Shadow on the Land (6 page)

‘Oh bother,’ protested Lizzie. ‘That’s probably for me. I had to give them my number in case there was a flap,’ she explained, taking time to lick her spoon and put it down carefully on her side plate before she went out into the hall.

‘Elizabeth Hamilton,’ she said, as she picked up the receiver.

The dining room door was open and one by one they put their spoons down and listened.

‘Yes, yes, of course. No, I think you’re quite right. It’s not easy at all. Hold on and I’ll get him, Robert.’

At the mention of Robert, Alex was on his feet and half way across the room. Of all the reliable people he knew at the four mills, Robert was one of the best. He took the receiver from Lizzie and asked what was wrong.

They all listened intently, but for many minutes Alex said nothing. Only Emily, sitting at the head of the dining table opposite the door into the hall, could see him nodding his head vigorously.

He strode back into the room.

‘I’m sorry everyone,’ he said quickly. ‘A plane has crashed on the edge of the Millbrook reservoir. They’ve rescued the pilot, but he’s injured and none of the men who got him out could get any sense out of him.’

‘But why should
you
do any better, Da? Why don’t they just take him to hospital and let them cope?’ asked Johnny crossly.

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Lizzie coolly.

‘No, it’s not,’ agreed Alex, looking down at Jane who was watching him carefully. ‘Robert knew you were here and thought you might be willing to come with me.’

She nodded vigorously and got to her feet.

‘Robert also remembered that I speak German as well as French.’

The young man was stretched out on the couch below the window in Alex’s office, the books and papers that usually rested there now stacked hastily on the floor by the filing cabinet. Robert had bandaged his head, but blood was already making a vivid stain on the white dressing. Where it was not obscured with dried blood and some dark residue released by the impact of the crash, his face was deathly pale. His blonde hair fell unkempt over his closed eyes.

Alex took a deep breath and swallowed hard. The young German pilot who lay before him looked even younger than Johnny.

‘He’s passed out again,’ said Robert quietly. ‘He tried to run away when we got him out of the plane, but I think he may have broken his leg. Certainly it wouldn’t hold him, or we mightn’t have caught him.’

‘Da, where do you keep the proper medical kit?’

‘It’s in the store-room, Jane. I’ll get it for you,’ Robert said quickly. ‘D’you want anything else? Hot water?’

Alex turned to his daughter to find she’d already peeled off her pink sweater, parked it on his desk and was now rolling up her sleeves.

Robert returned moments later with a large wooden box. Perched on top, a bowl of hot water steamed gently. He set the bowl of water down next to her, opened the box and stood beside Alex watching as she removed the dressing, inspected the wound and went to work cleaning the young man’s face.

‘D’you think it was reconnaissance?’ asked Alex soberly. ‘He’s a bit young for a spy, isn’t he?’

‘He thought we were going to shoot him when we pulled him out of the water. He said something like ‘Nicht schlossen,’ but I only know German from war films,’ Robert replied.

‘He’s not a spy,’ retorted Jane sharply, as she dropped bloodstained surgical wipes into the wastepaper basket.

‘How d’you know, Jane? Robert asked.

‘Just look at his face,’ she replied, as she wiped his brow and pushed his hair back.

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ said Alex. ‘But we need to know. I don’t want to see him shot any more than you do, Robert. Do our people shoot spies?’

‘Oh yes. But they do get a trial as far as I know.’

At that moment, the young man stirred, moving agitatedly even before he opened his eyes.

‘Please don’t move,’ said Jane quietly, ‘not till I’ve finished.’

His eyes flicked open, wide with amazement and stared at her. Both Alex and Robert saw the look he gave her as his blue eyes met hers, but only Alex understood what he said before he passed out again.

‘I must be dead for you are an Angel.’

‘Oh the poor boy,’ said Emily, her face creased with distress, as she listened to Alex’s account of the afternoon. ‘Are you sure it was safe to take him to hospital?’

