An Ocean Between Us

by Rachel Quinn

  His lips were smothering hers, and she could feel his fingertips brushing against the baby hairs on the back of her neck.

  And then, just as it was starting to feel like heaven, their lips parted, and he drew his hand away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and slowly stepped back. ‘I’m really sorry. Goodbye, Aileen.’ He took a few more steps back, gave her one last look, then turned and started walking away.

  Aileen watched him until he was no more than a dot that turned around the corner at the end of Kingdom Avenue.

  The next day Aileen attended early Mass, and spent the rest of the morning writing a long letter to Niall, and trying not to concern herself with what she would do with her Saturdays from now on.

  Then Mr and Mrs McDonald said they were going to Belfast Lough to see the ships. Aileen said she would like to go too, and to her surprise so did Doreen.

  When they got there, it looked as though the entire population of Belfast had had the same idea. There were more people than Aileen had ever seen gathered in one place, and there seemed more ships than she thought existed – a carpet of them covering the sea up to the horizon and to the land left and right. Aileen had only seen small fishing boats in real life, so the size of some of the ships was hardly believable – they were like floating towns. And there were many smaller ones too. Mr McDonald reeled off names like battleship, cruiser, cargo ship, passenger ship and escort craft. But Aileen could only stare at a sea turned metal-grey.

  It was around ten days later – after all the news reports of the D-Day landings – that Aileen visited the same place by herself straight from work, and it was now a ghostly vision. Only a handful of tiny boats remained, moored alone and awkward on the edges, and the water had returned to its usual murky green hue.

  Somehow life in Belfast wouldn’t be the same without the troops. The lough was calm, the air quiet. Marvin had left Belfast.

  Aileen couldn’t help thinking that he’d taken a little of her with him.

  When she got home that same day, however, her feelings of anxiety were heightened by the contents of the letter that was waiting on her bed.

  2 June 1944

  My dearest Aileen,

  I’m really sorry for the rush, but I need to make this another short letter. We have all been training hard with no spare time.

  This morning we all found out the reason for the ban on leave. Tomorrow we are being transported to the south coast. We have been told we are on red alert or standby or whatever you want to call it, which means we could be ordered to battle at any moment. The rumour is that it’s very big, involving every last soldier we have.

  Nobody really knows what it’s all about. Then again, I’m sure we all know, we just don’t talk about it to each other. That helps keep our spirits up. The chaps all keep joking and playing tricks on each other, but just below the surface we all know.

  I promise I will write again when I know anything more. I have to admit that when I’m alone I feel scared. The only thing that makes me feel a little reassured is the thought of returning home to Ireland and to you.

  Your loving fiancé,

  Niall.

  Aileen read the letter again and again through tears. When he’d written the letter, Niall hadn’t known why he was being transported to the English south coast, but now the world knew. Similarly, Marvin wouldn’t have fully known what awaited him. Even now there was little on the wireless apart from updates on the D-Day landings – wave after wave of Allied troops landing on the beaches of Northern France. Thousands of ships had departed from ports all over the UK and carried hundreds of thousands of men there, Marvin and Niall just two of them. Aileen feared for the lives of both of them, one more so than the other.

  Normandy, France, June 1944

  This was the moment. It happened in the middle of the night and made Niall’s hands shake with fear.

  He and his fellow soldiers had been hearing about the D-Day operation for days. The wireless announcements were bullish, but in private there were murmurings that the Allied landings on Normandy’s beaches had been harder than envisaged, with more casualties than the Allied leaders had foreseen. The German defences along the coast were extensive and well organized: underwater obstacles dotted with mines, camouflaged tank traps, arrays of clifftop concrete pillboxes spewing fire down on to the beaches. Allied planes had done their best to counteract the measures, but still the Allies’ targets for advancing into France were not being met – at least in the time periods they had planned.

  However, with the help of the French resistance sabotaging the rail network and the electricity supplies, the Allies eventually made headway, pushing German forces away from the coast, leaving the beaches free and relatively safe for successive waves of Allied troops and vehicles.

  Niall and the rest of his company were given no warning. They were woken in the middle of the night – at least, those who had been able to sleep – and boarded a commandeered passenger liner. By sunrise they were wading out of the sea and on to a Normandy beach.

  The air was filled with the noise of confusion: the great ship engines rumbling as they idled, the popping of distant gunfire, the slop of seawater on hull and soldier, the occasional exploding shell, the shouted orders from the beach. It was as though all these noises were fighting their own battle.

  As Niall reached dry land the shouts were clearer: ‘Keep between the markers!’

  But it was only a reminder. They all knew. They’d been briefed on how the Germans – or more likely their slave labourers – had placed obstacles on certain areas of the beach, and how the other sections – those walkways between the obstacles that Allied soldiers would naturally take – had been mined.

  Niall looked left and right, seeing debris and craters. These were the results of unfortunate men discovering the German defences, although the tides had done their best to hide the grislier reminders with sand. He trudged on up the beach toward the grassy banks beyond.

