A Parachute in the Lime Tree

by Annemarie Neary

  Joachim had been right about the mural’s popularity. Once it was finished, the bar was full of German airmen. Madame was suddenly excessively friendly, and keen to offer them a reward. ‘I know what will cheer you up,’ she said. The tooth glinted. ‘You’ve not been out in the bay yet, have you? There’s an island for each day of the year out there. I’ll arrange for someone to take you out on a little fishing trip when the weather improves. Out to the Ile aux Moines, perhaps. The Île d’Arz? Catch some sardines, oysters.’

  Madame Pouliquen kept her promise about the fishing. A week or so later, her nephew took a group on weekend leave out to the Golfe du Morbihan. Fish, camp, drink. Joachim said he didn’t need another break so soon. He’d stay behind. He agreed to do a training flight instead, a favour for someone.

  The nephew was surly, and Oskar felt they were no more than tolerated. They went out under sail on the outgoing tide, the boy navigating in silence. They hit a school of mackerel after a couple of hours and pulled in at one of the islands to light a fire to cook lunch. When the time came to return, they were warmed by spring sunshine and a bellyful of fish, and the nephew was almost friendly.

  It wasn’t until they got back to the billet that they realised anything was wrong. For once, Delphine came out from behind her curtain. She rushed towards Oskar, hesitated a moment, then reached out to touch his arm. Madame Pouliquen stood at her desk, a black scarf at her throat.

  It had been raining heavily in Vannes that day, though it seemed the rain had nothing to do with it. Oskar tried to visualise Joachim’s plane as it set off, shortly before dawn: rolling in driving rain from the paddock to the take-off point, taking its position on the starting grid, with the faint illumination of the kerosene lamps, then roaring down the track. Something went wrong shortly after take off. Everyone had his theory. The trimming wheel, perhaps. Some freak obstruction. Maybe they’d jammed the sprocket, rolled over a border lamp when taxiing. With only the instruments for a guide, how soon would Joachim have noticed that the rate of climb was excessive? They’d have struggled with all their might to keep the nose down.

  Oskar found it impossible to sleep. He kept imagining he could hear Joachim’s clarinet, those jazz tunes he used to belt out to annoy the Prussians. They hadn’t yet reallocated Joachim’s bed, so he turned on the light and, for the first time since arriving back in Vannes, he took out the journal he kept outside on the windowsill, tucked behind the flower box. One by one, he read through Elsa’s letters. He tried to visualise the grey city she described, where it rained all the time. He tried to imagine the torment it would be for her to be so far from home without anyone to speak to in German, unless somehow her parents had made it to Ireland after all. Now that Joachim was gone, it became Oskar’s habit to write in the journal most nights after returning from a mission. It gave him hope that there was something beyond the war, and gradually his thoughts began to turn again to escape.

  10 April 1941

  Overheard Werner speaking to someone from another crew. It was a while before I realised it was Joachim they were talking about. The other guy said he’d heard Joachim was a cocky bastard who thought he was infallible. Thought he didn’t have to prove his loyalty, either. One of those aristocrats who think they can look into their own hearts and see the Fatherland: so full of shit, they don’t seem to realise they’re yesterday’s men.

  Then Werner started. Probably lucky for his family he went down when he did. Might have found their Schloss a little harder to hold on to if he kept shooting his mouth off like that.

  I didn’t realise that’s how he thought of Joachim. It shocked me, the words he used. The balance of his mind was disturbed: that’s how he put it. I wonder if that’s what they’ll say about me.

  11 April 1941

  No news from Berlin since I was home on leave. Willy was in back there last week. He’d promised to look in on Zweibrückenstrasse but when he returned he said he couldn’t find the place. I began to think of all kinds of dreadful reasons why he mightn’t have been able to find it. I worried that there were raids on Berlin they weren’t telling us about. Turns out he didn’t even look. Got lucky with some girl and didn’t bother his head.

