Charlie’s arm was beginning to hurt. He’d be amazed if there wasn’t a bruise in the morning.
‘Jesus, I love you,’ said Bobby. ‘I hope she’s a bit friendlier with you, Charlie. I hope you get a bit more out of her than that. Sure we haven’t heard a peep yet. Have a go there Sullivan, see what you can get out of the lovely Elsie Rankin.’
Sullivan took one step towards Elsa and she was off. ‘Thanks for nothing,’ Charlie shouted back at the two men as he set off after her.
He caught up with her in no time, just a street away. She was panicky, huddled against a wall, her face shiny with tears. He was puzzled. It seemed to be such an overreaction. Bobby Coyle was an awful eejit, but he wasn’t a thug. As for Sullivan, he was just a muck savage. It was an unpleasant end to the night but if she’d stood her ground they’d just have gone away. He couldn’t understand what had frightened her so much. Because he was sure now that fear was what he’d seen in her eyes. Not annoyance or irritation but fear.
At first, she shrugged him off. He drew away a long strand of hair from in front of her face. She breathed in sharply and turned to look at him. It was as though she’d emerged from a tunnel. She let him put his arms around her and buried her face in his shoulder. As he held her, he could feel her sobs come in a little bundle, then subside again until eventually her breathing evened out.
‘If you knew Bobby Coyle, you’d laugh that he could be given a uniform by anyone.’
He expected her to laugh but she didn’t. She looked up at him. ‘Where I come from even the worst of men have a uniform.’
He realised that she was soaking wet, what with having no Mackintosh and her shoes just light patent leather things. He felt terrible sending her home to the Abrahamsons in this state. The first time he’d taken her out and here she was, sodden with tears and Dublin rain. They walked up to the next bridge then back down the other side of the canal. Along by the backs of the houses, he asked her what she meant about the uniforms.
‘They don’t need to wear uniforms to be cruel. Sometimes it’s enough to be called Professor, Doctor, whatever. But the ones who wear uniforms are even worse because cruelty is what’s expected of them.’
‘All this and yet it’s your home.’
‘Home is gone. We don’t have any home.’
‘But your parents, your school friends, all your memories must be there.’
She screwed up her face and shook her face so fast it was blurred. He started to ask her more but she held up her hand to stop him.
‘Are there letters?’ he asked. ‘Can you write to them?’
As soon as he said it, he remembered what Bethel had told him and he wished he could bite back the question.
She shook her head, just once this time. ‘Not any more. How do you write to people who are trying not to exist?’
They sat on a bench, half hidden by the reeds that arched up behind them.
‘I’m not even meant to be here,’ she said. ‘They didn’t know what to do with me in Belfast. There wasn’t anywhere else to go, except for the Farm. What would I do on a farm? It was so long, that time in Belfast with no piano, no one to talk to. I just want to stay where I am.’ She gripped his arm, and that alarmed him all over again because he wasn’t sure he knew enough about the world to be able to keep her safe in it, and he knew that he wanted, more than anything, to be the one who could do just that. ‘I didn’t know they put your name in the newspaper, your address even, just for winning a little competition.’ She began to cry again, swiping away the tears with her knuckles. ‘Bethel says don’t worry. He says they’d never send me away. Not now. He says that’s not the way they do things in Ireland. Someone would just turn a blind eye and that would be fine. It is just another thing I am not to worry about, now that I am in Ireland, where there is no war. I am not to worry about Mama or Papa. Certainly not Aunt Hanne or Uncle Rudi. As for old Frau Hirsch who lives on her own … Don’t worry. Don’t worry.’ Her hands were clutching at the hem of her skirt, stretching it taut, then pulling and pulling, as if she might rip the cloth in two.
Charlie placed his hand on top of hers as gently as he could. After a moment or two, she seemed to relax a little, and then she spoke. ‘Every night I worry about them all. I worry about myself too. I worry that someone will come to the door. Someone in uniform to tell me I’m not wanted. Bethel and Hilde say that things aren’t like that here. Make some friends, they say. Try to live a normal life. Try to forget. You’ll see them all again when things calm down. But even I can tell they don’t really believe it’s possible just to forget.’
