Shadow on the Land (19 page)

Alex sat at his desk, his head in his hands,
wondering what more he could do. He’d already rung James Wilson and asked if he thought a distribution of food and medicine would help. Money
could
be made available. He had no anxiety at all about persuading his fellow directors that it was the proper thing to do, whether they looked at it practically, or from a more humanitarian perspective.

But that wasn’t going to solve the problem of silent machines, orders not complete and red notices from Government Departments who were as desperate for his materials as he was to fulfil their orders.

He was still sitting with the work sheet in his hand when Margaret returned with a mug of tea. As she bent down to put the mug close to his hand, he was suddenly aware of the gay yellows and greens of her pretty patterned blouse. He smiled to himself at the memory of the vast floral arrangement that had walked into his room way back in the spring.

The thought cheered him, he drank his tea yet more thoughtfully and then picked up the phone.

‘Margaret, do you think you could find anyone to relieve Daisy Elliott for a few minutes? I need a wee word with her.’

Daisy and the knock on the door were indivisible. She stood in front of him before he’d even looked up from the note he was drafting.

‘Ach, man dear, yer lookin’ worried and
you
should be on top of the world,’ she said briskly.

Alex beamed at her and waved her to the visitor’s chair.

‘I’m on top of the world in my spare time, Daisy. And so is Emily. But there are one or two problems I have that are a wee bit pressing.’

‘Aye, I’m sure yer worried about all this absence. I was just saying to my Billy last night that we must be well down on production. You got us the machines fixed and now a third of them in my section are standin’ idle. That can’t be good.’

‘What are we goin’ to do, Daisy?’ he asked quietly.

‘I was wonderin’ about that m’self,’ she said promptly. ‘Did you know that Hazelbrae has packed up?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he replied, somewhat surprised that she should mention a major shirt-making enterprise having to close its doors.

He tried to remember if they’d had any government contracts or whether they’d gone on producing solely for Saville Row. Certainly, he hadn’t read anything about it in either the
Belfast Telegraph
or
The Leader
.

‘Ach aye. It’s partly the war and partly old man McFetridge. Sure the man’s in his seventies an’ he’s worked all his life. Why wouldn’t he retire? I think he only kep it up for the sake of the stitchers. There’s
a queer lot of them will be hard up this Christmas,’ she said shaking her head.

Alex reminded himself that it never did to assume that Daisy was not to the point, but he still failed to see how the unemployed stitchers could help him.

‘What a pity they weren’t spinners or weavers, Daisy. We could solve their Christmas present problem quite easily, couldn’t we?’

‘But sure that’s exactly what most of them are. Did ye not know?’ she demanded, her eyes wide with disbelief. ‘When those women got married and had the first wee’un, if there was no granny handy or willin’ they took up stitchin’. Hazelbrae has only a handful of women up there at the factory, packing and despatchin’, all the work is done in the home and collected up. Imagine you not knowin’ that?’ she said, amazement written all over her face.

‘Well I knew shirt-making is a home industry and that Hazelbrae collects all round this area. I even see the odd collection van round Ballievy or Tullyconnaught, but I’d no idea that stitchers were once mill workers.’

‘Ach aye. I’ve a friend Lily McCready over in Tullyconnaught and she gave up when the first chile came. Sure her childer are all up and away now but she goes on stitchin’ and glad of money. She might well be pleased to go back to the mill and she’d certainly be glad of work till this illness is over.’

‘The mill is great company’, she went on without
pausing for breath. ‘I couldn’t stan’ sittin’ at home stitchin’, but then if that was all that was goin’ I’d hafta, woulden I?’ she demanded, laughing so loudly, that Margaret, in the office next door, wondered what there could possibly be to laugh at with the way things were.

‘Forby that, there’s women has lost husbands or sons,’ she said dropping her voice. ‘Charlotte Spratt over at Lenaderg lost her Joseph torpedoed off Tobruk. Ach, I could name a whole lot,’ she said, suddenly stopping herself. ‘Some needs money and some needs to get outa the house, but give me an hour or two and they’d be back on the machines. Sure it’s like riding a bicycle, once you’ve done it, ye niver forget.’

‘Could you give me a list of names, Daisy?’

