Shadow on the Land (8 page)

‘What ho, Caruthers. I say this is a bad show, old boy.’

‘Damned natives. Can’t trust one of ’em. Must have got into the Clubroom again. Taken the glue, by Jove. Can’t fix the jolly old fuselage if there’s no glue.’

She could hear them and see them. She’d laughed at them and got on with her work. And now an unknown man with a Caruthers accent was saying he was sorry for her distress and meaning it.

‘I wondered about telling my son the news,’ she continued. ‘And there is the question of the funeral.’

‘Yes, I understand and I’m glad you’ve rung me. I shall tell John myself and I will arrange for him to phone you this afternoon between 4 p.m. and 5 p. m.’, he went on briskly. ‘I’m afraid for practical reasons he will only be allowed six minutes. Sadly, we cannot give him leave to attend a funeral other than one involving his immediate family. We are not unsympathetic, but there are questions of morale involved. I’m sure you understand.’

‘Yes, I do. We all have to keep spirits up. Low moral costs lives just as much as careless talk,’ she said quickly, without considering at all what she had said.

The response was immediate and heartfelt.

‘You are so right, Mrs Hamilton. I wish more parents could understand that.’

There was a sort pause and Emily was wondering if she should say ‘Thank you’ and ring off, when he cleared his throat and spoke again.

‘Mrs Hamilton, I can give you no word of comfort for the death of John’s friend, but I
can
say to you that your son is one of the best potential pilots we have here. That doesn’t mean he will come home safe at the end of this show, but it does mean his chances are higher. I’ve seldom seen a young man so at home in a plane.’

As Emily and Alex walked up a broad, carpeted stairway and into the Officer’s Mess of Chris’s small training regiment, Emily was sure the room must have been the original dining-room.

They both knew the handsome, linen merchant’s house requisitioned at the beginning of the war, but although neither of them had ever been inside it before, it seemed to them both as if it had remained much as it had always been despite its new inhabitants.

A huge marble fireplace with a most welcoming wood fire was overhung by an enormous portrait of a fierce-looking man with a hooked nose. The furniture was heavy, but much of the light provided came from old oil lamps, carefully converted to
electricity. Through misted glass mantles and delicately engraved globes it spread softly on mahogany and rosewood, drawing out its warmth and colour.

‘Now then, Emily and Alex, I want you to meet my new team,’ Chris said, as five young men waiting by the fireplace came to attention, saluted and then, at a single glance from Chris, relaxed and shook hands. ‘They flew in yesterday and we have till the end of the week to prepare for our boys arriving by sea. We’ve been busy,’ he added wryly, with a warm smile.

There was some laughter and Emily guessed that getting the hang of the camp and how it functioned, visiting the assault course and the workshops would have made a pretty busy day for young men just arrived after such a long flight.

‘So this is a Welcome Dinner for them and a Thank You for you two, for all you do to help us, and a chance for you all to meet each other.’

‘Now Lieutenants, a word in your ear,’ he said easily. ‘Your little grey book with instructions for ‘dealing with the natives’ may not prove helpful with our guests tonight. They are
rather
special. To begin with, they’ve been educating
me
for some months. I no longer put my foot in it by asking for the washroom when I do not desperately need to wash my hands, but I do have a desperate need. Neither do I ask, as I once did, to see their
‘backyard’ when what I meant was Mrs Hamilton’s garden.’

The young men laughed and Emily observed how easily Chris had made them all feel at home. No wonder top brass, whoever they were, had decided to keep him here at Castlewellan Road Camp and move new parties of engineers through, rather than sending him off with the young men he had already prepared for the front.

Behind them, the dining table was laid for eight, a beautiful candelabra at its centre, but before they made any move towards it, a waiter appeared with a tray of drinks.

Chris beamed as they were handed round.

‘Lady and gentlemen,’ he began, with a little bow to Emily, ‘I have some good news for you. It is no longer classified. A certain gentleman by the name of Eisenhower has landed in North Africa and has taken the surrender of French troops in Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. Operation Torch has got off to a very good start.’

Emily and Alex exchanged glances as they touched their glasses and they drank to the continuing success of the campaign in North Africa.

It was then that Chris made the introductions, beginning with Emily herself.

‘This good lady is Mrs Emily Hamilton,’ he said easily. ‘She is one lady I will take orders from and you will
all
do the same,’ he added softly. ‘She may
not wear stripes, but I assure you she always knows exactly what she is doing.’

Before Emily even had time to blush, he had moved on.

‘My good friend, Alex Hamilton, appears to know everyone in this area, not just the hundreds of people who work in the Bann Valley Mills where he is Technical Director. Thanks to Alex, you may well be given work for your team in one of the mills, but whatever chance you get, in any project outside the camp,
ask for his advice
. He came here as a stranger, just like you have, but as a result he knows people here better than they know themselves.’