‘As safe as we could make it,’ Alex said firmly ‘We did manage to get assurances from the Chief Constable that he would be guarded until he was fit to be moved. Thank goodness we had a Justice of the Peace on the Board.’

‘I expect he and the Chief Constable went to school together,’ she said briskly.

‘More than likely. He was certainly sympathetic when I told him what I’d been able to find out.’

‘Oh Alex, what would have happened if you hadn’t spoken German?’

‘He had a little English, but not much use for explaining himself. I’ll tell you something though,’ he added with a little laugh, ‘he seemed to understand every word Jane spoke.’

Alex paused, unsure how much more he should say about Jane’s part in the afternoon. He could certainly tell her just how capable she’d shown herself, but Emily would know that already. She’d seen Jane in action many a time, whether it was splinting a bird’s wing or bandaging Johnny’s knee.

He thought back to the afternoon and tried to remember the exact sequence of events after Jane had brought him round by bathing his face and hands.

‘I need to ask you some questions,’ he had begun somewhat hesitantly in German.

He was amazed that a language he’d spoken so seldom since he was a labourer in German Township should come back to him so easily after all these years.

The blue eyes regarded him anxiously.

‘This is my father,’ said Jane quietly. ‘He wants to help you.’

The young man had turned to look at her. Just one brief glance, then suddenly there were huge tears running down his face. Jane took his hand and held it, smiled at him and said, ‘You’ll feel better soon. Drink some more water.’

He’d wiped his tears with the back of his hand, drunk the water as obediently as a child and begun to speak, his voice husky. He’d told them he’d had to join either the Army or the Luftwaffe because it would be bad for his socialist father who had been sent to a labour camp if the family did not support
the Fuhrer. Both his brothers were already dead, one shot down over England and one killed in a raid on the French airfield where he was based.

As for himself, he did not want to fight or to kill anyone. He was trying to fly to Ireland. It was a neutral country and they would not shoot him, but he had no maps and there had been cloud over the sea when he set out from the north of France. So he had got lost.

When he came out of the cloud and saw the coast to the west he was so happy. But when he came lower he saw airfields below him. He could see the markings on the planes. They were British and he had no more petrol. The plane was stalling and he had to bring her down quickly. He saw the lake and headed for it.

‘Have you a headache?’ asked Jane, before Alex could make any comment.

He nodded.

‘Yes, it is very sore.’

As she gave him some Anadin and encouraged him to drink another glass of water, Alex realised that she made tiny gestures with her hands whenever she spoke to him. She might have no German, but he was beginning to wonder just how much of the young man’s story she already understood simply from looking at him.

‘So what will happen next?’ Emily asked anxiously.

Alex realised he’d fallen silent, his mind moving back over the afternoon’s events.

‘X-rays tomorrow. They might transfer him to a military hospital if the leg
is
broken. Then a P. O. W. camp. He’ll be no worse off in the North than in the South.’

‘Can one visit prisoners?’ Emily asked, folding up her knitting and putting back in its cretonne bag.

‘I don’t know. But I know someone who’ll be trying to find out.’

‘Would that be our Jane?’

‘Yes.’

Emily looked at him and waited, and waited. Finally he gathered himself and looked into the embers of the dying fire.

‘I’ve never seen two people read each other like open books the way Johann Hillmann and our Jane did this afternoon. Not a dozen words between them, but his blue eyes near as big as hers,’ he said, taking a great deep breath, as he stood up and switched off the table lamp on his side of the fire.

As Emily finished the second sleeve of Alex’s best shirt and turned round to pick up a clothes hanger from the kitchen table, she saw a glint of sunlight strike the wet panes of the wide window beyond the kitchen sink. She moved across the kitchen, glanced out into the cobbled yard, noted the wind rippling the shallow puddles and sighed. It would take an hour or more with a good drying wind before she could pick peas and much longer if she wanted flowers for drying.