  The first few hours on French soil were ones of cold sweat that felt wasted: a hike over flat scrubland, a tense walk over a brick bridge that might explode, or even the well-planned capture of a farmhouse that turned out to be deserted after all, but not so much as a glimpse of the enemy.

  They reached a settlement of hundreds of Allied troops, and there was a break for food and rest, during which time they were briefed on the plan to take Douzier, a small town which most definitely was in German hands, with wooden lookout towers and manned gun emplacements clearly visible from half a mile away.

  More Allied troops gathered there over the next few days, and when the time came, it seemed clear that they would outnumber and easily outgun the Germans.

  They were wrong. The Germans held out for six days before retreating, burning a quarter of Douzier to the ground. The Allied troops were left to put out the fires, and Niall felt his life in more danger from that task than it had been in taking the town.

  Over the next few days and weeks, the fear of losing his life gradually drifted to the back of Niall’s mind.

  Chapter 17

  Belfast, Northern Ireland, mid-June 1944

  The D-Day landings were now old news, and the BBC was reporting on the progress of the Allies through German-occupied France. Aileen waited for another letter, hoping that perhaps Niall had been spared the invasion, had somehow been deemed unfit to fight. Anything would be preferable to the hell of the D-Day landings and fighting in France. But even to know that he had gone would be a blessed relief.

  The letter came just after breakfast one morning as she was about to leave for work. She hurried upstairs to read it in the privacy of her bedroom. The handwriting was more jittery than in any of Niall’s other letters, which only added to her concerns.

  8 June 1944

  My dearest Aileen,

  Very soon I will be going to France. And I’m sorry to say this letter is another short one and might be the last I’ll send for a while. Also, I probably won’t get another from you.

>   I’m assuming by the time you get to read this letter that you will have heard the news of the troops landing in France. Some of the men who crewed the ships back to England have been telling stories. They say they could hardly see the ocean because there were so many ships of every variety, a hundred thousand men or more were crawling up along every beach for miles, and the sky was alive with planes. They say it was like a vision of hell with all the gunfire and explosions. They also say that the whole exercise is a success – that the Germans are on the run.

  And we are sending thousands more every day. Me and the other lads are all fidgety. Nobody talks much. We don’t even joke. We know it’s our turn any moment now. We’ve been told to eat as much as we can and rest as much as we can. But it’s hard to get to sleep when you know what’s lying just around the corner. I haven’t told anybody here but I’m so very frightened of what might happen when I get my orders to go.

  Please pray for me, Aileen. And remember that whatever happens to me over there, I will always love you.

  Your loving fiancé,

  Niall.

  P.S. I don’t know whether to say this, or even how to say it. My mind is like a whirling dervish and I just can’t keep still. I only hope you can still read my writing and that it all makes sense. My muscles are full of energy and I’m bursting to get going, but in spite of all that I’m also scared and confused. There’s something I have to tell you. It’s this. If anything should happen to me over there, well, I hope you find love with another man, and if you want my blessing to do that, you have it.

  P.P.S. I think I should apologize. I know that what I’ve written is not the sort of thing you want to hear. But in all fairness this is what I joined up to do, and what I was trying to do in the Dodecanese. Besides, I’m a tough old sod and I promise you I will take care of myself.

  Not for the first time in June 1944, Aileen went to bed, curled up and wept.

  She only surfaced when she heard the creak of the door opening and the clink of cup on saucer, and quickly sat up on the side of the bed, wiping her eyes.

  ‘Thought you could do with a cuppa,’ Mrs McDonald said as she sat next to Aileen. ‘I know it’s none of my business . . .’ She paused expectantly.

  ‘It’s Niall,’ Aileen said hoarsely.

  ‘He went as part of the D-Day landings thing?’

  Aileen nodded.

  ‘And you’ve no idea where he is?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sure, tis a horrible thing, war. And don’t we know it here. He’s doing a good thing, Aileen – all you can do is hold yourself together and hope.’ She held Aileen’s hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘And be grateful for the little pleasures you have.’ She eyed the cup of tea. ‘Perhaps you should give work a miss today.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs McDonald.’

  Mrs McDonald left the room and Aileen started drinking the hot sweet tea. The heat brought comfort, the sweetness acceptance. One thing was certain: there was, indeed, nothing Aileen could now do. She could pray and she could hope, but she would have to wait. Writing to Niall was pointless – by all accounts he was by now deep inside France.

  But there was one other thing she could do. She could work. Mammy always told her that sulking does nobody any favours. And besides, if Niall was doing what he and thousands of other men were doing, then at least Aileen could do what thousands of other women were doing and go to work. So she did, and – after apologizing for being late – didn’t utter a single word all day.

  Aileen worked the summer months in the factory, walking there and back rain or shine. She told herself it was to enjoy the morning and evening sunshine, but she knew it was to make the hours pass more quickly, so she had less spare time to think and to find things to do by herself.

  The war prospects were looking good, with Allied advances on all sides and what the man on the wireless called the ‘end of the longest fight’ within reach. Aileen didn’t offer to pay rent again, but she managed to persuade Mrs McDonald that every other Saturday night they would go to the cinema, and that the McDonalds and Aileen would alternate paying for the four of them. To Aileen’s surprise and joy, even Doreen and Mr McDonald were enthusiastic about the idea. Nevertheless, as the weeks and months went by, Aileen was putting away a considerable sum from her wages – more than she would ever spend, the way things were going.