Watching Alex’s face, as he registered what Chris had said, it was all Emily could do to concentrate on the names of the young men who had listened with such close attention. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to remember all five first time, but what she would not forget was where they came from. Could she ever have imagined that one day she might stand in the same room with dinner guests from Vermont, California, Kansas, Michigan, New York State and Boston.

The meal was superb, the conversation both interesting and relaxed. Emily was intrigued to see that, although Chris was the senior officer and was addressed by them all as Sir, there was no deference. They were completely at ease with him and with
each other as they each declared for the benefit of the others what they thought of their own state, or city, or town, or village. Their stories were a delight, both shrewd and humorous. They answered her questions with a directness that surprised her.

She was amused to be called ma’am and eventually asked if that wasn’t what one had called Queen Victoria.

‘Slightly before my time,’ said Chris. ‘Though in the eyes of these youngsters, I probably predate Christopher Columbus.’

‘Perhaps Lewis and Clarke, sir,’ suggested the one from Boston, who struck Emily as having a Canadian accent.

‘Thaaaa-nk you, Hank,’ said Chris, turning to Emily. ‘He’s just paid me a compliment,’ he explained. ‘Lewis and Clarke are a couple of centuries later than Columbus, but still a helluva long time ago,’ he said amid the general laughter.

‘I should also explain, Emily, that this character sitting opposite you may have been named Alexander Lachlan Ross, as I’ve told you, but it appears he answers to Hank the Tank. No doubt there are other such names here present, yet to be declared, but that one got as far as the official record on my desk. Has to be a compliment, Hank,’ said Chris, nodding to him. ‘Pity you have stenters and not tank tracks, Alex,’ Chris added.

Hank blushed slightly and looked pleased. Emily
smiled across at him and caught an answering smile in his bright blue eyes. A lightly built man, his blonde hair cropped in a regulation cut, he was the one from Boston, the one who seemed somehow familiar though she couldn’t think why. Maybe it was just the Canadian accent. At least, she thought it was Canadian. It might well be. One thing she had found out this evening about North Americans was that no one ever stayed where they didn’t want to be. They just moved on.

In the weeks that followed Emily and Alex’s evening visit to Chris and his lieutenants, suddenly it did seem as if hope had been rekindled. Spirits lifted as each news broadcast reported the German army in North Africa being driven back yet further as Operation Torch proceeded. Then came the news of General Montgomery’s resounding defeat of the Afrika Corps at El Alamein and the Eighth Army’s hot pursuit of the enemy, now in full retreat.

In all this heart-lifting activity, local regiments had played their part, along with the Americans and Canadians everyone in Banbridge had befriended.

December proceeded, wet and sunless, but the many thanksgiving services that followed the victories were well attended and the feelings of both relief and hope were very obvious. Alex reported a better atmosphere in the mills. He said Christmas decorations had suddenly appeared in unexpected places, draped from rafters and wound round
pillars. He had asked the managers to make sure they were firmly attached if they were suspended anywhere near moving parts of machinery, but he told them on no account to have them taken down.

Try as they might, Emily and Alex found it hard to share in the general rejoicing. In the middle of November, Cathy had written to say she could now tell them that Brian had been moved to London, to the School of Tropical Medicine. She had told them the previous year that he was working on a new preparation for the treatment of serious infection, but neither of them had any idea then that the work would suddenly be moved forward with such urgency.

He’d been given a bare week’s notice to move to London. With a class of forty in a one-teacher village school, there was no possibility of Cathy’s going with him, though she said she’d be able to join him in his lodgings for the Christmas holidays.

Emily was torn between wishing Cathy could stay in the relative safety of Cheshire and hoping that Brian would be able to find them somewhere to live as that was clearly what Cathy wanted. Uneasy about the feel of Cathy’s letters, Emily arranged to ring her on the school telephone in the lunch hour or if she wasn’t free then, after school.

Calls to Cheshire were often unavailable, even more liable to be cut off than those to the capital itself, but Emily persisted. When she did manage
to get through, she was quite sure that something was badly wrong. There was a tone of anxiety in her daughter’s voice that had not been there before, not even when she and Brian had lived for a time in Manchester itself and had been driven regularly to the air-raid shelters.

Cathy had never been one to share her troubles, however, even though her mother had always encouraged her to talk about what made her anxious, so Emily was left to wonder whether it was a problem between her and Brian, the burden of coping with so many children and only an untrained, part-timer to help her, or some fear she couldn’t speak about, because she herself couldn’t even recognise it.

When a quick scribbled note from Lizzie arrived saying she had a 48 hour pass for the first weekend in December, Emily breathed a sigh of relief. With only eighteen months between them, Cathy and Lizzie had always been close to each other. Their closeness had increased after Jane was born, for though Jane was the most good-natured of children she never asked her older sisters to play with her.