Today was the first Monday in September and it was days since she’d been able to do anything in the garden, even weeding. As sure as she set foot in the yard, she’d feel the first spits of rain in the wind. One look up at the dark base of the cloud above warned her it was about to pour at any moment.

She picked up another shirt, noticed how worn the collar had become and wondered if she should turn it before it got any worse. She sighed again. It
wasn’t that she minded sewing in itself, but she did mind sitting indoors when she needed to be out in the garden.

The high summer months had been so disappointing. After a most lovely May, full of sunshine and sudden showers that kept the garden watered, but never lasted long enough to damage the growing plants, June had been almost completely dry. She’d had to get the hose out when her back ached from carrying buckets and watering cans, but June was also endlessly sunny and warm. Whenever she wanted to do a job, she had only to change her shoes and walk outside. She’d gardened morning, noon and night, glad to have so much she could do when Alex was away for long hours and Johnny was at school or shut up in the dining-room with his final revision for his all important final exams.

She’d been so pleased with her early vegetables. Some she’d given to the hospital in Banbridge. The rest she’d sold at the Women’s Institute market to raise funds for the Red Cross. She’d made so much money that Alex had teased her and said if she would only go into business he’d be able to retire.

But July was a different matter. There was rain nearly every day, less sun, and humidity as bad as on a spinning floor. But unlike working on a spinning floor, there was no relief at the end of the day. The humidity persisted, making the nights clammy and sleep difficult. She’d gazed at the rotting blooms on
her geraniums and viewed the well-nibbled leaves of vegetables beaten down by the rain and hoped that August would be better.

August was even worse. There was just as much rain, but even less sunshine. Fairly, it was less humid, but she’d felt she had no energy for anything. When she did get a dry afternoon, she found herself wandering up and down the rows of peas and beans not able to decide whether to tackle the rampant weeds or to pick the swollen pods before they burst and the birds got them.

Then Johnny went. And she was quite alone.

She paused, took a deep breath and decided she’d done enough ironing. There were only two of them now and Alex had enough everyday shirts and clean handkerchiefs to see him through a week, never mind till tomorrow, or the next day.

She’d done her best, she really had, but she’d not been able to hide from Alex the fact that she was so very low in spirits now there was no Johnny to help her keep them up. She refused to say ‘depressed’. Although the women’s magazines said it was nothing to be ashamed off and told you how to deal with it, she couldn’t bring herself to admit that she just didn’t know how she could keep going if the war went on much longer. It had been bad enough at times these last three years with shortages and the endless problems at the mills, but now there was one more worry, Johnny was out there too, with
his sisters, learning to fly, which could only lead to certain danger, wherever it might happen to be.

Three long years since that morning when they’d stayed at home from church knowing there was going to be a broadcast on the wireless at eleven o’clock. They’d listened in silence and then, as soon as Mr Chamberlain finished, Alex said he thought she should phone Cathy. So she had. Cathy had cried, because she knew Brian would be called up.

But, of course, in the end, Brian had been reserved, the last thing either he or Cathy had expected.

Perhaps she should try to remember that so far none of her worst nightmares had come true. Worrying about any of her family wasn’t going to get her anywhere. It might even make her ill and how would Alex cope then, with all he had on his plate.

She filled the kettle and made herself a cup of tea. She’d sit in the conservatory with the flowers that weren’t rain-battered and rotten and read her book for an hour. Then, this afternoon, wet or dry, she’d go out and pick some peas for Mary Cook and take them down to her when she went for the milk.

She’d done exactly what the Dig for Victory pamphlet said she should and planted her peas and beans every three or four weeks instead of all at once. The residues of the first rows had long since shrivelled
on the compost heap, but the later plantings were now heavy with fresh green pods. To her surprise, the rain had held off and now a few gleams of sun came to dry the still damp foliage and to create little pools of quicksilver where tiny drops of water lay in the broad leaves of cabbage and rhubarb.