‘Aye surely. Have ye a pen?’

‘I have indeed, Daisy, but I also have a meeting I mustn’t be late for,’ he said briskly. ‘Would you go in to Margaret and give her names and addresses. I’ll need a typed list.’

‘Right ye are. How’s Emily?’ she demanded, pausing at the door.

‘She’s well and in good form,’ he replied, smiling at her.

‘Tell her I was askin’ for her and that Jimmy is doing great. Dab hand with the bandages now. Cheerio,’ she added, as she pulled the door behind her and left Alex to recover himself.

The woman was a gift, he thought to himself, as he collected up his papers, but he always felt after one of her visits as if he had been caressed by a gale force wind.

November produced more than its share of damp, foggy days. Emily hated fog. She could put up with rain and tolerate high winds, but the effect of the chill blanket of white moisture that muffled sound and vision was altogether too much for her. It was certainly her least favourite month, but this year, she was amazed to find how very depressed she still felt, despite the good news about Johnny.

It was not a new thing. More than once she had read the columns in the women’s magazines that told you what to do. They always published advice in November, so perhaps she wasn’t the only one to be affected by the dying flowers and rotting vegetation in the garden and the constant slow drip of moisture from the black twigs of the hedgerows and the sodden branches of the trees.

She had
not
survived the anxiety over Johnny, she decided, she had been
spared
from having to cope with his loss. The more she thought about it, the less she felt she’d have been able to carry on if he’d perished, as so many sons and husbands had.

She argued with herself as she caught up on the neglected chores, the sewing and mending she simply couldn’t bend her mind to when every part
of her was listening for the phone, the doorbell, or the letterbox.

What on earth would she do if Johnny had been killed or Alex had an accident, or any of her family or close friends were taken from her? It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to make sense of her fears, but try as she would, she never got any further.

She knew she was a sensible, practical person, the kind others turned to in a crisis. That was all very well. She could deal with
their
crisis, but what about her own? She couldn’t see how she could manage if something like the loss of Johnny were to come upon her.

There was no one she could talk to about it, except Alex. So one evening by the fire, she confessed. She told him as simply as she could that she just didn’t know how she’d cope if something dreadful happened.

‘Emily, do you think you ought to
know
how to cope?’

‘Well, yes. I’m a grown up person with four children. I ought to be able to manage whatever comes my way.’

‘And do you think other people manage?’

‘Well, yes, I think so. Don’t you?’

‘I think we all manage, as you call it, in our own way,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There isn’t
a way of doing it
, like with a job. You have to invent your own way. And what you invent depends on who
you are and what experience you’ve had. Not of loss itself, but of life, especially your own life. All that has happened to you.’

He paused, looked at her anxious face and wished he could put her at ease. She was listening so carefully, but he knew she didn’t recognise her own strength. Everybody else saw it and he would be lost without it. But you can’t tell a person such things. Or rather, you can’t expect them to grasp what you’re saying if you do. They need to
see
for themselves and however much you may want to make things clear for someone you love, you can’t. Somehow, they have to find a way of doing it for themselves.

‘Emily love, you don’t know what’s in the cupboard till you’re hungry and have to go and look. You’ll have to trust me that you’ve got plenty there to draw on, should you need it.’

However modest the gifts might be, Emily still thought it worth the effort to wrap and pack presents and send letters for Christmas. There were, of course, gifts for Cathy and Brian, Jane and Johnny, as well as a new sweater to finish for Alex, one she’d had to knit in her sitting down time after her lunch each day so that it could still be a surprise.

But as well as family and friends, Emily sent small offerings to anyone she knew who was ill and to those who had had a difficult or unhappy year like her sister-in-law, Jane Ross and her son Lachlan,
now back in a military hospital in New England.

One of the boxes she carried in her bicycle basket to the Post Office in Banbridge contained a fruit cake and a pot of raspberry jam for Mrs Campbell, the old lady who had invited Alex to tea and helped him find his sister. Another was for Johann Hillman at Dungannon. She also sent a small embroidered handkerchief to Chris’s wife and a card with pressed flowers to his youngest child.

