Shadow on the Land (20 page)

The snow continued intermittently through Wednesday and Thursday, but when Emily drew back the curtains on Friday morning she found a thin, mizzling rain already pitting the smooth contours that covered hedge and bush. She could hear the drip of water from overflowing gutters. Later, when she tramped through the slush to the bird table she found the air had lost its icy chill.

She could now breathe more freely in both senses of the word, for a winter picnic had been planned at the community hall in Seapatrick and at this rate by late morning the roads would all be clear. Even if the footpaths were wet and muddy, it would make life easier for everyone if they didn’t have to carry bags and boxes over slippery pavements.

The picnic itself went well, the practiced routine never failed to create a lively good feeling, but she felt tired afterwards as she packed up plates and dishes, loaded her shopping bag and basket and gave them to the pale young man who stood to attention when she spoke to him, but had been a great success all afternoon with his impersonations of Superman.

It was so good to be home with no more to do than put a match to the fire and listen for Alex before she lit the gas under their champ. It was Alex’s idea that they have a picnic themselves in the evening if she was busy with a picnic in the afternoon.

He was a little earlier than usual and in good spirits.

‘Here you are, read that,’ he said, taking an envelope from his pocket and dropping a large brown paper bag on the table.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ she said warmly. ‘What did they give you?’

By way of answer, he pushed the brown paper bag across the table.

She opened the bag and looked inside.

‘Alex! Where
did
they get these?’

‘I thought I’d better not ask, but the whisper was they all had odd bits of shirt in their work boxes and it took them till now to get the pieces they needed. You said the shirt situation was getting serious. Those will help, won’t they?’

‘My goodness,’ she said happily. ‘Saville Row label and all. These will last for years! Oh love, what a lovely surprise.’

‘That and a bowl of champ and Sam’s turf on the fire …’

He broke off in the middle of taking off his dungarees as he heard the phone ring.

‘It’s all right, I’ll take it while you struggle,’ she said, laughing as she went out into the hall.

She switched on the light and seeing how dim it was bent down and picked up the torch that sat on the floor beside the phone table in case the power
should fail. The receiver was cold to the touch and there was a moment of complete silence as she put it to her ear.

‘Hallo, Hallo, is that you, Ma?’

‘Lizzie,’ she replied, surprised and pleased, ‘how lovely to hear you. Have you come over on leave?’

‘No, Ma, I’m in London, but I’m in someone else’s office and I may get cut off …

There was a loud noise in the background and a sudden crackle on the line. Emily knew she had missed some words, for Lizzie had gone on speaking unaware of the crackle on the line.

‘What did you say, Lizzie?’

‘I said I’m sorry it’s such bad news.’

‘What bad news?’

‘About Cathy and Brian …’

‘But what’s happened?’ she asked, anxiety stabbing her as she realised suddenly what the noise must have been.

‘It was a direct hit, Ma. There’s nothing left at all. They wouldn’t have known a thing,’ she said, her voice tight with anxiety. ‘I’m afraid I have to go. This line is priority. I’ll send you the notification, but I can’t do anything more. Sorry and all that,’ she added apologetically, as the line went dead.

Emily looked at the heavy black receiver as if there were more words in the earpiece could she only reach them. But she couldn’t. There weren’t
any more words to be had. It had needed so few. And now a strange silence flowed all around her. Like the snow, it had come at last, the enormity of loss she had always feared.

She felt Alex’s hand on her arm as he took the receiver and put it down.

‘Who, Emily? Who is it this time?’ he asked, his face featureless in the dim light.

‘Cathy and Brian,’ she said, the words coming out without the slightest difficulty.

‘Dead?’

‘Yes. I think it was an air-raid. There was an explosion, so I couldn’t hear the first time,’ she went on, wanting to share with him the smallest detail.

‘Who rang?’

‘Lizzie.’

‘Lizzie,’ he repeated, with a great sigh. ‘I wonder how she came to be there.’

‘I think they still see each other occasionally, but I don’t ask. It’s between her and Lizzie.’

She stopped and thought again. She couldn’t say that any more.

‘I mean it
was
between her and Lizzie.’

In the dim light, she couldn’t see if Alex had tears in his eyes, but he looked pale and she felt herself shiver. The hall was stone cold. Once again there was no paraffin and the convector heater had cut out as the supply fell.

‘Alex, we mustn’t stand here. Let’s sit by the fire,’
she said, putting her arm round him and urging him towards the sitting-room door.

The fire had burnt up and the room was full of the faint aroma of turf. Its flickering flames reflected in the well-polished furniture and caught the gold and white blooms of the Christmas chrysanthemums lasting so well in the chilly room.

‘What are we going to do, Emily?’ he said bleakly as they stood warming themselves at the fire.