She gathered what she needed for Mary Cook and their own supper, and then decided to pick some more for her old friend, Dolly Love, in Dromore. Dolly might be feeling just as low as she had felt, for her Tom had gone last week. What a pity it was that Tom, and Johnny’s best friend Ritchie, only a couple of weeks younger than Johnny himself, had all been sent to different training camps though they had applied at the same time and hoped to be together.

Emily might well have gone on pulling out weeds and thinking her own thoughts long after the peas were picked had it not been for the sound of a car on the hill. At the sudden vibration on the now warm air, she straightened up, stretched her back and listened.

It
did
sound like Alex all right, but she couldn’t remember when he’d last arrived home at four o’clock in the afternoon. Moments later, she heard his car swing into the avenue, out of sight behind the flourishing hedge.

She arrived back in the yard just as he slowed round the corner of the house and stopped.

‘We have a visitor,’ he said, grinning as he caught
sight of her Wellington boots. ‘Do you want me to head him off and bring him in by the front door?’ he asked, as she caught the sound of another vehicle on the hill.

But before she’d had time to consider this possibility a jeep with the big white star of the U.S. Army on its bonnet swooped down the avenue and pulled up sharply behind Alex’s Austin, a flutter of fallen leaves caught up on the wheels settling gently to the ground.

‘Major Hicks, how lovely to see you,’ said Emily with a great beaming smile.

‘And you too, ma’am,’ he said, dropping down from the driver’s seat and holding out a large hand. ‘I don’t know when I last saw a lady in muddy boots. Makes me homesick for Vermont.’

‘Major Hicks has come to consult you, Emily,’ said Alex, a twinkle in his eyes.

‘Now, Alex, this won’t do,’ the tall American protested. ‘I may be on official business, but I will not be called Major Hicks standing in your backyard. The name is Christopher, but no one except my Ma calls me that. So Chris it is. And you ma’am are Emily, if that’s all right.’

‘Of course, it is. Now let’s go in and see if I can find a piece of cake for tea.’

‘Well, don’t worry if you can’t, Emily. I’ve brought some cookies and coffee. Just a few things might come in handy,’ he said casually, reaching
into the back seat and producing a large, over-filled cardboard box.

Emily stared at it and then laughed.

‘Chris, I haven’t seen coffee since 1940. And I
love
coffee.’

‘That’s just great. I could sure use a cup of coffee, cake or no cake,’ he said laughing. ‘If you’re going to make it for us, can I look around your backyard?’ he went on as he carried the box over to the house and set it down on the doorstep.

It was Alex who laughed at the startled look on Emily’s face, but it was Christopher Hicks who apologised.

‘That’s one down to me, Emily,’ he said shaking his head and smiling wryly. ‘The correct word is ‘garden.’ I forgot
again
. We have a book, official issue, telling us the obvious mistakes we can make because we all think we speak the same language. That one is on about page two.’

‘I’d like to see your book, Chris,’ said Emily smiling. ‘It would help
me
when I meet your young men navigating cross-country. It ought to work both ways, you know.’

Chris Hicks nodded vigorously.

‘That’s exactly why I’ve come to you, Emily. I need your help. If your good man can spare you, that is,’ he added cautiously.

He looked sideways at Alex, found him grinning broadly, and turned again to Emily.

‘We’ll see about that,’ she said promptly, as she waved towards the flower garden. ‘We’ve a good view of the Mournes, Chris, if you’re not fed up crawling round them already. Alex, dear, try to keep him away from all the neglected bits. It’s even worse than I thought it was,’ she added, as she bent to take off her boots.

She put the kettle on, pulled a kitchen chair over to the tall cupboards on the wall adjoining the conservatory, climbed up and opened the double doors of the over-cupboard. There, among the stored items, like the pretty, hand-painted water carafe for the guest room, the collection of jam pots for January’s marmalade and the spare mantles for the emergency oil lamps, sat the coffee-pot. Beside it, an empty ceramic jar said
COFFEE
. They were both perfectly clean but for a thin layer of dust on their lids.