Christmas she knew could be so happy if all was well with you, but it was a very different story if it was not. Christmas made the happy things even happier, but left the unhappy totally bereft. So she braced herself and set aside her own sober thoughts to give her mind to what she could do for those who had much less to celebrate than she had.

There was nothing like a little surprise, she thought, as she sat making her own greeting cards in late November. They would provide just that for some people who might be so in need of it.

But the greatest surprise in November came to Emily herself, in a letter from Johnny. To his own obvious amazement, he had been awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross. He would be going up to the Palace on a 48 hour pass next month which would allow him to visit Cathy and Brian in their new home, but when she read the final line, she just couldn’t believe it. She hopped up and danced round the kitchen, then read it again.

The news might not have resolved Emily’s questionings, but it certainly brought a lift in spirits and gave her plenty to think about, for Jane would be home as well and Chris had promised to look in briefly on Christmas Day itself.

As soon as Emily had tramped down the sodden garden path and put her small scraps of food on the bird-table, she made her way to Rose’s viewpoint. From that point on the boundary fence the land fell sharply away into one of Cook’s fields and a gap had been left in the planting of trees and shrubs so that the view of the distant mountains should never be masked.

She stood gazing out across the green countryside, the Bann flooded into the adjoining meadows, the Mournes outlined against a sombre sky. They’d had a covering of snow on their tops for days now.

‘
The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow
,’ she said aloud, rhyming to herself in the sing-song voice they’d all used in the small schoolroom in a remote Galway village. She looked up into the heavy grey sky and smiled. It was a familiar rhyme, but hardly ever true for this part of the country and certainly not today. There was no wind at all, just
a heavy pall of cloud, sitting over the countryside, waiting. Waiting for some change of temperature, or pressure, not perceptible to human eye. Nevertheless, she’d be very surprised if a change didn’t come before the end of the day.

Meantime, there was work to do. She turned her back on the mountains, set off briskly for her own kitchen and decided that if she baked first, the heat from the oven would help to keep the room warm enough for her to sit and write some letters at the table. After that, she’d think again.

She took out her cake tins and began the practiced routine. Soon her mind was far away, moving freely from time long past when she had lived as a child in one Coastguard house after another, to the recent Christmas, now receding fast as January dropped one grey day after another, a barrier behind which lay one of the happiest times she had known since the beginning of the war.

After their solitary Christmas the previous year, when they had read together and listened to the radio, venturing out only to go to the Carol Service on Christmas Eve and to call on the Cook’s with presents for the children, this year had been an amazing contrast.

She would never forget the sight of Johnny grinning at her through the glass panel of the kitchen door as he pushed it open and dropped his suitcase on the floor. He’d arrived in uniform, looking smart
and distinctly handsome, still sun-tanned, his hair fairer than it had been even in childhood. He looked both alive, in some vivid way she had never seen before, and at the same time, more mature.

For two days before Jane arrived, he’d helped her with her preparations. He’d cut holly from the garden. Dug up the little Christmas tree they’d used for years. Patiently decorated it with all the tiny toys and precious baubles they’d had since childhood, while she’d placed gold and white chrysanthemums in jugs and vases in the sitting-room.

They’d drunk coffee in the warm kitchen and he’d talked about planes and sorties and comrades and the night sky. As the hours passed and they spent yet more time at the table, she thought it almost felt as if he were tape-recording all his experiences, so they could never be forgotten. He was quite right, of course. He knew how she’d always listened to his stories, right from when he could only just speak, and he knew the story of the months that followed his eighteenth birthday and brought him to this present moment was one she would never forget.

He opened for her a whole new world, answering her questions, describing the everyday detail as well as what was totally unfamiliar. All she could bring to the telling were the war films she and Alex had seen in the local cinema, images of crews sitting waiting, playing chess. Scrambling when the siren went, then the formations ripping across the screen.

She offered what she could and went on asking questions, sensing how much he needed to go on talking.

‘Not many manage to play chess, I suspect,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ve never seen anyone do it. Chaps are far too keyed up. More likely to knock the whole lot flying with the shake in their hands. That stops once you’re up. It’s a really strange feeling as you take off. A kind of sickening fear and then a wonderful sense of freedom. I expect it’s adrenaline, but it’s a wonderful moment as you soar off and see your pals up there beside you. Great solidarity, Ma. Whatever doubts and fears you have on the ground, there’s no fear up there. Just focus. Skill. Cunning,’ he said, choosing each word with care.