‘I think we have to give thanks for all they had,’ she said reaching for his hand, ‘Like Johnny said at Christmas to Jane, ‘
we’ll have enjoyed so much
.’ They did, Alex. They were happy. Happier in this last year than they’d ever been.’

‘And that’s been taken away,’ he said bitterly.

‘Yes, it has. But the loss is ours, not theirs. They had what they had and it was good. And they went together, Alex, as we would if we could choose. They were not parted.’

‘No, they were not parted. That’s some comfort. But not much. And it seems we’ve lost Lizzie as well. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of a kind word for us.’

‘No, there wasn’t,’ she agreed. ‘I think Lizzie’s given up kind words. But we haven’t. We’ll just have to be very kind to each other,’ she said, putting her arms round him and holding him close.

The hardest part on that Friday evening after the first overwhelming shock of Lizzie’s phone call was trying to decide what to do for everyone else. Jane and Johnny to begin with, then friends and family. They wondered if Lizzie had also been in touch with Brian Heald’s family, whom they’d never met. Emily wasn’t even sure she had an address for them as they’d had to move twice in the last year, having been bombed out earlier in Manchester.

They forced themselves to listen to the Nine O’clock News so that they would at least know what was going on in London. It was no comfort at all to hear that the attacking force of over five hundred assorted German planes had been manned by such inexperienced pilots that only a small number of bombs had fallen on the city itself and that few of them had dropped in the areas outlined by flares. No casualty figures were quoted, but forty enemy planes had been shot down.

The wireless was in the kitchen and when they switched off, Emily moved to the stove.

‘We must eat our supper, Alex,’ she said firmly, lighting the gas.

‘Like good children,’ he said, unexpectedly.

‘Like the way we did the night Ritchie died,’ she replied, glancing up, as she stirred the champ, the most good-natured of meals they had ever neglected.

‘Would you drink a hot whiskey?’ he asked, remembering the bottle of Jack Daniels Chris had brought them when Johnny went missing.

‘I’ll drink a hot whiskey with you, if you’ll eat your champ with me,’ she replied, as she lifted the empty kettle from the stove and gave it to him to fill at the sink.

‘I think we should do nothing tonight, Alex,’ she said, as they put the bowls back on the tray. ‘It will have to be one step at a time.’

‘Will it be any better tomorrow?’ he asked, his shoulders drooped, his head bent.

‘Yes, it will. We’ll have survived that much longer. We’ll have kept afloat like Johnny did. Something may come to help us, and if it doesn’t, then we’ll just go on helping each other.

In the week that followed, Emily and Alex had to allow the community in which Cathy had grown up to speak about their grief. People long forgotten contacted them. Sunday School teachers and Brown Owls. Primary Teachers and Girl Guide leaders. Librarians and shopkeepers. They all looked at the obituary in
The Leader
and thought ‘Ach, that’s wee Cathy Hamilton, the parents will be in a bad way.’

With the kindness that is one of the most admirable qualities of Ulster people and the vigorous directness that often leads to their worst excesses, they took up their pens, got out their bicycles, harnessed the pony and trap, or took the bus to the foot of Rathdrum Hill and made their way up to knock at the front door, in a constant stream that led Emily to wonder why a kitchen door could not serve at such a time.

The minister of Holy Trinity suggested a memorial service which Alex courteously declined, pointing out that so many had died from the local
villages that he felt it was not appropriate. But he did provide the material requested for the parish magazine, who were fulsome in their praise of a girl who had worked hard, had many friends and had become a very good teacher.

He could not afford to take time off work with bad weather at sea and urgent new orders together creating delays and pressure on the mills, but Emily was grateful when she saw that his work was a comfort to him. She wasn’t entirely surprised, for she knew of old the solidarity men like Robert Anderson could offer without saying a word beyond the exchanges of everyday.

A week on from the evening of Lizzie’s phone call, the first Friday in months she had not been driven to a winter picnic, she peeled potatoes in the dim and chilly kitchen and listened for the car in the drive hoping that he was still as steady as he had been when he left that morning.

He was coping well as far as she could see and she had not done so badly herself. The stream of visitors had been exhausting, but their memories of Cathy and their warmth towards herself had brought real comfort. But that would stop. Suddenly, without any warning, somewhere in the next few days the stream of well wishers would melt away, she would be left alone with the silence, the silence that had flowed in all around her when first she’d heard the news.

February was bitterly cold. Although there was more sunshine than in January, the strong light only served to sharpen the images of frosted leaves and twigs and trees. The countryside was thinly skimmed with white but it was frost, not snow, and the cold bit deeper, the house never warm, Emily feeling a chill she’d never felt before.

There were so many letters to write. She could not fail to reply to the kind thoughts directed towards her and her family but she found herself struggling, she who loved writing letters, discovered that words were deserting her. And all the while, there was a silence in her head.