  12 April 1941

  Today we were over a place code-named ‘Speisekammer’. Caught in a searchlight and survived that only to find ourselves in the midst of concentrated flak a little way on. Weather better but forecasts still not very reliable. The beams are intercepted whenever possible by the British. Dummies everywhere, too. They set fires themselves to throw the bombers off course. There’s always some idiot who ends up bombing the hell out of a little patch of countryside someone has mocked up to look worthwhile. Some Easter.

  13 April 1941

  All I can think of now is escape. I never mentioned Elsa to Joachim. I suppose I wasn’t sure how he would have reacted. The Jewish question was not something we’d ever discussed. Maybe I was afraid to find out what his views were. He was no Nazi but he’d never have dreamed of betraying his comrades by leaving them one short on the home run. He would despise me for it. He would tell me my duty was to Germany. These people won’t last, he’d say. We do our duty for Germany, not for them. He liked to say that Hitler would wind up Bürgermeister back in Linz, if someone didn’t bump him off first.

  One of the higher-ups took me aside today. They have their eye on me. They tell me they’re worried about my state of mind since Joachim died. This kind of emotionalism can affect the rest of a crew, they said. I don’t know where they get their information. Werner? I’ve been thinking about that chap who just disappeared last month when he fell to pieces and took to weeping into his drink. Nobody ever found out where they took him.

  14 April 1941

  Today my luck changed. At the preflight briefing, they told us that tonight’s target is the Etappe. Belfast. An industrial city, it seems, a port. Apparently, the other Irish have daubed their independence in large white letters on clifftops all along their coast, to warn us to keep out. But if we have enough fuel left, Rolf will fly back along it anyway, to avoid crossing England a second time.

  So that’s what war has done for me: made me ecstatic to be bombing the place where Elsa’s been given refuge. Madness. Yet for the first time there is also hope.

  Nobody felt comfortable flying without Joachim. It didn’t help that the new boy had fallen asleep on the home run the very first time they’d flown together. Besides, they’d all become so superstitious now, clinging on to their own personal mascots. They’d become just like the old Norway hands, determined to do everything exactly as they’d done it the day before. Before the flight, Oskar off-loaded as much standard-issue kit as he could. Rations, maps, even his beloved traubenzucker. Instead, he stuffed his pockets with her letters, his journal and Joachim’s yellow scarf, folded to no bigger than a pack of cards. He left his Luftwaffe watch behind and brought Grandpapa’s pocket watch in its place. As always, in the moments before take off, each man was immersed in his own most intimate thoughts. Oskar thought of Mutti and how she would feel when the word came back that he’d deserted the Reich. Maybe they’d just write him off as a casualty. For her sake, he hoped so.

  Rolf took the plane up over the tip of Cornwall and north of the Isle of Man. He skirted the coast of the neutral place they call Éire until they reached the inverted V of Belfast Lough. The mission had seemed straightforward enough, with most of the targets clustered together, but the weather conditions were much worse than had been expected. Cloud cover was 9/10. The crew were tense, focused. Werner was stretched out on the mattress, peering through the glass nose, scanning for cloud breaks through which to drop the incendiaries. Willy fretted about the fuel supply as they circled over the targets. They were all furious that the weather forecast had been so inaccurate.

  As for Oskar, he crouched down in his glass pod, jerking the gun this way and that to keep alert for tracer fire. He hoped they would get it over quickly. He was more rattled than usual, sickened by the smell of kerosene a
nd the knowledge that there was only one way out. When the time came he would have to make for the hatch and push his way through it so fast they couldn’t stop him. His only hope was that Rolf would decide to fly home over Éire. A good chance, he thought, provided the fuel would hold out. It wouldn’t be like Rolf to risk a run down the English coast if there was a safer way of getting home. But they were spending far longer than usual trying to find targets, battling against the dense blanket of cirrocumulus that stretched underneath them. He was painfully aware that each minute was eating away at his chances of escape, until at last the plane scythed up and away from the burning city. They left the coast behind them and veered west. He knew then they were taking the long way home. His heart tightened when he realised he would get his chance.

