‘My parents were still alive then. My mother was looking after Margaret.’
‘And?’ Dora said.
‘She placed her in my arms and said “This baby needs its father,” and I looked at her and saw not Bea, but myself, this little daughter who looked like me.’ He laughed. ‘I was like Narcissus. I fell in love with her. Bea had died for her, my child. Does that make sense?’
Dora nodded. She’d known grief, could smell and taste its maw, had watched helpless as it gobbled down her past, and future too. She knew Geoffrey’s anguish, its weighty pain.
‘And you, Dora,’ he went on. ‘Do you have sorrows like that?’
‘My father died too.’ Dora couldn’t say what other sorrows went with that death, the grim crumble of her being.
‘You told me.’
Her life sundered, shattered by the Nazis. And all the while Geoffrey was living his private tragedy here, in this farm. Life was strange, that way, she thought, the way a war roiled and churned the world so she and Geoffrey had washed up together, like flotsam and jetsam.
‘I was told I looked like my mother,’ Dora went on. ‘She died when I was tiny.’
She felt his fingers through her hair.
‘Your mother’s hair?’
‘My mother’s colouring,’ Dora said. ‘My father’s curls. A bit of both.’
A bit of comfort, too.
She moved her hand around his back, pulling him closer. He’d said, ‘you have every right to ask.’
It was spring. Geoffrey had invited her for lunch. She bought a hat, in de Gruchy’s. A ridiculous hat, old-fashioned, expensive, but there was no choice, a cloche of forget-me-not straw, finished with airy blue feathers. She wore the blue spotted dress that she’d bought before the Germans came. It matched the hat and highlighted her blue eyes and hair. She remembered Miss Besson’s question, ‘Do you dye your hair, or is it naturally that colour?’ As if you could get dye these days. Not even on the black market. What had she been insinuating? Dora couldn’t bear to think about that. It was a sunny day, the kind of day she remembered from the posters on the underground for holidays in Jersey. The sunny Channel Island. Weary troops would find a welcome home. There were pictures of children playing on the sand, striped beach umbrellas, a woman in a swimsuit. Lapis skies and yellow suns.
Where once every lane led to the ocean, now they turned back, devoured themselves. The beaches had become forbidden zones, verboten. Military property, flanked with anti-aircraft guns with their long steel barrels. She missed the cries of children as they jumped in the waves or built sandcastles, she missed the joy of being alive that they promised. There were few spaces left for them to play now, few parents happy to let them out into the streets. Silence. That’s what Dora hated most about the island now. The Germans had suffocated sound, joy, desire.
Dora had to cut across country these days, avoid the main routes where the soldiers milled and marched. Her bicycle was second-hand, a heavy machine, and it was hard going up the hills. Scabius and cornflower flickered in the hedgerows and Dora stopped to pick them, threading them through the band of her hat. She looked around. The last of the bluebells hovered in a wood across a nearby field. Dora pushed her bike through the gate, propped it against the hedge out of view in case a passer-by took a fancy to it. That happened now, people stealing bikes, and replacements were like gold dust and as expensive. Thirty pounds. Thirty. She set out towards the wood. A posy, for the table. A small gift for Geoffrey. The least I could do. She entered the wood, bent down to pick the flowers, snap the stems without pulling the bulb.
‘Fräulein. Bitte.’
Dora froze.
‘Was–’ She stopped herself in time. Was wollen Sie? Caught off guard, so easy to slip into German. She looked around, could see no one.
‘Bitte.’
There was a hawthorn bush, its blossoms spent and brown, its leaves in full furl. A shape moved behind it and a man crept out. His hair was matted and unkempt, his face grubby and unshaven. A German soldier, his uniform soiled and crumpled. He looked like a tramp, a rough sleeper. He held his cap in his hand, fingered and wrung it as the dying might clutch and twist their bedclothes.
‘Gibt’s was zu essen?’ He pointed to his mouth with one hand.
Dora dropped the flowers and ran. As she neared the road, she saw the search party, two jeeps, the Kübelwagen. Eight Geheime Feldpolizisten, secret policemen, jumped down, pistols in their holsters, rifles in their hands. They pushed open the gate and ran towards the wood. One spotted her, stopped, came towards her, cupped his hand round her chin and shoved her against the hedgerow.