She brought them down carefully, one at a time, the kitchen chair wobbling slightly on the worn tiles and fetched a pack of coffee from the doorstep.

‘Oh wonderful,’ she said aloud, laughing to herself as she took a great deep breath of the rich aroma, remembering how she’d once said to Alex that if she ever passed out he could forget the smelling salts and just wave an open jar of coffee under her nose.

There was more cake in the tin than she’d remembered, but as she cut it up and waited for the
coffee to filter, she thought how kind it was of Chris Hicks to bring his own cookies. But then, he was a kind man, and she’d already had good cause to be grateful to him.

They’d met on one of the sun-filled May evenings when the town council of Banbridge had given a reception for representatives of all the regiments who had taken up quarters locally. The idea was that they could meet local people. The entire Board of Bann Valley Mills were there with their wives, the local clergy, doctors, solicitors and businessmen.
The Who’s Who of Banbridge
, Alex had whispered, as they gathered in the Recreation Hall at Millbrook, the largest space immediately available with so many halls and public rooms being used for other purposes.

Somewhere in the course of the evening Emily had found herself on the edge of a large group and had slipped aside to look out through the tall plate-glass windows which framed the small reservoir outside. Created many years earlier after a bad fire which could have been dealt with had it not been for lack of water, it had been planted with willows and other water-loving shrubs. With its irregular shape, carefully planned by Sarah and Hugh Sinton, it had become an entirely natural part of the landscape. All the more so because there was always at least one pair of swans to be seen moving silently across the still water. This year there had been five cygnets as well.

The water was mirror calm, the trees a perfect reflection in the gently paling light.

‘Looks so peaceful, doesn’t it, ma’am? That’s the thing I find hardest in this lovely countryside of yours.’

She turned and smiled at the broad-shouldered figure looking down at her, his uniform immaculate, a variety of markings suggesting he was a fairly senior officer.

She nodded vigorously.

‘Sometimes when I put out washing or pick some flowers for the table, I think how incredible it is that armies are fighting through towns and villages, destroying everything around them as well as each other and here I am …’

‘Holding the world together for someone, no doubt,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘as my wife does for me.’

‘And she’s so far away,’ she replied, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tears that had sprung to her eyes.

‘Vermont.’

‘I’ve read about Vermont,’ she said, recovering herself. ‘I’m afraid autumn here won’t be nearly so dramatic.’

‘If we’re here.’

She nodded.

‘That’s the other hard thing, isn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘Never knowing what’s going to happen next.’

She asked about his wife, found he had a young family, the eldest boy eight, the youngest, a little girl, only just two. Then, he asked about her family and she told him of Cathy, Lizzie, Jane and Johnny, how old they were, what they were doing, and where they were, as far as she knew where. Just recently, both Jane and Lizzie had written to say they were being moved. Obviously, in a letter, they didn’t say where. She would have to wait as patiently as she could for a visit home to find out about the new posting.

‘That’s Alex, my husband, over there,’ she said nodding to where Alex stood deep in conversation with a fellow director. ‘I’m afraid he’s being naughty and not doing his social duty,’ she said with a smile. ‘With that look on his face and talking to James Willoughby I’d say he was talking about a damaged countershaft at one of the mills.’

‘That’s his line, is it?’

‘Yes, he’s Technical Director for the four mills that make up Bann Valley Mills. Trying to repair machines is a nightmare in war time. I’m amazed that he manages to stay sane,’ she added honestly.

There was something so solid and reassuring about this man, the way he listened so carefully to everything she said, took it all in and asked sensible questions that she found herself setting out the whole problem for him.

‘The textile machinery specialists are all on
war work,’ she explained, ‘aircraft or munitions. Anyway, materials are almost unobtainable.’

She paused, lowered her voice and went on. ‘What makes it so bad for Alex is that there has been some deliberate damage.’