She was always perfectly happy to be by herself, talking to an imaginary friend, or singing to herself as she moved objects around. Toys, or clothes pegs, or scraps of left-over dough which she made into small figures, it was all the same to Jane, as she created stories for them and acted them out. She
loved flowers, arranged daisies, dandelions and leaves in jam pots and lined them up on whatever windowsills she could reach. And as soon as Johnny could walk he attached himself to her. He’d seek her out, watch what she was doing, then sit down smiling and simply wait for her to amuse him.

Jane had always loved looking after him, and didn’t mind a bit when, in due course, he went off to play with other little boys. Even when he went to Banbridge Academy and made lots of friends, Ritchie especially, he still came looking for her the very moment he came home, to tell her what he’d been doing or who he’d been with.

To Emily’s surprise Lizzie arrived the following Saturday morning, on foot and in uniform. She looked exhausted.

‘Oh love, you do look tired. Did no one give you a lift?’

‘No cars, Ma,’ she responded, as she parked her small suitcase on the floor, dropped down on a kitchen chair and took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘But I wanted to walk anyway,’ she went on quickly. ‘I haven’t seen the light of day for weeks. D’you mind me smoking in your kitchen?’ she asked abruptly, as she was about to strike a match.

‘No, no,’ replied Emily, flustered.

She didn’t know Lizzie had started to smoke, but she supposed it was the stress of the long hours on duty. As she watched the practised way she lit up
and inhaled deeply, she also noticed the tone of her skin and hair. Though not as perfect as Jane, both the elder girls had good skin, the tone warmer as with anyone dark-haired. Cathy and Lizzie had both had masses of dark curls as children but Lizzie now wore her hair so short few curls survived. Although it
was
so short, normally it still shone and had a spring in it, but today it was dull and lifeless. As she looked down at her through the haze of cigarette smoke, all Emily could think of was the Before and After pictures in those shampoo advertisements one saw in the newspaper.

‘Extra duty?’ Emily asked casually, as she made tea and reached for the cake tin.

‘Training course. Endurance was part of it. If you’ve got a complex situation, you can’t just hand over. You may have to keep going regardless,’ she said, turning her head to blow smoke away from her mother. ‘Got a stripe though,’ she added. ‘Thought I might ask you to sew it on. Always lousy at sewing.’

Emily smiled and offered congratulations as enthusiastically as she could manage, but she felt little joy. However successful Lizzie had been, there was something different in her whole manner and in the abruptness of her comments and replies, that worried her.

She did indeed seem pleased by whatever it was she’d done that had gained her a stripe, but there was a withdrawnness about her that was quite
new and made Emily feel she had put up a fence round herself. One might approach and look over to see what one might see, but entry was forbidden, even to her. Like Chris’s camp, unless you had your authorised pass, there was no possibility whatever of getting beyond the guards.

‘Heard from Cathy lately, Ma?’ she asked, as Emily put mugs of tea on the kitchen table and offered cake.

‘Yes. I finally managed to get a call through on the school phone on Wednesday. She can’t answer it unless her helper is there. They only have it in case of an emergency with a child and they need to ring out. Mostly it just rings and rings when there’s no one but Cathy to answer it.’

‘But you persisted?’

Emily nodded and drank thirstily. She noticed that Lizzie had ignored the cake, so she put it back in the tin.

‘How was she?’

‘I was going to ask you that,’ Emily replied. ‘I wasn’t very happy about the way she sounded. I hoped maybe you’d know more.’

‘She thinks she’s pregnant,’ she replied, drawing vigorously on her cigarette. ‘It was an accident, but she blames herself and Brian is worried silly about having to leave her behind in Cheshire.’

Emily took a deep breath and told herself it could be worse. At least it wasn’t another marriage
breaking up under the strain of war.

‘But surely if she’s pregnant she can’t go on teaching, so she can go with him,’ she said, thinking of the local country schools she knew. ‘I know teachers are short, but surely no one is allowed to go on teaching once it becomes the slightest bit obvious.’

‘Might be different in England, Ma. Pregnancy is a form of sinfulness in this province,’ Lizzie replied, as she stepped over to the sink and stubbed out her cigarette butt fiercely on a metal soap dish.

Emily watched in silence as she ran the dish under the tap and followed the course of the butt disintegrating under the flood of water which swirled the fragments down the drain.

‘No use worrying, Ma,’ she said with a brief smile. ‘She’ll end up in London with Brian sooner or later and then I’ll be able to go and see her.’

For one happy moment, Emily simply thought how good it would be for the sisters to be together again. Then the implications of what Lizzie had just said dawned upon her.

‘How come, Lizzie?’