Charlie wished he was better at finding the right things to say. He put his arm around her shoulders and they sat there for a long time, just listening to the sound of each other’s breath. When it was time to go, he turned to look at her. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking, as she gazed ahead into the dark water of the canal.
Dublin
Hedy Lamarr and the Parachute Man
Kitty had been out with a fair few fellows up in Dublin. Without exception, they were a shower of octopuses. There’d not been a hint of that with the German. Maybe he was just brought up to be gentlemanly (not that it made a blind bit of difference to the octopuses, and them indoctrinated against the sins of the flesh since they were in short pants).
It would give you the pip: fellows lining up to take her out that summer up in Dublin before Father became ill but not a flicker of interest from the one who’d fallen out of the sky. She imagined dandering down Grafton Street with Oskar on her arm, taking tea and little cakes in Bewley’s. It would be dreamy to be away from Dunkerin with somebody as glamorous as him. Rita was driving her mad with her letters: this dance and that one. To hear her, you’d think she was out at dinners in Jammet’s every other night of the week. Oh, to be back in the land of the living with Oskar to show off around town. There’s no way Rita could beat that: a man who’d floated down to earth like a dandelion clock. Sure she wouldn’t have to say he was a German at all. She could pass him off as some other class of a foreigner; do the talking for him, if she had to.
As for a place to stay, Aunt Effie would put them up. She wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Effie didn’t give a fiddler’s what anybody thought. Didn’t they say she had a fancy man herself, some fellow with a funny name who dressed up in Indian clothes and pretended to be the doorman? That’s what Father used to say, anyway. Mother was horrified. ‘Whisht now, Frank,’ she’d say. ‘That’s an awful thing to say. Sure he’s just one of those poor divils who come to Effie looking for the Light.’
‘So that’s what they’re calling it these days.’
She couldn’t make head nor tail of Oskar. Whatever about the lack of movement on the romantic front, there was no sign of him making any move for Wicklow either. If he was a spy, which she very much doubted, then he didn’t have a lot of get-up-and-go about him. She’d reached the conclusion that he was a bit of a dreamer, really. She wasn’t surprised he’d left the war. She reckoned the war would do just fine without him. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine him being any good at all when it came to dropping bombs. All Oskar seemed to do was sit and dream and fiddle around with his knife on scrag ends of wood. One morning, when she arrived at the shed, she jumped with fright when she saw the knife, until she realised he was just whittling away at something. He had a little leather book that he wrote in, too: pages and pages of spiky script.
The thing that puzzled her the most was that she still couldn’t see how he’d reached Dunkerin in the first place. If his plane had crashed, wouldn’t they have found it by now? If he’d been dropped deliberately, then he was a spy, and she didn’t believe they couldn’t find someone a bit more like Humphrey Bogart for a job like that. If he’d really done what he said he’d done and just jumped out of the war, then he was a deserter. It must have been a pretty desperate state of affairs to drive somebody to jump out of the war, out of everything he’d ever known, too. She couldn’t imagine what would drive a man to that. Besid
es, once you deserted there was no way back. People hated you for it. Up in Dublin, she’d seen a picture once where the French Foreign Legion did awful things to deserters out there in the middle of the desert. From what she’d heard of the Germans, they weren’t likely to take too kindly to deserters either. As for all that about not wanting to harm anyone, that was a bit rich, what with Belfast blown to bits.
Kitty considered Hedy Lamarr, and what she would do when it came to a parachute in the lime tree. Hedy Lamarr would likely bide her time and the fellow would come running to her anyway. That was all very well, thought Kitty, when you were Hedy Lamarr, but what’s floated down can just as easy float off again. So instead she was bold as brass. The night Mother was due to stay over with the Kennys after the musical evening for the Red Cross, she told Oskar there was a bed for him in the house. When he arrived, he stood at the bottom of the stairs until she told him to come on up. He came up all right but he hardly said a word to her. He plonked himself down on the bed in the old nursery and was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. She couldn’t help thinking there was an insult in that, and for the first time she thought how easy it would be to have him locked up.