‘But we don’t use formation flying like you see in the cinema,’ he continued. ‘They did to begin with, but it had something of the same effect as the Charge of the Light Brigade,’ he added sharply. ‘There were high ups who thought it was a good idea and the first squadrons who broke it up and refused to fly formation ran into bad trouble. There were actually court-marshals.’

‘But why, Johnny? Why was there trouble?’

‘It was new, different, not in the book,’ he replied flatly. ‘But tight formation flying cost lives. It was predictable and made you easy targets for enemy gunners. Besides, you’re so busy keeping formation, you’re likely to get caught out by Messerschmitts
coming in on your tail. You have simply got to keep them guessing, even when you’re guessing yourself.’

It was after breakfast on the morning of Christmas Eve that Johnny suddenly spoke of his own ill-fated flight from Tunisia. Emily was preparing a goose from Cook’s, making breadcrumbs for stuffing and preparing sauces she could re-heat next day.

‘I might not have made it, Ma, if it hadn’t been for Ritchie,’ he said suddenly. ‘And for you.’

She paused, startled, aware that for the first time, he was not taking his previous relaxed view of his ditching and the two nights he’d spent afloat. She knew well enough that the light-hearted letter he’d sent following his telegram was a clever way of being able to tell them quite a lot about what had happened and still get past the censor. But nothing he’d said since then had been other than equally light.

‘How so, Johnny?’ she said, not looking at him, though she noted the way he was twisting his almost empty coffee cup between his hands.

‘Walker’s Mill,’ he said abruptly. ‘If he hadn’t got us the job there in the hols I’d not have seen how they shaped those fuselages and cemented them together. I mightn’t even have known they’d float, with a bit of help,’ he added shortly. ‘I had to keep bailing, of course, but it gave me something to do while I was waiting to be picked up,’ he went on, a look on his face that she couldn’t read.

‘The danger was not exposure, though it did get cold at night, nor enemy subs, because they’d all left the Med by then, nor even sharks,’ he said, grinning briefly. ‘I did remember you once told me there aren’t any sharks in the Med.’

To her surprise, he stopped, put his coffee cup down on the table and gathered himself up from the familiar comfortable slouch he’d clearly not forgotten from schooldays. But he remained silent and thoughtful and a long way away.

‘So what was the danger, Johnny?’

‘What?’

‘The danger, Johnny,’ she repeated patiently. ‘What was the danger?’

‘Oh, giving up, of course. You’ve banged your head and it hurts like hell. You’re sitting in a kite with no food and the only water is sea water round your ankles. The kite is about as protective as an eggshell if a ship comes your way or one of our own chaps can’t read the markings and thinks you might be a enemy spy. Not a good situation,’ he finished, with a great intake of breath.

‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked lightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice that she’d shaken far too much salt into the stuffing and was now removing it with a teaspoon.

‘Didn’t I tell you? Thought I had. I came to, seeing those little red bits you put on the pudding for Jane’s birthday and I decided that it was a message
from home. So I started thinking about everything I’d ever seen or done. Everywhere I’d ever been. All the things we’d talked about. And every time I bailed out water, I thought of that thimble of yours, for the cream. Do you remember? And I thought, if Ma can do it, I can do it.’

‘Do what?’ she asked, thoroughly confused.

‘Oh Ma, all the things you do. Like saving up the coupons so we could have beef for Jane’s party and growing veg to give to the Hospital and the Red Cross. Picking apart sweaters to knit something new. It is the way all the little things add up. Sitting there, I decided that
multiplication
is the most important thing anyone ever teaches you, the tiny things added and added to each other. Each minute. Each bakelite mug of sea water. Each walk up the hill to Rathdrum. That’s how I did it, Ma. It’s you that should have had the medal,’ he ended, as he stood up, took his cup to the sink and washed it under the tap.

She saw the first flakes fall as she washed the cake tins. Soft, curved flakes, like feathers from a plucked goose, caught by the wind before you’ve managed to gather them up. She stood watching them float down, thinking how slippery the hill would be for the postman, and how much worse it would be by tonight if the temperature dropped and it froze before Alex got home.

