road.

‘I haven’t told you the latest from the
Impartial Reported.
’

‘Do proceed.’

‘Well some of the practical problems will be quite insuperable,’ she began. ‘I am reliably informed that, in one dwelling, the bedroom is so aligned that whoever sleeps in the bed has their head in the North and their feet in the South.’

Emily watched Alex’s face as it broke into a grin. However often it happened and despite the many years in which she had observed the sudden transformation, she could never quite believe the difference it made when Alex smiled. What a sombre little boy he must have been. Or could it be that it was the other way round. That the little boy who could smile so winningly had been turned into a frightened child and a sombre young man.

‘Here we are then,’ Alex said, as they stopped at the barrier.

The guard checked Alex’s pass meticulously, leant over to look at Emily and then waved them on with a broad smile and a salute.

Camp security, stores, supplies and medical services were provided by personnel from other regiments and they had remained unchanged since Chris had first arrived. Emily knew them all and had ensured from the beginning that they too were included with the activities set up for the young engineers.

‘Emily, Alex, it’s good to see you,’ Chris said, shaking hands and beaming at them. ‘Come and meet my new team.’

Emily couldn’t remember exactly how many times they had now met a new team. Five, perhaps six, since that evening at Millbrook when she herself had talked to Chris and introduced him to Alex.

Coming to the camp was now a familiar and most pleasurable routine, not least because she loved the handsome reception room where such care had been taken of the original furniture, the flock wallpaper and the heavy velvet curtains.

She shook hands and studied the young faces, tried hard to remember the new names and knew she wouldn’t manage it. Faces she always remembered, but names had a bad habit of getting away from her. Places were rather better and she often found herself asking friendly questions about a young man’s town, or city, or state, to give herself time to try and retrieve his name.

Tonight was going to be more difficult than usual, she reflected, not because her fellow guests were other than pleasant, but because there were more of them. She shook hands and smiled at nine of them and then realized that the tenth young man was not nearly as young as the others.

‘Emily, this is Giovanni Hillman,
Captain
Giovanni Hillman, and my new Number 2. Thanks to him, I shall now be able to accept your kind invitations to come and have supper with you … if you haven’t changed your mind, of course,’ he said lightly, amid general laughter.

Captain Hillman was tall and dark-haired with rather splendid dark eyes that looked down at her attentively as he took her hand. This was one name she would certainly be able to remember though for the moment she would certainly make no comment.

The evening proceeded with much good-humour assisted by excellent food and several bottles of wine. Chris made his usual speech of welcome. She was always impressed that even when what he had to say was the same each time, it never lost the freshness of a genuine welcome and he always managed to make little jokes that revealed how much of a relationship he’d made with his new lieutenants, just in the two days since they arrived.

As she listened to Chris, Emily thought of Hank the Tank and how he had introduced him formally
as Lachlan Alexander Ross before referring to his more familiar name. Hank was the young man she had liked more than any of the others, so how happy a chance it was that he had turned out to be her nephew by marriage.

Chris’s speech was as warmly received as ever. To her surprise, Giovanni Hillman got to his feet as Chris sat down. He smiled across at her and began to speak.

‘Ma’am, Sir, Mr Hamilton, colleagues,’ he addressed them, gazing round the candlelit table, ‘it is my pleasant duty to respond to our welcome from Lieutenant Colonel Hicks and to have the honour of being the first Captain to address him by his new rank. In saying thank you for your kind welcome, Sir, may I commit us to doing our best for this training unit which has been so
very
successful under your guidance. Let us raise our glasses and drink to the health and continuing success of Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Hicks.’

Emily raised her glass, looked across at Alex and then at Chris, saw the broad smiles they exchanged with each other and felt sure this was a moment she herself would remember for many a long day.

September, always a favourite month of Emily’s, began most happily indeed. The weather turned fine and sunny and although the nights were sometimes chilly, certainly cold enough to need the fire in the sitting-room, the afternoons were very warm.