Journal of Oskar Müller
Day 3, 20 April 1941
The days are very long. It’s frustrating still to be here, but my knee has swollen to the size of a grapefruit, not that there are any grapefruits around here. I don’t know if I can trust Kitty but I feel sure she will not have me arrested while I’m still a novelty. She is barely more than a kid and she seemes to know little of the world outside her village. She is the only person I’ve had contact with, so it’s not easy to get an idea of these people. There is a mother, though I haven’t heard her speak. I have heard men’s voices: an old man who works around the place and, last night, two younger men who found sport in hunting me down. The place itself is rather down-at-heel: a small farm, perhaps, that the family can no longer manage. The house is a reasonable size, surrounded by trees, mainly chestnuts and limes. Beyond it, there is only wilderness.
Day 4, 21 April 1941
Kitty does not seem interested in the war. I suppose that’s in my favour. She asks question after question about Berlin: the shops, the cafés, what hats the ladies wear. She prattles on about Dublin, the only city, I suppose, she has ever seen. How she lived there once. How she wishes she had never left. She talks of an aunt who lives there still. The aunt was the first vegetarian in Ireland, she tells me, as if such a thing is possible. Even though she was christened Eileen everyone calls her F.V. After a while, I stop listening to Kitty’s long stories about this splendid aunt of hers; FV or Effie or whatever.
Day 5, 22 April 1941
I am so far from Wicklow. How I shall get there in this state and without money, I don’t know. I don’t wish to steal from Kitty, though sooner or later I suppose I’ll have to steal from someone. I have already broken one boundary, who knows how many more I’ll have to break? I don’t suppose any of my comrades see me as a person of honour any longer.
Day 6, 23 April 1941
I am impatient to start my journey, and yet there is a kind of paralysis about me. I am almost afraid to leave this place. I am like the first man on a new planet. I have no way of getting back and yet I do not know if what I have done is a calamity.
Day 7, 24 April 1941
Last night, Kitty brought me inside the house and I slept like a baby in a room with rosebuds on the walls. She is pretty, lively and there is a sharpness about her that amuses me, but I have no inclination to complicate matters by playing the handsome stranger. This morning she barely spoke to me and there was no breakfast. It will soon be time to leave.
Day 8, 25 April 1941
I left the shed early, before first light. I took from the kitchen what food I could find, and filled my watercan. I had almost reached the gate when I heard Kitty running after me. She says this aunt does not believe in wars. Her evidence is the aunt’s vegetarianism. I almost laughed. Our own vegetarians are much more warlike than any meat eater in this damp little place. But it seems Kitty has everything planned. Not much of a planner myself, I find this astounding. She has even kitted me out in clothes belonging to her brother, dressing me like a new doll. How the boys in Vannes would laugh to see me now! I am a country gentleman with a waistcoat. My flying suit, uniform – everything but my boots – she burnt with some garden rubbish, dashing precious paraffin over it like a mad thing.
Am I wise to rely so much on this girl? She can’t be entirely stable. But it’s true that I will be less conspicuous with her than on my own. Once I reach Dublin, it will be a simple matter to find Wicklow, a mere day or two by foot, and then to disappear.
Sean Galligan took Kitty to the station in the gig in time for the early train to Dublin. The morning was overcast and she sat wrapped in the travelling rug, her stomach raw from nerves and lack of breakfast. Oskar had already left on her bicycle. She didn’t like letting him off on his own, in case he had to speak to anyone, but he didn’t look too worried as he headed off down the driveway, whistling through his teeth.