‘Posting. Probably south coast to begin with, but Air Ministry later. Official Secrets and all that. But it’s even better than what I’d wanted when they kept me here in Belfast.’

‘When are you going?’

Emily heard herself ask the question as if it
were a polite enquiry about a perfectly normal arrangement, as if Lizzie were off to see a friend or merely taking a day in town to do some shopping.

‘Sometime on Monday afternoon. As soon as I get back to base, depending on flights.’

Emily was almost grateful when Lizzie explained that she was very short of sleep and needed to catch up. Even apart from the Official Secrets Act, which meant she couldn’t talk about her work, it seemed to Emily in the hour they’d spent together that she was very reluctant to talk about anything very much at all.

Emily had tried to share her own activities, organising Sunday visits to families for Chris’s boys and indoor picnics, when they could meet and play games with local primary school children. She spoke of their friends and their neighbours who’d once been such a part of Lizzie’s life and told her about some recent local events. To all of this, Lizzie listened politely, but made no response.

Late on Saturday afternoon, Lizzie was still in bed when Alex arrived home to find Emily puzzled and concerned. She told him what she’d observed and suggested he might do better at conversation than she had. She went as far as to remind him of the story Jamie Macpherson had told him about his own daughter, an old school friend of Lizzie’s.

‘Oh yes, Olive,’ said Lizzie indifferently, as they
settled by the fire on Saturday evening after supper, a pot of coffee in the hearth. ‘She joined the Land Army, didn’t she? Wanted to get away from that awful mother of hers, I expect. Where did she end up?’

Emily saw Alex’s eyes widen as the cigarettes came out, but he had promised not to say a word.

‘Well, I knew it was Gloucestershire somewhere,’ Alex began, ‘but when I met Olive’s father shortly after she went, he told me it was one of those stately homes the Ministry of Defence took over as a centre for injured Airmen. It seems they specialised in treating burns and doing plastic surgery.’

He took his coffee from Emily and settled back in his chair.

‘Well, you probably won’t remember your Aunt Sarah, Lizzie. She used to come and visit us before she and her husband were posted to Germany with a trade mission. Sarah had an older sister, Hannah, who married the son of Lord Harrington who’d inherited this huge mansion in Gloucestershire called Ashley Park …’

Emily watched Lizzie as she inhaled and then flicked her ash into the saucer she’d provided for herself.

‘Apparently Olive and her colleagues were drafted in to grow vegetables in the parterres of this place. When the old gardener who’d stayed on to help run things heard Olive speak, he spotted the
accent right away and said his Lady Hannah was from Ireland too, just like she was.

‘Well, of course, the mansion was Ashley Park. Lady Hannah was brought up at Ballydown as you know, only half a mile away from your friend Olive at Lisnaree.’

Lizzie made no response at all. For a moment, she just looked into the fire, then she took a long pull at her cigarette and looked from one to the other.

‘The war does throw up some strange coincidences,’ said Lizzie slowly. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to believe just how differently people behave. I must say I never thought a sister of mine would apply for a transfer to a military hospital to be able to look after a German spy.’

Emily sat stunned, her coffee going cold as she heard Alex ask Lizzie quietly what she meant. She registered the replies and the interchange which followed but what she was seeing was Jane’s face, Jane smiling at her as she arrived for her first weekend break almost six weeks after her interrupted birthday lunch.

She’d written quite openly about what had happened between her and Johann. Now she sat down at the kitchen table, curled her hands round a large mug of tea and told her the whole story.

‘Ma, Johann has asked me to marry him,’ she said, her eyes shining, her face radiant.

Emily opened her mouth to speak, but Jane jumped in and began to reassure her.

‘Oh, Ma, we know it will be ages and we know it’s going to be difficult, but as long as we know we’re going to be together we can manage. Lots of couples are parted in wartime and most of them are in danger, far more danger than we are.’

Emily laughed.

‘That wasn’t what I was going to say,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Sorry, Ma,’ she apologised. ‘I should have known you wouldn’t say I was too young, or he was German, or any of the things other people might say. What
were
you going to say?’

‘I was just going to ask how Johann managed to propose, given how little English he has.’

Jane clapped her hand to her mouth and laughed happily.

‘Ma, I couldn’t believe it either,’ she began. ‘You remember he wasn’t on my ward at Musgrave, don’t you? Well, it took about a week before I was able to visit him after work, though I had been able to send him some little messages with one of the male nurses I knew from the Royal …’

She paused, took a large mouthful of tea and broke a small corner from her cake before she went on.

‘I walked into the ward and found him sitting in the bedside chair, the leg sticking straight out in front of him and the bed covered with books and
pieces of paper. And, do you know what he said?’

Emily waited patiently.

‘
I am so pleased to see you, Jane. I have been employed. But I have some operational difficulties. I hope you will assist me
.’