She sat in the conservatory with a rug and a hot water bottle and stared at the light on the geranium leaves. Even in February, there was always a bloom or two, bright red, or pink, or even the unusual purple on the plant that Sarah had once brought from somewhere exotic. But it was the geranium leaves she was aware of, the minuteness of the tiny blonde hairs made visible by the angle of the light.

How could this fragment of life go on surviving in this world of noise and battle, of falling masonry and crushed bodies, of explosions and anti-aircraft fire, screaming fighter planes and chattering machine guns.

She scolded herself regularly when she found herself going over and over again what must have happened to the house near Waterloo Station. What
did it matter how they died? All that mattered was that they were gone. And whether it was to the Heaven of the would-be comforters, who had arrived with gifts and offered their firm belief, fluent with quotations, or not, what did it matter? All that mattered was that they
were
gone.

Gone away. No longer resident at this address. Return to sender.

She seldom cried. When she did, it was usually set off by some small memory that crept upon her unbidden. She’d take up her knitting, force her mind to concentrate on the detail of a cable or the heel of a sock and it would remind her of teaching Cathy to knit. That small face, so given to sudden smiles, creased in a furious frown as she tried to master the largest and easiest needles Emily possessed.

She missed out on only one Friday afternoon commitment and when Chris asked if she could face a new instalment of lads arriving in the middle of the month she said, yes. Life had to go on, she insisted, and although Chris had come to see them as soon as he’d heard their news they had hardly seen him since Christmas. It would be good to see him as well.

‘This could be the last batch, my friends,’ Chris said soberly, in the few moments they always shared in his office before they went upstairs to the big dining-room where five new lieutenants would wait
with Captain Hillman and the five they already knew.

‘How so, Chris, or should I just guess?’ asked Alex, as they shook hands warmly.

‘The whole world is guessing as far as I can see,’ Chris replied. ‘It has to be soon, but we have to be at full strength. Your man Montgomery showed how necessary that is as far back as Alamein. He was pushed to move sooner and he wouldn’t. Got a lot of stick for it, but he made his point. This is the big one and we daren’t screw up,’ he said emphatically, glancing up at the maps on his wall. ‘My bet is early summer, but that’s hardly more than what the newspapers are saying. It’s obvious in one way it has to be summer. What’s important is the element of surprise. That’s not my department, thank goodness. But we may not have time for much in the way of goodbyes,’ he added, as he drew them towards the door and out into the grand hall with its elegant staircase.

Emily was happy to see Chris and Alex together. Alex had so little time for friendship beyond his work, while she had a web of friends at the end of her pen, in the shops she visited and the Women’s Institute. She’d got to know so many new people since she’d first tried to do something about a bunch of homesick lads even younger than Johnny.

The evening went well as it always did. She enjoyed the food, the huge warm fire, the bright
lights and the friendly faces, but she felt as she talked to the new Lieutenants that she was acting her part, speaking lines from a well-rehearsed script and seeing each face as one might through a light fog, the outlines clear enough, but the detail obscured.

Thinking about the evening as she stood over the ironing board next morning, she tried to remember something she’d read recently about fog or mist. Try as she would, it wouldn’t come back.

It was later, when she sat down to write to Jane that it came to her and she went and found the letter she’d received from Johann some weeks earlier.

March roared in like the proverbial lion but it did bring a rise in temperature, at least by day, the evenings lengthened and there were grey shoots of daffodils even if there were still no blooms by the third week of the month.

Emily registered all the customary signs of the coming spring, but she knew she was simply doing what she always did when she ordered seeds and planted her crops. There was no pleasure in the work any more than in the everyday tasks which she performed meticulously as if something of great importance depended upon them.

Sometimes, as she prepared potatoes for planting, cutting them one by one in the correct manner, she thought of Johnny on his floating plane, baling out with a small bakelite mug. She comforted herself with the knowledge that the bank account she had opened for Jane and Johann was looking distinctly healthy from last year’s efforts and that this year’s surplus potatoes and the
vegetable crop would add yet further deposits.

She had written to Johann and thanked him for his letter. She had, at last, written to the teachers who had been Cathy’s colleagues and the young men who had written so formally from the laboratory where Brian had been admired and well-liked.

By the end of the month, when suddenly the wind dropped and the weather settled, as it sometimes did in March, after St Patrick had ‘turned up the sunny side of the stone’, she had written all the letters she needed to write telling more distant friends of their loss, or thanking all those who had written to them both. Now, when she sat in the conservatory in the warm sun, she could write letters again without having to refer to what had happened. It felt rather strange at first, as if it were not quite proper to talk about books to Brendan, or share her sister’s treasures from County Fermanagh with her other correspondents and her new contacts like Carrie Hicks in Vermont and the Campbells in Manchester.