At the station, there was a straggle of commercial travellers waiting for the first train of the week. Most of them seemed to know one another and they stood together in little clumps. She bought two tickets and tried not to let it bother her when the man behind the counter gave her a funny look. On board, she moved like a crab along the narrow corridor. When she found the right compartment, she placed her small suitcase on the rack and waited for him to find her.
She didn’t look up when the compartment door slid across but she spotted his boots, with Desmond’s tweed trousers tucked inside them. She was still feeling a bit mad with him for heading off on his own without so much as a thank you, but now that he was here she was prepared to let bygones be. He was just sitting down next to her when she heard the sound of someone moving smartly down the corridor, then stopping just outside. Suddenly, Oskar was all over her. It was like one of those clinches in the pictures, with the violins going for it like mad. Gone with the Wind or something like that. When the door of the compartment opened, she tried to pull away from him for modesty’s sake but he held on tight, his head buried in her shoulder. The man in the doorway glanced from Kitty to Oskar then back again. He looked like an official type, in his Mackintosh and hat. He cleared his throat. She was sure he was about to ask for their papers but he seemed to think better of it. Instead, he wished them a good day and was gone. No sooner had the man left than Oskar pulled back from her. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, as if he’d passed wind. She half expected him to try to wipe the kiss away from her lips with his handkerchief.
‘No bother,’ she said, but she was woozy from the kiss, and parts of her felt so pinprick sharp from it, too, that she wouldn’t have minded if he’d been an octopus, not at all.
As they pulled out of the station, she imagined she was seeing everything for the first time, with his eyes. She wondered whether he thought the place beautiful, for all the lack of a bit of sun. She wondered what he thought of her. Just then, she noticed he’d taken Desmond’s valise: the one with his initials on it. She couldn’t remember having given him that and she thought to herself what a blasted cheek. She didn’t say anything, though, because she liked the warmth of him next to her and she still hadn’t got over the kiss.
The train was travelling slowly enough as it was but it began to decelerate to little more than walking pace, then shunted to a stop in the middle of open countryside. Kitty had fallen asleep on his shoulder, so he wedged his rolled-up jacket between her head and the wall of the compartment and carefully extricated himself. There were no waiting passengers and he didn’t think they’d stopped for a signal. During the ten minutes or so that it took for the train to get going again, he was sure the game was up. Then, a whistle and a hiss of steam and they were off. His heart jolted as the compartment door slid back again. This time, though, it was a young woman. ‘Mind if I join you?’ she said.
He shook his head and clo
sed his eyes to avoid the need for conversation. The train seemed practically empty, so he wondered why the woman hadn’t taken one of the other compartments. For her benefit, he drew Kitty’s head back down onto his shoulder and began stroking her hair. The woman started rustling at something. Ravenous by now, he hoped she wasn’t about to unpack a picnic. He felt it was important to keep an eye on her, so he allowed his head to fall back so he could watch her from under his eyelids. His view of her began at the blue toque on her head and ended at her waist. It worried him that he couldn’t see her hands.
‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ she said. She was eating sandwiches, ham he thought, and he had to stop himself from just reaching out to take one.
‘Hel-lo-oh?’ She leant forward; he could see the veins at her temple, smell mustard on her breath. ‘Well?’
Eventually, he made a great show of rousing himself, stretching and yawning on an operatic scale.
‘Honeymooners?’
Oskar took Kitty’s left hand and kissed it. The woman’s eyes darted to the empty ring finger. ‘You divil,’ she said and smirked at him. ‘Do you not have a word?’ She leant forward. ‘Parlez-vous anglais? Speaky ze English? Pogue mahone?’ She chuckled to herself. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’
Kitty sat up, still half asleep. The woman tapped her on the knee. ‘Welcome back, sugarplum. Any more where he came from?’
Kitty was on the point of blurting out that they were to be married, when she remembered that was only in the dream she’d been having. She blushed in mortification at the thought.
The woman winked at Oskar and pointed to her own ring finger. ‘You’d want to get a move on and buy the bit of tinsel.’
A Parachute in the Lime Tree Page 11