  Kitty

  This Parachute Business

  The parachute hung like a cloud over one of the lime trees at the end of the garden. Still half asleep, Kitty watched the magpies fussing over it like a clatter of nuns. They could fuss away, but it was clear that whoever had come down with it was well gone. Was he lying in a ditch somewhere, his face burned off him, his cries carried onto the bog? She opened the window and listened. Nothing. Maybe this was just the start of it. Maybe this fellow had given the game away and there were dozens of others, all along the coast from Killary Harbour to Roonagh Quay. Those men, hiding the evidence, slipping in like the flu. Most girls would be frightened, she thought. Most girls would be beside themselves at the very thought. She felt a hop in her guts all right but she didn’t think it was fright.

  Mother wouldn’t have spotted it yet. Since the funeral, she slept on half the morning. Later, they sat together at the kitchen table and waited for the tea to draw while Mother pasted her bread with bright yellow butter. More than once, Kitty opened her mouth to mention the parachute but the moment never felt right. After breakfast, Mother disappeared into the parlour with The White Feather under her arm.

  ‘I’ll just cock the feet a while,’ she announced, leaving Kitty to the clearing up.

  Kitty wandered through the hallway. A stream of light lit up the dust particles in the air, flurries of them, like moments piling up into one more day. She took the scarf from around her neck and snapped it across the hall table to stop the moments from congregating. Then she made her way to the lime tree through the new vegetable garden Sean Galligan had planted after Father passed away to replace the old one that the brambles had taken. Sean always said you couldn’t eat a peony rose.

  By the time she got to the bottom of the garden, the silk of the parachute had ballooned up around the side of the tree like the skin of an onion. Although Easter had been and gone, there was still a nip in the air. Kitty gave a little shiver. If the parachute man was still nearby, he might be watching her, willing her not to call in the Guards, to give him a bit longer to get clear. She smoothed her hair back over her forehead and wondered where the fellow might be.

  Back at the house, Mother was sitting bolt upright in the parlour with the wireless tuned to Raidió Éireann. When Kitty opened her mouth to mention the parachute, Mother raised a hand to halt her. She listened attentively until the broadcast came to an end and then she interpreted the news in breathy chunks for Kitty. Hundreds of planes … bombing the daylights out of Belfast … mountains of fire and carnage everywhere … and even the water mains blown up. ‘Those poor people, Kitty, blown to bits by the Germans. Nothing but great big cowardly vultures with their night bombing, and the people half starved up there anyway.’

  They didn’t know anyone in Belfast. Mother was always saying what black-hearted bastards they were. Kitty walked over and set her hand lightly on Mother’s shoulder. Her back started to shake even more violently then, as though Kitty had released some terrible, pent-up sorrow that was being spent tonight on Belfast. ‘We’re hardly off our knees yet and there’s people fighting their battles over our heads.’

  Kitty wondered how to bring up the matter of the parachute without upsetting her even more. Maybe, she thought, it was best to let it pass; just have Sean cut it down and say no more about it. All the same, she couldn’t help wondering if one day she’d say: that was the day the war came to Dunkerin.

  Mother put some Chopin on the gramophone and Kitty decided to keep her trap shut. It wasn’t the right moment, and anyway, she liked Chopin. It was soothing and it always gave her hope that one day there’d be dancing again. Years ago, Cora Redmond used to give ballet lessons in the old ballroom up at Cloheen. Mother said Cora was always carried and had lost the run of herself altogether when she snared Eric Redmond. ‘It’s far from the ballet that one was dragged up.’

  It was almost a year, now, since Con signed up for the Ulster Rifles and Mrs Redmond shut up the old house and moved across the border. ‘To be nearer him in spirit,’ she said.

  Con had been around during the summer holidays for as long as Kitty could remember. When they were younger, a gang of them would go off together on the bicycles for the whole day, across to Dunkerin Bay where they would fish for crabs in the rock pools and eat sandy doorsteps for lunch. Once he left school, he didn’t come home much any more and the little group of friends began to disperse.

  Then one day, out of the blue, Con arrived at the door. Kitty hadn’t even realised he was home. She invited him into the parlour and they had a glass of lemonade. She couldn’t find any biscuits.

  ‘I’m heading over beyond,’ he said.

  ‘To fight for King and Country?’