The new raspberry canes which weren’t supposed to produce a crop in their first year, surprised her by doing exactly that. The fruit was tiny at the beginning of the month, but she decided to leave the berries as long as she could given the warm sunshine and see if they got any bigger and ripened. Not only did they get bigger, but flavour became richer as each week of good weather passed.

At the end of the month, when a few fat berries dropped to the ground she gathered them all within the day, claimed her jam sugar allowance from the grocer and produced eight jars of a rich, dark red preserve. With pretty gingham covers cut from a worn-out table cloth and a handmade label,
she glowed with pride at having some Christmas presents ready to put in the cupboard.

There was good news too from Cathy. Shortly after they’d moved to the new flat, she’d put her name down at the local Education Office, hoping she might get a teaching job sometime in the future. She wrote and said they’d been pleasant and helpful and had commented on the value of her special additional qualifications, but to their own surprise, they seemed to have more teachers than jobs.

Then, suddenly, only two days before the beginning of term, a young man who’d had to be turned down by the Air Force because of his eyesight, was offered a job in the Air Ministry. The Education Office was happy to release him at such short notice, because they had Cathy on the books.

In turn, she’d had no difficulty with the WVS unit with whom she’d been working since the move. Her senior officer had simply said that getting the work done was what they were in business for. Children needed teachers. She could teach. Other women couldn’t. Good Luck.

It was clear to Emily how delighted her daughter was to be back in the classroom, especially in a city school, which was large enough to have a proper staff and much better facilities than her single-teacher school in Cheshire. She wasn’t entirely surprised when Cathy owned up to the fact that she’d become dispirited in her village school with
no one to share the problems of a large class, mixed in age and ability.

The new flat was a source of great joy. The cleanest and tidiest of girls, she’d surprised her parents by searching out the street markets which sold carpets and curtains from bombed-out houses. Dirty and torn, they didn’t look much, she told them, but they were cheap and did not require points, unlike fabric in short supply in the shops. Moreover, Brian had put his knowledge of solvents to good use in helping her make them useable. One particular square of carpet, a very soiled dark red when they bought it, had revealed a pattern of blue butterflies by the time they’d finished with it.

Thinking back to the letters she’d had from Cathy a year earlier, Emily could hardly believe the difference. Then, she’d found herself dreading having to respond to the newest problem, but now she looked forward to hearing from her.

Cathy’s new-found happiness did something to offset the sad fact that there’d been no letters from Lizzie for over a year now. Emily had sent a letter and a birthday card via Cathy, so that she could deliver it when they met, but she and Alex had decided communicating with her that way was not fair to Cathy. The only thing to do now was let Lizzie make her own decision and wait and see what happened. Meantime, they had established that she was now working in London and had three stripes.
The last time Cathy had seen her she was smoking heavily, but seemed in very good spirits, but she could say nothing whatever about her work, not even in which part of London she was based.

October came with cold nights and sudden chilly squalls, but Emily was heartened by a visit from Jane. This time, she had not been on night duty. She looked fresh and very pretty, her blonde curls cut short for convenience, her blue eyes sparkling as she took in everything around her. One glance told Emily that the news from Johann must be good.

He had indeed had a difficult time over the summer. As he explained to Jane in his now fluent English, loss breeds loss. The loss of his mother in the Hamburg raids had animated all the other losses he’d suffered personally, starting with his father’s death in a Labour Camp, followed by the insistence that he and his brothers join the fighting forces. He felt the sadness weighed upon him like a yoke across his shoulders. He told her that he couldn’t put it down, yet he felt equally he couldn’t carry it.

‘As I told you, Ma, the prisoners at Dungannon are very varied,’ she began, as they sat in the conservatory drinking coffee. ‘Some are quite old, veterans from the first war, others are even younger than Johann. There are no Nazis or S.S. men, for they go to the high security camps in Scotland and the North of England, but there are some who are
very pro-Hitler. Sometimes there are arguments that lead to blows.’