‘Was tun Sie hier?’ He sneered, as if Dora was a child, or a dog. Dora shook her head. He had smoked a cigarette, his breath stale and fusty. ‘What are you doing here?’ His English faltered. ‘Vat are you doing? Who have you been with?’
He twisted her head, left, right, fingers pressing hard, the skin coarse.
‘No one. I was picking flowers.’
‘Let me see.’
‘I dropped them,’ she said. What if they took her in? Questioned her? The soldier was a fugitive, she realised now, a deserter. He’d be shot. If they thought she’d helped him, they’d shoot her too. People had been killed for much less.
‘I heard a noise,’ she added. ‘It gave me a fright.’
The Feldpolizist’s grip on her chin tightened and she cried out. He pressed harder. He could break her jaw. One twist, a struggle, the hinge would snap, like a wishbone. She saw, over his shoulder, that the search party had flushed out the deserter, had tied his arms behind his back and were shoving and dragging him towards the waiting jeeps. Dora was choking, eyes and nose watering.
‘Please.’ Her voice was thin, the words unclear. ‘Let go.’
The party came towards her.
‘What have we here?’ It was a sergeant. He nodded to the Feldpolizist, who released his grip. Dora shuddered, stepped back, her hand soothing the hinges of her jaw.
‘Your girlfriend?’ The sergeant jerked the prisoner forward and back. Dora saw him wince, his arms pulled so far behind him she thought his shoulder could be dislocated.
He looked at Dora, shook his head. ‘Nein.’
The sergeant shoved him so he stumbled. ‘In the jeep.’ Turned to Dora. ‘You should choose your boyfriends more carefully.’
‘I’ve never seen him,’ Dora said. ‘Look,’ she pointed to the flowers in her hat. ‘I was picking flowers. Bluebells.’
‘Papers,’ the sergeant snapped. Papiere!
‘In my basket.’ Dora pointed to her bicycle. The sergeant pulled his revolver, aimed at Dora, watched as she walked to her bicycle and took the card from her bag. She sensed his jumpiness. One false move, turn too fast, rummage too deep, bam. She passed him the paper, studied his face, what can he see?
Holder… Simon, Dora. Residing at… 14 Gloucester Place. Born on the…17th May 1915
At…
Dora held her breath, waited, ready.
‘Stockholm?’ the sergeant said. ‘Sweden?’
Dora nodded.
The sergeant peered at her. ‘You prove it?’
She shrugged, rolled her hands. ‘My papers are in London.’ Be polite, courteous and obedient at all times. If we do not provoke them, they will not provoke us. ‘I didn’t think I would need them.’
‘London?’ the sergeant said. ‘Why London?’ He was a young man, perhaps nineteen years old, blond hair and flushed cheeks, the scratch of manhood just visible on his face.
‘I had moved there.’
‘We need your papers.’
‘I can’t get them,’ Dora said. ‘You’ve cut us off from England.’
His face was blank, hard as a pavement. ‘But not from Sweden, Fräulein. There will be records there.’
Dora swallowed. ‘Of course,’ she said. Of course they would demand that. Lügen haben kurze Beine. Lies have short legs, her father would have said.
He was looking at her, the veins on his f
orehead pulsing, as if memorising every tuck and blemish in her face, every wave and ripple of her hair.
‘I know you now,’ he said, placing the revolver back in its holster. ‘I will look out for you.’ Walked away, called over his shoulder. ‘I never forget a face.’
She pulled out her bicycle, wobbled away. She’d tell Geoffrey she’d been stopped. Nothing more.
CHAPTER SIX
JOE
Jersey: May 1985
Joe had been thinking more and more about home of late, of that house above the butcher’s shop in Cloghane, of the mist coming up the estuary from the sea, of his brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. He’d been happy enough here with Geoffrey, but he hadn’t been home for forty years. He still called it that. Home. Could see the heavy horsehair chair that his father used to sit in, the dark mahogany chiffonier that his mother polished every Saturday, the kitchen range with its blackened pots and the privy outside with its horseshoe nailed to the door. He hadn’t seen any of the family for forty years either. The time had passed quick enough, but he should make amends before he died. Perhaps it had something to do with the letter from the Hummel woman, setting his mind on a train towards the past.