  ‘For the rights of small nations, Kitty. That’s my war. I’m fighting for no King.’

  She thought it was funny, him coming all the way over to tell her what she would have heard in a few days anyway. She hoped he would stay out of trouble. Mind you, wasn’t that what a war was all about? Trouble, then more trouble. Someone had told her that during the Great War there were villages of fellows went off and never came back at all.

  ‘Try to keep to terra firma, Con,’ she said as he left, giving her one of his strong handshakes. He seemed a little hesitant at the door, as though there was something else to be said, but then he just walked away. She’d like to have seen him in his uniform but Mother said he probably wasn’t allowed to wear it around here. ‘It wouldn’t be wise, anyhow.’

  Sean Galligan arrived around mid-morning. By that time, the sun had come out and the parachute was even more noticeable. Sean was chewing on something, looking hard at Kitty.

  ‘That Gerry parachute you have in the lime tree, Miss. There’ll have been a fella on the end of that yoke. Have you been on to the Guards?’

  She looked at Sean’s reflection in the hall mirror. He was raising his eyebrows and pulling a face at the wall. He’d not have done that if Father was still alive. ‘You think I should then?’

  ‘God knows what the fella might be up to. Couldn’t he be anywhere? Skulking about, waiting till dark.’ Sean walked away, shaking his head.

  She followed him out into the garden. Sean ignored her; just kept on stabbing at the ground with the hoe.

  ‘I suppose we’d better get Sergeant McCreesh up to have a look,’ she said.

  ‘About time.’

  After Sean left, Kitty took a turn around the garden, down as far as the old bathtub where the last of the daffodils lay flattened. The grass was an unnatural, electric green; the colour you sometimes get before gales. She lay down on the electric grass and looked right up into the sky. The thing is, there’s no beginning to a sky. She’d no idea how high a plane could fly, or what happened if it tried to fly too high. She wondered how small a speck he’d have been when he left the plane. She imagined him hurtling through that sky, all the way down to Dunkerin. She brushed her hand over the blades of grass. A spy more than likely. Bloody useless place for a spy. She clenched her fist around a clump of grass and pulled. The moisture in the grass began to seep into her back and she wondered again whether he was watching her.

  Back in the kitchen, she scrambled two eggs and watched as Mother ate them slowly, revolving the
mixture loosely in her mouth. ‘Lovely, pet. You’ve a lovely touch with the eggs.’

  She didn’t ask Kitty if she had eaten. A little later, when Mother had gone off to tend to her geraniums, Kitty stood at the side door in the grey light and waited for Sergeant McCreesh. By mid-afternoon, he still hadn’t arrived and she began to wonder just how seriously he was taking this parachute business.

  It was almost seven when, from some distance off, she heard a noise like a throat clearing. The light had faded a little but she could still see the motorcar as it wound its way towards the house. Meanwhile, Mother was dozing in the parlour, propped stiffly between two embroidered cushions.

  When he climbed out of the car, the sergeant looked past her shoulder at first, as though hoping for someone more important to talk to, until he seemed to remember that there were just women in the Hennessy household now. He had the eyes of a hard case and his remaining hair was oiled down carefully across his scalp. The sergeant captured her hand in both of his. She guessed that she was not in any trouble as far as he was concerned.

  ‘Sean tells me you have a matter to bring to our attention under the Emergency Provisions.’

  ‘The parachute?’

  ‘Indeed so.’

  ‘Sean tells me it’s a German parachute, not that it makes much difference.’

  For the second time that day she heard how hundreds of German planes had just bombed the bejaysus out of Belfast, how Dev was sending up the fire brigades and weren’t we all brothers when it came to the bit.

  ‘Surely to God, Miss Hennessy, that makes a difference. Killary Harbour, Clew Bay.’ He looked over his shoulder and hissed at her ‘U-boats. Taking their ease in our waters. We’d want to watch we don’t swap one master for another.’ He chuckled at his own worldliness.

  She led him down the garden to where the parachute was snagged. It no longer looked like it was about to be whipped away by the wind but had entered complicated bondage with the tree. The magpies had gone.