She paused, looked distressed and then took a deep breath.

‘You know, Ma, sometimes the worst things can have a good side,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘I was so upset when I found out about the big fight. Johann had a cut on his cheek and a really bad bruise. It was still purple when I saw him two weeks after it happened.’

‘One of the guards hit him with a rifle butt. Probably by accident, because Johann was actually trying to separate two men who were fighting. Typical Johann. He couldn’t bear to see a man who was small and not very robust being set upon by this big chap, because he’d said Hitler was a tyrant.’

‘Anyway, Ma, to cut a long story short, when it was sorted out, a young man whom Johann had never spoken to before, because he rather avoided contact with other prisoners, came to him and shook his hand and said how sorry he was he’d been hurt when he was trying to do what was right. His name was Matthew and his father was a Lutheran pastor, a lovely man by the sound of it. Matthew had been studying in Switzerland in 1938 with a man called Carl Jung when his father was interned for preaching against the state. Have you ever heard of Carl Jung, Ma?’

‘Yes, I’ve
heard
of him, but I’ve only read a little bit about his work. I don’t think any of his books
have been translated into English yet. I’d have to ask Brendan about that.’

‘Well, Johann and Matthew have become friends,’ she continued. ‘They talk and talk, and it’s such a comfort to me to know that he has a real friend now, although he did always get on well with most of the others. Matthew wants to go to London after the war and finish his studies, but meantime, he’s been helping Johann with his problem,’ she explained with a smile.

‘We did do some basic psychology in our nursing training, as you know, but Matthew is
very
clever,’ she went on, shaking her head. ‘He says no one can heal your mind for you, but you
can
be helped to heal it for yourself. If you have a hurt, you can’t just fix it, but if you recognise it and become familiar with it, then you can move past it. He also said that when you suffer loss, grief is a necessary process. Denying your loss brings about a kind of stunting of one’s emotional growth.’

‘And Johann has been able to use what Matthew is offering?’

‘Oh yes,’ Jane said vigorously. ‘That’s why I’m so happy for him. He told me that once he’d let himself weep and stopped feeling he couldn’t
do
anything, he began to feel better. Older, sadder and wiser, he said, but not so burdened and worn down.’

‘Oh Jane, that
is
good news. There will be so many in need of people like Matthew when this war
is finally over. What about Matthew’s family? Does he know what’s happened to them?’

‘Oh yes. He knows alright,’ Jane replied grimly. ‘Matthew came back from Switzerland in 1938 when his father was interned. The family tried to have him released, but they failed. His father died in a labour camp in 1939, just like Johann’s father and the authorities took Matthew’s passport away. He couldn’t go back to Switzerland and so he was conscripted. He tried to join a Medical Unit, but he wasn’t allowed to, so he let himself be captured. It was the only way he could avoid having to kill.’

‘But wasn’t that very risky?’ she protested. ‘He might have got shot on the battlefield. The Geneva Convention doesn’t always hold if someone sees a German and has a gun in his hand.’

Jane nodded.

‘Matthew knew that. But he said it was a risk he had to take. There was no other way. Just like Johann that day he flew to Ireland and crashed on the edge of the lake at Millbrook. Is it any wonder they’ve become friends?’

Emily beamed at her and shook her head.

‘You know, you’ve just reminded me of a story your father often tells about the First World War. He and your Uncle Sam sat in the workshop at Liskeyborough and the pair of them tried to decide what they’d do if there was conscription here. As Uncle Sam was a Quaker and your father has
never had the slightest wish to harm anyone, they decided it would have to be the Ambulance Corp. Mercifully for me, and probably for you, Ireland was so unstable in 1914 that conscription was never brought in, so they weren’t put to the test. But at least in this country it’s possible to be a conchie.’

‘Conchie?’

‘Conscientious objector. People like Sam and Alex and Matthew’s father. The worst that happens in this war is that our conchies are put in jail if they’re not willing to accept the alternative to military service they’re offered or someone manages to see them as a security risk. Hitler has no such scruples.’