He pulled out his pad of Basildon Bond, his old Burnham fountain pen and bottle of Quink and sat at the table in his caravan. He hadn’t used the pen for years, and the ink-sac had corroded. He had to dip the nib in the ink, be careful it didn’t drip because he couldn’t find the blotting paper and he doubted you could buy it now. Everybody used biros these days, but he couldn’t use one of those, not for something important like this.
Dear Pat, he wrote. It seems to me that enough water has passed under the bridge and it is about time that we forgot and forgave. I trust you and your family are doing well.
He was about to write, and how is our mam? but thought better of it. She’d be well over a hundred by now, if she was alive. She’d probably been dead for years and no one had thought to find Joe and tell him. Was he so hard to track down? Hadn’t he sent them his address? They must have guessed he wouldn’t go far, would settle somewhere with the birds and the sea. Oh, that hurt, that they hadn’t sought to bring him back. Put a SOS notice out on the BBC. Will Joseph O’Cleary, late of Cloghane and St Helier, please contact his mother who is seriously ill… Pat Junior always had a spiteful streak about him, took after their father like that. Joe put down his pen, tore up the paper.
On the other hand, perhaps they had tried and he never knew. No, he told himself, placing the lined paper under another sheet. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Write.
There must be all sorts of nephews and nieces now who maybe don’t know their Uncle Joe. For alI I know, there could be grand-nieces and nephews.
I am doing fine these days, with a farm. Now, this is why I am writing. I’m not getting any younger and could do with some help and I wondered whether there was anyone in the family who’d like a new start in life? As you see, I live in Jersey, have done since the funeral. That’s a long story, for another day.
Because you didn’t want to know about it, even back then. Yes, there was a lot of hurt, a lot of bitterness to swallow, bile, even now. He paused a moment, read over the letter. No, let bygones be bygones, make the peace. He had an uncle, their mam’s brother, who’d emigrated to America in the 1920s and wrote back from Boston, your loving brother. It had made his mam cry, so he thought he’d try it now.
Your loving brother, Joseph O’Cleary.
He put it in the envelope, wrote O’Cleary & Sons, Family Butchers, Main Street, Cloghane. He had no idea if Pat still lived above the shop, but he reckoned that Cloghane wouldn’t have changed so much that the postie wouldn’t know where they’d moved to. It was about time he put out feelers, like, to see if they couldn’t make it up now.
It was forty years ago, after all. The war had been over for two months. Joe had got off the Tralee bus and walked down the main street in Cloghane. He could imagine his mam’s face, and his daidí’s, as he walked through the door. Will you let me take a look at you. Kettle on for tea in the big brown pot and his daidí bringing out the Jameson. Oh, there’d be a grand party. Cissie Mooney’s soda bread lathered with butter, cold beef and black pudding from the O’Connors, beer and whiskey and the Waring cook’s poitín. The kitchen thick with tobacco smoke, stubs in brimming ashtrays, smouldering pipes. Good to have you back, Father. The whole of Cloghane squeezed into the tiny front parlour which doubled as the dining room at Christmas. Singing and dancing. His mother and little Bridey and his Uncle Gerald’s wife, pushing through with cups of tea, while his brothers and his daidí and uncles and the other men stood to the side with bottles of beer and picked tobacco from their lips.
But his father’s butcher’s shop was shut, a black ribbon hung on the front.
‘Well, our prayers have been answered,’ his mother Bridey said as Joe walked through the door, as if he’d only been round the corner for five minutes and not lost in the war for five years.
His brother, Pat Junior, clapped his hand on Joe’s shoulder. ‘Sad times, eh?’ He pulled out his cigarettes and offered one to Joe. ‘How was your war?’
Joe wanted to say, Terrible, since you’ve asked, but he knew Pat didn’t want an answer, most likely blamed him for the war, him being on British soil and all.