But there was a kind of relief in the falling flakes. The waiting was over, the snow had begun and already with the thinnest skim across the yard, the roof of the workshop, and the hedge beyond, it was brighter. The gloom of the laden sky was offset by the blanketing sheet of whiteness that covered every surface, smoothed out the irregularities and reflected what light remained in the short, winter day.

Jane had been glowing with fresh air and effort when she arrived. She’d seen no one she knew on the road from Banbridge and she’d got as far as Cook’s just as the parcel-post van had set off up the hill to deliver a gift from Cathy and Brian.

‘Good exercise,’ she said, as she dropped her suitcase and hugged her. ‘Where’s Johnny?’

‘Right here,’ he said, having run downstairs, shaving soap still decorating one ear.

Emily had turned away to put the kettle on as they threw their arms round each other. They had always been close and Jane had been distraught when they had to tell her he was missing.

‘Didn’t you wind your elastic up enough?’ Jane said, disentangling herself, and staring at him.

‘I wound it up all right, but it broke,’ he came back at her, looking her up and down as if he’d never laid eyes on her before.

‘When’s the Big Day?’ he asked, taking her coat and pausing by the door into the hall until he had her answer.

‘Not just immediately. I have one or two operational difficulties, as a friend of mine used to say. Come and sit down and I’ll tell you exactly what I need you to do,’ she replied, though Emily could see she was teasing.

‘Well, brother dear, there is this man Hitler,’ Jane began. ‘You haven’t seen him off yet, and until you do my poor Johann is stuck in Dungannon,’ she went on sadly. ‘Now he does have a friend and the locals are kind,’ she admitted, ‘but he is
bored
. Wouldn’t you be bored shut up in a camp? It will be two years on my birthday, more or less.’

‘I’ll have to see what I can do for you,’ he said adopting the same sober tone his sister had used. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to go ahead with the Second Front single-handed. Anything to oblige,’ he added, as he looked hopefully at the rapidly emptying tray of cookies on the kitchen table.

‘Help yourselves,’ Emily said, pouring more tea for everyone. ‘I refuse to ration out cookies at Christmas. When they’re gone, they’re gone, but we’ll have enjoyed them.’

There was a sudden unexpected moment of stillness, as if she had said something significant and important. She looked from one to the other but for a moment they continued to remain silent.

‘It’s just something I wrote in a letter to Jane back last month,’ Johnny began. ‘I’m as safe as it gets in Norfolk, unless a kite blows up, or I have an
encounter with a tree, or the North Sea in winter, all of which I shall endeavour to avoid. But I might buy it next time. I told Jane that if I’m gone, I’m gone, but we’ll have enjoyed so much that we had’

‘Good for you, Johnny,’ Emily said reassuringly. ‘And we’re
all
going to enjoy this Christmas. Live every day as if it were your last, as they all say,’ she went on, ‘but just don’t go getting indigestion and spoiling it if you can avoid it.’

No one did get indigestion, she reflected, as she cleared the cooling racks from the kitchen table and sat down to write. The only opportunity for excess was the huge pile of roast potatoes from her own plot and the carefully stored carrots and sprouts. The goose would serve eight with care, but it had to last for a meal on Boxing Day as well.

It was fortunate that none of her children had ever liked plum pudding, for she herself had always found it much too heavy. In the past, at Christmas, she’d made trifle or fruit pudding or even golden syrup pudding by special request, though she hadn’t seen Golden Syrup in the shops for a long time now. This time there was only one possible pudding she could offer them.

‘Worth banging your head for, Johnny?’ Jane said.

‘Absolutely,’ he replied.

He picked up his spoon, gathered up a collection
of the jewel like fragments of well-set red jelly and allowed them to fall, one by one, back down to the swirl of cream that sat atop the sherry trifle in the best sundae glasses.

‘I’ve waited a long time to do that,’ he said, lifting his spoon in salute to his mother.

‘A good thing is worth waiting for, so they say in these parts,’ said Alex, with a sideways look at both his son and daughter.

Her first letter that afternoon was to her ‘other Jane’, her new-found sister-in-law.