  There was little point in writing to Niall, but she decided to write anyway, not expecting a reply. She exchanged letters with Briana more often, keeping up with events in Leetown and telling Briana that very little exciting was happening in her life apart from the cinema evenings.

  One bright Sunday in August 1944, when the sun was still high in the sky and the breeze was warm and gentle, she decided she needed to go for a walk – to go anywhere to break the boredom. She went to her room to change out of her best clothes, still left on from Mass that morning. Doreen was sitting up on her bed, book in hand.

  Aileen spoke the words instinctively as she was thinking them. ‘Would you like to come for a walk, Doreen?’

  It didn’t seem a lost cause. Doreen had now turned sixteen and wasn’t what Aileen would call outgoing, but was just a little more talkative, especially on nights out at the cinema.

  Doreen’s eyes now darted away from the page for half a second to acknowledge the question. She shook her head and continued reading.

  A part of Aileen was disappointed. She’d managed to engage Doreen in conversation a few times now, but Mrs McDonald’s words of warning had always made her wary of appearing to be forceful. The two men in Aileen’s life and her family were all out of reach so it was partly selfish, but she figured it would hardly do Doreen any harm to have a friend either.

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘we could go to the cinema tonight, just the two of us. Would you like that?’

  This time Doreen didn’t look up at all. ‘Thank you. No.’

  ‘Ah, c’mon. Why not just take a walk outside with me? The sun on your face is lovely, so it is.’

  Doreen shook her head.

  ‘I’ll even give you a strip of chewing gum my American friend gave me. It’s double mint. How about that?’

  Now Doreen looked up. She said nothing, but there was a pleading in her eyes.

  Aileen sat down next to her. Their shoulders touched. Aileen wanted to tell Doreen she could be her little sister, that when she was a girl she had always wanted a little sister and that she got young Frank instead. But, of course, Doreen had been someone’s sister a few years ago, so those comments wouldn’t have helped.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘don’t you get awful bored spending so much time up here, day after day, just reading books?’ She waited, this time staring at Doreen.

  Eventually Doreen’s mouth opened. ‘I don’t think about that too much.’

  ‘And lonely too. Do you never think you’d like to meet other people?’

  ‘I see Aunt Susan and Uncle Jack.’

  ‘I mean, besides them.’

  Doreen’s eyes glazed over and she took a long breath. ‘I miss my mammy and daddy and my brothers.’ Before Aileen could think how to reply, Doreen added, ‘Don’t you miss your family?’

  Aileen shrugged and said, ‘They’re there for me if I need them. I know that much.’

  ‘I used to think that,’ Doreen said. ‘Well, you do when you’re a child. You think they’ll always be there for you. You think your family is permanent, set in stone, indestructible, like an immovable object. You never think that . . .’

  Aileen barely heard the rest. Her mind was back in Leetown, walking along the beach with that coarse gritty sand biting into the flesh between her toes. She heard Briana screaming – half in joy, half in anger – as young Frank splashed her with freezing water. She was in Cready’s, listening to her mammy swapping gossip over the counter. She was watching a tiny fragment of peat glow and die, feeling the warmth from its larger mass crisping her salt-laden frock as she sat with the rest of her family, waiting for tea, ingest
ing that aroma of burning peat mixed with mutton stew mixed with fresh barmbrack.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she heard Doreen say in her delicate voice.

  The words brought Aileen back to Belfast. They also made her dismiss her thoughts as nonsense or at least weakness.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aileen.’

  Aileen pulled herself together with a deep breath. ‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘Sure, what have you to be sorry about?’

  ‘You looked upset. Did I say the wrong thing?’

  ‘Aach, no.’ Aileen dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. ‘No, you didn’t. I was just thinking about back home. You know an awful lot of big words for a sixteen-year-old, don’t you?’

  Doreen blushed.

  Aileen nodded toward the book. ‘It’s all that reading you do, I’ll be supposing. You just made me think, that’s all. You have a point. I do miss my family, especially my sister.’ She felt a melancholy smile drift on to her face.

  ‘Actually,’ Doreen said. ‘Now I think about it, I would like to go out somewhere.’

  ‘Ah . . . what?’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not. That’s grand. Get a little sun on your skin, yes?’

  ‘Could we go to Jubilee Park?’

  ‘Jubilee Park?’ Aileen said. ‘Isn’t that where . . . ?’ Her throat locked at the prospect of finishing the sentence.

  ‘But I’d like to visit Crown Street first, if you don’t mind. Just for a few minutes.’

  ‘Crown Street?’

  ‘It’s where I used to live.’

  ‘Ah, right.’ Aileen slowly nodded. ‘Of course we can go there. That’ll be grand.’

  Twenty minutes later, Aileen and Doreen stood at the top of Crown Street, behind wooden barriers on to which Keep Out signs had been nailed. Aileen had seen many bombed houses on her travels through Belfast, but never whole streets that had been destroyed.