‘Such wickedness, Ma. Sometimes I just can’t grasp the awfulness of everything that’s happening round us.’

Emily smiled as she glanced at the clock. It was nearly lunchtime and she was due to leave for Lenaderg at 1.30 to prepare for an afternoon of games and music.

‘Perhaps it’s as well we can’t grasp everything,’ she said abruptly. ‘Perhaps it’s a necessary defence. Ask Johann to see what Matthew thinks of the idea next time you have the chance. And don’t forget to tell me,’ she said, standing up.

‘Now, do you want to come and meet my new
boyfriends
as your father calls them or would you like an afternoon of peace and quiet?’

The sad thing was that Emily felt she’d only just got to know Chris’s new young men when it was time for them to go. When they’d first started the various entertainments for these younger troops back in ’42, they’d been staying for nearly four months. Now it was a bare two.

At times, Emily wondered if all the effort was justified for such a short period. The baking and packing that she and her four friends did almost every week, the transporting of the five of them, of the school children and of the young men themselves. Then there was the setting up of halls, community centres and church rooms. That meant more work for caretakers and church ladies and the office staff at the four mills. Not that any of these people ever grudged the time they spent, but one hoped that what they did was worthwhile.

She was ironing shirts and blouses in the kitchen one wet morning late in the month, when she heard a jeep come round the corner of the house and splash through the puddle that always gathered in front of the workshop after heavy rain.

Through the rain-spattered window, she saw a figure jump down and head briskly for the back door. She placed the iron carefully on its asbestos mat and got there in time to open it as he arrived on the doorstep, his jacket inflating as if he’d been blown in by a squall.

‘Morning ma’am,’ he said as he stepped inside,
the raindrops trickling down the black waterproof.

‘Captain Hillman, how nice to see you. I wasn’t expecting a visitor on such a morning. Is the hollow by Tullyconnaught flooded?’

‘No, not yet, but I guess it soon will be. The dykes are full. Sheughs, I think you call them.’

‘Do put your jacket over the chair,’ she said, as she turned her iron off. ‘I hope you’ve time for coffee.’

‘I have, ma’am. In fact, I have a permit for coffee,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘My superior officer says I need to talk to you about morale and he assured me I would be offered coffee and cake. He also sends his greetings and is looking forward to his next visit,’ he went on, rather formally.

‘Then do sit down while I make it and we’ll go into the conservatory. It’s pretty gloomy in there this morning, but the armchairs are more comfortable and it doesn’t smell of starch,’ she added, as she indicated a chair at the far side of the kitchen table.

With his long legs she needed to settle him as far away as possible from the sink and work surface while she put up a tray.

‘Am I required to call you Captain Hillman or may I call you Giovanni?’ she asked, glancing over her shoulder as she measured coffee.

‘I answer to Chuck, ma’am.’

‘Right, Chuck, then tell me about morale. Are you having problems at the camp?’

‘No ma’am, not so far as I am aware, but it is my business to find out about such things. In fact, I have been giving a lot of thought to the social events laid on in the community for the boys,’ he said flatly. ‘You are aware I’m sure just how tight the training schedule now is,’ he continued, in his usual matter-of-fact tone.

‘Yes, indeed. It must put extra pressure on everyone,’ she agreed, as she cut slices of cake and put the lid firmly back on the tin.

He stood up, opened the door to the conservatory, waited for her to go through and then sat down, the tray on a low table between them.

She looked across at him as she poured his coffee and wondered if he thought the time spent giving piggy-backs to school children would be better redeployed. He might be right.

Meantime, she passed him the cake and saw a slight softening of his rather sad face. She was beginning to think that Chuck was a rather unhappy young man.

‘Did your grandparents emigrate to America?’ she asked, before she had entirely thought about how he might respond.

The amazing change in his face took her aback.

‘Who told you that? How can you
possibly
know that?’ he demanded.