It rained all through the days of the wake and was still falling when Uncle Gerald came with the hearse to collect the body from the house. The rain drummed on the slate roof of St Brendan’s. It rained as they left the church and walked towards the burial ground, his daidí in his pine coffin with the flowers dripping and the wilting wreath in the shape of a chopper. The rain turned to hail, glacial to the touch, icy water skidding to the earth and soaking into the soil, falling in grey rivers over the tombstones and monuments, eddying in the dips in the paths and the space around the graves. It splattered off the umbrellas and the hats of the mourners and soaked the trouser legs below the raincoats. It seeped into the leather of the shoes. The mourners walked to where the pit was dug, six feet deep, in a plot big enough for Bridey too when her time came, and stomped their sodden feet in the soggy earth at the side of the grave. Father Murphy in his white surplice and purple stole, Joe in his, sopping cassock heavy with water, clinging round his legs so it was difficult to walk. The coffin was lowered into the grave and the ropes relaxed and Father Murphy nodded to Joe who stepped forward with his rain-soaked missal.
‘May his soul,’ his foot began to slip in the quagmire round the rim of the hole, ‘and the souls of all the faithful departed,’ Joe put his other foot behind him to keep his balance but the waterlogged ground couldn’t hold the pressure and with a slurp, ‘through the mercy of God,’ sucked him down so that he slid over the side of the grave as if it were an open scree. He flung out his arms and let go of the missal, ‘Rest in peace,’ and landed with a thud on the foot end of the coffin, which tipped in the sludge and settled with a slap, spitting gobs of black mud over the crisp white lace of the surplice he’d borrowed from Father Murphy.
Joe stared at the layers of earth in the mud wall in front of him: the thin, black topsoil and the red clay beneath marbled with severed roots, washed white like a slab of best porterhouse veined with fat, and beneath the clay the cracked tips of grey stone. The hole smelled like a winter night, dank and decayed, and as he tried to push himself up, the sides began to crumble with the weight of water and there was a roar as they caved in around him, pushing him back, covering his feet and legs and waterlogged cassock and splattered chasuble in a thick flow of ooze.
‘Hold on there.’
The gravediggers lowered a ladder and Joe heaved himself up and stepped out and onto the boggy ground, little Bridey standing there wiping an eye with her grubby handkerchief.
‘Only Jesus himself climbs out of a grave,’ Father Murphy said afterwards in the sacristy, handing him a glass of Jameson. ‘Drink up. It’ll do you the power of good.’
Only Joe didn’t go back to the house, not after th
at. O’Sullivan’s was open, half a dozen men with crumpled tweed jackets and black ties staring into their glasses.
The publican looked up. ‘What’ll it be, Father?’
‘A whiskey,’ Joe said. ‘A large one.’ He waited while the publican poured.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said, handing it to Joe. ‘On the house.’
Joe stood as waves of hot and cold rolled up and down his body, corrugating his flesh, spinning his head. He finished the whiskey in one easy gulp.
Sitting on his father’s coffin, eye to eye with marbled roots and raw-red worms, earwigs and beetles, as the rain washed down from above and the sludge pushed up from below, he had seen, as clear as daylight, that there was no difference between man and animal. No immortal soul. No life hereafter. When you died, that was it. Buried deep and feasted on by maggots who were gobbled up by pheasants who were shot down by hunters and served up as game in his father’s butcher’s shop.
His teeth chattered and the hairs at the back of his neck stood proud. He nodded to the publican who filled his glass again. Joe walked over to a small table in the corner, lifted the chair, turned it so he faced the wall and sat, the liquid forming rainbows in the glass as it swirled and settled. He stared into the amber void, conjuring again the cadavers of his war, the skeletal frames he’d called his friends, the wanton, casual cruelty of it all. God had turned a blind eye to all of that. And no one here gave a damn.
He swallowed the whiskey, waved to O’Sullivan for a refill. Nothing scared him now. Not the Church, and all its holy fathers. Mortal sin and venial sin, guardian angels and purgatory. Lies. All of it.
‘There, Father,’ O’Sullivan said, placing the bottle on the table. ‘Take it easy.’
Joe thought of the hard man who’d once been his daidí, lying in his coffin, fist coiled like a mace and knuckles sharp as rocks. I will not hear this filth. Do you hear? He’s a man of God, so help me. Joe had cowered on his knees, head in his hands, elbows to the fore, a wounded crow, while his father, shoulders hunched, hovered over Joe, breathing fire like a bull. ‘It takes a lot for a man to punch his own son,’ he’d said. ‘But I will not hear a word against Holy Mother Church.’
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